That security would be ramped up in China before the Beijing Olympics was to be expected and is entirely normal.

My abiding memory of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City – just a few months after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. — is of removing and putting back on my heavy winter boots several times a day at security checkpoints.

The experience of my wife and son at Qingdao airport yesterday, however, suggests that even security precautions can sometimes go a little too far.

After spending a couple of days at the seaside in the city that will host the sailing for the Beijing Games next month, three-year-old Max had packed his bucket and spade along with other favourite toys in a little plastic suitcase for the journey back to the Chinese capital.

Having successfully negotiated the metal detector, he was with his mother waiting for the bags to reappear from the X-ray machine.

“You have a weapon,” the female security guard said to my wife.

Sal, I must stress, is largely a law-abiding citizen of the People’s Republic and has no previous record of involvement with gun-running or hijacking. She adopted the internationally-understood facial expression for confusion.

“You have a weapon,” the security guard repeated and, as if to clarify, pointed at a poster on the wall that pictured an array of hand guns and an AK-47. “We have seen it.”

Still confused, Sal opened Max’s suitcase for inspection. 

Casting aside the Woody and Buzz Lightyear action figures, the Kung Fu Panda DVD and several Disney-themed colouring books, the guard seized upon Max’s bright red and orange plastic water pistol, raising it triumphantly into the air.

“You cannot have this,” she said with a certainty that brooked no argument.

Not wanting to upset Max before the flight, Sal gestured for the guard to quickly put the 10 yuan toy out of sight, which she did. 

The skies above China were safe once again. 

Picture of an unorthodox police drill in Taiyuan this week by REUTERS/stringer 

Until a few months ago, a few weeks in some cases, the Jingshun Highway, once one of the main arteries out of Beijing heading for skiing in the mountains and the Great Wall, was lined with scrappy auto-repair workshops, metal yards, tyre stores, manual car-wash services and other businesses.      

I am talking about the stretch of highway northeast of the huge conurbation of Wanjing, beginning where the airport expressway veers off to the right and surrounded by the suburbs of grandiose villa compounds with names like Beijing Riviera and Grand Hills, temporary homes to CEOs and other rich expats.      

They weren’t the prettiest of shops in Beijing, but they bustled. Roads and pavements were packed as red-cheeked children ran to and from their village homes and mums and dads ate squatting on the flagstones outside their stores.

In short, this was a sprawling, busy trading community supporting hundreds of
families, if not more.

Now, suddenly, many have been wiped from the face of the Earth.

Where once there were workshops, there are now thin lawns, bushes and spring flowers. On one stretch, a long, pretty, one-storey building, in the style of old China, houses several businesses, presumably uprooted from their uglier previous incarnations.

But the rest have been erased. Where did they go?      

And why all the effort to make this road, no longer a major artery with huge, fast, state-of-the-art highways being built all around, pretty?      

A long-term resident suggested an answer. The road is not as important as it once was, but it is the road athletes and spectators will take to the Olympic rowing and canoeing.

They won’t want to see slums.  

Pictures of the rowing/canoeing venue at the end of the road by David Gray (top) and Alfred Cheng Jin.

Beijing promised to turn itself into a model city after winning its bid for the 2008 Olympics almost seven years ago. I lived in the city then and thought, yay, go team. Beijing, afterall, could use some work.

Infamous traffic gridlocks would be sorted out, the waiting world was promised. Working-class taxi drivers who love to chatter in Chinese would speak English. City-dwellers would quit spitting on the sidewalks. The polluted grey skies that aggravated my head colds would turn blue. Order would be enforced at the capital’s chaotic international airport.

Twenty-four-hour construction that dominates kilometre after kilometre of sprawl would be polished off, making the wee hours darker and quieter. Foreigners would be welcomed, not blamed by association with their governments for upsetting China at some point in history. No more pirated DVDs, meaning less harassment on street corners and less friction between China and Western governments.

A dream team of state agencies, media and street-level public opinion advocated all these and a list of other changes before the Games.

After being away for nearly two years, I was back in April. And certainly some things have changed….

Beijing commuters now line up on subway platforms. I was stunned when they left a single-file corridor for exiting passengers at a particularly packed station.

Guards at the airport hand out brochures listing expected taxi fares to major hotels to prevent visitors being ripped off. My cab driver was even fair to the point he stopped the metre when he took a wrong turn.

Dust has settled on some major construction sites over the past two years, turning hazardous public wastelands into towering shopping complexes with lounge bars and spacious coffee houses.

“You can find quiet space amid the chaos here,” said one Beijing native who seldom compliments his city when we got together.

But now with around 2-1/2 months to go till the start of the Games, some of my international phone calls still get bounced and Chinese friends say their Web-based e-mail can’t always be opened, probably due to the same technical glitches that were around five years ago.

Scrappy, stinky poured cement construction sites the size of small towns still hulk on segments of the horizon, blasting hammer blows and flood lights through residential neighbourhoods long into the night with no hint of nearing completion.

A car trip from the financial district of west Beijing to a bar district in the east can take more than an hour as columns of cars wait turn after turn at red lights, basically no change from a few years ago. “You can’t just hop across town for dinner in Beijing,” an expatriate remarked to me.

Also winning no medals, English directed at tourists rarely exceeds snarky shouts of “hello!?” followed by grammatically mangled commands to buy something, all in the fourth tone. Tourists from parts of China not used to foreigners still stare at non-Asian faces.

A city isn’t a DVD. Beijing can’t fake itself just for Olympic visitors, not after hundreds of years of doing particular things in particular ways.

The fact is, if you live in Beijing, you spit in public, smoke wherever and yell in quiet places (such as hallways in the multi-star hotel where I stayed).

None of these Chinese characteristics need stop Beijing from holding an international sporting event, my friends and sources accurately remind me. As a former student of anthropology, I also believe Olympic visitors should see true Beijing instead of a facelift version. I give uncut, unpolished real Beijing a medal for being itself.