When Chinese President Xi Jinping opens the 24th Winter Olympics, the sky lights up. Bouquets of fireworks in the colors of the Olympic rings explode over Beijing’s national sports stadium, the Bird’s Nest. Tens of millions of euros go up in the air within a few seconds. No expense has been spared to show the world what China is capable of when it puts its weight behind something.
It is an impressive show, put on by the Chinese star director Zhang Yimou. At least three thousand singers and dancers filled the stadium before the fireworks concluded the grand opening spectacularly after about two and a half hours.
The allure and grandeur of the most prestigious sporting event in the world should radiate to China, which wants to prove that its political system is superior. This has got to be the best Winter Games ever.
The complete program of the Winter Olympics
For that, so much is already clear after a week in the Olympic bubble, the country likes to apply a layer of varnish here and there. See the self-propelled trash cans that keep the floors clean at the Main Media Center (MMC), a convention center with 15-foot ceilings. The robots that bake burgers, shake cocktails and serve noodle dishes. Show it is. Strangely too. It distracts from reality outside the walls of the building. But it cannot be completely camouflaged.
The immovable rules during the Games state that the thousands of journalists who have come to China from all over the world can only get around with a network of buses that move through a labyrinth of fencing and checkpoints.
It will be a closed loop system called, in fact nothing less than bars. Gates to hotels will only open to Olympic buses if the security guards, in long coats and fur hats, give the signal safe. Outside there are police officers on every street corner. The area around the MMC has been completely cordoned off and resembles a besieged fortress.
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Photos AFP and Reuters
disco light
Opposite the Beijing Fujian Hotel, one of the seventy Olympic hotels in the city, is a large apartment building. Hundreds of windows are visible from the entrance. In the evening there is one green-red disco light. A few windows away, a sphere of red lights is spinning. Every now and then a face becomes visible. That and the view from the buses is all the Olympic visitors get to see of everyday life in the Chinese capital.
Boundaries have also been drawn within the hotel. Anyone who accidentally takes the elevator to floor -2 will run into a boarded up door. One floor up, the left side of the hallway is completely screened off. ‘Closed Loop Management’ it says on a wooden wall. ‘Don’t GO THROUGH’.
In the hallways there is a table next to every room door with the text ‘contact-free handover desk’. Room service delivers orders there. Every now and then a high-pitched siren goes off in the ‘quarantine room’ on the fourth floor. Voices come from the room, signaling that someone is tucked one level deeper into the security system.
On Tuesday evening there is suddenly an ambulance at the hotel entrance. The lobby is cordoned off. The situation can be guessed; In all likelihood, a guest has been diagnosed with a corona infection. The management is in turmoil, all newly arrived guests are pushed into the elevator in a slight panic. Half an hour later, peace has returned. The lobby has been cleared and the ambulance gone; the corona patient probably removed.
Smiling volunteer
Everything is being put in place to keep the coronavirus out. Anyone who dares to wear a simple surgical mouth mask outside the walls of the hotel is tapped on the shoulder by a smiling volunteer and given a safer FFP2 mask.
But even with military precautions, people still get infected. On Thursday, the highest number of daily positive tests was registered in Beijing in the run-up to the opening ceremony: 55 units.
Of the more than 67,000 tests within the Olympic bubble, 26 came back positive. Another 29 infected people were intercepted at the airport. A total of 287 people related to the Games have contracted the virus, including 102 athletes.
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Photos AFP and Reuters
Continue like this
The Dutch athletes have remained calm so far. Most say they notice little of the restrictive measures. “I can walk straight into the Olympic village here. Four years ago in South Korea you were completely turned inside out”, says short tracker Sjinkie Knegt. No hassle on the way to and from the Olympic village and the sports locations; that’s all that matters to the athletes. They want to focus on their performance.
There is a lot of praise for the Olympic village. The residential towers are painted in gold, silver and bronze. Within the village, the athletes are allowed to move freely, also for a walk or a training ride in the open air. “Best village ever”, says short track coach Jeroen Otter, who has already experienced nine Games. “It’s clean, it’s finished and everything works.”
Here the corona measures work in favor of the athletes. “I now have my own bedroom. At previous Games I had to share my apartment with four others,” says Yara van Kerkhof.
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Also look at: Winter Games open: the most beautiful images of the opening ceremonye
Outside the Olympic bubble, criticism of China has been growing in recent days. On Thursday, people took to the streets in more than 65 cities worldwide to protest Chinese human rights violations against Taiwanese, Hong Kongers, Tibetans and Uyghurs.
Meanwhile, Chinese officials have warned athletes not to be overly critical. Yang Shu, director of the organizing committee in Beijing, said athletes could be punished if their statements violate “Olympic ideology and applicable laws in China.” They could lose their accreditation.
“Athletes are responsible for what they say,” Yang Yang, chairman of the Olympic Athletes Committee, said this week. “We will strictly enforce Article 50.” According to that article in the Olympic Charter, athletes are not allowed to express themselves during competitions and ceremonies. In interviews before and after their matches, they are free to give their opinion.
Sven Kramer kept it politically correct on Thursday, on the eve of his fifth Games, when he was asked what he thought of China so far: “I advised my teammates who have now entered the Games for the first time to continue until Milan [over vier jaar]. There it goes in a different way. It would be a shame if this was their Olympic experience.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 5 February 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 5, 2022
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