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138 Chapter Ten Hyperreal Beijing and the 2008 Olympics The Beijing Olympics commenced on 8 August 2008 with great fanfare in the opening ceremony orchestrated by the fifth-generation filmmaker Zhang Yimou, aided by Steven Spielberg (before he quit to protest China's policy on Darfur) and what the People's Daily dubs the "five-tiger generals," including such a Chinese celebrity as the "fireworks" artist Cai Guoqiang ("Zhang Yimou" 1). The number 888 is pronounced "bu, bu, bu" (as in "but") in Cantonese and is considered close to "fu, fu, fu" (as in the f-word) for "prosper, prosper, prosper." A Cantonese habit long adopted by the whole country, the auspicious date of 888 was deliberately chosen for the game that would purportedly demonstrate China's prowess to the world. Sports, after all, have long been the proving ground, literally and metaphorically, for Asia to showcase modernity vis-à-vis its adversary the West. Dominated by Western (neo)colonial powers, the East during the Cold War and the contemporary global era resorts to the seemingly nonconflict, nonviolent athletic arena and tropes to prove its worth. Hence, the lingo of track and field competition suffuses East-West rivalry. During the Cold War, the nuclear race and the race to the moon were watershed events. Chairman Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward of the 1950s touted the slogan "Surpass England and Catch Up with America" in a few short years. The Sino-US relationship in the 1970s was channeled into the game of "ping-pong diplomacy," far friendlier than late-Qing "gunboat diplomacy." Ping-pong diplomacy stood both parties in good stead: China made contact from a position of strength; the US downplayed and belittled the outcome of this "mini-sport." In good time, amid recalls of Chinese products and the US economic downturn, the ping-pong ball pickled into Balls of Fury (2007), after Bruce Lee's Fists of Fury (Tangshan daxiong [1971]), with Christopher Walken, a caricature of Fu Manchu, in quasi-Qing wardrobe and pompadour hair style, plus a queue. Christopher Walken's wardrobe and pompadour hair style make him an androgynous character, consistent with the stereotype of castrated and effeminate Oriental males. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, the Little League Baseball championships won by Red Leaf and other Taiwanese teams in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, boosted national identity for the island beleaguered internationally. In Hyperreal Beijing and the 2008 Olympics 139 other parts of East Asia, the equation of sports with national pride applied as well. Professional baseball arose in postwar rubbles to restore Japan's self-image. The 2002 World Cup semifinal appearance of the host South Korea led to high expectations and the crushing defeat of the 2006 game in Germany. Recently, Asian exports such as the Houston Rocket's Yao Ming and New York Yankee's Wang Chien-ming became celebrities on both sides of the Pacific, a transnational promise yet to be realized in reverse flow by the American export Michelle Kwan and the like. Translated back into English, however, "fu, fu, fu" sounds like the repetition of an expletive. Indeed, Beijing's official triumphalism revolving around 888 meant the city's underbelly was, pardon the expression, "fucked up." The Olympic hype spelled the end(game) for the old Beijing, literally, as old hutong ("alleys"), siheyuan ("single-storied courtyard houses"), and other infrastructure of hundreds of years were peremptorily dug up to make way for (post)modernist sports venues and relevant facilities of steel and fiberglass, for instance, the National Stadium ("Bird's Nest"), the National Aquatics Center ("Water Cube"), the CCTV station poised to broadcast the competition, and the giant egg of the National Grand Theater adjacent to the Forbidden City, all designed by Western architectural firms. Any aerial shot of the neighboring National Grand Theater and the Forbidden City would confirm the jarring juxtaposition of the old and the new, except the "old" here is deemed the everlasting, the forever young. The other, "truly" old Beijing does not show up in such aerial views; it needs to be excavated from below. The opening date signals how tightly controlled public discourse over the Olympics was. Mass media—newspapers, television channels, billboards, public campaigns and activities—strove to ensure a successful international event that brought nothing but joy. The effusive propaganda and advertising over the Olympics saturated the public domain, so much so that a virtual net/work was cast by the regime and big corporations. This net/work constituted an immersion experience...

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