Beautiful Country

by J. R. Thornton

  Two days before the opening ceremony we flew into the new airport that had been built for the Olympics. It had been designed by the famous British architect Lord Norman Foster. It was the largest airport in the world. Lord Foster had said that the design of the new Beijing had been inspired by the form of a dragon. Our flight landed in the afternoon, but it was cloudy, and I did not get a view of the airport from the sky. I remembered Mr. Zhang’s describing his designs for his building as a dragon, too.

  The new airport was elegant and ultramodern. It had been designed to be vast and airy and built of light material. The ceilings were high and swept upward in gentle curves, dotted with triangular skylights. Most of the walls were glass and huge yellow columns rose from the floors, supports for the giant structure. As we passed by, the columns changed from yellow to orange to red. Everywhere you looked there was color and light. My father said the airport had been designed to deal with the fifty million passengers a day expected by 2020. That number was just shy of the population of the United Kingdom.

  Over the past few years there had been an incredible amount of construction in Beijing. I remembered my father saying that the Chinese had plans to put up skyscrapers covering ground three times the size of Manhattan in three years. I had questioned him: “A new New York City every year for three years?” My father was confident it would happen.

  Though the airport had opened, it wasn’t quite finished. There were no signs telling arriving passengers which way to go. Young men and women, dressed in matching navy blue uniforms, had been positioned every ten yards to direct travelers and answer questions in crude English. I had read somewhere that fewer than three thousand high school students in the States take the Chinese AP exam. That one day, I guessed there were more English-speaking young Chinese in the airport than there were Chinese-speaking young Americans spread out across all fifty states.

  We went through passport control with passengers from other arriving flights. There were separate lines for all of the Olympic athletes. We saw members of the Israeli swim team and the Brazilian men’s volleyball team. One of the Brazilian players was over seven feet tall. Even though many of these athletes were well traveled, the Olympics was, for many of them, their first time in China. This time when I handed the immigration officer my passport, there was no trouble with my visa. The woman spoke good English and briskly stamped my passport and smiled and waved me on.

  Our luggage came swiftly. My father’s office had arranged for a driver to meet us at baggage claim, and once our bags had arrived, the driver led us to a private elevator that took us down to a VIP exit where his car was waiting. As the black Audi pulled out of the airport and onto the highway that led to the city center, I gazed out of the window at a landscape that was familiar but different.

  The sides of the highway had been planted with grass and flowers and shrubbery. The landscaping reminded me of the entrance to exclusive gated communities in Florida. The landscaping wasn’t just at the entrance of the airport. It continued on both sides of the road all the way to the city. I could only imagine the number of people required to plant these miles and miles of flowers and shrubs. I also noticed newly planted bands of trees. I asked our driver if the trees were for the Olympics. He shook his head and said, “To stop the sand from coming.” I had remembered Victoria pointing to a large swath of land that had been cleared near the airport. She had explained that the government was planting a ring of trees around the city to trap the sand and prevent it from entering the city.

  The traffic wasn’t nearly as bad as I had remembered. There were two highway lanes dedicated solely to Olympics-related travel, and we flew toward the city center without the usual stop-start rhythm of Beijing traffic. My father explained that the government had put into effect an alternating system of odd and even license plate numbers, so, in theory, the amount of traffic should have been cut in half. It was still heavy but not as bad as when I had lived there. The pollution had improved as well. My father said that the government had shut down a number of factories six months earlier to improve the quality of the air. Some of the Olympic competitors in track and field had dropped out because of the pollution in Beijing. One marathoner was interviewed and said he was fearful that he could suffer permanent lung damage. He was not willing to take the risk. It had taken me over a year to get over the cough I had developed in Beijing. My father looked up at the gray sky and said that they were seeding clouds in an attempt to create more rainfall that would also help purify the air.

