It’s not often that speeches by Chinese policy makers make you laugh, but that was certainly the case on Wednesday evening when Vice Premier Wang Qishan spoke to an audience of U.S. business leaders after two days of high-level economic talks in Washington.

Speaking off the cuff, Wang had the audience rolling as he delicately broached the subject of the negative publicity surrounding the Olympics, which reached a cresendo earlier this year when riots in Tibet sparked protests along the Olympic torch relay in cities such as London and Paris.

Rather than lecture his audience on how the Olympics should not be politicised, Wang thanked them for the support they and people around the world had given to China in the wake of the devastating earthquake that hit last month, saying he hoped that unity could be channelled into the Olympics.      

He even jokingly dangled the prospect of a little “guanxi” for anyone in the audience going to the Games themselves — those all-important connections needed to get many things done in China.      

“Whoever is coming to Beijing to watch, if you can’t get tickets, just ask me,” Wang said. 

“If you can’t find a hotel, we have the head of the tourism administration here — so put your minds at ease,” he deadpanned.

The crowd erupted in laughter.

Photo by REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst  

Disgraced Australian swimmer Nick D’Arcy is fighting to save his career and Olympic dream after being banned from the Australian team over an alleged bar room bashing of fellow swimmer Simon Cowley. The 21-year-old butterfly champ has expressed regret overhis actions and promised to stay away from alcohol but it has sparked a debate about whether athletes should be penalized in the pool or on the field for bad behaviour not related to their sport. Are athletes beyond reproach?

An annual survey of sports fans conducted for Sporting News found that a majority of the 1,500 participants — 62 percent of men and 63 percent of women — completely or mostly agreed that “more and more athletes today feel like they are above the law.” About half of the 12-64 year olds polled — 52 percent of men and 49 percent of women — completely and mostly agree that “athletes are less accessible and approachable today than ever before”.

Despite the negative swing in how athletes’ behaviour is perceived, the Sporting News survey found that sports fans are spending more time and money watching sports. About a third of men, or 27 percent, will spend 32.4 hours a week either watching sport on televions, reading sports magazines or surfing sports Web sites while about 44 percent of men will spend an average of 14.8 hours a week with sports media.

German gymnast Oxana Chusovitina is getting ready for her fifth Olympics for a third country in August. That would be by itself unusual enough under normal circumstances.  

The fact that the 32-year-old — who began her career for the Soviet Union before its demise and then for her native Uzbekistan before moving to Germany — is twice the age of some of her rivals in a sport long the domain of teenagers is another feat on its own.

But what makes Chusovitina’s tale even more incredible is that her ambition was fired by a battle to save the life of her son, Alisher. He was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukaemia at the age of 3 in 2002. There were no specialist oncology facilities in Uzbekistan and her family had no health insurance. So with the speedy help of some friends  in the gymnastics world from Cologne she moved to Germany, learned German, and eventually became a German citizen in 2006.

“There was no child oncology in Uzbekistan and in Russia you don’t have a chance because there are already so many on the waiting lists,” Chusovitina said in an interview after a high-energy training session in Cologne under the watchful eye of her coach, Shanna Polyakova. “I’d known Shanna and Peter Brueggemann at Team Toyota Cologne for a long time and they organised everything. They found a spot in hospital for me and fortunately we came here.”

Thanks to the treatment over the last six years, Alisher is now essentially cured and only needs to undergo periodic analysis of his blood. You can see a smile explode on the face of Chusovitina when she reports that.

She says he speaks more German than Russian and is even among the dozens of children who take part in training sessions in the same crowded gymnastics hall at the Cologne sports university with Chusovitina.

“He can do everything the other kids do,” Chusovitina said. “Sometimes he comes in here and does gymnastics with the other kids too.  My heart doesn’t ache any more as it did because I can see he’s healthy.”

Chusovitina says she thrives off the energy in the small, crowded and noisy gymnastics hall housing the Cologne team’s young gymnasts - scores of mostly grade school children scurrying around and running through their impressive if unpolished routines.

“The kids are so much fun,” she said. “I’m always taking a look over at what they’re doing because it reminds me of when I was so small before. They have so much fun working out. I’ll take a look and get a second wind because so many little children are running around at my side. Sometimes if I’m feeling tired and don’t feel like training any more, I’ll see them and think to myself ‘You can’t let them see you’re tired’.”

She said the children sometimes ask for advice - especially about blisters. “They’ve all helped me to learn German. I’ll ask them ‘How do you say this or that?’ and they’re always ready to help. Sometimes they’ll correct me, which is a good thing. They’re all learning a little bit of Russian too.”

