Deng Yaping is now 35 years of age, but once dominated table tennis and won 18 world champion titles and four Olympic gold medals during her sporting career. She has so far been the only women’s single player to win Olympic gold medals in table tennis in two consecutive games.

Now she has another role. As it were she is the mayor of the Olympic Village. In January 2007, Deng Yaping was appointed Deputy Director of the Olympic Village Department by BOCOG and she is often referred to as the ‘village head.’

Deng Yaping said, ‘The difficulty of managing the Olympic Village well and winning an Olympic title is roughly the same.’

She explained that both missions require a strong sense of responsibility and leave little room for any mistake. She said, ‘The Olympic Village Department has to work as a team in managing the Olympic Village.’

Deng believes that her experience of living in several Olympic Villages has provided her with good experience for her current job. She said, ‘Being an athlete for many years, I know exactly what kind of Olympic Village an athlete needs. When I worked as a member of the Athletes’ Commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), we had to take turns to be stationed at the Olympic Village during the Olympic Games. I spent a great deal of time at different Olympic Village during that period.

‘The Olympic Village should be first and foremost a home for the athletes.’

To ensure that athletes give their best performances at the Beijing Games, village administrators should make them feel at home with the most considerate service. When receiving visiting officials from Olympic committees of other countries and regions, she always asks for their suggestions to improve the operation of the Beijing Olympic Village.
Deng said facilities in the Beijing Olympic Village will not be significantly different from those of previous Olympic Games since it has to meet IOC standards. Decoration of the Beijing Olympic Village, according to Deng, will not be luxurious but will include elements of Chinese culture.

After she retired from sport in 1997 she went to Tsinghua University to study for a Bachelor’s degree in the English language. Once she had her degree she was admitted by the Business School of the University of Nottingham in Britain for her Master’s degree. Then she went on to get her doctorate in economics at Cambridge University.

It is difficult to think of anyone better qualified or more appropriate to run the Olympics village.
Source: Beijng Review

It will start at the Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens, seen here, built around 330BC and gloriously reconstructed for the first modern Games in 1896, thanks to a wealthy Athenian benefactor. On 30 March, the 2,300-year-old stadium will witness the passing of the flaming Olympic baton from the Greeks to the Chinese.

The flame will then take a 137,000km journey through every continent except Antarctica over a period of four months.

The torch is scheduled to pass through London on 6 April, San Francisco (9 April), Buenos Aires (11 April) and Canberra (24 April), before reaching Hong Kong on 2 May at the start of a tour of China and Tibet. The highlight — literally — will be an attempt to take the flame to the summit of Mount Everest: a second torch will be left with a group of mountaineers who are planning an ascent in May.

Is Beijing ready for the games?

In contrast to Athens 2004, whose Olympic building program only just met the deadline, the Chinese capital is well ahead of schedule. In fact, some of the 15 new venues were completed more than a year ago, prompting the IOC President Jacques Rogge to urge the organising committee to slow the work down.

The main stadium is not yet quite finished. It will be and the opening ceremony will start at 08:08:08pm on 08-08-08. In Chinese numerology you cannt get much luckier than that.

The airport has a new, third terminal to cope with the Olympic traffic, and Beijing’s metro is being almost trebled in size, with seven new lines and 90 new stations.

For your information the headquarters of the Olympic movement is in a city that has never staged the Games, and is never likely to.

Baron de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee in Paris in 1894, but it moved to Lausanne after the First World War because of Switzerland’s neutrality. Which will almost certainly never see an Olympic Games. It matters not.

Beijing will do all the shining and glory the Olympics will ever need. Read the long, exhaustive and superbly researched story by clicking on Source.
Source: The Independent

Beijing has done its utmost to provide a good image to the citizens of the world who will be attending the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games this August. Yes, there have been articles against China and against Beijing and against the government but these are starting to subside as the reality of the preparation of the games becomes apparent.

Beijing is deploying about 80 sniffer dogs to patrol the subway system to sniff out flammable products such as fireworks. Xinhua quotes police officer Wang Ning as saying, ‘the security patrol ahead of the festival will be good practice for the police dogs ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games later this year’. Eight dogs have already started patrolling five downtown stations.
A special monitoring centre for food safety will be set up for the Games. Zhang Zhikuan, head of the Beijing Municipal Bureau for Industry and Commerce said the Olympic Food Safety Command Center will issue warnings of food risks and deal with food related emergencies. Food to be provided for the Games will be classified into 345 items under 10 categories, with each item checked against specific technical standards.
Beijing has started enforcing a stricter auto fuel standard to help further reduce pollution. Gasoline and diesel sold in Beijing must meet the China IV standards equivalent to the European Union’s Euro IV requirements. Beijing introduced China III fuel standards at the end of 2005 which cut emissions by 2,480 metric tons annually, and the latest benchmark is intended to cut annual emissions by a further 1,840 tons.
Nearly every policeman, from new graduates to those close to retirement, is studying foreign languages and ‘refined’ manners hoping to polish the city’s image. A handbook containing useful phrases in seven languages — English, French, Russian, German, Japanese, Korean and Arabic — has been given to all police and state-approved volunteers who will assist security service forces at the Games.
Beijing police has launched a campaign to eradicate illegal activities in Tiananmen Square and along the Chang’an Avenue ahead of the Games. Beggars, unlicensed peddlers, those distributing flyers, and illegal motorcycle and tricycle taxi riders will be fined, detained, or have their equipment confiscated.

Source: Games Bids

Ran Chengqi, deputy director of China Satellite Navigation Engineering Center, has said the new satellite navigation system would be used in guiding traffic and monitoring sports venues during the Beijing Olympics in summer 2008.

The Compass Navigation Satellite System, which consists of five positioning satellites orbiting the Earth, will help ease traffic problems during the Olympics by providing detailed positioning information to individual drivers.
The home-grown navigation system, coded as Beidou in the Chinese pronunciation for the compass, can not only pinpoint precise locations of moving vehicles, but also tell drivers real-time traffic on routes to their destinations.

In working for the Olympics, Ran Chengqi said, the Beidou system would be compatible to the prevailing global positioning system (GPS), which was developed by the U.S. military and is now in wide civilian use worldwide.

China had primarily constructed the experimental satellite navigation web by May 2003, via launching three Beidou satellites into space. In February and April 2007, another two satellites were separately sent into orbit. The cluster of five Beidou satellites are now the main infrastructure of the Chinese satellite navigation network.
the Shanghai-based Wenhui Daily quoted Ran Chengqi as saying China is going to launch more navigation satellites in 2008.
Source: English.eastday.com

Beijing is confident it will be able to stage an Olympic Games in a comfortable environment, said the Games organizers in Beijing.

During a video meeting (how times change) with the International Olympic Committee, Liu Qi, president of BOCOGsaid the environment kept improving, which filled the organizers with confidence of holding a Games with good air quality.

Liu Qi said, ‘Until Nov. 22, Beijing had 226 days of good air quality (air quality level II or better) this year, nine days more than the same period last year.

‘Take August as example, we had 28 days of good air quality, including two days of level I air quality and 26 days of level II.’ He added that the level of sulfur dioxide and inhalant particulate matter in the air also dropped to a new low. The illustration is a genuine one of blue skies in Beijing.

Beijing has spent RMB120 billion between 1998 and 2006, more than 3% of its GDP, on environmental protection.

The Chinese capital has urged citizens to take public transportation instead of private cars by reducing ticket prices and building subway lines as vehicle exhaust emissions became a major source of the city’s pollution.

The city has also limited the use of small coal-burning stoves and urged natural gas as the clean energy alternative.
Source: English.eastday.com