  In the five years that I had been away, the city had changed dramatically. An entire district had been redeveloped to serve as an area expressly for Western tourists. It was filled with familiar restaurants and shops and new nightclubs and bars. I asked our driver if he could take us to the old tennis center where I had practiced every day. He was confused by my question. He assured me that the Beijing tennis center was on the outskirts of the city. I realized they must have built a new center and asked him if he could take us to where the old one had been. I was amazed to see that the old tennis center had been totally transformed into the site of several new clubs and bars. I got out of the car and walked toward the old stadium. The main gate was gone, and with it, any sign of the machine-gun-toting guards that I had passed by every day. A huge neon club sign sat atop the building that had housed the gym and thin women in glinting cocktail dresses tiptoed past in their stiletto heels. I heard laughter and voices speaking in English behind me, and I turned to see a group of American teenagers stumbling in my direction. The tall five-sided statue was still there, but it looked wildly out of place now—a relic from the past that someone had forgotten to remove, or maybe it was too heavy. The indoor tennis stadium, where we had run and sweated and bled until we were on the verge of unconsciousness, was now a nightclub called Club Latte. I went back to the car and motioned to the driver that we could leave.

  When we arrived at the hotel there was a message from Victoria. She would not be able to come to Beijing. Her baby was sick, and it was difficult to get train tickets. She sent me an e-mail with a picture that she had found and had been saving for me. It was an image of an airplane that had been mislabeled BUS. Underneath was the nonsensical slogan “Wherever we go the passages are always our God.” Victoria said in her e-mail that she had never stopped looking for the absurd signs to enter into our Translation Olympics. I replied that I could hear her laughing.

  My father and I unpacked our suitcases and decided to walk down to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Both were packed with people. At the entrance of the Forbidden City, gone were all the beggars. I suggested to my father that we go to Starbucks. He told me that the Starbucks had closed. About a year ago, an anchor at CCTV had started a blog against Starbucks being in the Forbidden City. His blog had received over half a million hits. Many Chinese felt, as he did, that there was something disrespectful about having a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City.

  On the eve of the opening ceremony, Mr. Zhang invited us to a party at a penthouse apartment in one of the buildings he had built on the land next to the Olympics. I don’t know if I was more amazed by the Olympic buildings or Pangu Plaza. There, on what four years ago had been a vast field of rubble, was a five-building complex that was in the shape of a dragon. Of the five buildings, the middle three were thirty-nine stories tall and identically shaped. They formed the body of the dragon. On top of each were penthouses that were modern interpretations of courtyard houses. The three buildings were flanked by an office tower, twice as tall as the other buildings with a top in the shape of a dragon’s head, and a fifth building the same height as the three identical buildings but which looked half the width of the apartment complexes and represented the tail of the dragon. Unlike Lord Norman Foster, Mr. Zhang’s interpretation of a dragon was as literal as possible. Pangu Plaza had been named after Pangu, the mythic Chinese god who is said to have created the world by separating heaven and earth.

  We arrived at Pangu Plaza behind a gold Rolls Royce fro
m which two Chinese men emerged. My father recognized both men, K. L. Tang, a wealthy Hong Kong businessman who had made a fortune in real estate, and Timothy Chan, also from Hong Kong, who owned a private bank. My father greeted both of them as we waited for the elevator. K. L. Tang was finishing off what looked like a hamburger wrapped in McDonald’s paper, and he was looking for a place to throw away his wrapper. “I had to stop by McDonald’s for my Big Mac,” he said, laughing. “I can’t survive these parties without my Big Mac, but I can’t arrive with this.” He laughed, waving the crumpled wrapper. His British–Hong Kong accent produced sharp, exact words. He stuffed the wrapper in the pocket of his bespoke suit as he entered the elevator. Just as the elevator door pinged open, he invited my father to a private dinner he was hosting several days later in the Forbidden City at a royal garden he had restored.

