Luxurious Living

As a treat to myself, I decided to splash out on a five-star hotel... for one night.

And I picked The Regent near Wangfujing, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

There is a view on the 16th floor, and I was facing east towards the CCTV tower. I could also see Chaoyangmen to my left, and Wangfujing on my right.

The room is a good size, not too small, with a large bed, a chair, glass desk and flat-screen TV. My only gripe is the Internet access doesn't work for Macs, but I've also had this problem in other hotels.

Nevertheless, the bathroom is fantastic -- there's a sliding door so you can keep it open or closed, and comes with a bathtub and a shower with an over-sized shower head. In the shower, the water drains into a frame-like crevice and then into a drain discreetly covered by a tile.

I also wandered down to the fifth floor where the health club is. Fitness freaks would have a ball there.

In most hotels, the health club is one of the last things they consider. But here it was a top priority.

There were separate rooms for aerobics or yoga, as well as for treadmills, and another for weights.

But the highlight was definitely the indoor pool.

It's 32 metres long -- more than twice the length of the one I usually swim at. While the water didn't seem heated, I had to do several fast freestyle lengths to get warmed up. But after a while, being by myself in the pool, I quite enjoyed feeling like Michael Phelps going so fast.

I briefly wondered about gym membership here probably being an arm and a leg; but location-wise it didn't quite suit me. Too bad.

Had a wonderfully blissful sleep under the duvet and was sorry the experience had to end before 12 noon.

I'll just have to find another excuse to treat myself again... soon.

The Regent
99 Jinbao Street
Dongcheng District
8522 1888

Round Two

After a heavy rain on Friday, and slight showers last night, today there is a gorgeous blue sky and white fluffy clouds. Who knew Beijing could be so beautiful on an August day?

The Paralympics is six days away and already in the last few days the banners around the city have changed from the Olympic to Paralympic ones.

While the logo of the five Olympic rings are still on the Olympic lanes, the signs pointing them have also changed to show the Paralympic logo.

Flowers along the roads and mini gardens on street corners and patches of areas have been spruced up with fresh plants looking cheerful as ever.

And the army of city volunteers began mobilizing again yesterday, hanging out at the subway platforms waiting for their latest instructions.

With the Olympics over, the Paralympics will probably be a walk in the park, being much smaller in scale.

However, as I took the bus today, I saw a stretch of sidewalk that was prettily decorated with a series of potted plants every few metres.

If the city is supposed to be more accessible, potted plants on a sidewalk isn't really wheelchair accessible, unless they don't expect anyone to go along that sidewalk.

Watching from Afar

Last summer the buzz in China, or at least in Beijing was that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be the Democratic presidential candidate and that she would be the first female president of the United States.

Many Chinese felt she had good political experience having been in the White House before with husband Bill, and that she was pro-China.

But many of us North Americans, at least us young'uns disagreed and explained that we thought Barack Obama was the one.

When he finally won the grueling race against Clinton, the Chinese were confronted with the reality the Democrats would be led by a half black man with not much political experience and his foreign policy unknown.

But this week they eagerly watched the Democratic National Convention. We turned on the television in our office to CNN and watched Michelle Obama's impassioned speech about her husband being the same man she met 19 years ago; Bill Clinton making the case for Obama; and Hillary Clinton persuading her followers to not split the party and join her in supporting Obama.

And this morning (Beijing time), we saw Obama, standing in front of a crowd of tens of thousands, enthusiastically accept the nomination to take on Republican John McCain in November.

His stirring speech appealed to the everyman -- the working class who are trying to make ends meet. He gave them a vision of the future, of better education for children, health care for all, and less dependence on oil.

The best slogan of all, was "Eight is enough". Wonder if that'll be a bumper sticker any moment now.

In the meantime, we have a small chalkboard near our main door where some people post messages or draw pictures to cheer colleagues up.

And it was great to see this message there.

Perhaps they were just as excited as we were, seeing someone who is an inspiration for change.

The Shy Building

Tonight after dinner we wanted to take pictures of the new CCTV building.

So I told the taxi driver to take us to the "da kouchar" or "big pants" and he dropped us off across the street from the giant black building.

However it wasn't lit up maybe because it wasn't completely finished. But you'd think with the Olympics and all, there would be some lights shining on it to draw attention to its crazy, fantastic, unique design.

But no, it preferred to stay hidden in the dark. We took some photos by the parking lot and thought we'd get better shots around the corner.

Almost half an hour walking later, we tried to get another angle, but our view of it was completely blocked by these annoying makeshift billboard-like walls that said "One World, One Dream" in various languages.

At the street corner all we could take were pictures of its top and even then it looked horrible with the hazy air and the colourful walls stopping us from admiring it.

We'll just have to wait until it's completed and the barricades come down. Such an interesting building and architectural critics raving about it and not being able to photograph it is a pity.

Tough Crowd

In the last few days I've talked to a few local friends and colleagues about the Olympics and in particular the opening ceremonies.

And many of them panned it.

