By Tang, David
Albert Speer was commissioned by the Chinese government to lay out a masterplan for the access to the Olympic Green in Beijing. His design consisted of one impressive avenue connecting the Forbidden City and the National Stadium in which the opening ceremony will take place. Speer is indeed the son of the infamous Albert, chief architect to Hitler and his minister of armaments. Speer Senior had also laid out his signature axis within Hitler's megalomaniac city 'Welthaupstadt Germania' which, thankfully, was never realised. So what the father failed to do in Berlin, his son managed to achieve in Beijing, about 60 years later. It has also taken about 60 years for a commercial flight to fly directly from the mainland to Taiwan. The historic landing on 4 July signalled a seminal thaw between the two Chinas. Such friendly news could only be a bonus for the political stature of mainland China. It, together with the show of some highly efficient relief work on the Sichuan earthquake, was a timely dilution of the uglier internal conflict with Tibet, an irritating thorn in China's anxious promotions of the Olympics. Indeed, the success of these Games has become an obsession for China from the moment she secured them seven years ago.
Not only was the German Albert Speer recruited, the Australians were brought in to design the aquatic stadium and the British to build it. The Swiss were appointed to design the main stadium in collaboration with a leading avant-garde Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, responsible for the 'bird's nest' effect of the outer crust of the stadium (even though Ai Weiwei is a vocal critic of the Chinese government). The new airport, with 118 per cent of the capacity of Heathrow terminals 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 combined, and built within budget and ahead of time, was the work of Norman Foster, OM. The headquarters of China's Central Television is a dramatic brace of leaning towers that make Pisa look vertical, and was designed by the Dutch and German duo Koolhaas and Sheereen. The National Theatre, a science-fiction-looking dome adjacent to Tiananmen Square, is the work of the Frenchman Paul Andreu.
In other words, the best in the Western world have been engaged by the Chinese government to present an impressive backdrop to the Olympic bonanza.
A giant luminous digital clock counting down to the opening ceremony at 8.08 p. m. on 08.08.08 (the number '8' auguring fortune in Chinese feng shui) has become the focus at Tiananmen Square. Nothing seems to matter more. Missiles, not only anti-aircraft ones to protect against terrorist attacks, but also ones loaded with climate seeds to disperse and condense dark clouds and accelerate untimely rainfalls, will be on hand to ensure a beautifully clear day for the opening of the Olympics 2008.
There has been a constellation of other measures.