Behind China's Bamboo Curtain; Shanghai And Beijing Ain't All That
Just finished reading a riveting (and still ongoing) series on ESPN.com (of all places), entitled, "Behind the Bamboo Curtain" (h/t to The Shanghaiist). It is subtitled, "One year from the start of the 2008 Olympics there is a China they want you to see . . . . and one they don't," and it chronicles a car trip on Highway 108 from Beijing to Chengdu. The series is written by Wright Thompson, a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN Magazine and he explains it as follows:
More than 2,500 kilometers separate us from our destination: Chengdu, the dominant city in China's Wild, Wild West. A driver, interpreter and I are setting out to look at a sprawling, complex country through the prism of the 2008 Olympics. In front of us is a week of white-knuckle mountain roads, countless oxen, a Rolls-Royce, homes made of mud, skyscrapers made of steel, a dreary coal-town wedding, a forest of smokestacks, a quilt of rice paddies, hundreds of villages and cities filled with people, each with a story to tell about the hopes and dreams of the real China and what, if anything, the Summer Games can do to make those dreams come true.
There is so little good writing on China's interior and this truly does make for a very interesting read.
http://www.chinalawblog.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/2083
Behind China's Bamboo Curtain; Shanghai And Beijing Ain't All That:
» ESPN goes "outside the rings" and reports on China's interior Imagethief
Via China Law Blog and Shanghaiist , this is a very interesting story from ESPN Magazine . It's interesting []
Comments
That is a really nice piece about traveling through some of the country between Beijing and Chengdu.
It's always important to remember those who are being left behind in China's leap forward, and how they can be helped (if at all).
Posted by: Jeremy | August 14, 2007 11:57 PM
Its a very interesting article and look forward to the rest of the series. I expect a lot more of these "search for the real China" or "Urban/Rural" type articles to come out leading up to the Olympics. I guess the point is that a lot of people don't know about China and this is serving as an introduction to both the good and, overwhelmingly, the bad.
Yet I still sort of wonder about it. Were writers driving from Atlanta to Denver, stopping in places like Oolitic, Indiana (as a fellow Hoosier, I believe you'd be aware of the town) and asking people there what they thought about the Olympics?
I guess this is because these are, rightly or wrongly, identified as "China's Games" just as much, if not more, than "Beijing's Games." While this can be seen by how the games are treated in other cities around China where there is some (perhaps only minimal in most cases) pride and excitement (more so than in other US cities in '96 or '02), is it any surprise that most people in the countryside could care less? Was it any different in the US in '96?
Posted by: b. cheng | August 15, 2007 1:58 AM
b cheng:
It is a little different for provinces outside of Beijing regarding the Olympics. All of China's and municipalities had to give Beijing 1 billion RMB for Olympic development, with no promise of ROI. Can you imagine a mayor and governor of a US Olympic host city/state calling around to other major cities and states making such demands? I'm picturing an answer that involves a finger and spinning.
Posted by: nanheyangrouchuan | August 17, 2007 9:15 AM