http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/c...icle4560655.ece

From The Times
August 19, 2008
What will the Olympics ever do for us?

The costs are huge and a spell under the international spotlight can be uncomfortable. So why stage the Games?
Simon Barnes


It's one of the eternal mysteries of life: why would anyone want to stage the Olympic Games? The money makes your nose bleed. Sober estimates say that the Chinese spent £20 billion on infrastructure for the Games here in Beijing; others say £30 billion. That's not counting the money invested in sporting talent since they started bidding for the 2000 Games in 1993.

London will spend a mere £9.3 billion on infrastructure, and there has been enough whingeing about that. It's about what Athens paid four years ago. It's not cheap, so what do you get back? For a start you get the world going through your dirty laundry. Would we be so excited about Tibet, Darfur, democracy, human rights and the treatment of Falun Gongers if the Olympics didn't concentrate the mind?

And with all that investment, it can still backfire. It did at Atlanta in 1996. Why did Atlanta do it? Provincial chippiness - to show that anything the smug cities of the West and East could do, Georgia could do better. But the organisation was terrible, the attitude all wrong, the aggressive redneck security drove everybody nuts, and a bomb killed one and injured 100.

The smugness got to us. This was America and America was the tops, so you're lucky to be here, right? A colleague said that Athens should have got the Games: “Oh no. If the Games were coming to Georgia, they had to come to Atlanta.” In the end, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, refused to say that “these were the best Olympic Games ever”. It was a devastating judgment.

Why did Athens - the Greek one - want the Games? To show that Greece was bigger than anybody believed. For all our worldliness, most us base our views of foreign countries and cities on pretty basic notions and a simple archetype. Deep down, most of us have a slightly 'Allo 'Allo view of the world. The Olympics provide a brilliant, dangerous and expensive corrective.

Everybody knows that Greeks are mad, quarrelsome and chaotic, and couldn't organise a piss-up in an ouzo distillery. A country freshly inducted into the European Union had a point to make. The breathtaking nerve with building deadlines reinforced the stereotype: but the Games themselves were great. Not perfect: on the eve of the Games, two Greek athletes, including the national ikon, Kostas Kenteris, swerved a dope test, got rumbled and were kicked out. Also the Greeks themselves never turned up. They did what they always do in August and stayed on the islands.

But the Sydney Games of 2000 were an unqualified success. After seven years of devastating bitch-fight urban politics, the Games were a triumph. Most of the world had little idea that tucked away at the bottom of the planet was a thrilling vibrant, optimistic, cosmopolitan sorted-out, go-getting, can-do sort of place.

Barcelona had a simple succès fou: emerging from Madrid's shadow to prove that it was the real place, the sexy one. As Gary Lineker, then still a footballer, said after the opening ceremony: “Well Des, what do you expect from the city that gave us Miró, Dalí and Gaudí?” What indeed?

That is why you hold the Olympic Games: for the sake of matters impossible to quantify. It's billions spent on, er, good vibes. Oh, legacy is a part of it, and here, Barcelona is the template for what the Games can do for a city in terms of the hardware left behind. But it's in the software of vibes, good and bad, that the real legacy comes.

So where's it at with the Chinese? Since they decided to join the rough-and-tumble of international trade in the late 1970s, opening up has continued at ever-more-

dangerous speed. The Games are a coming-of-age ceremony, not in terms of culture - that happened several thousand years ago - but in terms of industry and urbanisation.

The Games show the world that China has arrived, and - perhaps just as important - they tell the Chinese the same thing. So far so good. But these things have their own momentum. The ambition of the young Chinese goes far beyond stadiums, subways and gold medals. China has been temporarily invaded by the world. The walls have come tumbling down. I don't think they can be built again.

China is an old society pregnant with a new one. Karl Marx said that in such cases the midwife was force: but the Olympic Games might play a part. So might money, trade, prosperity and the unstoppable forces of Westernisation, of which the Games themselves are a part. There is a possibility that, in staging the Olympics, the Chinese Government might be getting more than it bargained for.

And in four years' time, London. What's in it for us, apart from a Tube line, a stadium and the sexing-up of East London? The world will look at the British record in Iraq, our lapdog relationship with the US, question our policies on immigration, ask who we are to get tooty about human rights. Then the Games will begin and visitors will be aghast at the cost of hotels and taxis.

