On Monday, our Sociology class took a field trip to Beijing’s Olympic Park.  This is where the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics were held. Our professor first took us to some secondary Olympic buildings before taking us to the main event, the Bird’s Nest!  I was pretty excited to see these outstanding architectural buildings.  I’ve read a lot about Ai Wei Wei’s design of the Bird’s Nest.

But first, the supporting buildings.  Our professor took us to the 2008 Beijing Olympics Headquarters.  Although this building has now been transformed into a local government office, you can still see all the proud Olympic signs and logos.

We next visited Beijing Institute of Technology, a local university, which was chosen to build a warm-up facility for the athletes.  Just keep in mind this building was built only a year or two before 2008.

The facility already looks run-down and is barely used by the students.  When walking around inside the gym, it did not feel like this was an Olympic venue.  However, the bigger shock came to me when we arrived at Olympic Park.

This was the building where all the media broadcasted from.  If this isn’t symbolic of China’s view of what media should be, I don’t know what is!

We crossed the street to enter Olympic Park.  My first thoughts overwhelmingly concerned why there was so much cement.  There were very few patches of lush grass where people could have enjoyed watching the games outside.  I did find it comical that China imported mature (yes, mature) trees from other provinces to help reduce air pollution before the games. Dug them up, moved them hundreds of miles just to be replanted. 

I really loved the design of the bird’s nest!  The angles and shadows were mesmerizing!

The stadium itself was impressive.  However, it was just too big. Beijing has no use for a stadium this large.  Since the Olympics, this stadium has been pretty much unused.  Plus, when it was built, they realized it had a horrible echo.  So it can’t even compete by being a good concert venue.

Some of my classmates suggested that they could sell the “Olympic seats” but it’s difficult to think of ways to use this space post-Olympics.

The last venue we visited was the Water Cube.  This was where all of the swimming/water sports were played!

This is the swimming pool where Michael Phelps won all his medals.  You can pay about $40 to swim in the pool!  They even had scuba diving lessons in the pool!

The Water Cube has done a better job at stay relevant post- Olympics.  There were lots of people swimming in the pool and they built a water park inside for children to use in the summer!

So why was my trip to Olympic Park anti-climatic.  I’ve noticed through traveling around Beijing and Qinghai that when China wants to build something- they build fast but not always efficient.  Buildings that are not even 10 years old took run down and are falling apart. Other mega buildings, like the Bird’s Nest, had one and only one purpose.  Tourists didn’t know what to do with themselves.  There was no restaurants or vendors around and the souvenir shops had few Olympic theme items. 

We piled back into the bus and as I was looking out the window watching the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube disappear, I realized that this anti-climatic feel was the point of the trip (at least from my Sociology professor’s perspective).  They didn’t want us to see the venues.  They wanted us to see these venues as they were and how they are now- to analyze what happened and what could be done to prevent this anti-climatic feel to an obvious tourist attraction opportunity.

I will end on a happy note.  This was an adorable sign on one of the patches of grass. I just love the English translation!