Trapeze artists spun above the heads of the sparse crowd inside Volkswagen's pavilion on the Olympic Green, earning the approval of Yao Yuhong. "It's great," the retired scientist marveled as performers bounced, twisted and turned above Perspex half tubes displaying VW cars against a water fountain backdrop. "It's big and bold", her friend Liu Xinping agreed. The pair of elderly academics toured the Olympic Green on Sunday using an Olympic Green coupon. "How does one get one?" I asked, but Yao didn't know. She was given hers by her son.
It seems knowing someone who knows someone may be the best -- or even the only -- way to find one of these coupons. On Sunday, I asked Sun Weide, official spokesman for the Beijing Games organizers, or Bocog, the same question - how to get one - but even he wasn't too sure of the details. This is strange as Bocog has been telling journalists for a full week now that it's doing its best to increase visitor numbers to the Green.
The Olympic Green is big - about three times the size of New York's Central Park- so filling it is a hard task. But China is not short of people. Public spaces often veer towards uncomfortably crowded. That the Green remains stubbornly empty is embarrassing in the same way as empty stadium seats are (another topic of the week) but with a twist. It represents a missed opportunity for corporate sponsors like VW, McDonalds, Samsung and GE-- who've spent undisclosed fortunes on supporting the Games -- to woo the Chinese public, and they're not happy about it.
Sponsor have splashed out on lavish pavilions that were thinly populated as I strolled around late last week. GE's showcase had only about 20 other sightseers as I ambled through it Friday morning; VW's walk-through tube was only half full at showtime on Sunday. Coca-Cola drew a queue, as did Johnson and Johnson which was showing five genuine terracotta warriors from the Qin dynasty.
(Not bad considering even the British
Museum could only borrow 20 after long negotiations; then again, J&J makes
chemicals to keep the 2,000 year-old sculptures mold-free.)
Access to the Olympic Green was originally limited to sports event ticket holders. But after pressure from unhappy sponsors IOC Marketing Commission chair Gerhard Heiberg met with Bocog last week to demand changes. IOC members also raised the issue in daily inspection reports written for the IOC-Bocog Coordination Committee."This is certainly something that could've been handled differently. I really hope the organizers flexen [sic] up a bit and they allow people to enjoy the Games much as possible", said IOC member Nicole Hoevertsz on Friday. Sponsors say they've seen improvements in footfall since the end of last week. It remains to be seen if this is just a weekend surge or something more lasting.
Much of what Bocog has done to improve access to the Green betrays the same hyper-anxiety about security that caused the problem in the first place. The Green is already well-protected by searches and scans at all access points. Bocog's loosening up moves underscores just how difficult it can be for authorities obsessed with control to lighten up and let the public in.
First, they relaxed restrictions on accredited Olympic pass holders so that all 300,000 of us could go to the Green. Trouble is, this doesn't improve access for the public, nor does it help the sponsors much since all these people are there to do a job - they're volunteers, contractors, journalists -- without much spare time to browse the exhibits.
Bocog says it also increased the number of coupons from 10,000 a day to 30,000 a day by Aug 13. "After the initial two or three days we increased [ticket numbers] because it's obvious the Olympic Green is very big and it can accomodate more visitors," Bocog official Zhang Jing said. Continued poor turnout midweek was blamed on rain, heat and humidity. Bocog officials now have high hopes that better weather and the start of popular track and field sports will boost overall attendance.
The Beijing City Ethics Office -- which is in charge of things like encouraging good manners and halting spitting in public -- is distributing the extra Olympic Green passes, Bocog says. It has given them to hotels and travel agents for use by tourists.
The biggest pool of potential visitors to the Green though remains ordinary Beijingers, and here the procedures are indeed complicated. The coupons have been distributed to Beijing's 18 district-level governments so "you have to talk with the local district or the local county," said Bocog spokesman Sun Weide. "My personal understanding is that it's for groups" as opposed to private individuals, he said. However, more information came from Ding Jun, director of the Public Area Management Committee of the Olympic Green, who said individuals and their families could ask for coupons through neighborhood committees, the lowest layer of local government. Getting tickets this way would take about three days, he said. It sounds as if access to the Green with these coupons is going to be mostly a perk for district officials.
Yao's coupon from her son covered a three-hour slot from 9am till noon. However, Bocog has loosened up on exit times. "There's no strict enforcement" of them, says Zhang. There's little information either. Many volunteers manning entry points to the Green knew nothing about the coupons when questioned on Saturday.
Chinese authorities have been highly security-conscious in organizing the Games; while security is important they've forgotten to factor in a way for locals to simply enjoy themselves by strolling around the Green. It's a pity. Not only are many of the exhibitions enjoyable -- hardly anyone could resist GE's interactive LED screens of dandelions that blow away when you wave an arm near them -- but the park's newly-planted pine trees and grass offer a relaxing respite from the heat-soaked urban landscape.
Sponsors are now putting a brave face on it. "In the beginning the traffic was a bit sparse", said GE's Peter Foss at a sponsors breakfast roundtable on Sunday. He claimed 6,000 people visited GE's exhibit on Saturday which was "as many as you'd want to have".
Bocog says the numbers of people entering the Olympic Green rose to more than 230,000 a day on Friday and Saturday, which compares to about 160,000 earlier in the week. This doesn't necessarily translate into footfall through the sponsors' pavilions, however, since it measures total attendance at every venue (and the capacity crowd that watched the men's 100 meter sprint final on Saturday night didn't necessarily wander through the exhibits). "The People's Olympics" is one of the slogans used to promote the 2008 Games, but it seems organizers got a tardy start in trying to make that slogan a reality.