Spending a few hours with Chusovitina, her coach and about two dozen  enthusiastic young gymnasts in Cologne was the perfect antidote for months of reading worrying headlines about the Olympics in Beijing. On the train on the way home to Berlin, I kept thinking: “Isn’t this what the Olympics is supposed to be all about?” 

Picture: Oxana Chusovitina competes for Uzbekistan during the World Cup competition in Artistic Gymnastics in Moscow in this May 26, 2006 file photo. Photo by Thomas Peter.

WASHINGTON - The Olympics are supposed to be all about sports, not politics, right?

Wrong.

Although the Games began in 1896 with the hope that sporting events between nations could bring about a more peaceful world, they have not escaped politics.

Over the past 112 years, nations have boycotted the Games for political reasons, others have been denied entry by the International Olympic Committee and in 1972 Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinian insurgents.

Click here for a photo slideshow “Politics and the Olympics”, narrated by noted American sportswriter Frank Deford published by the U.S.-based Council of Foreign Relations.

Balazs Koranyi was a semi-finallist in the 800 metres at the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games and will cover the Beijing Games for Reuters.  

For an athlete, the Olympics are a bigger gamble than putting money on the zero at a roulette table. And when you take a big gamble, you’re bound to do dumb things.

I read recently about marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe, who was hobbling on crutches at the time, talking about coming back from a stress fracture for Beijing. It made me wonder why normally bright, rational people do insane things when it comes to the Olympics.

I was in a similar situation eight years ago, though not quite at the same level. I had just collected an indoor European bronze medal in the 800 metres and had every expectation of making the final at the Sydney Games. So, I pushed and pushed myself until something broke. Well tore, actually. It was my calf.

I had time to heal, rest and train again but even the thought of letting up on my dream drove me near insane. I couldn’t rest. I had spent a decade preparing for my date with destiny.

So I pushed and pushed more, despite the pain. I spent 2 hours a day practising and 22 hours putting myself back together for the next practice. The pain was excruciating. I limped everywhere. I skipped friends, I skipped going to the movies because it hurt too much to get out of the house.

What I had not counted on was the emotional toll of being in pain.  When it hurts, you hate the world and have no friends. The burden is all on you and you’re mad at world for not sharing your misery.

Training for the Olympics are about walking the fine line between health and injury, or to be more precise, between minor and major injury. You have no choice but to push your body to the breaking point and inevitably, sometimes you push too hard. Top athletes develop an awesome ability to override the body’s warning signs and not even know where edge is.

So I pushed some more. As I tried to protect the injured leg, I strained the healthy one and tore a foot muscle. The pain was worse but again, there was no time to stop.

In the end, I got to the Olympic semi-finals but ran an unspectacular race as my mind and body just couldn’t give more.

Even in hindsight, I’m reluctant to say I’d do anyhing differently. The Olympics are a gamble and unless you risk big, you won’t win big.

Picture of Balazs Koranyi (in yellow) on his way to victory in the 800 metres at the Osaka Grand Prix in 1999 by REUTERS/Eriko Sugita

The Beijing bureau today continued its look at China’s ‘08 generation, 19 years after the crushing of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and 64 days before the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Read Lucy Hornby’s piece about the challenges facing China’s college graduates here

 Pictures of aTianjin job fair by Vincent Du.

Tiananmen Square - June 4, 2008. 

Pictures by David Gray. 

After a disarmingly cool Beijing spring, summer hit the Olympics host city like a hammer this past weekend, marking the psychological final stretch to the Games.Across the city, kites fill the skies, cold drink sales pick up and bicycle ice cream vendors pedal the streets and lanes to provide relief from the pounding heat.

But if there is anything that defines summer in China’s capital when the mercury rises, its the near ubiquitous outpouring of Beijing bellies.

Sure, as is the fashion in other metropolises, women in Beijing wear tops that suggestively expose their midriffs.

But what sets Chinese men apart is that they are no less shy about baring their belly flesh. With shirts hiked to mid-rift range — but rarely taken off completely — they proudly sport pot bellies, thin bellies, sagging bellies, even rippling buff bellies, for all the world to admire.

Foreign visitors arriving for the Olympics in early August, still among the hottest and stickiest times of the summer, will no doubt have a chance to gaze and wonder at this cultural trait.

It’s common to see a cluster of men huddled around a game board at a park or a pair here and there lounging outside a shop while exchanging some local gossip or chatting about a news event. Some men rest their hands on the oval bulges and rub the sides as if admiring a prize watermelon.

