Everybody wants to make a good impression for important guests, but it’s almost like an episode of “Extreme Makeover” here these days.
With a price tag of $43 billion, the Summer Games that will open Aug. 8 in Beijing are the most expensive in Olympic history. The transformation, however, goes far beyond the eye-popping architecture. The Chinese government also has been trying to create a new, improved population to go along with its spiffed-up capital city.
Migrant workers, beggars and many masseuses and fortune tellers have been sent packing for the Olympic season. Since May, restaurants have been required to have no-smoking sections, and this month, Beijing’s food safety administration ordered restaurants to remove dog meat from their menus lest it offend Western sensibilities.
DVD shops have pulled their stocks of pirated Hollywood films. Western-style toilets have replaced squat models in many locations. And a group calling itself the Capital Committee to Promote Culture and Ideological Progress recently distributed 50,000 packages of tissues along with a warning that those caught spitting in public were subject to a $7 fine.
“It’s not just the buildings, it is the emotional change in the city that is so profound,” said Jeff Ruffolo, an Olympic veteran from L.A. who is serving as an adviser to the Beijing Olympic Committee.
Since 2001, when they won the rights to the Olympics, Beijingers have been honing their English skills. At least according to the official Web site of the Olympic Games, 90,000 Beijing taxi drivers have gone through a special training program. The city has cleaned up its English-language signage, removing some of the more notorious clunkers — for example, those near the Olympic stadium that directed visitors to “Racist Park,” now properly referred to as the Ethnic Minorities Culture Park.
Not all the measures are popular.
The Geneva-based Center for Housing Rights and Evictions estimates that 1.5 million people have been moved to make way for Olympics-related projects.
But public protest has been relatively minimal, in part because of the Chinese government’s intolerance of dissent, but also because of genuine pride in the Olympics.
“We are patriotic. We want China to make a good impression on visitors,” said Yan Dajie, 42, whose DVD shop now displays mainly boxed sets of opera and black-and-white classics on its shelves. (Customers in search of “Kung Fu Panda” can get it from a carton hidden behind a sliding bookcase in the back room.)
