Olympic venues still draw crowds long after Games are over

BEIJING — The spectacular fireworks were long over and the Olympic athletes had all gone home. But for Cai Shanhai and his wife, He Jingfeng, it was still a moment to savor as they stared up at the soaring steel arches of the Bird's Nest national stadium this week.

"Our whole life, there's been nothing like the Olympics. On TV, you can only see so much of the Bird's Nest, but in person you can see every bit of it. It's so grand, so grand," said He, 67, clad in a red embroidered jacket for the occasion.

The couple — farmers from a village in Inner Mongolia — are hardly alone in their enthusiasm. Since the Olympic Games ended in August, some 35,000 to 40,000 visitors a day have streamed through the 91,000-seat stadium, according to ticketing officials. The smaller, whimsical Water Cube nearby draws its own share of visitors — 20,000 to 26,000 daily.

The enormous interest in the Olympic venues signals that the collective national pride and excitement built up over the Games remains in force — a big payoff domestically on the government's $40 billion gamble at showcasing a more open and modern China.

The display of dazzling technology and modern infrastructure also largely succeeded in boosting China's image internationally, scholars say.

"It is the first time that 4.5 billion people in the world saw on TV what China really looked like," said Jin Yuanpu, professor and director of the Humanity Olympic Study Center of Renmin University. "Because the Olympics offered an opportunity to the world to get to know China, there were more positive reports during the Games. Seeing is believing. China is changing."

The government fulfilled its promise to clean up the air pollution and reduce its snarled traffic for the Olympics. But for those who had hoped the Games would quicken progress on the contentious issues of human rights and media freedom, lasting changes have been less clear. Beijing did announce that relaxed restrictions on reporting by foreign journalists, already in place for the Olympics, would become permanent.

In a tumultuous year marked by crippling snowstorms in southern China, an uprising in Tibet and a devastating earthquake in Sichuan, the government's success in managing the Olympics had a powerful effect on public confidence.

"It was a victory for the government's attempt to improve China's image," said Ashley Esarey, a scholar at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. "The Chinese feel they are fully on the radar of the international community. The Olympics was proof of that to them."