China calls the Olympics the “Dream of a Century” and is ferverishly trimming hedges, planting flowers and splashing new coats of paint on rusty lamp posts and fences all over Beijing to present a modern and healthy image.

If you’re a cynic — a common pastime for foreigners in Beijing — you might say the billions being spent on the Games could be put to better use educating or improving the lives of hundreds of millions of farmers in China’s vast countryside.

But what the hey, I live in Beijing and I like flowers!

For the most part, even the heavy handed pre-Olympic security crackdown, the extra police checks, warnings of terrorist threats and bar closings don’t bother me that much.

After all, this IS the Olympics and this IS China, and there really could be people out there who want to do bad things this summer.

But what does bother me is that Beijing’s finest have decided they need to close down my favourite DVD store, and apparently many others, indefinitely … because of the Olympics.

Besides depriving me of watching the Joker battle Batman this weekend, I would think that an executive at a major film studio who loses billions of dollars due to pirated DVDs would be disturbed by this news.

If police can close these shops — apparently with little problem — for the Olympics, what about the other 40-some weeks of the year?

So after the Games will it be Batman Returns, or will he disappear like, well, a bat out of hell and rusty signposts?

Picture of Beijing DVD store by Claro Cortes IV