That chill up your spine came from someone inexplicable trying to write like Tom Friedman. Or the screenwriter of Highlander.Yet there is a tremendous upside to these Games: the exposure to modern China, including the Olympic architecture. Exactly one year from today, there will be four swimming finals in Beijing’s National Aquatics Center, nearly finished and already nicknamed the Water Cube because it looks like a square of sparkling water, instantly frozen, bubbles and all.
Next door is the main Olympic stadium, glowing a bright red and nicknamed the Bird’s Nest because of the steel twig-like prongs woven together. “To promote traditional feng shui balance between fire and water, the venues were placed side by side,” wrote John Powers of The Boston Globe, who recently visited Beijing.
China is near.
Vecsey goes on to absolutely wonder at the fact that China seems to have ... yuppies!* Why this is noteworthy, I still can't figure out.
Nor can I figure why, with all the issues surrounding the rise of China, Vecsey decides to deconstruct Olympic architecture like it's the Slusho viral marketing campaign. But in addition to the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube he could have mentioned:
The genocide that gets bankrolled by China's do-what-ya-like capitalism.- If that's too out there, man, here's a slam dunk: All those Mattel toys that were covered with lead. And the Chinese head of the company who committed suicide after the news about the lead hit. Maybe Vecsey should focus on the feng shui between prominent embarrassments to the country and the corpses that seem to follow. What's going to happen to the Chinese environmental bigwigs when the summer of 2008 rolls around and the air in Beijing still sucks? (Hint: Odds seem decent that they'll die.)
**Yeah, Ghana's better off than many. But point stands: Every country has a First Class section.
