Olympics Beijing 2008

How the Chinese prepare for the Olympics.

"For about 20 minutes the Chinese side impressed their guests with slick presentations, and a deluge of facts and figures; everything from the number of trees being planted, to the treatment of Olympic sewage.

The presentation complete, the group of Chinese officials sat back smiling, confident that the foreigners had been suitably impressed. But Ken and Seb clearly hadn't read the script.

Lord Coe immediately launched into a string of questions: "How would the facilities be used after the Olympics? What percentage of energy used during the Olympics will come from renewable sources? How would the Chinese achieve their aim of making the Olympics carbon-neutral?"

A look of panic came over the officials faces. Why were these foreigners asking questions? Hadn't they been listening to the carefully prepared presentation?

For a few minutes the officials floundered and waffled, before the meeting was brought to a swift close."

LOL!!!

"For Seb and Ken it was lesson number one in Chinese bureaucrat-dom, official information is there to be consumed, not questioned."

"Take the example of Beijing's international airport. To cope with the extra Olympic visitors, it's being doubled in size, with a vast new terminal building and third runway, in a design by Lord Norman Foster.

But while in London, Heathrow airport's new terminal five started life somewhere back in the mid 1990s, and still isn't finished, Beijing's new space-age terminal three only broke ground in early 2005.

By the end of next year it will be complete. It's also about twice the size of the Heathrow building, and includes a new runway, railway link, and new motorway.

To make way for all this, three villages and thousands of villagers had to be moved.

In Britain this would represent a huge legal and financial obstacle. Not in China."

Bangalore's new international airport is floudering for similar problems. Unlike China, there's this pesky thing called human rights in India which the government has to take care of before pursuing a gigantic project.