Waking from the One Dream

Forget the "morning after" clichés that would logically follow the end of Beijing's "coming out party" [may this mark the last time the phrase is written or uttered]. The past seven years have been no party - they've been China's holy PR crusade. Expats have spent the better part of a decade witnessing frantic façade building, and experiencing all the inconvenience that entails. Let's look at what Beijing's gotten out of being ground zero of the Battle for a Glorious Olympics, besides all the intangible pride and honor, and what we may expect from a city that can finally exhale and pad around the living room in its underwear.

Five Un-Olympic Activities

Make no mistake - we at China Expat are 100 percent committed to a glorious, harmonious Beijing Olympics. We are also realists. Hence, we must consider the microscopic chance that, somewhere between the shooting preliminaries and the flyweight boxing finals, a few visitors may crave entertainments entirely unrelated to competitive sports. Glance around at the roasted fans watching the eighth scoreless inning of the Venezuela-Japan softball match. You'll notice that some of them are flushed and listless-looking, but not from Olympic fever.

In fact, we suspect that even the athletes could benefit from some contingency activities. So when the resounding "doink" of a swatted shuttlecock ceases to thrill, consider some of these alternative outings, completely free of Great Walls and other obligatory cultural wonders.