Modern meets traditional as China develops and prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. (John Borthwick)

The Wonders of China Beijing prepares for the Olympics

This was my first trip to China and my first press tour. As I boarded the plane for Beijing, I thought I knew what to expect. Surely, having Chinese friends, colleagues, neighbours and a penchant for moo goo gai pan gave me an informed leg up. Still, I harboured romantic images of rice paddies, sampans, millions of bicycles and dragons ... a visual imprint dated from years of thumbing through shelves of yellow-jacketed "Don't you dare cut out the pictures" National Geographic magazines.

Hours of Googling the capital of the largest country in the world and watching The Discovery Channel and other yummy travel shows did little to alter latent impressions and I flew on, unprepared for the startling revelation that lay ahead.

We landed at the ultra modern Beijing Capital International Airport, a sleek giant festooned with shops and restaurants. Luggage in hand, we plopped drowsily onto our bus and headed for the Olympic City. It was dark and then suddenly, it wasn't. Giant skyscrapers, bejeweled with a kaleidoscope of neon lights, burst out of the night.

We travelled slowly towards our hotel along huge boulevards plugged with honking vehicles of all sizes. I was mesmerized by the soaring, crazy-quilt skyline dotted with scaffolding and cranes, and lit up like an enormous movie set.Beijing is under construction.

We pulled up to the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel, the bus doors opened and my throat closed. This was the infamous, searing Beijing pollution. I was grateful for the throat lozenges my informed travelling companions had passed out on the bus.

Tiananmen Square (ironically translated Gate of Heavenly Peace) is the site of the 1989 student uprising and pro-democracy massacre, forever etched in our collective memory with the image of a young man standing defiantly in front of a menacing tank.

A small group of goose-stepping soldiers implied the presence of a darker time but were eclipsed by the clouds of chattering tourists. The only immediate threat appeared to be the millions of umbrellas brandished by sightseers to keep off the sun and forge a path to the Forbidden City.

Thousands of us poured through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, a huge red structure offset by an immense portrait of Chairman Mao (a new one is painted every year by Oct. 1, National day) and flooded into the Forbidden City. It is difficult to describe the scope of the beautiful palaces, bridges and grounds of the ancient city. It houses about 980 buildings, is the size of 140 football fields and like its big sister, Beijing, it too is coated with acres of scaffolding and construction teams.

Palaces are closed and bridges and pathways are lined with two-by-fours. Time is of the essence. Beijing is on the move. All must be ready in time for the Olympic Games starting Aug. 8.

We took a pedicab tour around the ancient hutongs, a meandering network of skinny alleyways that envelop the siheyuan, Beijing's multi-familied, courtyard houses. Since the 1990s, few of these have escaped the wrecking ball and most of the families have been moved to the corridors of highrises that make up the Beijing suburbs. The remaining hutongs and siheyuan are now under government protection. Many of these have been designated tourist rentals and some are already booked for the 2008 Olympics. Inexpensive now, the price will probably triple before the Games.

The hutongs eventually wind their way to the Shichahai Lake District, a series of beautiful, man-made lakes. A popular recreation area, Shichahai offers outdoor cafes, bars, boat cruises, shops and the omnipresent Starbucks. Actually, no matter where you go, the Chinese make an excellent cup of coffee.

China is famous for its freshwater pearls, cultivated from mussels instead of oysters, and we spent some time at the famous "Pearl Market" a department store with several floors of clothing and an extensive array of inexpensive goods topped by two floors of what can only be described as "pearl city."

Throngs of enervated salespeople dart among piles of glittering, multi-coloured pearl strands draped over busy counters. Exacto knives are scraped over opalescent surfaces to prove authenticity.

Everyone has a better pearl or a better deal. I found it overwhelming and escaped, eventually buying my pearl take-homes from a small department store around the corner from our hotel.

