The stories I write sometimes catch the attention of editors at Xinhua, the state-run news service. If the stories are positive, Xinhua sometimes snatches them and distributes them.  Far as I know they don’t pay a dime. What they do is, er, polish them. That is, they take out anything negative.

This doesn’t just happen to me. It happens to all resident foreign correspondents in China.

This serves several purposes for Xinhua and its readers. For masses of readers, it makes them think that foreign journalists are completely admiring of modern China and have nothing negative to say. A slightly more discerning reader may think foreigner reporters are saps. They know that China has warts, and may wonder why the foreign journalists don’t see them.

Only very savvy readers know that Xinhua guts the negative from stories.

It recently happened to me again. This time, Xinhua or China Daily didn’t actually carry the story, applying the scissors to negative paragraphs. Rather, Xinhua wrote a story about the story. Here’s what the agency said:

U.S. media: Beijing Olympics a "clear success" 

www.chinaview.cn 2008-08-15 23:57:32

    WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- A week into the Beijing Olympic Games, athletes brim with praise for the Olympics venues, and the Games are seen as a "clear success," the McClatchy newspapers reported Friday.

   Athletes and several International Olympic Committee (IOC) members thought "China has reason for pride at how the 29th Olympic Games are unfolding." They laud the world-class facilities, precision organization and the hospitality of armies of Chinese volunteers, according to the newspapers.

   "The organization and everything else ... is just unreal. The accommodation, the food is lovely ... It's absolutely super," Kenny Egan, Ireland's light heavyweight boxer who qualified yesterday for the Olympic quarter-finals with a 10-2 dismissal of Turkey's Bahram Muzaffer, was quoted as saying.

    "The organization was perfect," Austria's women's volleyballer Doris Schwaiger was reported as saying, "I haven't found anything that is not okay."

    The newspapers also praised Chinese government's anti-pollution measures that have cleared Beijing's streets of much of its traffic and lessened the smog.

    "Friday was the clearest day of the games with a cloudless sky and vistas of the western hills on Beijing's outskirts," depicted the reports.

    Arne Ljungqvist, the IOC chief medical official, also said Friday in Beijing that "the recent several days have had very good conditions indeed."

Now here’s the actual story I wrote:

China sees Games as success, thanks to rain and fakery

By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

BEIJING — A week into the Summer Games, athletes brim with praise for the Olympics venues, rain has mercifully cleared the skies of smog and China beams at its success even as it deflects charges of "phony spectators" and other fakery at the games.

Athletes at marquee Olympic events like swimming, basketball and track and field have played to arenas full of enthusiastic fans, but rows of forlorn empty seats look down at a surprising number of venues, including tennis and field hockey.

"The games have been proceeding pretty smoothly," said Wang Wei, vice president and spokesperson for the Beijing Olympic organizers.

China has reason for pride at how the 29th Olympic Games are unfolding, according to athletes and several International Olympic Committee members. They laud the world-class facilities, precision organization and the hospitality of armies of Chinese volunteers.

"The organization and everything else . . . is just unreal. The accommodation, the food is lovely," said Kenny Egan, an Irish light heavyweight bathed in sweat after a bout in the boxing arena. "It's absolutely super."

At the new beach volleyball stadium, loud speakers pump out "Put Your Hands Up in the Air!" and an animator urges spectators to do the Mexican Wave as resting Austrian women's volleyballer Doris Schwaiger gushes about the games.

"The organization is perfect," the 23-year-old spiker said. "I haven't found anything that is not okay."

Occasionally heavy rains, slight winds and government-mandated anti-pollution measures that have cleared Beijing's streets of much of its traffic have lessened the smog that normally cloaks the capital. Friday was the clearest day of the games with a cloudless skies and vistas of the western hills on Beijing's outskirts.

A key test of Beijing's air quality will come this weekend with several endurance events. On Sunday, tens of thousands of Chinese and foreign spectators will fill city streets for the women's marathon. Also occurring this weekend are the two-day women's heptathlon and the men's 10,000 meter final.

Heat and humidity have sapped the strength of some athletes, but air quality has stayed well within the range of what the International Olympic Committee considers safe air.

"The recent several days have had very good conditions indeed," said Arne Ljungqvist, the IOC's chief medical officer.

Faced with partially empty arenas, authorities have mobilized armies of volunteers to attend Olympic events, despite the fact that all seven million tickets to the Summer Games were sold out or distributed to national Olympic committees.