Although some men become a tad self-conscious if asked to be photographed or if they are questioned about the habit, others will beam with delight at the attention.

Maybe by the end of the Games, Beijing’s city authorities can hold an exhibition event on the sidelines of the Olympics — an honorary gold medal for best Beijing Belly.

Photo of the full monty by REUTERS/Guang Niu. For a taste of the more popular partial  exposure, check this out.

This weekend, Beijing inaugurated the new Bird’s Nest Stadium with the “Good Luck Beijing” track and field event. I attended less than 24 hours after covering the earthquake in Sichuan, and the contrast between sports and rubble was a little hard to digest.

The Bird’s Nest stadium, built for the Olympics, can seat 91,000 fans. The air flows through well, keeping it cool in the muggy Beijing summer. The seats are well-positioned, so the contestants can be seen easily. The screens are visible, the sound-system clear, the lighting strong but not harsh.

The Mianyang stadium, in Sichuan, is currently housing nearly 20,000 refugees. Every railing is covered in clothing, the floors covered in cardboard and quilts. The glassed-in second story helps shield old people and children from the rain. The screens are tuned to television coverage of the disaster and the PA system booms out the radio news.

Lucky Beijing, Unlucky Sichuan.

But the two stadiums have some things in common.

A small army of young volunteers works in each. Fresh faced volunteers in Beijing answered the call to help China’s Olympics make a shining impression on the world. Masked volunteers in Mianyang answered the call to serve fellow Chinese in an hour of need.

Lines for snack food in Beijing’s stadium are polite and orderly, in line with campaigns for “cultured queuing.”

Lines for food in Mianyang are also polite and orderly, but a lot longer, as refugees show enormous patience despite hunger and grief.

Taxis pull over on the road outside the Bird’s Nest, so that people can take photos of themselves in front of the Olympic icon.

Cars pull over on the road outside the Mianyang station, to drop off donations of clothing and water.

Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought the applause of the Beijing crowd got a little warmer when the blue-suited Sichuan contestants won.

Pictures of scenes from Mianyang Stadium by Jianan Yu, Bird’s Nest by David Gray

Watching athletics at the“Bird’s Nest” National Stadium is a dream for many Chinese people but it turned into nightmare for me last weekend.

We set off last Friday to see the titanic building and a relatively low-key athletics meeting mainly contested by young Chinese athletes.

There were, however, still tens of thousands of people at the showpiece venue for Beijing Olympics, most of whom were looking forward to a first glimpse inside the stadium and to watching their hero Liu Xiang in action.

But our passions gradually died long before we entered the Bird’s Nest.

It took us nearly one and a half hours from seeing the stadium from the road to actually getting anywhere near it.

Every junction was gridlocked and we had to drive another 3 kms further down the fourth ring road, which runs alongside the Olympic Green, to find a place to turn around.

Twenty minutes later, we reached an entrance of the stadium only to find that there was no parking lot.

“Go! Go straight!” one cop shouted to us at a crossroads. Several more shouted the same phrase at us as we continued and we drove more than 2 km more before finally parking our car in a temporary “car park” on the curb as the cops directed.

From there it should have been 15 minutes walk to our destination but we were not that lucky. Heading back to the entrance we had past earlier, we found chaos with hundreds of people milling around.

“Closed! Closed! There are too many people! We can’t bear it!” one officials shouted. “We will take you to another entrance soon, by free bus!”

Less than a minute later, an empty bus arrived but there was only room to take a very small portion of the anxious crowd. The others stood in lines, waiting for another bus.

Officials, police and volunteers shouted through loudspeakers, asking people to keep calm and orderly.

But they seemed incredibly anxious themselves, as if they were surprised to see so many people. All this with a crowd of only about 30,000 making its way into the 91,000-seater stadium.

“I can’t imagine what will happen here when the Olympic Games come,” said one man standing close to me. “They should be prepared for the event better than this.”

At one stage, some people behind us in the queue suddenly ran back to the gate, saying that it had been re-opened. We decided to wait on.

The second bus came ten minutes later and took us by a circuitous route to another gate on the opposite side of the stadium.

From there it was another 15-minute walk, through at least three security checkpoints, before reached the Bird’s Nest at last.

It was 8:30pm by then, one and a half hours after the action had started.

Another curious thing happened in the stadium when the athletes were being introduced.

“Lane one…” the announcer said. “From China!” (who?)

“Lane two…from China!” (who? again)

“Lane three…from China!”

Oh God, I know we Chinese don’t have lots of good runners besides Liu, but they could have found a list of their names.

Pictures by David Gray