10 Years Today: 2008 Beijing Olympics Hype as It Happened

Blow Up the Olympics
Just under a year prior to the Olympics, it was announced that Cai Guoqiang, China's godfather of all things pyromania, was recruited to oversee the fireworks display at the opening ceremony (if you haven't seen the touching account of his Sky Ladder creation, put it on your to watch list). Additionally, director Zhang Yimou was cast as one of the head artistic directors of the event.

thebeijinger.com/blog/2007/09/06/blow-olympics

Great Balls of Fire
Unfortunately, that wasn't the only news blowing up at the time given that the Peking University Gymnasium, planned to be the 2008 Olympics ping-pong venue, caught fire one month before it was set to be complete. Luckily, hordes of firefighters rushed to control the blaze and no casualties were reported. At the time, the fire was unofficially blamed on faulty electric welding.

thebeijinger.com/blog/2007/07/05/great-balls-fire

Ten Do's and Don'ts in Olympic Prep
As excitement built for the Olympics, so did the government fervor to civilize the people. Instructions on how to present a good face went into overdrive and culminated in road-side do's and don'ts lists that included tidbits of wisdom like: "Do try to learn as much as you can about Olympic regulations" and "Don't buy or sell pirated goods".

thebeijinger.com/blog/2007/10/21/ten-dos-and-donts-olympic-prep

Where have all the Billboards Gone? and Where Are These Olympic Scratchcards From?
While Beijingers' minds were being cleansed of the urge to spit and graffiti on everything, the city's environment was also getting a scrub with the airport expressway's once-defining billboards, flogging everything from jewelry to real estate, being taken down on orders from the government. In the meantime, 5 kuai Olympic scratchcards were unleashed on the public, leading us to ponder, "Ever wonder where Beijing's getting all the money to build such architectural marvels as the Bird's Nest (estimated at costing around RMB 3.5 billion) and the Water Cube (about RMB 1 billion)?"

thebeijinger.com/blog/2007/07/04/where-have-all-billboards-gone

thebeijinger.com/blog/2008/06/19/olympic-scratch-cards

Materialize your Olympic Dream
If it wasn't scratchcards you wanted to spend your money on, there was plenty of other Olympic-branded tat to buy up, including man bags, pinky rings, and even an 18-karat gold-plated Olympic edition cell phone. With junk like this, it was easy to get distracted about what the Games were really about: the cute, cuddly, omnipresent, shoved-down-your-throat-every-10-seconds Fuwa, of course (which could be yours fashioned out of jade for the modest price of RMB 290,000).

thebeijinger.com/blog/2007/08/01/materialize-your-olympic-dream

Questions, Questions, Questions
Let's just say that there were still a lot of unanswered questions six months prior to the big day.

thebeijinger.com/blog/2008/08/02/questions-questions-questions

Images from the Opening Ceremony from Around the Web and Inside the Birds Nest
And boom, it was here! Drummers in diapers and fake fireworks galore meant the beginning of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. All joking aside, the opening ceremony was truly a spectacle to behold and it had much of the world in awe with what could be achieved when one country had so many people at its disposal.

thebeijinger.com/blog/2008/08/12/images-opening-ceremony

thebeijinger.com/blog/2008/08/09/what-opening-ceremony-looked-inside

A Look at the Highlights of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing
And then it was over. The Olympics and the Paralympics passed with nary a hitch and it was back to normal life for the laymen and women of China, except now they had been afforded a wave of pride courtesy of the home athletes topping the gold medal tally, 42 in total, 12 more than their nearest competitors, the USA (in yo face!). Here we took a moment to recap some of the best moments from during the Games.

thebeijinger.com/blog/2008/08/26/flashback-look-highlights-2008-olympics-beijing

What's Next for the Olympic Venues?
No sooner had the Games finished then the discussion about what was to become of the official stadiums had begun. Thanks to the power of hindsight (with regards to examples of monumental wastes of money at previous Olympic Games), 11 of the venues used during the event were previously standing, meaning that only 12 of the 31 venues were new, including the Water Cube and Bird's Nest. Another eight were temporary venues, which included the Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Ground, still accessible to this day.

thebeijinger.com/blog/2008/10/20/what-next-olympic-venues-chaos-water-cube