Some of the Chinese spectators appear lost at the intricacies of the events they watch as they sit in blocks in stands, wearing colored T-shirts and waving flags.

IOC member Kai Holm, a Dane, called them "phony spectators."

"They sit around in small groups, some in yellow shirts, some in red shirts," Holm said. "They do not understand the rules of the game they cheer. It's a little bit funny."

Holm said leaders tell volunteers when to cheer: "They are applauding by signs."

Police look the other way at rampant ticket selling and scalping unfolding near some of the Olympic venues, such as the Workers' Stadium that is hosting soccer matches and the nearby Workers' Gymnasium that hosts boxing.

"If we were dealers, we could make an extreme profit," said Tamas Balazs, a Hungarian who was trying to get rid of field hockey and boxing tickets that he said a travel agency back in Budapest required that he buy as part of a package.

Holm said scalpers were pulling in $2,000 to $3,000 per ticket for major events at the aquatics center, where U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps was on a gold medal binge.

Charges of fakery have dogged China since the opening ceremonies of the games. Earlier in the week, China acknowledged that the real singer of the song "Ode to the Motherland" at the ceremony was a girl with bad teeth and not pretty enough, so they put on an angelic 9-year-old to lip-synch the song.

China also said some of the "live" fireworks shown on television coverage of the opening games were actually computer-generated images.

On Friday, China acknowledged that children clad in ethnic costume who carried the Chinese flag at the ceremony were not actually from any of China's 56 minority ethnic groups.

Wang, the games spokesman, dismissed criticism of the fakery, saying the children were "actors and actresses and performers."

"It is typical for Chinese performers to wear different apparel from different ethnic groups. There is nothing special about it," Wang said at a news briefing. "They will wear different apparel to signify people are friendly and happy together."

China's majority Han Chinese, who make up about 92 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion people, have poor relations with some of the minority groups, particularly Tibetans and Uighurs, a restive Muslim minority in China's far west, which has been roiled by separatist violence.

A bright aspect of the games has been the surprising lack of positive doping tests. Medals were taken away Friday from a Vietnamese gymnast and a North Korean medalist in shooting who failed doping tests. They are only the second and third athletes to fail doping tests during the games.

The low number "is a feature of increased awareness in the sports population that doping is unacceptable," Ljungqvist said.

A coach of a losing Polish swimmer cast aspersions earlier this week on the achievement of a Chinese swimmer in the women's 200-meter butterfly, suggesting her smashing of a world record by a whopping 1.22 seconds was "not rational."

Pan Jiazhang, the coach of Chinese swimmer Liu Zige, strongly defended Liu and China's swimming program, which was dogged by doping allegations in the 1990s.

"Look at how many times our swimmers have been tested, I assure you that this is a clean team," Pan was quoted in the state-run China Daily as saying.

Among the few people who are grumpy at the games are some foreign journalists, who have sparred daily with IOC and Beijing organizing committee spokesmen about incidents of police violence against journalists and over whether China has broken commitments it made on media freedom and human rights to win the right in 2001 to host this year's games.

Put off those plans to head to Tibet in a luxury train.

Looks like the “five-star tourist train” that was supposed to begin this month, ferrying tourists from Beijing to Tibet in special luxury, is not to be, at least not yet.

The Shanghai Daily this morning carries a Xinhua story that says the plan has been put off indefinitely.

Tickets for the 96-passenger, 15-car train were to cost 20 times the normal train ticket price to Lhasa, that is to say, more than an air ticket.

But then passengers would get 20-square-meter suites with double beds. Each train would also have a special sightseeing wagon with big windows and comfortable chairs.

Of course, one can still take the regular passenger train to Lhasa, which is quite comfortable. I took it once from Lanzhou in Gansu Province all the way to Lhasa. That train service was inaugurated in July 2006 and was the most expensive railway to construct in the world because of the difficulty of building track across permafrost

Why are the Chinese not better at team sports?

Or to put it another way, why have American athletes fallen short in individual competition that they used to do well in (boxing, weightlifting) but still excel in team sports?

It’s an interesting issue. Scratch most sports fans here and one finds great pride in the Olympic medal tally but a little sensitivity about the lack of team sports medals.

In a newspaper column that dealt with this issue, a Duke University political scientist, Michael Allen Gillespie, says the matter goes to the way societies are organized.

Since each member of the U.S. men’s and women’s basketball teams won gold medals, as did the men’s volleyball team and the women’s soccer team, the total number of gold medals taken home by U.S. athletes is higher than the total for Chinese athletes.

