Olympic Reflections

I didn't watch any of the Olympics, excepting the creepy opening ceremonies. Yet I found Thomas Boswell's reflections on his time spent in Beijing during the Olympics to be one of the more interesting articles I've read in a long time. It's a little bit like Thomas Friedman riding around in a cab, but with actual insight:

At 3 a.m. on most Olympic nights, a bus with a few reporters would return to the Beijing Tibet Hotel. A dozen security officials met us to make sure we had credentials. During the day, knee-high tape outside the hotel created lanes for entering and exiting -- a reasonable way to keep things organized.

But in the middle of the night in a sleeping city, the tape was irrelevant. So, exhausted, we'd step over the tape and take the direct route to the front door. And every night the security people objected, insisting forcefully that we obey the stupid tape maze.

Finally, a Chinese solution was devised. Instead of stopping by the front door, our bus continued to the side of the hotel so, even though our walk was longer, the direct route now obeyed the tape.

Though we were the guests and they the hosts, we didn't matter. Common sense was irrelevant. The tape -- symbolic of a decision made by somebody somewhere in an unknowably complex and security-conscious control structure -- was all that mattered. They had uniforms. We didn't. That's big everywhere. It's huge here.

The current Chinese culture doesn't just reveal itself in the middle of the night. All day long, every 20 minutes (to the split second), hundreds of buses run back and forth from media hotels to the Olympic venues. There's even a special "Olympic lane" for all official traffic to the Games. Because the Chinese are obsessed with appearing efficient, the number, size and frequency of buses comically exceed the need. I often had a bus to myself.

However, I can barely believe what I saw Saturday when, by accident, I had to return to my hotel at 1 p.m., when almost no reporter has reason to leave the Olympics. Several football fields full of buses all pulled out simultaneously, headed to hotels all over Beijing, theoretically transporting media.

But I was the only rider on any bus I saw. Dozens were empty.

They still made their runs. They still wasted fuel. They still clogged traffic. But nobody, in an activity as state-controlled and Communist Party-scrutinized as these Olympics, would deviate from the original plan, no matter how stupid it might be.

Boswell also observes that "The complete lack of dissent here -- not one person could get a permit to use the designated Olympic "protest area," though some were detained for trying -- has an eloquence of its own."

Read the entire article here.