It is night and day how Beijing is different from the Beijing when I arrived 5 weeks ago. Olympic preparations have increased as of last Sunday the 20th, and Beijing is becoming more beautiful everyday. Olympic banners line the campus, the streets, and the highways. There are potted flowers all along the sidewalks and medians. There are new road signs posted through the city that point toward Olympic attractions. The signs have English on them! There's even a sign for the Tsinghua Swimming Pool. I have no idea why, seeing as it's closed.
The new subway lines are FINALLY open!! ...well almost. The new line 5 has been open since I arrived in Beijing. It runs north to south, ending at the Temple of Heaven. Line 10 opened on the 20th, which runs east to west, and I LOVE taking it. The line goes near the venues, and it is also a much easier way to get to the Silk Market because you can avoid the nasty transfer at Xizhimen that makes you walk nearly a half a mile up a bunch of stairs. The sad part is that Line 8 is not open yet! This is the Olympic Line that takes you to the Olympic Green, the Olympic Sports Center, the Olympic Village, the Bird's Nest, and the Water Cube. I'm sure it's done being built, they just haven't opened it to the public yet. Anyway, the new subways are beautiful. They have brand new trains with new seats and handrails, air conditioning, and plenty of space because not many people are using the new lines yet. The new trains even have map the light up to show the trains progress, just like in Hong Kong! The new trains also have TVs that are currently playing instructional videos about each Olympic sport. For example, the gymnastic videos explain what the gymnists wear, how high the pommel horse is off the ground, how gymnastics is scored, etc. At least, that is what I can gather from the Chinese and animations. I think it's neat how the government is teaching the Chinese about the Olympics by playing movies on the subways. Oh, and all of the subways and trains have English recordings that follow the announcements made in Chinese! I actually know when the train is coming and which station we are approaching now. That would've been helpful about a month ago.
Also, the new Olympic bus lines are now open too which transport people around the Olympic Green, which is made up of the Olympic Park and 10 venues, including the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. Oh and the construction by the Wudaoku subway station (the one closest to campus) is finished. They were putting in bike paths, sidewalks for pedestrians, and a bike parking area. It's not controlled chaos, instead of just chaos :)
The roads are less crowded too! As of the 20th, Beijing has been regulating the amount of cars on the roads. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, only cars with license plates ending with an odd number can drive on the roads. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, only even-numbered cars can drive on the road. Taxis and buses can drive on all days, and I'm not sure which cars are allowed to drive on Sundays. The cool thing is that the Chinese people are abiding by this rule! It's fun to ride down the street and only see odd numbered license plates.
This system has definitely cleared up the roads. It's not so scary riding my bike anymore or crossing intersections because there are not as many cars! The new system also benefits the taxi drivers because it keeps the fake taxis off the roads every other day. There are even lanes on the roads that are designated just for Olympic vehicles, similar to the HOV lanes in Atlanta. I'm not sure what constitutes an "Olympic vehicle", but the lanes stay empty most of the time, not even the taxis are allowed to use them. There are really pretty Olympic rings painted in the lanes too.
This car regulation system is working so well at loosening up the traffic that I will not be surprised if the Chinese government tries to continue this rule after the Olympics. It's had some great results, but there is no way that this kind of solution would work in Atlanta. Compared to Beijing, Atlanta's infrastructure and underdeveloped (or underutilized?) public transportation system would not be able to get people where they need to be. One day those civil engineers from Tech will figure something out :)
There are also officials throughout the city that are teaching the Chinese to be polite. Before Sunday the 20th, on the 11th of every month, Beijing instated "Queueing Day" where the Chinese people would practice courteous behavior on the subways and buses. Since the 20th, there have been guards wearing orange at all of the subway stations and bus stops. They have flags that they wave around too. At the subway station, each guard stands at a door of the train and makes sure the people line up away from the door, instead of standing in a big mob with their noses up against the doors. The guards make sure everyone has room to get off, and then they let the other people board the train. The same process occurs at the bus stops.
There has also been an EXPLOSION of Olympic volunteers. They are everywhere! They were all given the same outfits to wear- a bright blue and white Olympic polo, a gray Olympic hat, a yellow Olympic fanny pack, gray and yellow tennis shoes, and gray Olympic zip-off-at-the-knee pants. These volunteers are stationed throughout the entire city and in all of the subway stations to help tourists find their way. One of the guys in our program asking for directions to the Summer Palace, and he said they were incredibly eager and excited to help him. I wish they would've been around when we arrived a month ago. I have no need for them now, but it's still fun seeing them throughout the city. Their uniforms are so bright and pretty, and they are always so happy. They all seem very proud to be a volunteer. One of my group members for my Logistics class is actually a volunteer at the Water Cube!
