August 23, 2008 12:39 PM
The Big Toothpick
You know the list of the must-see attractions in Beijing already: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and the Temple of Heaven. The city has its famous markets and its old-world hutong neighborhoods. It even has up-and-coming districts, like Wangfujing and Sanlitun.After these Games end, visitors will be adding two more sights to the must-see list here: the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. They've both received nearly unanimous acclaim for their imaginative design and environmental sensibility. If you visit Beijing in a decade, they'll still be here.
But most of the other stadiums will not even be around when the calendar turns to 2009. Some could be gone -- deconstructed, if you will -- by month's end if the Chinese choose to.
The north zone cluster -- including the archery and field hockey venue -- was built as a temporary site. So was the Wukesong Baseball Field.
From the outside, Wukesong Field looks a bit like a seventh-grade toothpick creation. The stadium rises from above a blacktop, a vast network of metal piping holding up an oversized set of bleachers. It looks, at best, unstable. If fans started jumping or pounding on their seats -- as their soccer counterparts often do -- I'm not sure that the bleachers could withstand the shaking.
Other temporary stadiums do not seem as haphazardly built. The field hockey venue, for example, has wide concourses and no such erector set feel.Now, I'm sure that the IOC and BOCOG have conducted thorough safety tests on Wukesong Field. But having felt the bleachers do more than rattle from the stomping of few solitary fans last night, I just wonder what kind of safety test it was.
But by tomorrow, it won't matter. The stadium will start coming down. The sport it hosted won't be back in London in 2012. Here one day; forgotten the next. So it goes.
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