  Mr. Zhang was waiting for us. It wasn’t the first time I had seen him since leaving Beijing. After my father had salvaged the deal they had been working on, they had gone on to partner on several other projects and he had come to stay with us once or twice. He greeted us warmly and insisted on giving us a tour. He ushered us into the center of his apartment. It had indeed been designed around a central courtyard. A large flat piece of glass covered the ceiling. People were scattered throughout the apartment. In addition to the Chinese, judging by the accents I heard, the other guests were a collection of Americans, Russians, and Brits. Mr. Zhang took us over to a dining table where some guests were finishing dinner. He introduced my father and me to Lord Foster, who had been describing to everyone how the Chinese had built an entire airport in three years while the English, after a decade, were still working to finish Heathrow’s Terminal Five. Mr. Zhang patted him on the shoulder and said that they both had been inspired by dragons.

  Mr. Zhang escorted us to the balcony, which overlooked the swimming complex referred to as the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest Stadium that would host the opening ceremony the following evening. Mr. Zhang remembered the tour he had given me and Victoria four years earlier. “You remember,” he said, enthusiastically waving his hand out in front of him, “none of this existed.”

  “Watch,” he said as he pointed to the Water Cube. First it turned blue, then silver, then white. Lights forming the five differently colored Olympic rings traveled swiftly around the middle. Mr. Zhang clapped his hands like a delighted child. We turned to reenter the penthouse apartment. I looked down again across the city. From such a height, cars looked like squares of a broken mosaic that disappeared behind bands of buildings.

  四十

  There was a lot of talk that evening about the opening ceremony, especially about the security. Everyone said the security was going to be so tight that there was no chance anything would go wrong. The government had designed a special computer system that used cameras at the immigration desks in the airport to scan the face and measure the pupils of every person who entered the country. Placed around Beijing were tens of thousands of cameras that scanned every face in a crowd and matched it up to a face in the computer database. Apparently these high-tech computers could even see through sunglasses. With this system, any threat to security, any dissident or terrorist, could be identified and located within a matter of minutes. However, even with this intense security system in place, everyone had to come to the stadium via official buses. A few people said they suspected that the bus drivers were military officers.

  The following day we moved from the Grand Hyatt to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. There were nineteen state guesthouses laid out on a one-hundred-acre plot of land with lakes on what was once the site of an imperial mansion dating back to the 1200s. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, had made it her permanent residence. Now, visiting foreign dignitaries and provincial government officials were housed there. My father had been invited to stay in one of the guesthouses by a prominent Chinese businessman. The entrance to Diaoyutai looked like a park enclosed with a high stuccoed wall. At the entrance four armed guards checked our passports. We were ordered to get out of the car and walk through a metal detector while the car was checked carefully for bombs. We drove down a winding lane that crossed two small lakes. Villa Seven was a plain two-storied rectangular building with a Chinese-style portico. We walked inside. The entire staff of twelve was lined up to greet us. We were given a choice of several rooms, all of which were decorated like high-end hotel rooms. We even had a television with CNN.

  Later that afternoon, we were driven to a hotel in the north of Beijing and joined other guests of Mr. Zhang’s on a luxury coach bus. The bus left at 4 p.m. and we reached the Olympics site forty-five minutes later. The bus passed through an opening in the high chain-link fence that surrounded the entire site and deposited us at the entrance to a football field–sized hospitality tent where we were offered dinner. At 6 p.m. the gates to the Bird’s Nest were opened and we, along with thousands of others, walked toward the stadium. I felt as if I were taking part in one of those movies I had seen of massive ancient armies marching to seize a city. To the left of us was a less imposing chain-link fence that separated the spectator area from where all the performers were preparing. I noticed hundreds of young Chinese men dressed in long, flowing, light gray robes that reminded me of the garments that choir boys wear.

  As we were walking along, I thought I heard someone call my name. I turned around and looked but didn’t see anyone. Again I heard my name, “Chase! Chase! Hey, Chase!” My father was ahead of me talking to another banker. I looked around but couldn’t figure out who was calling my name. Someone grabbed my arm from behind. I turned. It was Random. He looked the same as he had four years before.