For an evening outing, we saw Chun Yi the Legend of Kung Fu at the Red Theatre, a wonderful musical extravaganza that has toured North America to rave reviews followed by dinner at the busy Quan Ju De, a Peking duck restaurant the size of the Pearl Market, only with ducks. Later we topped the evening off with a foot massage in one of the hundreds of salons that dot the city landscape like the nail salons that seem to pop up daily at home.

Most of us were keen to witness the Olympic story for ourselves and we were ushered into the Beijing Tourist Bureau, a modern lofty building that displays models of Olympic venues and a huge walkabout floor model of the future city of Beijing.

The models were fascinating, particularily the National Aquatic Centre aka the "Water Cube." The giant bluish, bubble effect on the outer layer of the building is state of the art and will allow the sun's reflection to act as an air-conditioner, saving electricity while providing a moderate climate for water events during the hot summer months.

Eventually we were escorted upstairs to a press conference with city and Olympic officials. This was the only time we came face to face with the Great Stonewall of China, the government. Despite several translators, smiles back and forth, hand-shaking and much pleading on our part, we got little information, no venue tours and were finally allowed to visit the outside of the venues -- from the highway, on a speeding bus.

At one point, the bus pulled off to the side of a busy thoroughfare and a few of us attempted to dart through the traffic and onto an overpass to get a birds-eye view of the "Bird's Nest," the intricately woven National Stadium.

It will be interesting to see how Chinese officials cope with the millions of visitors and aggressive world press that will invade their country in just a few short months.

My favourite memory of Beijing will always be the Great Wall of China. Several parts of the wall are open to tourists but some are fragile and extremely precarious. The wall at Badaling has been fortified and restored and offers both easy walking, a gondola and long steep hikes for the more agile and adventurous. Or, you can ride around the base of the gondola on one of the angry-looking camels that lumber around the edge of the parking lot.

Since we left Beijing late in the day (it's a 70 km drive), we spent hours on the bus and had little time on the wall. We only managed the return trip on the gondola and an aborted attempt to scale the steep grade to the top of the fortress.

Still it was magical. The wall, rising over 10 metres high, snakes up and over miles of misty egg-shaped mountains like a giant toothy zipper. The steps rise at incredibly steep angles and the stones, worn from the footsteps of time are polished to a sheen. It must get impossibly slippery in the winter. I was sorry when our guide signalled us to come down. It would be easy to spend the day following the ancient paths.

Beijing's renewal is marching ahead at an incredible rate and it is already too late to see many parts of the original city. The walls around the old city, that were torn down years ago and replaced with a series of "ring roads," are now choked with vehicles, contributing to a pollution problem that may interfere with the 2008 Olympic Games. In an attempt to cut traffic by more than one million cars, Beijing organized an alternate day driving test for four days. Unfortunately, pollution levels rose, probably due to the humid weather.

Subways and train systems are being expanded at a furious rate, parks and landscaping tart up the grand boulevards and whole districts have been flattened and replaced with new shiny districts that flaunt strange futuristic buildings like the Egg Shell (National Grand Theatre) and the "Trouser Legs"(China Central TV Building).

The cranes and scaffolding will probably disappear as the world watches the Games but as soon as the last Olympic flames go out and the cameras blink, the construction craze will resume its profile on the city skyline, as Beijing advances towards its 2010 renewal deadline. By this time, Shanghai will have completed another 1,000 skyscrapers, just in time for the 2010 World's Fair.

One can't help but think that at some point down the road, Communist China and Commercial China will either crash head-on or blend together, making China one of -- if not the most -- powerful countries in the world.

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BOTTOM LINE

MORE INFO

For information on travel to China, visit the China National Tourist Office at tourismchina-ca.com or call 416-599-6636 or 1-866-599-6636. Canadians needs a visa to travel to China. These can be obtained from the Chinese Embassy or Consulate Generals in Canada. Visit chinaembassycanada.org or toronto.china-consulate.org.