BEIJING—A pall fell over the Olympics on the opening weekend, after the bizarre stabbing of an American couple and their Chinese guide Saturday afternoon, and more explosions in Xinjiang Sunday. The weather didn’t help the mood any. It’s just after 5:30 a.m. in Beijing on Monday as I write from the CBC studio at Ling Long and the clouds (fog? smog?) have broken. It’s been raining now for about twelve consecutive hours, but the air, finally, looks to be clearing.

Alas, the Games go on. Michael Phelps won his first gold yesterday and last night’s US-China basketball match drew an estimated one billion television viewers. Crowds have been good so far despite intense security and the heat and humidity. I managed to check out beach volleyball at Chaoyang Park in east Beijing after work Saturday and was impressed with the atmosphere at the stadium. The announcer led the crowd through the wave; dancing girls called “beach babies” wearing lime bikinis filled in down time; and cans of Tsingtao beer were a mere five Yuan (less than $1).

Meanwhile, at the CBC studio the wait is on for Canada to do, well, anything. Our earliest medal hopeful, Calgary gymnast Kyle Shewfelt, failed to qualify for the finals. CBC has invested huge in this Olympics and they’re hoping upon hope the Canadian team will deliver.

The public broadcaster has invested big in these Games for a reason: it will be the CBC’s last until at least 2014 (CTV holds rights to 2010 and 2012). The network has pulled out all the stops for Beijing. They paid $45-million for the rights alone, compared to $33-million for Athens. Over 1,500 hours of programming are scheduled (much of it online), and they’ve brought in special analysts including Perdita Felicien, Sacha Trudeau, Mark Tewksbury, and Donavon Bailey. The Ling Long studio is nothing short of spectacular; you’ve got to wonder how much they paid for it considering there is only space here for five other networks.

In Beijing, the euphoria of the opening ceremonies has faded. (Aside: I watched the ceremonies at a bar in the raucous Sanlitun neighbourhood, where Canada received a hearty reception until the camera focused on Dashan — see Mara’s last post — when the mostly expat crowd erupted in boos; it seems everybody’s sick of being told their Chinese “isn’t as good as Dashan’s.”) Work is starting to feel like work. This is a bad sign. There are still fourteen days to go…

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… Last month in Kunming two buses were blown up, killing two people. Four days before the Olympics, Uighur separatists in Xinjiang killed sixteen police officers during morning exercises. Then today, suspected attackers armed with homemade grenades drove a taxi into a government complex (11 killed).

Why is no one talking about this? Imagine if a string of attacks occurred before Vancouver 2010 or London 2012. It would be all over the news. While the killing of the father of a former Olympian and in-law of the U.S. mens volleyball coach by a Chinese man—a tragedy undoubtedly, but an exceedingly rare occurrence in Beijing—has made headlines everywhere, scant attention has been paid to the string of attacks. Many foreigners in Beijing (including me) have complained about Beijing’s intense security build-up, and not a day goes by without mention in the media of the “no fun Olympics.” But four attacks in less than a month is an ominous sign indeed.

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… I said I’d take it easy on visiting journalists’ coverage of the Games. But Christie Blatchford’s report about the opening ceremonies in Saturday’s Globe deserves special mention. Equal parts stating the obvious and patronizing, Blatchford’s dispatch is parachute journalism at its worst.

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Posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 7:19 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.