RSS|
|
With a price tag of $43 billion, the Summer Games that will open Aug. 8 in Beijing are the most expensive in Olympic history. The transformation, however, goes far beyond the eye-popping architecture. The Chinese government also has been trying to create a new, improved population to go along with its spiffed-up capital city.
Migrant workers, beggars and many masseuses and fortune tellers have been sent packing for the Olympic season along with others deemed undesirable by the government.
Since May, restaurants have been required to have no-smoking sections, and this month Beijing's food safety administration ordered restaurants to remove dog meat from their menus lest it offend Western sensibilities.
DVD shops have pulled their stocks of pirated Hollywood films. Western-style toilets have replaced squat models in many locations. And a group calling itself the Capital Committee to Promote Culture and Ideological Progress recently distributed 50,000 packages of tissues along with a warning that those caught spitting in public were subject to a $7 fine.
Beijing ordered up 40 million pots of flowers. Some varieties were specially bred for the Olympics. To improve air quality, officials created a forest twice the size of New York's Central Park next to the Olympic stadiums. Factories hundreds of miles away have been closed.
According to the official website of the Olympic Games, 90,000 Beijing taxi drivers have gone through a special training program. The city has cleaned up its English-language signage, removing some of the more notorious clunkers -- for example, those near the Olympic stadium that directed visitors to "Racist Park," now properly referred to as the Ethnic Minorities Culture Park.
Etiquette training has been all the rage. More than 17 million people participated in an online program that offered advice on such fine points as what color socks to wear with a business suit (dark ones). During a competition televised this month on state-owned CCTV, contestants had to demonstrate how to greet visitors of various nationalities as judges held up cards grading their performance.
