Saturday, October 20, 2007

beijing 2008

since i'm in china...let's say something about the most important coming event...beijing 2008 Olympic games (北京奥运会 in slang). the day after i arrived in china, in july 2001, beijing got the title to host the games. soon after, the beijing 2008 logo appeared on all sort of stuff, from t-shirts to phone cards, mugs, etc. it's a great opportunity and challenge for china...and i've got to say that these guys are working very hard to reshape and modernize their cities (although with many contraddictions!). now, every trainstation, metro and airport has got its big panel with the logo and the count down to the beginning of the games. everything is almost ready for the super-ultra-lucky day 08-08-2008 (8 is a lucky number for chinese).
some days ago i was reading an article about Fuwa (福娃), the cute mascotte designed for the event. it's about five little dolls, like the five continents and the five olympic rings. their names....Beibei (贝贝), Jingjing (晶晶), Huanhuan (欢欢), Yingying (迎迎), and Nini (妮妮), which sounds like Beijing Huanying Ni (北京欢迎你), "Beijing Welcomes You". each one carries a color of the five olympic rings: blu, black, red, yellow, and green. so what? what is so interesting about these dolls? there's another fuwa, unofficial and completely fake...the cutest one, the pink fuwa! u can see it on the streetmarkets and in some other shops...welcome to china, man! they've got not only fake gucci bags, but also fake fuwa dolls...the apotheosis of the contraddictions of this country...

1 comment:

Adam said...

Ha ha ha - that is perfect - only in Asia (China) would they do a cheap fake of the cheesy Olympic mascots....

I just saw them (fuwa?) on a big sign here in HK and was shaking my head... terrible looking.

Ah well, as long as the judges are not corrupt~