If one looks over all of the Olympic sports, Americans took home 118 gold medals, 99 silver medals and 76 bronze medals, while the Chinese took home 76 gold, 35 silver and 38 bronze medals. That is 293 total medals for the USA to 149 for China.

The point here is that Americans are much more successful in team sports than the Chinese, and perhaps this is no accident. Voluntary cooperation has always been a hallmark of the American system, suffusing the lives of children and adults alike, an outstanding factor in our playrooms and in our boardrooms.

China, by contrast, has always put much less emphasis on voluntary cooperation than on hierarchical control and the obligation of those below to take directions from those above. Such discipline and obedience can produce individuals who become superb at repeating individual tasks, as in the diving competitions where the Chinese were outstanding, but it cannot produce the creativity and voluntary cooperation necessary to the successful operation of a team.

The Chinese government has begun to learn this lesson in the case of industry and the world has applauded its success, even if many have been intimidated by it. One might anticipate a similar success if the Chinese loosened the reins on other sections of their society.

Anybody out there disagree strongly with this analysis? One criticism of China’s soccer efforts that one hears constantly in China is that it has been “commercialized.” In other words, money corrupted the soccer federation because there wasn’t central state control as there is in other sports. Could China produce a winning soccer team if Beijing took the reins?

One of the most special feelings I had during the Olympics came right at the end. The closing ceremony was a memory. The torch had been passed to London. I finished my story in the press gallery of the stadium and was walking along the Olympic Green.

People were extraordinarily joyful. Thousands of couples and families milled outside, taking photos of one another. Some held up flashlights in the shape of Olympic torches or draped themselves in flags.

It was very multinational. For some reason, a guy was speaking in French over the loudspeaker system. I saw people sitting on the cleanly mown grass in common areas eating snacks as if such an activity were normal in Beijing. No signs to keep off the grass or worries about the usual animal or human filth in green areas.

It really was the first time I’d had a chance to take in the beauty of the Bird’s Nest at night with its glowing red underneath the silver girders. The water cube was also in full splendor, with patches of magenta moving gracefully along the translucent blue panels.

Everybody was extraordinarily relaxed. For the Chinese, the tensions were over. The country did well. Nothing major disrupted the Games. Foreign tourists were happy, all for various reasons. For a moment, the real meaning of the Olympics, the common quest of humans to take joy in sport, accomplishment and each other, seemed to descend on Beijing.
///
Chinese athletes did extraordinarily well in individual sports in the Olympics.

But I must say what really grabbed my attention at the Games were two powerhouse countries of sport: Australia and Jamaica. Pound for pound, they are athletic champions without rival.

Jamaica, with its population of less than three million people, took six gold medals and 11 total medals. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt captured three world records. Despite admonishments from IOC chief Jacques Rogge to tone down his antics (see my story here and video here), Bolt would not be slowed.

For its part, you couldn’t walk a block around Beijing, at least where I hang out, without coming across an Aussie contingent of fans cheering on their athletes, who won 14 gold medals and 46 medals overall, coming in fifth among all nations.

I ran into my colleague Rowan Callick of The Australian newspaper at the beach volleyball venue one day, and he explained that one reason is the extraordinary support Australian taxpayers give for sport. No politician in Oz dares suggest taking money away from sports programs or recreation centers.
///
One of the extraordinary moments, for me at least, was the chance to stand in what are called “mixed zones” at the different venues. These “mixed zones” are cordoned areas where athletes pass once the competition is over and can talk to journalists. At some venues, it was a mob scene, as when Bolt smashed the 100-meter dash record at the Bird’s Nest. At other times, it was utterly relaxed. I chatted up Natalie Cook, an Australian beach volleyball player, about how she felt about the weather and smog in Beijing, without having a whit of an idea who she was. Not till later did I find out she’s a bit of a legend.

I also was in a crowd of journalists around Paula Radcliffe, the world champion marathoner, as she talked about why she failed again to capture an Olympic medal. She broke down into tears twice in 10 minutes. And the journalists were clearly moved (I was, for sure). Here’s my story on that.
///
On the final morning, Rogge, the IOC chief, offered a final press conference and was asked what was the most memorable moment of the Games were for him.

He brought up something I hadn’t been aware of because I’d had my head buried in other Olympics-related matters.

But at the shooting venue, it was déjà vu all over again for U.S. target shooter Matt Emmons.

As Rogge reminded us, Emmons was the guy who threw away a gold medal in Athens four years ago by shooting at the wrong target on the last of his 130 shots.

