BEIJING — Sliding her tiny camera through a gap in the 10-foot tall security fence, a young Chinese woman sighed with disappointment and snapped a photo of the Bird’s Nest, where the Summer Games went out in a blaze of fireworks.
“No more Olympics,” 21-year-old Hong Hong said. “What do we do now?”
Good question.
After staging Games in which the venues were $40 billion of drop-dead gorgeous, buses ran on time and protestors were hauled away to jail, where does China go from here?
For Hong, who got no closer to the Olympics than a spot on the sidewalk after the torch was extinguished, it is back to the cramped tenement flat she shares with a half-dozen young workers trying to scratch out a living in a country where capitalism and communism both rule.
What we saw from the Beijing Olympics was exactly what the Chinese government carefully planned the world to see, although the truth is these Games were not a complete picture of China any more than Disney World accurately depicts how America lives.
To think the host country might have falsified the ages of female gymnasts to win gold is disturbing, just as the ugly fact that U.S. citizens who spoke out in the capital city for a free Tibet were sentenced to 10 days of detention reminded us sports are never a panacea for real- world problems.
But to dismiss the 2008 Olympics as nothing more than one big, elaborate lie is a cop-out by Western visitors who did not bother to take a serious peek behind the “cultural walls” erected to hide the grittier side of Beijing.
“How big is your house?” Hong asked a new friend from Colorado, while searching her wallet for a $5 bill of U.S. currency she keeps as a souvenir. “America rich, China poor.”
As the Games came to a close, Chinese official Chen Jian bragged the Olympics played a major role in a 12 percent annual growth rate for the local economy.
But not everybody got rich.
Hong works seven days a week as a waitress in a restaurant. Her paycheck? $125 per month.
Part of a new Chinese generation migrating to the cities and rejecting the rural existence that had defined her country for generations, Hong lives in one of Beijing’s disappearing hutongs, narrow alleys of old neighborhoods rapidly being eaten by towering apartments that rise into the smog.
A toddler back in 1989, she views Tiananmen Square as the place where supermodel Cindy Crawford stopped traffic during the Olympics, rather than the location “Tank Man” made infamous 19 years ago in the wake of a deadly government attack on protestors, many of whom were no older than Hong is now.
It made me laugh when Crawford said she was startled how the people of Beijing were “fascinated with my son’s blond hair,” because the appeal of anything and everything about Western culture seems at least as influential on Chinese lives as policies set by communist leaders. The government can clamp down on freedom of speech but can do nothing to stop folks from defining themselves by the Nike sneakers on their feet.
But sports as a major agent of political change? The Olympics did not change the country as much as Hollywood did.
Although China toppled the United States from atop the leaderboard in the Olympic gold-medal count, young Beijing entrepreneur Zeng Zhe insists the United States should not fear being chased down as an economic world power in the near future, because his countrymen are defenseless against three great American heroes: Mickey Mouse, Ronald McDonald and Superman.
“Do you remember the movie ‘Superman Returns’?” Zeng asked. “There is a scene where Lex Luthor says, ‘If you control technology, you control the world.’ China is one giant, efficient factory. But America still controls the technology.”
So we can sleep easy, with the confidence in knowing we remain stronger and faster than China, whether you’re talking swimming legend Michael Phelps or computer wizard Steve Jobs.
After Phelps won gold eight times, Olympic volunteer Zheng Yangpeng wanted to hear about the frenzy back in the States, then told me: “Americans are not very interested in the world, China or any other country, because America believes it is the center of the world.”
Maybe, if bringing the Summer Games to China did anything, it made us briefly pay more attention to a nation whose potential is as large as basketball star Yao Ming.
On the final night of the Summer Games, Hong reached into her handbag to show off a prized possession recently purchased with her earnings as a waitress. She pulled out a thick paperback book.
“A dictionary. American words and what they mean in Chinese,” Hong said. “I read it every morning.”
Think what you will of the Chinese government, but the people of China want to speak our language.
Are we listening?
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
