Winter Olympics - the non-sporty side

[nineveh_uk]

The Winter Olympics kicked off officially yesterday with a very low-key opening ceremony that was presumably the only way they could avoid any references to the pandemic whatsoever, except for their being no audience. It did rather make me wonder what the point of having Zhang Yimou direct it was.So the Olympics are in Beijing, which technically makes it the first city to host both the summer and winter games, though given the distances to the mountain venues that honour might as well go to Munich for the 1936 Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. All the reasons that Beijing was a terrible choice I listed in this post still apply, likewise this article. Except now we're in the aforementioned global pandemic and most important of all, human rights abuses are even worse than what was known in 2015, with the Xinjiang internment camps and other aspects of the Uyghur genocide. As some article I read said, if you can't draw the line of mentioning politics when it comes to sport at genocide, where are you going to? And the pandemic is actually really helpful for the Chinese authorities, no wonder neither they nor the IOC didn't want to postpone, it's a convenient way to avoid issues like journalists asking questions or competitors or tourists talking to anyone who hasn't been carefully vetted.

Given all this it is hardly surprising that even winter sports fans are finding it hard to summon the usual enthusiasm. I'm watching anyway. A personal boycott would achieve precisely nothing, writing to the sponsors and the British Olympic Committee won't either, but I shall do it anyway. And give some money in better directions. On the evidence of the first couple of days, what's in store is some very good sport, bizarre visuals of skiing in a desert, and pretty much zero atmosphere. Though that was likely to be the case even without the pandemic for a lot of events. I shall enjoy a lot of the sport, but damn it, we could have had Oslo. Though Oslo is probably incredibly relieved we aren't having Oslo.

Comments

[azdak]

I'm nearing the end of "We Have Been Harmonised" and am even angrier with the IOC than I already was.

Also, I am now convinced that the reason why no one good in a Chinese drama is every disloyal to the Emperor, even if he's a bad Emperor, is because the Party are perfectly well aware that they are the Emperor. So you can criticise the things about him that the Party ostensibly doesn't stand for, like excessive luxury, but you can't criticise the system of power that puts him there nor the Emperor as the instantiation of that power.

[nineveh_uk]

IT would have been very easy to say "the 2008 Olympics came with human rights commitments that the country failed to meet. Thus a bid can't be considered at this time." Not about setting some objective standard (though you'd hope they might!), but the fact that promises were made to the IOC itself. But to quote FaskerSkier from 2015: "Should Beijing win, it will be a clear message that money, financial stability, and glossy PR lines matter more to IOC members than the actual tenets of the Olympic charter." They are corrupt and despicable, which I suppose shows why they are just fine with the Chinese government.

the reason why no one good in a Chinese drama is every disloyal to the Emperor, even if he's a bad Emperor
That makes sense. The system stinks, but it is there, immutable, and you can't do anything about it nor criticise it, because the continuation of the system is more important than anything else.

[violsva]

Yes, I suppose the bright side to having the Pandemic Olympics in Beijing is that at least they aren't anywhere else.

[nineveh_uk]

Yeah, I don't imagine second-place Kazakhstan would have postponed them either, and it seems unlikely they would have improved the poor human rights record.

[carbonel]

I am an Olympics junkie, and am also watching the Olympics with comparable mixed feelings. And wow, those opening ceremonies. So many questions and thoughts.

I wonder what message is supposed to be sent by the fact that all the music played while the athletes were walking in were by extremely familiar classical pieces by European composers -- that started repeating about two-thirds of the way through, as if the organizers couldn't even be arsed to pull out a sufficient number of works to cover the entire time.

And that the Olympic cauldron...isn't. It's a torch, only slightly larger than the pass-the-flame torch, surrounded by a giant snowflake.

And having one of the people to do the final lighting be a Uyghur woman seems to smack more of tokenism than any meaningful statement about rights or change.

[ankaret]

The classical music choices were very odd! I would have preferred a chance to encounter some Chinese concert music, which I know nothing about, though to be fair it's quite a way down my list of things I wish the Chinese government would do differently.

[nineveh_uk]

I rather felt for the non-British team who walked in to Land of Hope and Glory! The dandelion thing was quite cool, but otherwise it didnt feel like it had much sense of location, and the generic feeling classical music didn't help. Surely there are contemporary Chinese composers who could have been asked to write something? It's not like all Chinese TV is done in traditional style, ifnthat is felt too much formthe audience.

[nineveh_uk]

I did find myself thinking that at least the torch wasnt wasting gas. Though that's rather an irrelevance compared to the energy of the rest. Same on the torch lighting. No way that she wasnt chosen solely for a "look, we aren't mean to Uyghurs" statement. Especially as Dinigeer Yilamujiang is a crosscountry skier, competed in the skiathlon next day, and all the rest of the women doing that weren't at the ceremony at all! Noone chooses people about to compete as torch lighters normally.