Word: nest
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Granted, China put on a fabulous show. Volunteers were unfailingly polite, constantly showering foreigners with a chirpy "Beijing warmly welcomes you." Events kept to a strict time schedule and positive drug tests were far fewer than in previous Games. The stadiums, from the latticed Bird's Nest to the ethereal Water Cube, stunned audiences with their architectural bravado. And the sheer athletic drama was, as it always is during any Olympics, astonishing...
...Games, stories trickled out about jailed dissidents, banned websites and curiously empty designated protest zones. And, as if acting out a one-man play on the perils of overtraining and stifling national pressure, star hurdler Liu Xiang, the face of China's Olympics, arrived in the Bird's Nest to run his first qualifying race - then turned his back to the crowd and limped off the track. After a shocked silence, the weeping announcers on Chinese TV intoned that it was acceptable to continue idolizing Liu because he had done his best. But gold-medal fever returned soon enough, with...
...most Chinese media were celebrating Beijing's Olympics successes, a magazine named Southern Window - a highbrow biweekly with a circulation of 500,000 - broke from the pack. On the cover of the magazine's Aug. 11 issue, there is no photograph of the sparkling Bird's Nest stadium, no triumphant Chinese athlete fondling one of the country's 51 gold medals. Instead, there is an illustration of law textbooks and a teacher with a wooden pointer giving instruction to a businessman and a government official. The cover line: "Rule of Law Starts with Limitation of Power." Sounds boring? In China...
...curiously empty protest zones. Then, as though summoned by some kind of karmic force, the Olympics produced a parable for the Chinese. Like a one-man play on the perils of over-training and stifling national pressure, China's star hurdler Liu Xiang arrived in the Bird's Nest to run his first qualifying race - and then decided that it was all too much. The athlete who was supposed to be the face of China's Olympics turned his back to the crowds and limped off the track. After a shocked silence, the weeping announcers on Chinese TV intoned that...
...very much in line with a results-obsessed nation whose mission was to impress and, by impressing, to dominate. The athletes, unused to being distinguished from their teammates, appeared to be flummoxed, unsure of how to occupy the vast amount of space in the center of the Bird's Nest. Even during the pop interludes, the athletic participants were subdued, choosing to stand or sit rather than dance...