Beijing: Olympian Dreams by Brian Johnston

The first time I flew into Beijing, fifteen years ago, its airport was a cavernous hall, poorly lit as the set for some disaster movie. Customs officers sat in little wooden boxes with counters so low I had to stoop awkwardly for a glimpse of a uniformed sleeve and sullen face. In the arrivals hall, the baggage was dumped unceremoniously in a heap among dusty potted palms, setting off a scrum of passengers. More than a decade and a billion US dollars later, Beijing airport is another place entirely. The bright new complex of soaring steel and glass is brightly lit and welcoming, with polite messages in English: Please do not put your body out of the escalator. All you can hear is the hum of the frigid air-conditioning and Walls ice cream freezers. By 2015 the airport is expected to host sixty million passengers a year – and then they’re going to start building another.

The Chinese are people in a hurry: they not only conjure up whole new airports, but practically whole new cities too. Anyone who hasn’t been to Beijing before is in for quite a surprise, and anyone who hasn’t been for some time will be amazed at the transformation. Beijing is a city going places, with new roads and new flyovers. In the city centre high-rises and luxury department stores sprout with the speed of mushrooms after rain. Gone are the blue Mao tunics and a great many of the bicycles; expect kaleidoscopic fashions and black Audis. Even the bright yellow and blue taxi you sit in is likely to be new. No more belching and spluttering from either car or driver; emissions meet international standards and drivers merrily practice their English. On back windows a bumper sticker reads: Build New Beijing! Hold Great Olympics!

Change first came to Beijing and to China in the 1980s, but revved into high gear in the 1990s and achieved supersonic lift-off when the city won the Olympic bid. The Beijing Olympics will be held on 8/8/08, eight being a highly auspicious number to the Chinese. But the government isn’t just content to let good luck work its magic; it has coughed up US$30 billion for improvements to the city. Cranes lean over the city from every angle amid a jungle of scaffolding. There are plans for sixty new roads, three new bridges, 200 kms of new rail track, thousands of new buses. An ultra-modern planetarium opened in 2004; this year sees the completion of the National Grand Theatre, a US$400 million opera house toped with an egg-like dome in glass and titanium. Even the Forbidden City is getting a new roof.

Welcome to the brave New China, where you can feel the country’s dynamism as it hurtles into the twenty-first century with a great deal of can-do optimism. Have to host an Olympics? Let’s revamp eleven venues and knock up twenty others, including the National Convention Centre, Olympic Village and Media Village, all of which should be finished by 2007 for trail runs before the main event. And don’t think modest: the Olympic venues stand in the north of the city right on the same central axis that runs from the Temple of Heaven in the south through the Forbidden City in the centre. The National Swimming Centre, nicknamed the Water Cube for its avant-garde design, will later become a public aquatic centre and cinema complex. The National Stadium has a spectacular and challenging roof that has earned it the affectionate title ‘Bird’s Nest’.

What does this mean for the visitor? With a host of ancient cultural attractions few will want to spend time on Olympic building sites, but visitors can benefit from the flow-on effect. For a start, you’re likely to see some blue sky in Beijing these days, thanks to intense efforts to clean up the heavily polluted air. Out goes manufacturing and coal power, in comes natural gas and cleaner cars. (While cars now seem to dominate, bicycle lanes remain, separated from the road by solid barriers, making renting a bike one of the most enjoyable ways of getting around this very flat city.) Beijing is greener too. The aim is to green 25% of the city in time for the Olympics, including two vast green belts (one loop is finished, another still to come), new parks and trees everywhere.

Of course, it isn’t just the Olympics but China’s spectacular economic momentum that’s contributing to a transformed Beijing. In more good news for visitors, hotels, restaurants and nightlife have transformed out of all recognition. Hotels are now the equal of any in Hong Kong or Tokyo, and you can expect another eight hundred over the next few years. Dozens of new nightclubs have also appeared, along with bars and art galleries, in buzzing areas such as Houhai Lake, Sanlitun, and an area in the northeast known simply as Factory 798. Here Russian women, American marines and Gucci-toting Chinese yuppies mingle, quaffing imported beers and dancing the night away.

The food is much better too. Thousands of private restaurants compete to offer a staggering variety of cuisines. Chic restaurants have left the old-style Chinese halls behind; not a hint of a lazy susan, but plenty of fusion cuisine. Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman have eaten at the Court Yard Restaurant, where traditional Chinese furnishings compete with leather sofas and avant-garde art. Huaihai is the up-and-coming place for modern Chinese cuisine, where you’ll find new takes on the likes of pan-fried dumplings; you can also browse the antique shops and fancy clothing boutiques. Not a few visitors have also fallen back on Western fast food, which is having a huge vogue in Beijing; currently there are 57 McDonald’s alone.

The Chinese are on a roller-coaster towards modernisation, and the scale and rapidity of the changes can hardly be exaggerated. Beijing has some of the country’s best monuments to its exquisite past, but in the end it’s the determination and vision for the future that’s likely to strike you the most. By all means visit the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace and nearby Great Wall, which are staggering, but budget plenty of time to get a taste of the modern city, which is hauling its infrastructure, transport systems and urban landscape right into the modern era. Its culture and lifestyle are coming along for the ride. Expect iPods, designer-copy T-shirts with slogans in odd English, cell phones galore. Expect trendy youngsters sipping lurid cocktails in nightclubs, or eating sushi and French fries in the street. (The good news is, you can still get a good bowl of old-fashioned noodles too.) Expect Beijing men to sport shiny shoes, glittering watches and gigantic bunches of keys hanging from their belts; women to wear spangled Lycra and diaphanous dresses. Expect giant video screens trumpeting the latest in technology. On TV news a drab announcer used to mutter about the wheat harvest. These days, a journalist in a pink suits smiles as she informs you of stock market trends.

Go shopping. A decade ago you went down to the street market to buy Communist handbooks, giant maps of China and the odd cabbage. These days you can pick up ‘Rolex’ watches, Mickey Mouse wall clocks, bootleg CDs and heated toilet seats. I give you good price okay hello you want! shout old ladies in English, all in one breath. And yes, you do want: US$5 designer sunglasses, US$20 quality anoraks and (oops, maybe I got a bit carried way) a Chairman Mao cigarette lighter. Then head to Wangfujing Street, where the shopping malls are another whole world again: futuristic vacuum cleaners and kitchen blenders vie for attention among Armani and Dolce & Gabbana fashions. Hoardings, vaunting the delights of Panda-brand washing powder and Volkswagen Santanas, jostle for space with family-planning posters.

Of course, you shouldn’t be hoodwinked by all this growth and prosperity: most Beijingers still find even a Starbucks coffee an unaffordable luxury; the average disposable income in Beijing, which is well above the national average, is US$50 a year.) And not all the changes are necessarily for the better. Taichi in the park has been replaced by frenzy in the nightclubs, and many older Chinese bemoan the loss of values among the young. Vast ring roads encircle the city, seeming to go on forever; the noise of construction reverberates everywhere; hotels are monstrous mountains of glass. The elegant old hutong courtyards are mostly demolished, and every day Beijing looks a little bit more like any other city. You have to fear for the more gentle side of Beijing, and enjoy it while you can: the back lanes where people sell trinkets, old men wander in their pyjamas and birds sing from bamboo cages.

For the moment, the past and the future sit curiously but surprisingly comfortably side by side. Go now and you’ll experience a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a city and a country on the cusp of gigantic and exciting change. Out in Tiananmen Square, a vast electronic clock counts down the minutes to the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. The seconds flash past with mind-numbing speed: the Chinese are in a hurry, and the future beckons.