But the event will be fabulous - London is good at putting on a show - and the world will see that it is not just a place full of old buildings and crumbling imperial memories with a rather curious family in nominal charge. No, London will show itself and its nation as a cool place: ancient, yet up to the minute; with deep roots, bright new leaves. London will be the centre of the world for 17 days, bathed in the Olympic glow of fabulousness, for sport fascinates the world and blesses everything it touches. Best not bugger it up, then.

Exactly.

There are many things in the world that can't be measured with numbers, especially in terms of monetary investment and return. One can always find a better way to spend money and everyone has a different view on how government's money should be spent. In the endless row over the money, in a society where the bean counter mentality prevails, what's truly precious, i.e. the unquantifiable greatness of human kind, are often sacrificed. Lost opportunities just never come back.

not quite sure which society you mean " a society where the bean counter mentality prevails', but lets hope things are getting better in our country after the Olympics.. and agree with that: "There are many things in the world that can't be measured with numbers", many things, not just Olympics... "The walls have come tumbling down. I don't think they can be built again.", although it doesnt change the nation dramatically, hope the opening up makes the Beijing Olympics worthwhile, for Chinese, and thats the reason why i approve of it.

http://www.zaobao.com/yl/tx080910_502.shtml
北京奥运给韩国带来强烈震撼

（2008-09-10）

● 黄彬华

　　韩国在本届奥运中的表现不俗，所获奖牌在亚洲仅次于中国，在世界上排名第七，但它似乎并不因此兴高采烈。一也许是中国独占鳌头；二是北京比东京、汉城（首尔）奥运更辉煌，更被世人推崇；三是中国不仅一跃成为体育大国，还崛起成为崭新的世界强国。

　　有人从中国即将成功回返汉唐盛世来形容，也有人从中国再次崛起为世界的坐标来看北京奥运。笔者却发现，中国不仅消除了全民心中百年的积怨，还首次向世界表现出不亢不卑的姿态，已经没有克服不了的强敌，也没有驯服不了的顽冥，整个奥运期间就是如此一片平和与自信。因此有人说，中华民族成熟了，自信了。

　　但韩国传媒却抱怨说，开幕式上，韩国代表团进入会场时没有受到（中国）观众欢迎表示，却对台湾和日本代表报以热烈掌声。又说，射箭比赛期间，韩国运动员遭到口哨声的妨碍。韩日对垒棒球赛中，（中国）观众只为日本队疯狂喊加油，这些都令韩国人惊诧。《中央日报》甚至申诉，闭幕礼上出现的大地图，竟然把（韩国主张的）“东海”标记为“日本海”，却没有人出来表示歉意。

　　两名获得亚军、季军的韩国选手，在中国选手获颁冠军衔的礼台上，对着中国国歌声中冉冉升起的五星红旗，竟然不脱帽敬礼。有人就说韩中对抗已经表面化了。

　　这些也许就是本届奥运会的瑕疵。中国方面没有人公开申诉，韩国传媒却似乎非常介意。但韩国主流报章除了敬畏，也表示担忧，特别是有识之士对奥运象征的中国意志力、组织力，和显现的文化底蕴、现代科技水平，表现出韩国人一定程度的恐慌和敬畏。

混杂敬畏与警戒心情

　　韩国高丽大学社会学系教授朴吉声8月28日在《朝鲜日报》上撰文。他说，看了“灿烂的文明”与“辉煌的时代”为主题的开幕式，以及以“狂欢与热情”为主题，寓意于世界融为一体的闭幕式，世人也许早已思绪万千。他强调，“在世人眼中混杂着敬畏与警戒”。

　　朴吉声承认，西方社会仍对中国心存偏见，无法摆脱东方主义的思维框架，掩饰不了对未来21世纪将被中国“标准化”的担忧。但他说，韩国具备以第三者眼光，对中国进行综合性、战略性分析的最佳条件。问题是，韩国李明博政府的未来计划中，未必有将中国假设为世界核心的全球计划。

　　首尔大学国际政治学教授尹永宽在《中央日报》发表评论。他说，雄壮的场面、绚烂的色彩、传统美与高科技而成的北京奥运开幕式足以让世界40亿观众为之震惊。但他有个疑问，就是“韬光养晦后大放异彩的中国，这股强大的力量未来将用于何处”？