"This is something already very painful," Rogge said.

Well, Emmons did it again in Beijing. He shot brilliantly during the entire competition until the very end, when his rifle fired accidentally into the air, costing him another gold medal.

"Again leading and being very close to gold, he took his rifle, put his hand on the trigger and, for some reason, the trigger went off," Rogge said.

Rogge said he admired Emmons' resilience after again losing gold. Emmons vowed to be there in London 2012 to try to win gold for a third time.

“This is the true spirit of the Olympic Games. The Games is not only about winning, not only about being triumphant. It is about the struggle of every athlete every day to achieve his or her own limits and having this resilience,” Rogge said.

"Let's hope he does come back."

///

On a final personal note, I mentioned a few months back that my youngest daughter would be participating in one of the Olympics ceremonies. We never knew whether it would be the opening or closing ceremony. She and some 150 of her classmates at Fangcaodi Elementary School were picked to sing the Greek national anthem, and there they were on the field during the closing ceremony.

From where I was sitting in the press section, I couldn't pick her out. But a good friend of ours who is a photographer for the AFP news agency (and who hadn't seen our daughter for eight years) recognized her and shot this photo.

I kept looking up at the big screen to see if her face would appear. It never did but we do have the photos.

One other thing: Unlike some singers at the opening and closing ceremonies, these kids weren't lip-synching. They actually had to learn the Greek words.

Chinese companies go where others fear to tread.

Here’s the latest example: At some point today, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani will arrive in Beijing to finalize a contract with a unit of China National Petroleum Corp. on developing Iraq’s Ahdab oil field. It would make CNPC the first foreign company to get exploration rights from Baghdad since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

The government has said the Ahdab field in southern Iraq may produce about 90,000 barrels a day, Bloomberg news says.

It’s timely to recall that a Chinese company last fall announced it would invest $3 billion in Afghanistan to develop the Aynak copper field in what is the largest foreign project ever in that country.

The mine will employ some 10,000 people.

Chinese companies eagerly scour the world for such resource deals. Sometimes analysts say the Chinese overpay for deals, but they also lock up raw materials to keep the Chinese economy humming. 

I was in the Wukesong basketball arena last night watching the U.S. “redeem team” take on the Australians in Olympic basketball.

The arena was full and the game had already started. As I walked through a passageway, a roar was going up from the crowd. I rushed in to see who they were cheering for: Australia!

The first quarter was half over and the Australian players were giving these NBA all-stars a run for their money. And for the next 10-15 minutes contrary impulses ricocheted around the arena for Chinese fans. For one part, some hoped the Australians would be giant killers. A good part of the stadium cheered lustily for an Australian upset.

But by the second half, the Americans were running up the points. And every time, the U.S. side would tap in a three-pointer, the crowd roared. At one point, poster boy Kobe Bryant stole the ball from Australian player, zipped down the court, soared upward and spiked the ball into the basket. Roar! Kobe has a huge fan base in China.

So who are these Chinese fans rooting for? Have they made up their minds? It’s something I keep thinking about as I float in and out of arenas and stadiums. Obviously, they are rooting for the national athletes, who are doing extraordinarily well. But they are also there when Chinese athletes aren’t in competition.

My colleague Francesco Sisci, a correspondent for the Italian newspaper La Stampa, recently wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post talking about how his Chinese wife and other friends are rooting for American athletes.

Why do the Chinese cheer so loudly for swimmer Michael Phelps or basketball star Kobe Bryant? Why did the government choose the most American of China's sports stars, NBA hero Yao Ming, to be the standard-bearer of the Olympic team? If "pro-American" Italy had chosen an athlete playing in the United States to represent its Olympic team, it would have been heresy, a national scandal. But "communist" China did it, and "communist" party leader Hu Jintao, sitting on the rostrum of the "Bird's Nest" stadium, applauded it.

So what's the answer? For one, most top leaders choose to send their children to study in the United States, not Europe or Japan. Hu's son was married in the United States. China's late supremo, Deng Xiaoping, was proud that he had an American grandchild -- born in the United States and thus entitled to an American passport.

For many Chinese, America remains the gold standard -- even now that China holds $1 trillion of American debt. It's what China would like to be: rich, powerful and, yes, democratic, too. It's all part of the package, many Chinese people think. Globalization, the great phenomenon that's making China rich, isn't a vague idea here. It has a name: America. Without the United States there would be no globalization, no wealth for China. For that, the Chinese are grateful.

