History and Impact of The Beijing Olympic Games
The Olympic Games in Beijing – History and Its Impact
The Summer Olympic games in 2008 are being hosted by China, in the city of Beijing. Originally handled as a religious observation in Ancient Greece, the Olympic Games were a week long celebration of athletic competition and the ancient Greek virtues. After a hiatus of over 1500 years, they were restarted in 1896, in Athens. They have been held nearly every four years ever since (missing years during the World Wars), and switched in the 1990s to staggering four year dates for the Winter Games (which were last held in 2006) and the Summer Games (currently being held in Beijing.
Paleontological evidence indicates that the area around Beijing has been occupied for nearly half a million years, with the oldest archeological evidence dating back to the dawn of agriculture in Asia, nearly 6,000 years ago. Among the earliest legendary annotations of Beijing as a city include a mention in passing with the legendary Yellow Emperor, while Beijing's history starts with Quin Shi Huang, when the city of Ji became the capital of one of the first 36 feudal prefectures in the 4th century BC, making Beijing a contemporary of ancient Athens.
As a venue of the Olympic Games, the government of China has been working for nearly a decade getting the city ready for its closeup in the international media. Strict pollution controls were put into place, as prior to 2000, Beijing had some of the worst air quality of any city on the planet. Likewise, massive construction programs have been in place, not only for the Olympic facilities, but to improve mass transportation access in the city, and laying down nearly 200 miles of new roads. These enhancements will benefit the city of Beijing for years after the games have gone, including providing training facilities and venues for other Chinese sporting events and sporting teams for decades to come. Much the same way that the LA Coliseum helped renew downtown Los Angeles from the '84 Summer Olympics, China hopes that the civic improvements will provide long lasting benefits to Beijing for decades down the road.
However, while Beijing gets the glory, there are plenty of other venues for the 2008 Olympic Games than the city of Beijing proper. The games are held primarily in Beijing, but several events are being held in other cities. For example, Hong Kong will be hosting all the equestrian events, and other events will be hosted by the cities of Qingdao, Tianjin, Shanghai and Qinhuangdao. These have resulted in nearly 70 stadium and sporting complex construction projects across the nation of China.
The theme of the 2008 Chinese Summer Games is One World, One Dream, emphasizing that the Olympic Games are meant to transcend petty political differences and squabbles. This has caused several organizations with an anti-China bias (such as sympathizers with the Tibetan independence movement, and people protesting China's human rights record) to demand boycotts of the Chinese Olympics, including a rather regrettable statement demonstrating historical ignorance about US participation in the Berlin Olympics of 1936.