"It was nothing special," a girlfriend remarked. "It didn't say much about China."

Others felt the images artistic director Zhang Yimou were cliche and old fashioned.

Granted the people I talked to are from the post 80s generation in their 20s so they can be hard to please.

However many of my media friends from overseas who came to cover the Olympics -- and they have seen many opening ceremonies in their time -- were totally amazed.

They were so impressed by the precision of the performers (PLA soldiers) and the massive scale of the production. They loved the giant globe with people walking upside down and especially thought having former gymnast Li Ning light the torch the way he did was amazing.

Again the finale was panned by my local friends.

"Of course they would pick someone like him to do that," my girlfriend continued. "We all knew that already."

From the small pool of people I talked to, it seems the opening ceremony was more for the outside world than for the Chinese. It was a carefully choreographed sequence of images to show the world what China is about and what it is capable of doing.

And the 25,000 foreign journalists who descended on Beijing to report on the Games thought the people were so friendly and at times overly helpful, that they thought the entire city was like that.

Not.

The media village and the areas they worked in, the International Broadcast Center and Main Press Center were really a sanitized view of Beijing and China. It was like living in the Disneyland version of a big Chinese city.

Little do they realize what some locals really think about the Olympics or what living in Beijing is about.

And because people were so busy covering the events, they had little time to escape to see what's really going on in the city -- from people cooped up in their homes watching the Olympics on TV because they couldn't be bothered to deal with the crowds, to the congested subway lines, and not even able to do recreational sports like tennis or swimming because of "security reasons".

The 2008 Olympics created an image of a "harmonious society" and many reporters who parachuted in for the event are leaving with a warm fuzzy feeling.

And that's exactly what the government intended.

Back to Normal... Almost

After breathing a collective sigh of relief with the end of the Olympics, Beijing and its people went back to business as usual. Well, almost.

Half the cars are still banned off the roads, but the restrictions were loosened in the fifth and sixth ring roads.

A friend noticed a Uighur selling trinkets on the street and some places roasting chuan, or meat kebabs on outdoor barbecues. For him it was a good sign things were slowly getting back to normality.

The Beijing 2008 and "One World, One Dream" signs are still up with the Paralympics coming in 10 days.

Most of the athletes and journalists have left, but a few are still hanging out in the city. They are clearly visible with yellow accreditation cards around their necks like dog tags.

These cards give them a free pass around Beijing's sights -- and one joked he would have seen more if he had time to go see famous landmarks instead of covering the Games.

But in the next week or so the capital will be hosting a new set of guests, ones that will require more assistance and really test Beijing's ability to host a large number of disabled people.

In the time I've been here, I've hardly seen anyone in a wheelchair or with physical disabilities here because they find the city inaccessible.

Hopefully the Paralympics will push greater awareness to this group of people who are eager to contribute to society -- if society would let them.

The Party's Over

Seven years after Beijing was awarded the Games, the 29th Olympiad is over.

The Chinese capital and the country can breathe a sigh of relief after a job well done.

The closing ceremony was a mish-mash of tacky to cool, from people spinning plates and jumping rope on unicycles, to a giant tower with people hanging from it and robot men flying through the air.

At one point there were several Chinese women singing about the moon. They all had those high-pitched voices and unfortunately wore cliche cheungsams that were hardly original.

And what about the Canto and Mando pop stars all uncoordinated as well in their outfits? Didn't they get a memo about the dress code? Oh well.

Most of the foreigners felt the highlight was watching Jimmy Page of Led Zepplin working the guitar and footballer David Beckham popping out of the red double decker bus as part of the handover to London for 2012.

And classical fans got to see tenor Placido Domingo with a big paunch.

It looked like the athletes had fun. Many mingled amongst themselves and the favourite was Yao Ming who everyone wanted to take a picture with. He really is a giant.

Sprinter Usain Bolt was supposed to be the Jamaican flagbearer but was switched at the last minute to Maurice Smith, a decathlon athlete who finished fifth and this is his last Games.

Speaking of Bolt, my friend Marc saw him at the Silk Market yesterday. He managed to wriggle his way through the crowd who were all excited to see the gold medallist. He told him not to buy anything for more than 200RMB. Wonder if he took his advice?

After the show, trying to get across white barricades was frustrating. For some reason security wouldn't open them up causing a flood of people trying to trickle through specific areas that were opened up.

Everyone was complaining about the barricades as we were all hot and tired from the festivities.

They were also busy taking their last photos on the Olympic Green on the last day of the Games. They were trying to capture the moment, the highs of China's success of putting on the Olympics, and they were a part of it.

One Chinese guy wandered through the crowd with a white T-shirt and got whoever he encountered to sign it. Wonder what he'll do with it afterwards.

And now the party's over.

One of the main reasons why I came to Beijing was to witness this momentous event. And after all the anticipation and anxiety, from the pollution, the Tibet riots, the torch relay and the Sichuan earthquake, China has pulled through.

Yes, the Games cost the country alot. Was it money well spent?

We'll have to see.