Beijing is virtually unrecognizable with little more than a week left before the start of the Olympics. Within a few months, the avenues and streets have been dotted with posters, billboards, flags and other decorations that give the city a festive atmosphere. It's hard not to feel like taking part in the Olympic craze.

A little more than a week before the start of the Olympics (scheduled for the 8^th of August), Beijing is working on its final preparations and its desire to show off an international image to the world. Within a few months, official posters and signs filled up the streets. Flags and Olympic banners hang from the streetlights. Even sites that are still under construction are hidden away behind large pieces of sheet metal covered with Olympics advertising.

In other words, the Chinese capital has not held back on decoration. BOCOG, the Beijing Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games, has created 66 banners from pictures of the city that have been taken from June 2007 to May 2008. All of the banners have the official slogan "One World, One Dream", written in all the languages of the world.

« One world, One Dream »

The banners are divided into three themes that were revealed on July 18^th by a local Olympic committee official at a press conference. The first theme entirely painted or drawn is entitled "Civilized Beijing, Harmonious Olympics." One banner shows the famous red and white logo of the Beijing Olympics and the Olympic rings on a mountainous landscape. The other two mixes modern architecture and the Olympic venues. You can therefore see the Forbidden City and the National Stadium or "Bird's Nest" and the Temple of Heaven and Olympic swimming pool or "Water Cube".

The second theme is "Smiling Beijing, a Shared Olympics", and includes 12 portraits presenting Chinese cultural items such as the art of paper cutting, the Peking opera or the kite throughout the ages. The backgrounds on these banners are always of typical Chinese architecture of the country.

The last theme, which is also the largest, is called "Dynamic Beijing, Dream Realized". 29 pictures
illustrate all of the Olympic sports: from basketball to gymnastics through badminton and diving. This is supplemented with about a dozen images selected for the Paralympic Games to be held in Beijing from September 6^th to the 17^th and put includes a ping pong player or a wheelchair fencer.

A panel shows off 9 "folkloric" photos where you can see the Great Wall, the entrance to a traditional house with a courtyard (siheyuan), the glazed tile roofs of the Forbidden City and even the National opera of Paul Andreu. For all these banners, the municipality has chosen very large formats, some being as big as 10 meters on 20 meters. And to give a more festive atmosphere to the city, multicolored flags float alongside the red and yellow flags of China, which flap on the top of buildings or on the antennas of cars and taxis.

Text: Edouard Beauchemin
Photos: Wang Zhuo
August 2008