　　奥运后中国将何去何从呢？尹永宽说，中国面前有两条道路可走，一是成为攻击性民族主义，二是发展合作的民族主义。中国任何选择都会大幅度改变东北亚和朝鲜半岛乃至世界的秩序。他说，中国人口是韩国的27倍，领土面积更是97倍，与如此庞大的中国为邻，是命运的安排，也是不得不接受的现实。韩国必须要比中国更为机敏、灵活、团结。但实际情况却是，韩国比中国更为迟钝、死板、分裂。为此，他表示担忧。

制定国际关系新标准

　　学者的看法基本还客观，但传媒的表述则较极端。《中央日报》记者姜赞吴从北京发回来的报道就断言：“中国正向强国迈进。除了军事领域，通过北京奥运，中国自认已经拥有与美国对等的力量。”

　　他说，入场顺序不是按英文字母而是由汉字简体笔划来决定，这是一个具有代表性的事例。“华盛顿共识”将由“北京共识”取代。显示中国有意用中国标准来代替美国式全球标准，制定国际关系的新标准。

　　中国也展现其危机管理能力。他说，奥运前西方媒体不断提及西藏和少数民族问题，结果都相安无事。他引述专家的分析，中国不会在短期内超赶军事比自己强大10倍的美国，却会在其他领域试图摆脱现在一极多强的格局，向多极的格局转变。

　　《中央日报》中国研究所所长刘尚哲更坦率。他分析说，2008年8月8日，100多位国家和地区元首出席了北京奥运开幕仪式，规模超过了联合国召开联大会议。是什么让各国首脑放下手中事务参加的呢？是因为无法拒绝北京的邀请。胡锦涛设午宴欢迎各国首脑，各首脑按次序等待胡主席接见。美国是当今世界的超级大国，连布什也要排队等候将近30分钟，简直就是回到了三跪九叩的时代。

用汉语、英语引领世界

　　刘尚哲也说，不管愿意还是不愿意，世界各国首脑齐聚北京，意味着他们认可了中国的崛起。为此，我们（韩国）该怎么做呢？我们（韩国）应该学会与强邻共存的方法，与日益强大的邻国谋求共同发展，而不能继续用1992年中韩建交时的眼光来看待中国。中国正在从“世界工厂”逐步转变为世界市场，韩国需要出台相关政策，尽早适应这一变化。此外，没有中国产品，我们已经很难生存，没有中国，韩国也将一事无成，因此必须进行一番研究，怎样才能不再把中韩关系当韩美关系的下属来思考。

　　刘在另一篇分析文章中还注意到，开幕式结尾部分的合唱《我和你》，是中国人刘欢与英国人歌手莎拉·布莱曼用中文和英文合唱的。他说，“这或许暗示了中国人认为，未来世界秩序就是要围绕汉语圈和英语圈国家来实现的”。

　　文化评论家、延世大学中文系主任柳仲夏教授，早在北京奥运开幕前便已撰文指出，“被字母夺去全球文化霸权的汉字再下战书”（见8月7日《中央日报》）。他说，北京奥运是标志以汉字为基础的图标，这是一枚巨大的信号弹，或者说照明弹，向西方世界宣告汉字的进军。这枚信号弹的威力，是人工降雨气象弹（指奥运期间使用的先进科技）所不能及的，是一枚持久的文化炮弹。

　　他说，占世界人口20％的中国、加上香港、台湾、新加坡等中华经济圈，以及已经形成汉字文化圈的韩国和日本，还有分散在世界各地的华人、中国和日本的侨民，若让他们了解熟悉汉字的话，那汉字热风重新席卷世界的日子还会远吗？

　　柳中夏教授还语重心长地指出，北京奥运的汉字图标是一个指南针，能让我们据此推测出21世纪汉字和国际语言环境，进一步说可以推算出许多符号体系的动向。

　　韩国人在汉字文化圈中生活了千百年，不仅对汉字有一股特殊的情怀，也对东亚的文化复兴有着强烈的期待，难怪北京奥运会给他们带来了如此强烈的震撼。

·作者是本地资深时事评论员