In fact, I find Chinese behavior in the Olympic stands containing complexities beyond this. For sure, some Chinese would like to beat the Americans in every way possible, and that means rooting for third nations that play against the U.S. teams.

At other times, I’ve seen them root for the underdog. That occurred in a Russia-Georgia beach volleyball match. The crowd was going for the little guy against someone they perceived as a bully.

Then there are the times Chinese root for those who play well. That happened at an Argentina-Brazil soccer game earlier this week. The crowd was for Argentina, which won 3-0.

Then an interesting thing happened: The crowd began chanting, “Xie Yalong, xia ke!" – which means, “Xie Yalong, take a hike!” Xier Yalong is president of the Chinese Football Association and a national whipping boy because Chinese love soccer but can’t seem to put together a decent team.

So there you have it: Sometimes Chinese fans root for the underdog. Sometimes they root for the dominant team. And sometimes they even chant against their own side if it doesn’t live up to expectations. There could be a political message in that.

I was at the BMX cycling course today, which is quite breath-taking. It’s out at the Laoshan cluster of cycling venues in far western Beijing.

BMX cycling is the newest sport in the Olympics. Be prepared to see many new sports in the coming years as the International Olympic Committee tries to stay relevant with youth. I wouldn’t be surprised if surfing, skateboarding and inline skating end up as sports in the Summer Games.

Here’s a video/slideshow that we put together on BMX.

In any case, one of the things that surprised me when I asked some of the experts out there which teams were strong, almost to a T they said this: Latvia.

Why Latvia? I still can’t figure it out. One thing is clear, though. The Latvian riders are huge, as the photo attests, generally the size of football team middle linebackers.

I asked the Latvian team doctor, Aldis Cirulis, about why BMX was so popular there and he brushed off the question. But he was more voluble on why BMX cycling is likely to become a popular Olympic sport.

“It’s exciting. It’s a short event. It’s a lot of action. It’s dangerous. People like that,” he told me.

Skepticism seems to pervade these Olympic Games against winners.

At the daily news conference this morning, a German reporter asked Arne Ljundqvist, the IOC chief medical officer, for details of any anti-doping tests done against Michael Phelps, the American swimmer.

Maybe it was just my ears, but his voice seemed to drip with the sort of sarcasm that the French reserved for commentary about Lance Armstrong, the repeat U.S. Tour de France winner who many French assumed was just as doped up as a lot of other riders on the tour.

Ljundqvist said he couldn’t yet give details on whether or win Phelps has been tested.

Later, Phelps was asked at a press conference about doping.

“I purposely wanted to do more tests to prove it (that I’m clean). People can question all they want. But the facts are the facts. I’ve got the results to prove it,” Phelps said.

Of course, some people will never believe. And it’s not only true of Phelps.

The Chinese woman weightlifter Liu Chunhong has also come under questioning. Liu, who lifts in the 69 kilogram category, lifted 31 kgs more over her head Wednesday night than the silver medalist, Oxana Slivenko.

Tamas Ajan, the Hungarian president of the International Weightlifting Association, was asked about that huge gap today: “This morning, I was at the swimming (pool) and I don’t want to tell you the difference between the U.S. man and the second place. Each sport has its great talents and the young lady from China is a great talent.”

A Polish swimming coach is also questioning the huge win of a Chinese swimmer in the women’s 200-meter butterfly, suggesting her smashing of a world record by a whopping 1.22 seconds was “not rational.”

Pan Jiazhang, the coach of Chinese swimmer Liu Zige, strongly defended Liu and China’s swimming program: “Look at how many times our swimmers have been tested, I assure you that this is a clean team."

It’s a bit of a sad commentary on modern sport that few achievements go unquestioned these days.

I’m currently in the stands of the Capital Gymnasium watching the China-U.S. women’s volleyball match. The cheers for China are deafening. Who said home field advantage isn’t huge? Word from my press colleagues is that Chinese President Hu Jintao is down below us in the stands. I can’t personally see him. He didn’t show up for the U.S.-China basketball game, although the papers said he would. China got beaten badly there. This volleyball match seems like a safer bet.   

The following exchange occurred earlier today at a daily press conference that senior spokespeople of the International and Beijing Olympic committees offer to the foreign media.

I include this excerpt between a British television journalist and the two spokesman without any comment of my own:

Question: Hi, I’m Alex Thompson from Channel Four News. My question’s mercifully short, and it’s for Giselle. Given that China got these games largely on making promises on human rights and press freedom, and given that the Chinese government has lied through its teeth about keeping those promises, is the IOC in any way embarrassed?

