Beijing China

Beijing The air turned an eerie white four days before the opening ceremony, then became a murky haze that hung over this city for a week. The Chinese still chalked up some of those sunless days in the "blue sky" category, according to their measurements of air pollution, which was one of the reasons to wonder if a clear picture of the 2008 Summer Games would ever emerge. The sky actually went blue in the middle of the first week of competition, the sun came out almost every other day, and the Beijing Olympics wound up looking as most expected.

Lou Hongfei is playing tour guide. His girlfriend has just arrived in the capital from the provincial city of Chongqing and he wants to show her the urban wonders of Beijing. So he has brought her to Tiananmen Square for a patriotic experience many Chinese tourists liken to the thrill of walking the Great Wall or viewing the terra cotta warriors: the quiet majesty of the flag-handling ceremony in one of the world's largest public spaces. Twice a day, out-of-towners flock to the square's imposing expanse of concrete to watch the soldiers tend to China's iconic flag -- red with five yellow stars -- as it is unfurled at dawn and calmly taken down at dusk.

"Empty," says Jack Rodman, an expert in distressed real estate, as he points from the window of his 40th-floor office toward a silver-skinned prism rising out of the Beijing skyline. "Beautiful building, but not a single tenant. "Completely empty. "Empty." So goes the refrain as his finger skips from building to building, each flashier than the next, and few of them more than barely occupied.

"Empty," says Jack Rodman, an expert in distressed real estate, as he points from the window of his 40th-floor office toward a silver-skinned prism rising out of the Beijing skyline. "Beautiful building, but not a single tenant. "Completely empty. "Empty." So goes the refrain as his finger skips from building to building, each flashier than the next, and few of them more than barely occupied.

United Airlines won tentative approval Tuesday to operate the first nonstop daily flight between Washington and Beijing, a 14-hour trip that links the capitals as their countries' economies become more intertwined. The Department of Transportation's final approval would give UAL Corp.'s United a route popular among executives and government officials and potentially worth $200 million a year. Washington-based fliers who make regular trips to Beijing applauded the news.

beijing -- China said Monday that it would use global positioning satellites to ensure food safety at the Beijing Olympics as it steps up efforts to blacklist manufacturers who violate safety regulations. Wang Wei, an executive vice president of the Beijing Olympic Committee, said the high-tech system would monitor food production, processing factories and food hygiene during the Games to make sure healthy food is delivered to the 10,500 athletes in the Olympic village.

It's a mystery that has baffled the world for more than half a century. Whatever happened to the fossils of the prehistoric human ancestor known as Peking Man? Their discovery in the late 1920s and 1930s in limestone caves on the outskirts of Beijing, the Chinese capital then called Peking in the West, was one of the greatest paleontological finds of the 20th century.

In front-page reports in Wednesday's newspapers, officials insisted that there was no truth to the rumor that the capital would be sealed to prevent the spread of the SARS virus. Those reassurances failed to prevent a wave of panic buying of food and basic goods, nor did they ease the worries of out-of-town students and migrant laborers who scrambled to get out of the city.

Lou Hongfei is playing tour guide. His girlfriend has just arrived in the capital from the provincial city of Chongqing and he wants to show her the urban wonders of Beijing. So he has brought her to Tiananmen Square for a patriotic experience many Chinese tourists liken to the thrill of walking the Great Wall or viewing the terra cotta warriors: the quiet majesty of the flag-handling ceremony in one of the world's largest public spaces. Twice a day, out-of-towners flock to the square's imposing expanse of concrete to watch the soldiers tend to China's iconic flag -- red with five yellow stars -- as it is unfurled at dawn and calmly taken down at dusk.

Zhang Huimin, 8, skips, walks and jogs along National Highway 107, an impish girl in an undersized red tracksuit. She has been going since 2 a.m. and it's close to noon, but she's keeping a steady pace, driven by a goal: to complete the 2,150-mile trip from her hometown in southern Hainan province to Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the political heart of China.

The international Paralympic Games opened Saturday in Beijing in spectacular fashion, launching an event China's leaders hope will show their country in a compassionate light. The crowd roared its approval at performances in the National Stadium, called the Bird's Nest, which also was used for last month's opening Olympic ceremony. Particularly well received was a ballet performance by a young girl who lost a leg in May's massive earthquake in Sichuan province. An athlete hoisted himself up a rope, along with his wheelchair, to light the Paralympic flame.

Beijing The air turned an eerie white four days before the opening ceremony, then became a murky haze that hung over this city for a week. The Chinese still chalked up some of those sunless days in the "blue sky" category, according to their measurements of air pollution, which was one of the reasons to wonder if a clear picture of the 2008 Summer Games would ever emerge. The sky actually went blue in the middle of the first week of competition, the sun came out almost every other day, and the Beijing Olympics wound up looking as most expected.

Beijing There are more than a billion people in this country, but I wouldn't capture my Olympic experience here until I was alone. At least, I thought I was alone. It was a quiet weekday afternoon, I was hustling through the quiet lobby of our military-owned hotel, taking an empty elevator up to the 16th floor, walking down an empty hallway, ducking into my empty room to pack for my next assignment. Five minutes later, the hotel phone rang. "Your door is open," said a voice.

The closing ceremony in Beijing is still a week away, but sports marketers already are scrambling to determine which athletes can squeeze the most sponsorship gold from their Olympic feats. The early favorites are the whale in the pool, the boomer's delight and a plucky gymnast.

China came under criticism from the International Olympic Committee on Thursday after a British reporter was dragged away by police and detained for 20 minutes while covering a protest. China pledged to provide open access for foreign news media as a condition for winning the right to host the 2008 Olympics.

The World Park offers so many globe-trotting activities you might almost forget you are in China. You can climb a 100-foot-high replica of the Eiffel Tower, walk across the Golden Gate Bridge and get your picture taken in front of the New York City skyline -- complete with the World Trade Center. But one thing you apparently cannot do is protest, despite assurances from the Chinese government to the contrary -- a reminder that this still is China and a China unchanged.

Iknew that moving from Paris' 7th arrondissement to a dorm room in northwestern Beijing would be a jolt akin to waking up in a body cast after falling asleep at the wheel. I had been to the Chinese capital a decade ago, so I packed surgical masks for the pollution, thermal underwear for the cold and enough antibiotics to open a pharmacy. I weaned myself away from Ladurée macaroons and French Bordeaux, got a visa that identified me as a student and changed my e-mail address.

BEIJING -- A billion Chinese do care. Under a blue-gray-black-white-brown August sky, the People's Republic of China put on a marvel-arts show here on the eighth day of the eighth month of the year 2008. It was a five-ring Olympic circus under the stars, even if the stars were scarcely visible through an every-hue-but-purple haze. How they did what they did, who can say? Ancient Chinese secret.

DUJIANGYAN, China -- In a narrow alleyway, family and friends enjoyed a special dinner of fish, duck and pork as they watched Friday night's Olympic opening ceremony on television. They'd been waiting years for this night, but cast against a brutally trying few months, the celebration also serves as a welcome distraction. Ke Hong, clutching a bottle of wine, had been enjoying the night enough for all of China. His Olympic spirit, in fact, might have resulted in a headache the next morning.

BEIJING -- A billion Chinese do care. Under a blue-gray-black-white-brown August sky, the People's Republic of China put on a marvel-arts show here on the eighth day of the eighth month of the year 2008. It was a five-ring Olympic circus under the stars, even if the stars were scarcely visible through an every-hue-but-purple haze. How they did what they did, who can say? Ancient Chinese secret.