Visas, airline tickets, and hotel bookings to Beijing are hard to get, much less to say the game entrance tickets. Suppose you are lucky enough to have obtained all these and arrived in Beijing already. You can take a taxi from airport to see the stadium directly. The taxi drivers, wearing the newly distributed yellow shirt and black tie, are trained to speak a little English like ‘Welcome’ and ‘Thanks’. As long as you show a picture of the Bird Nestle, s/he will know where you want to go.

Traffic rule in China is to drive on the right hand side. The light posts along major roads are decorated with skyscraper banners in different colors. The inner lane, painted with Olympic 5-circle logo, is devoted for the exclusive use of Olympic vehicles. Driving mistakenly on the lane by non-Olympic vehicles will be fine as much as RMB1800 (approx. $300). On the road, you will see other cars with labels in Odd (or Even) numbers depending on the calendar day number. Public transportation including taxi, buses and police are not restricted. The Odd-Even Rule is applicable from July 20 to Sept 20.

In case your taxi gets lost, it’s still easy to find the stadium by following the helicopters overhead. It’s noisy and circling around the stadiums. Seeing helicopters or hearing its noise tells you that you are about to arrive.

The central Olympic area locates in the north of Beijing, consisting of Nestle, Water Cubic, National Stadium, Main Press Center, Athletes Village and Olympic Park. All buildings are fenced for security reason. The most concerned ‘Bird’s Nestle’ (or ‘Niao Chao’ in Chinese pronunciation) and blue Water Cubic are isolated from the curious public with 2-meter high fence placed about 200 meters away from the buildings. So visitors can only look at them and take pictures of or with them from afar. Behind the fence are soldiers in green standing still in the little shade of umbrellas placed on the ground about 50 meters apart from each other. Policemen in blue and anti-riot policemen in black, together with their specially-trained dogs, are roaming outside the fence. All working staffs are wearing a rectangle ID label in orange and red, possibly sponsored by Kodak. Content in ID labels, as well as all direction boards, are printed in three languages: Chinese, English and French.

On the streets outside the fence, you will see the police cars back and forth with blinking blue and red lights on its roofs. Smiling young volunteers are standing in scattered sites, wearing sky blue T-shirt and silver-colored pants. Most of them are from universities. Their non-volunteer university classmates are enjoying an extraordinarily long summer vacation from July 1 till Sept 15.

The torch, designed by Lenovo and made by a space-tech firm, is under relay in different cities. The medals for winners, with jade embedded at the rear panel, are ready for awarding. Opening ceremony performance and fireworks show is under busy rehearsal. Delegations from different countries are arriving and checking into the Athletes Village to get adapted to the new environment.

Everything seems ready. If you are not able to visit Beijing, make sure to watch the live broadcast of the opening ceremony and game performance on TV, mobile or Internet.

written by  blogpictures on December 7, 2008 from Beijing, China
from the travel blog: Trip to Beijing
tagged Beijing and Olympics
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