Oarsome. Tomkins Embodies The Spirit

The Age

Friday August 8, 2008

Greg Baum

The annointing of five-times Olympian James Tomkins as Australian flag bearer is a moment of personal triumph. For China, tonight's opening ceremony, likely to surpass all before it, is also a seminal moment.

IN BEIJING, as always at Olympic Games, the prelude consists of a series of ceremonies and formalities of escalating grandeur. For Australia yesterday, there were two, the raising of the Australian flag at the Olympic village, and the announcement of rower and five-time Olympian James Tomkins as Australia's flag-bearer. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd presided sweatily at both.

Tonight is the opening ceremony, surpassing all previous ceremonies, and perhaps all previous Olympics, too, for China is resolved to put on a show.

For it, China has drawn on its single greatest resource: people. More than 15,000 will perform, a third of them members of the People's Liberation Army, with 5000 more backstage.

It will end, inexorably, in fireworks, 15,000 exploding shells in the stadium, 14,000 more in an area of the Olympic Green that will be open to spectators without tickets. Fireworks were a Chinese invention, and remain a specialty, and one way or another, these Games always were going to have fireworks. The next fortnight will determine their form.

Temperamentally, the Olympian penchant for ceremony looks to suit a country in which everything has an element of ritual about it. It might be at an intersection, where police sentries stand rigidly at attention, hour upon hour, enervating humidity notwithstanding. It might be soldiers walking down the street, always in single file. It might even be going to the toilet; someone will be there to smile and open the door, someone else to smile and move in afterwards, cleaning fluids in hand.

In China, there is a person for every function, and a function for every person. And they all smile. A road sign overhanging the major routes to the main stadium reads: "Smiling Beijing Traffic Police". It conveys a sense that smiling in China is a civic obligation.

So Beijing is ready for its Olympic Games, as far as can be seen. Yesterday, that was an indeterminable distance. Partly, that was because of the smog that sits like a smoky pall over the city, turning everything and everybody ghostly grey.

On one scale of measurement, conditions had deteriorated further yesterday, from 85 to 96, though authorities described air conditions as moderate. Australian deputy chef de mission Peter Montgomery said he knew of no Australian who planned to withdraw from competition.

Most of the major events are sited around the Olympic Green, which consists of broad, stately, straight, comparatively empty thoroughfares. Here the haze has an eerie effect, making it impossible to see the ends and edges and so creating a sense of immensity, of the Games, of Beijing, of China. But to stand in it is to discover that, far from taking your breath, it leaves you with no air to breathe. It is not the least mystical.

Beijing is as ready as all Olympic cities in their time are ready, as far as need to be seen, much as television demands. The gardens look lush and green, but some of the grass does not stand up to much scuffing, and many of the trees are propped up by stakes. But they, like the Games, will stand up. On television, they will look the part.

A proper view of Beijing's preparedness is limited in other ways. One is the cultural divide, as memorably captured by travel writer Paul Theroux in his 1986 book Riding the Iron Rooster, when he noted that the Chinese pronunciation of the then new wonder came out as "flea market" rather than "free market", and that it was all one and the same anyway. Much has changed since, and nothing. The Olympics have been east before, but never to a place so eastern.

In a cultural display put on for the press on Wednesday night, Chinese dancers managed to make a fan look and sound like a dangerous weapon.

China has kept the media close at hand, as one might an enemy. Both major media villages are within the secured zone, which is convenient, but leaves reporters with a sense of working in a kind of diplomatic enclave, rather than the real China (whatever that is). It gives authorities, under the guise of freedom, control. Not that they need worry much. One way to recognise these as the Olympic Games is that at the Spanish flag-raising ceremony yesterday the loudest cheering came from media.

© 2008 The Age

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