A visit to the capital city of the Kingdom of the Centre without visiting the Olympic site is not admissible, especially because as the Olympics in China had ended four years before one could safely assume the place was going to be relatively empty. That of course is forgetting that China has many million people and no matter where you go, there are many many people around you, so the same is applicable to the Olympic park, especially on a Sunday, as the place is spacious and often used for a nice Sunday outing with the family. I had been told which number of bus to take, go to the end of the line and there you are, at the Olympic site, with all its fancy buildings. So I did, and when I finally recognized the place, I alighted the public bus into the furnace of a concrete hot and sunny area, where trees are not the most common feature.
Inside the building of the swimming pool, it is pleasant and you can see “in the flesh” what had been a daily occurrence during the Olympics. Particularly as I like to follow diving and synchronized swimming, the venue was not really unknown to me. After a tour of the site out I go into the furnace of the open air area between the swimming pool and the stadium, known as the “Nest”, which is an imposing big thing, closed to the general public so you can only see it from the outside, from the alleys around, where there are very few areas of shade but many vendors of water and ice-cream very welcome in the 34o C in the shade. The benches are many, but the visitors are more, so you grab a seat and keep it for as long as possible to catch your breath and think about the return to your hotel and hoping to figure out where is the bus stop closer to your present location.
First thing first, get close to the gates walking under the sun!!!
On the way there I started considering how to get to the hotel or to the centre of Beijing the fastest and coolest possible way, it was really getting to me this walking under an unrelenting sun but walking I went and on the way, I saw a police station inside the Olympic site. I imagined they could at least tell me where was the closest bus stop to take me to town, but of course for that you have to ask in Chinese, which is not the easiest. The little Chinese I had learned 17 years before, when I lived in Beijing, was coming back, ever so slowly and very little at the time. However I get to the station and there were three police people (?), two men and a woman, chatting and hoping nothing distracts them from the pleasant status quo of doing nothing and here I am, little old lady asking in more than very broken Chinese, where is the nearest stop of bus number 89 to take me to Tiananmen. I am not sure if my histrionic abilities are really so good or if I am more and more looking the part of a fragile little old lady, but they just needed to see me a moment and then after a very brief discussion among them, a good laugh at the “looser” they signalled me to follow the “looser”…. Into a police car! I had only asked about directions and I was being directed into a police car! You do not argue with the police so there I am, and we depart, fortunately no siren but all gates opened for us and the policeman asks me something, which I do not understand and my answer, presumably in Chinese, is not understood by him, so in the end we are mute, but suddenly in front of us is my bus number 89 and I point it out to him, my bus, my bus!! He nods and keeps following the bus; I start to worry because unless you have sirens on, you cannot make a bus stop by following it, not in China nor anywhere else but so be it and all of a sudden the police car accelerates and at the bus stop intercepts the bus, parks just in front and without much need of encouragement I alight from the car full of smiles to the policeman, and the bus driver opens the doors and lets me in.
I am sure they would have given anything to find out how a foreign devil, little old lady or not, had managed to be taken to the bus stop by the police, or who I was to have deserved such an attention. I would have been just as curious as a witness but language barrier oblige, they could not ask and I could not answer, so I can only thank the police at the Olympic site for the “lift” both in the car to the bus stop and of my morale for taking such good care of me.
Mementos of my life 