As far as pollution goes, there has not been much of a difference. Last week there were four days straight of blue skies, but it's been all cloudy and gray since then. I hope I see one more blue sky this week before I go home. All of my pictures of the city still have a gray haze in the background. Also, one bummer about the Olympics is that they are closing down a lot of clubs around the city... Mix, Vics, Propaganda, Kro's Nest, basically our favorite spots, are all closed :(
As far as this weekend goes, my classmates and I went too see an acrobatics show on Thursday night at the Chaoyang Theater. It was INCREDIBLE! I got to see contortionist that pulled their feet back up over their heads to the front of their faces. They were literally sitting on their heads. Their backs were so flexible! It hurt my back just watching theirs bend! It was so awesome! There were also two guys that ran around in a wheel, and there was a bike act where they put 12 girls on one bike! It was awesome.
On Friday morning, I went back to the Great Wall with Hannah, Gabby, and Adrienne. We went to the Juyongguan section, which was about an hour outside of Beijing. Much closer to campus than the previous Simatai section. The Juyongguan section has been renovated and reconstructed, so it looked really nice. Instead of doing lots of hiking like at Simatai, we spent a few hours taking tons of pictures. We got to there early in the morning, so we had the whole wall to ourselves! After an hour or so, lots of tour groups showed up, and the wall became just PACKED with people. Most of the tour groups were middle school aged kids, and they would come up to us and try to practice their English. We heard plenty of choruses of "Will you take a picture with us please?". It became more and more difficult to get good photos, so we headed back to Beijing. I had a great time. I would've liked to go to what they call a "wild" section of the Great Wall that is not touristy, and it's crumbly and overgrown and dangerous, but the Juyongguan section was still nice. If I ever go back to Beijing, I will definitely spend an entire day hiking across a wild section of the Wall. 
After the Great Wall Part 2, I went to the Olympic Flagship Store with Kristi, Gabby, and Sara. The flagship store is the biggest store for official Olympic merchandise. The place was crazy! It was so crowded and there was so much merchandise it took us hours to look through it all. My favorite items were the 5 foot tall stuffed Fuwa mascots and the 4 GB Olympic flash drives. Haha so clever. Outside of the store, it was like Beijing 2008 explosion. The street was jam packed with people, and there were huge colorful Olympic banners covering the buildings that lined the street. There were three huge Olympic stores just along this one half mile stretch of road! Can you believe that I still couldn't find the one item I was looking for that is sold out at the Tsinighua Olympic store? Yep. True story. Out of all these stores, I still couldn't find the one item that I wanted: a set of five drinking glasses that has each of the Fuwa on them. I even looked on the online store, and they were sold out too. 
On Saturday, Caroline, Kristi, and I went to the Olympic Green!!! We took the new subway line 10 and tried to take line 8 directly to the Green, but it was still closed. So we walked a good mile or two with the hopes of getting as close as possible to the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest. On our way, we passed lots of guards and lots of fencing. The ENTIRE park and venues are all still blocked off. I guess it makes sense to protect the venues, but I don't understand why the park is still closed. We passed by lines and lines of people waiting to pick up their tickets, the International Broadcasting Center (IBC), the Olympic Sports Center Stadium (soccer finals and the Modern Pentathlon), and a military zone that had surface to air missile launchers. Yikes.
Eventually we could see the Bird's Nest, and we went up on a bridge crowded with people to try to get a better view. There was also a news crew on the bridge doing a live broadcast. Fun! After taking pictures of the Nest, we saw the Water Cube!! This is where Onur and Kathleen will compete!!!! How exciting! The Water Cube actually looks blue during the day time, and apparently it lights up really nicely at night too! There was a big parking lot by the Cube that we could enter, and this is where we took a lot of our pictures. I wanted to actually touch the building, but of course we couldn't. It was so hot outside that we just wanted to go jump in the pool. How incredible would that have been! I would have given an arm and a leg to go inside! After visiting the Cube, we tried to follow the signs and my map to the Olympic Village, but we could not find it. The heat eventually got the best of us, and we took a taxi back to Wudaoku where we bought juice and water at the 711 and then went to our favorite BBQ chicken place for lunch.
My activities on Sunday included homework and studying, and I took one trip to the Silk Market to get three business shirts tailored. Today we took our first and only exam for our Logistics class. We had a homework assignment due today, and one is due tomorrow. On Wednesday we have a project presentation and a paper due, and then my summer study abroad is complete! AH! We are going out for pizza on Wednesday night to celebrate, and we have a class farewell dinner of traditional Peking/Beijing Duck planned for Thursday. On Friday, Caroline and I plan on meeting up with Onur who arrives in Beijing on Wednesday to swim in the Olympics!
No comments:
Post a Comment