  “I can’t believe I saw you,” he said.

  “Are you still playing tennis?”

  “No, I’m in business selling shirts with my father. We are making fashion shirts now.” He tugged at the white shirt he was wearing. “I am in charge of this line.”

  “Nice,” I said. “Only white?”

  “For now, but very good quality.”

  “How about the other boys?”

  “No, none of them,” and then he mentioned the names of two Chinese men players whom I had never heard of.

  “Bowen isn’t playing?” I hadn’t heard anything about Bowen, nor seen him at any tournaments since the incident at the Orange Bowl. I assumed that he must have gone back to China.

  Random shook his head. “He’s in Tianjin.”

  “On the men’s team?”

  Random lifted his shoulders and frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  The crowds were condensing, and I feared I would lose sight of my father as the undercurrents of the converging people were getting stronger and stronger. “Hey,” I said, “I’ve got to go this way. Where are you sitting?”

  “We are in lower section K4.”

  “I think we are in the top,” I said, “with Bank of China.”

  The opening ceremony began, as most of the world saw, with 2,008 fou drummers running single file into the stadium. They were dressed in gray robes, and they pushed their large square drums mounted on wheels. Row by row they filled the entire stadium. In formation they lit their drums to form giant digits for the countdown to the Games. These young men arched their backs and flung themselves over their drums with a dancer’s grace and flexibility. They performed the same movement in exactly the same way. Our host at the Bank of China told us that the boys were soldiers and that they had practiced for over two years. I had never seen such synchronization. And they made me think about Bowen. Bowen could never have been one of those 2,008 drummers.

  The ceremony lasted four hours, one set more fantastic than the last, but the only thing I could think about was what had happened to Bowen.

  By the time we got back to our hotel it was 3 a.m. I had been given tickets for a fencing match the next day, but I had other plans. I decided instead to take a morning train to Tianjin. I wanted to find Bowen.

  I arrived at the train station at about 11
a.m. It was packed. The old train station had been razed. In its place a much larger and modern station had been built and had opened a few days before the Olympics. I had never been in such a clean public space. There was not one piece of discarded litter to be found anywhere. Upon entering the train station, I passed through a metal detector, and my backpack was searched. I asked, “Zai nar mai houche piao (Where do you buy tickets)?” The security official seemed surprised I spoke Chinese, but after a brief pause, he pointed to the left. I headed off in that direction and after about twenty meters saw the line to buy tickets. There must have been several hundred people queuing in eight lines. I stood at the back of the first line and waited. As I advanced closer to the ticket booth, I heard the same series of disappointing announcements I had heard four years before. The first said that all the trains before 11:45 a.m. were sold out. I must have bought the last ticket for just as the woman behind the ticket counter pushed my printed ticket toward me, I heard an announcement that the 11:45 a.m. train was also sold out. I purchased a return ticket on the high-speed train leaving to Tianjin at 6:15 p.m.

  We lined up to board. The train station was new, but the behavior of the passengers had not changed. Boarding was a free-for-all. The doors of the arriving train had barely opened when people began pushing and shoving to get on the train, showing absolutely no regard for the passengers on the arriving train who wished to get off. I eventually made it onto the train and found my seat occupied by an overweight man. I showed him my ticket, and he shook his head. It wasn’t worth a fight so I stood in the space between cars and had my ticket ready to show the ticket taker. This train had a top speed of 330 km/h, and the journey was just over forty minutes. Compared to the two-hour trip I had made four years ago, standing for only one-third of the time would be easy. I found it surprising that even in the middle of the day so many people were traveling between the two cities—but then again the train ran between two cities, both of which had populations of over ten million people. Tickets were extremely cheap. A ticket on the high-speed train was only 50 RMB (a little over six U.S. dollars), less than one-twentieth the cost of a ticket on the high-speed train between New York City and Washington, D.C.