Beijing Olympics: TV party tonight

Editor's note: For the duration of the Olympics, we'll be running a series of special reports on the TOC blog from Tom Pattison of Time Out Beijing. Here he describes the experience of watching the Opening Ceremonies on the streets of Beijing.

On Friday night, as the countdown to the Olympic Opening Ceremony ticked away, a gang of us piled into a van. We had no Opening Ceremony ticket, but that put us in company with 15 million other Beijing residents, so we figured there’d be parties galore. From a rooftop bar in the city centre, we watched the firework footprints leap across Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and north up to the Olympic Stadium.

Then we moved on. But apparently, the only place to be that night was inside the Bird’s Nest Stadium. Tiananmen Square, where a crowd of thousands – including then premier Zhang Zemin – spontaneously celebrated winning the Games in 2001, was silent; the huge screens at Beijing railway station were switched off minutes into the ceremony as the crowd grew too large; another site with big screens was not even half full. International TV crews tried to get stragglers, hot and sweaty in 95-degree heat and 90 percent humidity, to look excited. And Asia’s biggest TV screen constantly streamed a sponsor’s advert, leaving nearby small screens to show China’s biggest ever global party to those with long enough necks to see.

The four-hour ceremony was extraordinary; half the world cooed. For many, it was a sign of how far the country has come in the past 30 years. For others, 14,000 performers choreographed in perfect unison signalled the full control China still maintains over its people. How will London compete? I hope it won’t. London’s celebrations in 2012 should be about streets teeming with partying people, not VIPs enjoying a ceremony while everyone else obeys official advice and stays home.

For more on Beijing and the 2008 Olympics, visit our sister site Time Out Beijing. Also, in preparation for the Olympics, China evicted 1 million people and London relocated several hundred. TOC's Jake Malooley wonders if the same thing could happen here if Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics is successful. And if it is, what will happen to our West Side landmarks? More on that in this article on Chicago's Washington Park.