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Beijing is undergoing a facelift on a scale not seen since the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty of the thirteenth century. Skyscrapers, hotels, apartment buildings and, of course, stadiums are springing up and the city’s currently one big, construction site covered by a sheet of smog. It feels almost like the residents beneath the covered city will shortly whisk away the sheet with a huge ‘Ta-da’ revealing the new China to outside world. And the world will be shocked to find futuristic buildings such as the National Theatre (or the Egg, as it is known) and the new CCTV Building (ironically standing for China Central Television rather than the Orwelian hub that the name implies), that will both be operational this time next year.
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Venues
The Olympic Stadium, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and built at a cost of RMB3.5 billion, is nicknamed the ‘Bird’s Nest’ due to its lattice steelwork architecture that uses 36km of steel. The venue will seat 90,000 and host football and athletics events as well as the opening and closing ceremonies. Directly opposite in the Olympic Park is the Water Cube – the National Aquatics Centre – which will hold all swimming events and is built with an energy saving bubble-like membrane to allow in more light and heat than glass.

The capital has truly turned into a twenty-first century city, with a skyline to rival that of any cosmopolitan centre. The Wall Street Journal has calculated that the total outlay on infrastructure is in the region of ‘$40bn…as much as 43 per cent of total spending on all summer Games since Montreal in 1976’, something that the country can afford, with a trillion dollars in reserves, though it raises the question of whether it’s money rightly spent, with 48 million of its people below the poverty line.

Displacement
The cost of building is not just monetary. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who have come to the capital to be part of the Olympic building campaign work in terrible conditions for as little as 60p a day. Slogans posted at the Olympic venues read ‘Quality of work is more important than life’ and vast numbers of injuries have occurred during the continuous 24-hour building. Some 500,000 people have been uprooted from their homes; 300,000 alone to make way for the largest urban green space in Asia, the Olympic Park. The traditional courtyard homes and alleyways, or hutongs, that have been home to Beijingers for hundreds of years have also been demolished, leaving families with often-insufficient compensation as Olympic projects or property developers snap up the land. Many of the poorest residents have been forced to move out to rural suburbs, the only places they can afford to live in a city with house prices rising nearly 50 per cent per year.

The Olympic buzz
You still won’t find anyone who’d say that the Games are anything but the best thing that’s ever happened to Beijing. The fact that over 600,000 volunteers have signed up to look after the 500,000 foreign delegates, media and athletes is evidence that the whole city is behind the competition. The Olympics are everywhere: from radio broadcasts teaching Olympic English to TV cartoons of the five Fuwa, the mascots. The eleventh of every month is dedicated to learning ‘how to queue’ and spitting in public now incurs a RMB50 (£3) fine. Every shopkeeper, taxi driver and kitemaker has a view on why the Olympics are so great – and how to make a quick buck, if possible.

Accommodation
Hotels that have only just finished laying foundations are already booked up for August 2008. Many local people are being encouraged to leave Beijing for the month, with additional public holidays allocated. This is primarily to ease congestion but also to free up space for visitors. Tenants are living in fear that they may be turfed out for the Games’ duration as clued-up landlords realise they can get from ten to 100-times the rent for that month. Websites have been established to sub-let flats and many younger professionals are planning on house-pooling – several people kipping on one person’s floor, renting out the other homes and splitting the proceeds.

Sports
If the Chinese want to come out on top of the medal table in the Games on their home turf, they’ll have to work for it. Children as young as six are living in special sports schools so they can train for more than 12 hours a day. Many youngsters are plucked from schools for their physique rather than any desire to be an athlete. But with stars such as hurdler Liu Xiang being made into national heroes, they still think it is worth risking everything for – even their lives. In the last two months, two Olympic hopefuls have broken their necks in separate training incidents, one fatally.

The big day
At 8.08pm on August 8 2008, everything will be ready to go. One million cars will be removed from the streets, migrant workers will be sent packing, and the clouds literally shot out of the sky to make sure the city is the clean and pleasant place they have promised to the IOC. China has so far run the Olympics like it runs the country: efficiently but with a firm hand. And, for what will be the biggest coming-out party in the world, you can guarantee China won’t tolerate mistakes.