olympics

I am going. This friday night we board the train for beijing. Got three big days in the city and one precious ticket to see the 110m hurdles first round including the chinese Liu Xiang and American Terrence Trammell. An extremely kind former coworker gifted me the tickets he was unable to use.

Its pretty excited, not only to escape the drear of chinese class and harbin, but also to go back to beijing. i want to see first hand what has changed over the past two years and what all this talk about beijing putting on a false face is all about. There have been several reports in the western news about beijing walling off areas of the city, erecting fences, tearing down neighborhoods, building false tourist attractions, etc. Now we get to see what is true.

When I was last in beijing in 2006, they had begun work on the olympic facilities but there weren't many noticeable changes. Full report to come next week.