Bird's eye: Seen from above, the new stadium stands out in Beijing's Olympic Green.

Olympic fever may at times appear restrained, but it breaks out at the Indoor Stadium when groups of grammar-school children in uniforms of red, green, or blue squeal and shout whenever a famous Chinese gymnast is announced or finishes with a perfect or near-perfect stick-it landing. The women's gymnastics team is rebuilding and not expected to score well at the Olympics. Today, though, home-crowd favorite Jiang Yuyuan, a young pixie of a Chinese gymnast, winds up with the highest all-around score. It's pandemonium whenever she takes the floor.

Acquiescing to this enthusiasm, I stay until the last dismount from the uneven bars, the final leap over the vault table, and the last stick-it landing in the free-style floor exercises. Along with many others in the audience, and even the student ushers, I linger after the competition's end, not wanting to leave.

Exiting through the lobby display area, I'm introduced to the "Fuwa family"—five Olympic mascots, one of each color of the five Olympic rings and each symbolizing one of the five Chinese elements. The child-appealing Fuwa look like a cutesy cross between a Teletubby and the Japanese good luck cat with the raised paw. Two of the Fuwa represent the endangered panda bear and Tibetan antelope. Their headgear incorporates patterns and design elements from ethnic minorities. Each mascot has a two-syllable name also designed to appeal to Chinese children, the first syllables of which when strung together approximate the greeting "Beijing welcomes you." What the Chinese managed with the number 8 is impressive enough, but achieving the multi-symbolism of the Fuwa family is like hitting a triple word score in Scrabble.

The Saturday following my midweek visit to the Olympic complex, Chen Xiu, a Bei Wai grad student friend and tutor, gets me inside The Egg, as the new National Center for the Performing Arts is called. Located in the heart of the city near Tiananmen Square, the Egg is a flying saucer–like, gleaming silver-and-glass orb standing shoulder to shoulder with the Soviet-era Great Hall of the People. From a distance, centered in a wide reflecting pool, the transparent, iconic edifice resembles a fried egg, sunny side up.

Celebrate with Cal Discoveries:

Jul 22–Aug 12, 2008:
Total Solar Eclipse, China's Silk Road & Legendary Hunza

Sept 6–17, 2008:
Mediterranean Music Festival—A Voyage from Athens to Venice

Oct 2–16, 2008:
Thailand & Laos—Exclusive Adventure to Thailand's Fireboat Festival

We enter by descending under the reflecting pool, and suddenly our eyes are drawn upward to the rippling pattern of the pool's water visible through the glass ceiling. We walk down a long hallway—with displays of Chinese theater artifacts on one side, and photos of major world theaters and scale models of traditional Chinese theaters on the other—and enter the main lobby. There, a matrix of escalators rocket sharply up through The Egg's open, spacious, naturally lit atrium to several grand reception areas. Terraced lobbies afford a vertigo-inducing view of the atrium, Tiananmen Square, and the sky beyond.

The walls of the main stage are covered in silk and acoustically designed for Chinese opera and theater. Two side stages are designed for Western opera and symphonic music. Chen and I head to the top balcony of the quasi–Art Deco symphonic hall and stop to rest a few minutes in the back row. From that distance, we can easily hear the conversation of several managers standing by the stage.

If the quality of the finished Olympic buildings approaches that of The Egg's interior, then I want to sit in the completed Bird's Nest at the Opening Ceremonies on August 8, 2008, at 8:08 p.m. I want to watch the parade of athletes, the lighting of the Olympic flame, and the fireworks overhead. I want to be outside shouting and dancing to the Water Cube's laser light shows and watch giant images of athletes projected onto the building's walls. And whatever performances are scheduled in The Egg, I want to see one on each stage. I want to do all of it.

William Poy Lee '74 is the author of the memoir, The Eighth Promise: An American Son's Tribute to His Toisanese Mother, which was excerpted in California (January/February 2007). His article "The Yuppies of New China" appeared in the May/June 2007 issue.

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