There are just one hundred (and ten) days left before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. Typically highly organised and publicised the 100 day count down for the Beijing Olympics has been announced ten days early. To mark this ‘occassion’ a song has been recorded and released; it includes the voices of 100 artists and is entitled ‘Welcome to Beijing’.
BOCOG have also announced that 364 cheerleaders have been selected to ‘wecome to Beijing’ athletes and spectators at 10 venues around city.
One of these 10 venues will be the Birds Nest – the national stadium – which has been official unveiled. Tim Johnson was one of the journalists allowed in to see, and describes it in some detail.
This is the final venue to be completed, a month after the organisers of the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Village opened that. According to the China Economic Review “Anyone who has visited say it is a delight and environmentally friendly design although, sadly, the loos are Asian rather than Western style”. Fascinating. Well this week (at least since Bob’s last post ‘Olympic Torch Protests – Who Says What?‘) Chen Zhili was named as the ‘Mayor of the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Village’. Ms Chen is clearly a busy woman, also Vice-Chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and BOCOG Vice-President, so it is unlikely she will have time to fix the toilet situation.
Speaking of Olympic mayors, it is just 11 days until the Mayor of the next city to host the summer Olympics and Paralympics will be elected. Already labelled the ‘Genocide Olympics’ (by many Chinese bloggers at least) London will host the Games in 2012, but who will be the Mayor between now and then, Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson?
From ‘Wecome to Beijing’ to Boris Johnson, via cheerleaders (apologies, but the BOCOG has been banging on about the cheerleaders so many times BOB had to given them at least one mention) seemlessly linked. Finally, apologies for the absence of posts in the last week, the Beijing Olympic Blog is most definitely back in action now.