Giselle Davies, spokeswoman for the International Olympic Committee: Good morning, Alex.

Thompson: Good morning.

Davies: There were certainly some hopes and aspirations outlayed in 2001 as to how the games could have a positive impact on the wider social framework. And I think we have to note that there have been enormous steps forward in a number of areas. You’re here reporting on the games. The world is watching. And there will be commentaries made appraising how the games have had an impact, wider through bringing sports, athletes and the world’s attention.

Interestingly, I saw that the Associated Press did a survey whereby their readers say that 55 percent of the respondents of the United States believe the choice was the right choice to come to Beijing, China …

Thompson: Yes, but I’m not asking that. I’m asking the IOC if they are in any way embarrassed about the manifest failure on behalf of the Chinese government to keep their promises. It’s a very straightforward question: Are you embarrassed?   

Davies: We are very proud of the fact that these games are progressing with spectacular sports, spectacular sports venues, operationally running very smoothly, and that’s what we’re here focusing on.

Thompson: I’m asking whether you’re embarrassed. I’m not asking about how well the games have been run or how wonderful the venues are. Are you embarrassed?

Davies: I think I’ve answered your question by explaining…

Thompson: I don’t think anyone in this room, if I may speak, I may be stepping out of line, but I don’t think anybody thinks you’ve answered the question. Is the IOC embarrassed about the Chinese government not keeping those promises?

Davies: We’re very pleased with how the organizers are putting on a good sporting event. That’s what this is. The IOC’s role and remit is to bring sport and the Olympic values to this country. That is what is happening, and the organizers have put on an operationally sound games for the athletes. This is an event, first and foremost, for the athletes, and the athletes are giving us extremely positive feedback about how they see these games being held for them.

Thompson: Well, Giselle, we’re certainly not getting anywhere are we? Let’s try it once more time. Is the IOC embarrassed about the Chinese government’s not keeping promises on both press freedom and human rights? One more chance.

Davies: Well, I think probably your colleagues in the room would like to have a chance at questions as well. I think I’ve answered your question.

(Outbursts from other journalists)

Wang Wei, secretary general of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games: I think I’ll add something to Giselle’s answer. I was the secretary general of the bidding committee. I was confronted with many questions about the opening up and reform of China. And I did say that the Olympic Games coming to China will help China to open up further and to reform better. And the facts show after 30 years of reform, China has developed greatly. People enjoy more freedom. People enjoy more wealth, have a lot to say. And people’s welfare and people’s economic situation are improved a lot. So everybody can see that. Olympic Games are a good platform. Everybody I see who comes to China for the first time will say to me, China is so different from what they read, what they saw in films and papers. People are so friendly. People (are) leading a good life. Everybody is happy. People are optimistic about their own future. That’s a fact. Of course, there are exceptions, like in any other country. Some people are not satisfied, that is true. But we need to take the legal procedures to resolve their own issues, their problems. We cannot allow the country (to fall) into chaos. So I think we welcome people coming to China to celebrate the Olympic Games with us, to enjoy the festivities with us. Of course, we also welcome suggestions, constructive advice from all the people, all the kind people. And, uh, I think a few, a very few, people come here to be critical, to dig into the small details, to find fault with that. That does not mean we are not fulfilling our promise. So I think the whole country can see how China is progressing, how China is genuinely welcoming the world to China to enjoy everything with us…

A couple of Olympics jokes are making the rounds in Beijing.

First one is a riff on the fact that while many Chinese are extraordinarily proud of the Olympics, they are also put out. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers were sent home from Beijing before the games began as constructions sites shut down. Many factories are temporarily closed. Lots of people are forced to work overtime. The nation is jittery that something may go wrong.

In short, people are exhausted and uneasy.

Here’s the first joke:

“At the closing ceremonies, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge announces that the IOC has decided that the next Olympics will be held again in Beijing instead of London since the games were so successful. The news sends millions of Chinese into a faint. Even the doctors swoon. Only the police are strong enough to withstand the news, and they immediately shout in unison: “Go to hell, Rogge!”

Another joke is about the song sung at the opening ceremony, “You and Me.” The English “you” sounds like the Chinese word for “oil” and English “me” happens to sound like the Chinese word for “rice.” So many people say the song reflects the "One World, One Dream" so precisely because the world is expecting more oil and rice.

Anybody heard any others?