Beijng's beautifiers complete work on city transformation

LONDON - The Guardian

On the other side of the world from Birmingham - where Britain's athletes are striving to book their places for the Olympics - Liu Xiaohua is making her own last-minute preparations for the showpiece event. Exactly four weeks before the first full day of competiton, the migrant worker from Henan province is sweeping a newly built underpass outside the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium free of construction-site grit, rubbish and the sand that blows in from the Gobi desert.

It may be one of the least glamorous and lowest paid roles in the Olympics (Liu's monthly salary is just over £100) but she is on the front-line of a massive beautification campaign, which will complete a seven-year facelift of the Chinese capital.

As sportsmen and women around the world make their final preparations, Beijing is in the throes of a final clean-up not just of streets and buildings, but "undesirable" social elements and potential troublemakers.

Liu is part of arguably the greatest transformation of a host city in the history of the Olympics. In the past five years, a construction boom has flattened swathes of the old city and surrounding countryside, replacing alleyways and farmland with the world's biggest airport terminal, a subway line, a light railway, hundreds of miles of roads as well as the spectacular stadium, gymnasium and swimming pool and other venues. Over the past few months, the focus has been on brightening up the new concrete and steel with flowers and paint. Formerly drab grey roadsides are now decked with begonias and shrubs. Since the start of the year, 40 million flowers have been planted, tens of thousands of trees re-rooted and countless acres of lawn laid on the naturally arid red earth.

In some areas, even old Cultural Revolution wall slogans, such as "Long Live Mao Zedong thought!" - which were previously out of favour - have been given a fresh lick of red paint. Olympic signposts have been erected around the city, Olympic rings have been painted on motorways lanes reserved for Olympic traffic and Fuwa Olympic Mascots are an increasingly uqibuitous sight on hoardings, in shops and on television.

Ahead of an expected arrival of 21,500 journalists, 10,500 athletes and half a million tourists, the city has replaced its notoriously smelly public toilets with modern, cleaner conveniences. To tidy the streets, it has increased the penalty on spitting, launched anti-litter campaigns and hired tens of thousands of migrant workers like Liu. But the clean-up will soon be extended to many of those doing the cleaning. On July 20, many of the city's migrant workers - who have done more than anyone to build and beautify the Olympic city - have been ordered to return to their home towns.

"We don't want to leave because we won't be able to earn money for two months, but we have no choice," complained Fang Jingshan, a construction worker from Hebei Province.

The closure of building sites and factories is aimed primarily at clearing the air of pollution. For much of the last two weeks, the city has been enveloped in a grey haze. Earlier this week the chairman of the International Olympic Committee's coordindation commission Hein Verbruggen described air quality as an "open issue".

To reduce emissions, cars with odd and even number plates will only be able to drive on alternative days starting from July 20. But the problem of pollution is so widespread in China that many Olympic teams are taking no risks by staging their final training camps in Japan.

For human rights groups, social cleansing is the main concern. While previous Olympic hosts have driven vagrants and other itinerants out before the Games, China has gone further by locking up several dissidents, putting others under house arrest, and forcing petitioners to return to their home towns.

According to the Legal Daily, 100,000 anti-terrorism personnel will be mobilised during the Games and 300,000 surveillance cameras installed. Some Beijing residents complain that the paranoia and emphasis on cosmetic appearances is stifling the gritty, chaotic, down-to-earth humour that is the city's greatest charm.

"It's all so fake," said Lily Chen, a restaurant manageress. "I just want the Olympics to be over with as quickly as possible so that life can go back to normal."

It is hard to argue that this face-obsessed nation has not employed excessive artifice in making a propaganda success of the Games. Many of the flowers, trees and lawns are a terrible waste of water in this dry city. And there is a real risk that the emphasis on security, visa checks for foreigners and controls on journalists could squeeze the fun out of the Games.

But it is not just a "Smile-or-else Olympics," there is a real sense of hope among ordinary people that the Games will mark a change in China and how it is viewed in the outside world. By the fence around the Bird's Nest stadium, throngs of tourists pose for photographs in front of the spectacular steel-lattice sports arena - now closed off until the opening on August 8.

On the other side of the road, an elderly couple watch from afar. The 84-year-old Hao Fukun says he cycled 40 minutes to get here, pulling his wife behind him on a cart. It is the first time they have travelled so far for many year, but they wanted to see the Olympic stadium.

"You simply cannot compare Beijing now with what it was," said the old man, who has lived through war, revolution, famine, political upheaval and modern development. "Life is so much better. I hope the world can see how our lives have changed. When the Olympics starts, I will be so happy, so happy."

The numbers Games:
10,500
The estimated number of athletes competing in Beijing between August 8 and 24

302
Different events featured in the summer Games - from the 28 designated sports

906
The gold, silver and bronze medals up for grabs

37
Separate Olympic venues

21,500
Journalists descending on China's capital from around the world

1.6m
Cars off the road on any given day during the Games as part of new anti-pollution measures

5,000
Different items of official Beijing merchandise available to buy

85,000
Miles the Olympic torch has travelled on its relay, the longest since the 1936 Berlin Games

7,000
Extra buses provided for transport during the two-week period

40m
Flowers planted in the city in the build-up to the Games