Eight of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games venues will be ready before August in time for the Good Luck Beijing sports events. The facilities include two new venues – the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park and the China Agriculture University Gymnasium – and six temporary venues – Wukesong Baseball Field, Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Ground, Olympic Green Hockey Field and Archery Field, as well as Laoshan BMX Venue and the Urban Cycling Road Course.
Beijing plans to restrict visitors at heritage sites during the Olympic Games to protect vulnerable ancient buildings. Shu Xiaofeng, director of the Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau, said heritage departments would monitor the number of visitors at ancient buildings during the Games. According to experts the appropriate daily number for the Forbidden City is 30,000 with the maximum number at around 50,000, but more than 114,800 tourists visited the Forbidden City on May 1, the first day of China’s week-long Labor Day holiday. All heritage sites will have Chinese and English signs and introductions before the Games, said Shu.
A leaked speech by a police commander in charge of security at the Beijing Games has disclosed that authorities are concerned about mass protests by disaffected Chinese – the biggest threat to the Games. The officer reportedly promised “swift and harsh” measures to forestall trouble, combined with “severe legal punishment”. The speech was given by Yu Hongyuan, a senior officer at the Olympics Security Protection Centre, to a joint meeting of security units on March 12, and was circulated in a restricted government newsletter, reports the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. The text was obtained by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an overseas pressure group. Independent Chinese analysts said it provided a detailed account of confidential plans by the security authorities.
A knowledge contest on the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games was launched May 20, the 17th “National Help The Disabled Day”, by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Games, the China Disabled Persons Federation, and other organizations. The contest is one of the major communication events that will mark the one-year-countdown to the opening of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games on September 8, 2008. The contest whose motto is “Hold Paralympics as splendid as the Olympics”, wants to popularize the Paralympics. Its slogan is “Transcendence, Equality and Integration”, and it’s hoped the contest will make people more compassionate toward the disabled and encourage participation and support for the Games. The three-and-a-half-month campaign will be publicized in newspapers, magazines and websites.
