Beijing A n immediate rumour after the opening ceremony at the
Beijing Games was that an emergency meeting of the British Olympic Committee was convened in order to find an excuse for cancelling London 2012. There might have been even greater panic because Britain is expected to produce a ‘performance’ of eight minutes as part of the closing ceremony in two weeks’ time. Beckham kicking a football was believed to be billed as the British climax, but if that’s all he would be doing, the meaning of ‘damp squib’ might well assume a new dimension.
One could well understand the British alarm, given the phantasmagorical display of brilliance that the Chinese team put together under the maniacal direction of Mr Zhang Yimou, whose supreme delicacy and elegance found in his early films such as Raise the Red Lantern gave way to a fevered explosion of bombast and spectacle. The extravaganza was a gargantuan success — every aspect of anticipation satisfied, every ounce of excitement fulfilled — and every sceptic and party-pooper, not to mention terrorist, entirely frustrated. The army of Chinese officials with individual Olympic responsibilities must have felt a huge relief from a reign of many sleepless nights. The Politburo would have nodded with satisfaction, and most of the Chinese population filled with pride. Every foreign visitor I met afterwards (the Fosters, Schwarzmans, Mittals, Sachses and Tessa Jowell, etc) gushed with praise in the firm belief that they had just witnessed the most outstanding live performance of their life.
But the night was insufferably hot and drenched in humidity. Unless one was a head of state, of whom there were 94, there was no escape from sweating through a long hike towards the stadium with five hours to spare. Columns of hoi polloi as well as irate heads of fancy banks and mighty corporations and billionaires were forced to march along in the sweltering heat under a tiny hazy sun. I, being fatter than most, had no trouble recalling the description by the Bard of Falstaff: ‘as he lards the earth’. At the security check, every pill and tablet had to be swallowed, every lotion sniffed and eye-drop dripped for proof of innocence, and writings in books and pamphlets were copiously filtered for subversive materials. By the time we got to our seats, our clothes were thoroughly soaked, and the whole stadium felt like a giant washing-machine, spinning in a Mobius strip. I dreamt of the oasis of a cold shower and a chilled Diet Coke with ice and slices of lemon, yet the air inside the Bird’s Nest was as still as warm Evian. For once in my life, I became conscious of what it must be like to be a piece of Peking crispy duck.
Thankfully, I found a distraction in the last two hours of the wait by chatting to one of the small number of advisers within the inner sanctum of the Chinese creative team. He shared with me much gossip. Zhang Yimou apparently became a megalomaniac. I must confess I detected, for the first time, an unusual amount of cliché and kitsch in his direction. His choice of music was insipidly syrup, except for the pagan drums. I certainly couldn’t fathom why Sarah Brightman appeared on top of a huge ball singing a Lloyd Webber song; nor why Lang Lang, famous for banging the piano, dressed like Liberace and wrapped his right hand round a young girl as he tinkled on the ivories. But I did like the famous revolutionary song at the beginning, although it was incongruously sung by children. It was, however, strange to me that in the dramatic unfolding of Chinese history, which anchored the theme of the ceremony and was hoovered up by all the foreigners, no mention whatsoever was made of Mao, surely the ultimate hero for China’s modern transformation. But I suspect that even in the intense heat of the arena, the leitmotif of communism might not have cut much ice. Meanwhile, the police helicopter flew over again.
Ihad invited a few of my British friends to the games (the Weinbergs, Vivien Duffield, Tessa Keswick, Robert Hanson, Julia PeytonJones and Barbara Black), and I was particularly keen for them to see some of the extraordinary developments within the capital. So we saw restaurants and galleries which none of us had seen the like of anywhere else in the world. We also saw architecture and infrastructure that was as impressive as any, and there was definitely an overwhelming sense of wonder and marvel at the pace at which modern China has emerged. The opening ceremony itself simply nailed the conviction that all has gone frightfully well. Mind you, none of them would necessarily have noticed the similarity between the mass choreography of thousands of performers and how they manage these things equally rigorously in Pyongyang. Nor would they have imagined (none of us thought it necessary) that, in fact, part of the firework images relayed on live television came from past rehearsals. But what’s a small sleight of hand between friends?
Overall, Beijing 2008 will be remembered as a paradigm of an epic curtain-raiser to the Olympics. How these spectaculars have come to symbolise the spirit of the Olympics has always slightly escaped me. But I am told that such entertainment is necessary to emphasise peace and harmony in humankind. On this occasion, it was just unfortunate that Georgia was invaded at the same hour as Putin was sitting comfortably with a proverbial carton of popcorn.
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