Illustrious Musings: The You-Know-What-in-You-Know-When

"I wait in line..."

I was amazed by how many people asked me when I first visited Beijing in August 2004, "Did you know that Beijing will host the Olympics in 2008?" Perhaps the best I can say for the city's collective modesty is that no one I have met so far has dared to presume that I don't know what's coming in 2008.

I hesitate to make sweeping generalizations based on a few weeks of observations, but I think it's safe to say that the Olympics are a reference point--if an incoherent one--for nearly anything in Beijing. Electronic billboards throughout the city proclaim: "There are 339 days, 21 hours, 44 minutes, and 32 seconds until [...]" I walk past a McDonald's, and the only Mandarin I can make out of the loudspeaker announcement is "...Olympics..." The key to my apartment is stamped "2008."

I've especially been struck by the paternalism of the government campaigns to prepare Beijing residents for the onslaught of foreign visitors next summer. The city has been blanketed with red banners advocating the virtues of lining up in an orderly fashion (for buses and subway cars, mostly). One learns at Beihai park the importance of yielding to others, at the International Beer Garden in Wudaokou of the cultural sophistication of waiting in lines, and on the subway itself of the happiness that this all yields.

(Sidebar: Banners aside, boarding the subway is usually akin to rushing into Wal-Mart at 6am the day after Thanksgiving to purchase a Tickle Me Elmo, with the notable exception that there are also people exiting the car, too. Even if a line has formed, it tends to disintegrate by the time the train arrives. At busy bus stops during rush hour, though, there are several flag waving guards that establish order. I recently saw one of these guards--a woman in her 60s--force a young guy crouched on the sidewalk near the bus stop to get up and move to the back of the line.)

My personal comfort aside, I'm more interested in what these campaigns indicate about the relation between the state/Party and the people, or the state's claims on the latter. Most of the signs are written in the first person: "I wait in line, I yield to others, I am happy," or "The Olympics are coming, civilized culture too, new winds are blowing; I participate, I contribute; I am happy." The voice of the state attempts to subsume the voice of the people, as if to guilt Beijing residents into acknowledging that they aren't yet civilized enough, by the government's standards, for foreign visitors. "Participation" is one of the more ambiguous words; in addition to obliging the flag waving guards, I suspect that it means at least endorsing the ideology that "Olympics=good." Ensuring the stability of this equation bolsters the legitimacy of the state's destruction and displacement of entire neighborhoods, as well as the establishment of any kind of capitalist enterprise, because this development is somehow for the common good.