...Photo for NEWSWEEK by Mike Powell

For up-to-date coverage of the 2008 Olympics please see our new blog on the Games, "Beijing Beat". Here's our Web story on the stunning Beijing Olympics opening ceremony:

     From inside the 91,000-seat Bird's Nest stadium, fireworks dazzled and the thunder of 2,008 performers drumming on traditional fou percussion instruments rolled throughout the stadium. High-tech special effects gave even the kitschiest subject matter a startling edge. An ode to China's invention of movable type—ho hum, you might say— morphed into a vast sea of undulating cubic shapes, simulating a giant computer keyboard—and took my breath away.

     When five-time Olympic medal winner Li Ning prepared to ignite the Olympic flame, invisible wires swooped him skyward for a gravity-defying space-walk around the stadium's rooftop opening. When gymnast Li, who launched a successful sports clothing and accessories empire after snagging three gold medals in Los Angeles, finally lit a gigantic torch perched on the rim of the Bird's Nest, the crowd went wild.

Today I de-camped at dawn to watch the torch relay in that you-know-which-famous-square. A couple dozen other journalists and I were herded to a spot facing Mao’s portrait, We waited and waited. The last time I’d waited that long in that place, that early in the morning, was in 1989 during a brief and ill-fated Beijing Spring.

Waiting for Yao Ming and the torch relay...

      Back then I was waiting for Chinese police to come clear the square of hundreds of youthful protestors who’d hung colorful silk banners off official flagpoles in front of the granite obelisk known as the Monument to the People’s Heroes. (Chinese look down on your political movement if you don’t have flags made of luxuriant silk, and if you don’t know how to brandish them just right so that the fabric floats like butterflies’ wings.) These kids in 1989 – about the same age as the youth in the square this morning -- chanted pro-democracy slogans and strummed folk-songs on guitars.

Yesterday we brought you the Extrauterine Pregnancy Express, journalist-blogger Chen Feng’s Oniony news parody on Beijing’s Olympic prep work. The unseemly title, as was explained in the post, derives from a punning Chinese nickname for the Games that's been creeping around the blogosphere (Gongwaiyun). Chen bashed out his cycle of mock dispatches in a flurry on Thursday. When complimented on his wry wit, he could only scoff back. “What’s so creative about it!”

Anyway, translated herewith is another installment:

By Mary Hennock and Manuela Zoninsein

The stage at D22 has fallen silent and dark--and Michael Pettis, owner of the popular Beijing rock club, says he never saw it coming. City authorities shut down the music without warning in early July because his club lacked a performance license. "They just turned up," says Pettis. "There was no notice … No time to adjust."

Beijing is full of bars, restaurants and businesses that have operated successfully for years without a full set of licenses. The rules were often so hard to understand that even city inspectors made little effort to enforce them--until now. Suddenly the city is cracking down on everyone in sight. Pettis, a 50-year-old New Yorker, has filed his license application, and all he can do is sweat out the few weeks that remain before Aug. 8. Whether or not he gets permission to reopen his bar for the out-of-town crowd of a lifetime, the Games are about to begin.

China's leaders want this Olympiad to be perfect. "The smiles of 1.3 billion Chinese will be reciprocated by the smiles of people all over the world," Premier Wen Jiabao promised at his annual meeting with foreign media earlier this year. But in the name of perfection, Beijing's inspectors are dusting off the rulebooks and pouncing on the tiniest supposed infractions. "In the last two months, all kinds of checkups have been harsher and harsher", says Tobi Demke, the Swedish manager of a Thai restaurant near the Workers Stadium expatriate bar zone. "There are a lot of regulations… and now, because of the Olympics, they really enforce them." Bar owners say inspections are taking place at least weekly. One pasta restaurant has been ordered to stop serving salads and desserts. Why? The license lists its business as "noodles," and the enforcers say that means nothing but spaghetti. "They don't understand the way it's done," says manager Angela Wang. "Western food, you eat appetizers, salad, dessert."

China has made enormous sacrifices to get ready. To clear the city's notoriously dirty skies, authorities have closed factories in a half-dozen nearby provinces and restricted cars to driving on alternate days, based on odd or even number plates. To boost security, police have set up hundreds of checkpoints on major roads into the city. But that's creating other problems. "It's difficult to get deliveries, ingredients," says French barkeep Matthieu Magery. He's been stockpiling wine recently, alarmed by rumors of a possible ban on transporting liquids during the Games.

Club owners say the government's runaway regulators are trampling the city's once-thriving entertainment scene. The nightlife guide Time Out Beijing is planning a double issue for August and September: there's not enough going on to fill two single issues. Commercial and legal uncertainties have made clubs nervous about committing to hire big-name DJs and bands. "In the month of the Olympics, there's less to write about than at any time in the last few years," says the magazine's editor, Tom Pattinson. "It's either a private party, or it's not happening."

For plenty of expatriates the party's really over: if they haven't been tossed out of the country, friends of theirs have. Formerly lax enforcement of China's visa laws has turned strict. Younger members of the expat community have been particularly hard-hit, and they're the ones who keep many of the city's nightspots in business. "Numerous bar owners have told me that a good portion of their regular customers are gone, and gone because of visa issues," says Jim Boyce, a self-confessed barfly who blogs about Beijing's nightlife. "I've lost, like, 50 percent of my customers," says Stefano Fin, proprietor of the once-bustling Aperitivo, in the suddenly quiet Sanlitun bar district. "No one comes anymore." Club owners and patrons worry that the next step might be a crackdown on Beijing's previously ignored 2 a.m. closing law.

READ FULL STORY

Preparations for the Games are bringing all kinds of changes to Beijing. Earlier this year, the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, a China-based NGO, raised concerns about an unexpected threat to the Forbidden City's historical integrity: wheelchair ramps.  Jennifer Conrad explains:

     Additions to the 600-year-old Forbidden City complex, home of Ming and Qing dynasty emperors and the the centerpiece of old Beijing, would help visitors arriving for September's Paralympic Games to maneuver around the site. 

...

The Chinese street slang for hooker, by virtue of a homophone, is “chicken” (hence the male equivalent, “duck”). Beijing’s best-known spot for “chicken”, as far as Westerners are generally concerned, is a “lady bar” named Maggie’s. Maggie’s’ infamous allure transcends its market niche as a pick-up joint. On any given night, the crowd divides roughly into three sets: the working girls, mainly Mongolian; their clientele, mostly Viagra-aged Western businessmen; and expat voyeurs, primarily swinging-single drinkers, who revel in the interplay of the other two. What happens at Maggie’s stays at Maggie’s. Or so they say. Most any adopted Beijinger has a memorable