100-year old dream comes true

Dionisia Tabureguci
At exactly 8pm on August 8, 2008, barring any major hiccup, the city of Beijing and its 15 or so million people will literally stand still.

Not only would that day and hour be significantly “lucky”, according to Chinese belief in the importance of the number “8” and its relation to prosperity, it would also be the day and hour of the official opening of the next Olympic Games—Beijing 2008, with a strong forward looking theme of “One World, One Dream”.

Then as if to complete that statement in an almost mathematical way, it would also be the day and hour that China realises a 100-year old dream—which was for China to host an Olympic Games one day, according to Sun Weide, Deputy Director-General, Public Relations section, Olympics Committee of China.

Weide had been briefing a group of starry-eyed journalists from some Pacific islands countries on the progress of Beijing 2008, described as one that would leave a unique legacy to China and to sports and also to those who would flock to this mecca of Eastern civilisation to experience what has been dubbed “the greatest sporting event on the planet when it happens”.

Scheduled to take place between August 8 and August 24, the Beijing Olympic Games will be held right across China; from Beijing being the main host city, Qingdao, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang and Qinhuangdao city to Hong Kong.

They will play co-host to games participants in a total of 28 sports, 38 disciplines and 302 events.
On the schedule are 18 competition days and 623 competition sessions.

The event is expected by its organisers to attract up to 800,000 visitors from all over the world and some 1 million domestic visitors, according to Weide, so one can imagine how that fleeting moment of a definitely warm yet highly charged Beijing summer evening in August would feel like.

From the way things looked when the Pacific press delegation was in China recently, Beijing 2008 was shaping out to be a widely anticipated event where preparations by the organising committee in Beijing were well underway and on schedule.

New competition venues complete with modern sporting facilities were being built, existing venues were being renovated, upgraded and expanded, hotels and accommodation facilities were under construction (in Beijing alone, work was underway to build some 80 new star rate hotels to add to the 658 star rate hotels and some 4000 budget accommodation), new subways, new road and new bridges in host city Beijing.

In the five co-host cities, an Olympic Forest Park, a separate Olympic village, a media village, a national conference center—all in Beijing—are definite part of the mix.

There are even plans, according to Weide, to run the Olympic flame right up to the top of Mount Everest, a feat never before accomplished in a torch relay of any Olympic Games—not even the ones in old and new Greece.

For the regular Olympic Games pilgrim, it is not expected that Beijing 2008 would be your usual dose of the rounds given that the games will begin smack in the middle of over 5000 years of Chinese civilisation, whether one is looking at a stone on a cobble-wall, a gigantic needle on an awkwardly positioned sundial stadium, or a miniature dragon on a temple roof. Never before had there been an Olympiad so steeped in history.

To prepare for all this, China’s Beijing 2008 organising committee is perhaps one of the busiest state bureaus in an already busy China. Preparations had begun in 2004.

“With the support of the Chinese government, the Chinese people as well as all social sectors, the preparation for the Beijing Olympic Games is progressing as planned,” said Weide.

“We have achieved, as scheduled, the goals set for each stage, laying a solid foundation for the successful staging of a high level Olympic Games with distinguishing features.”

In all, the committee is working in eight key areas in order to deliver to the world a well-managed Olympiad which would testify that China is now ready and eager to become a player in the affairs of the world and the state of world peace. 

These eight key areas are: Olympic venue construction, competition organisation as well as preparation in co-host cities are in full swing, preparation for the Paralympic Games is going on at the same time and is progressing as planned, Olympic marketing, communication and cultural activities, media services, preparatory work on transport, security, accommodation, catering and medical services, Beijing city operations and venue operations have been officially launched.