Less than a decade ago, this city was an industrial wasteland. The sky could be seen from Beijing's ancient monuments less than a third of the year. Nearby lakes were so contaminated that they couldn't be used to water crops. And children were warned not to play outside in the noxious air.So when China applied to host the 2008 Olympics, it encountered deep skepticism about its ability to pull off the feat in one of the world's most populous and polluted cities. There was real concern about athletes choking on chemical-laden air as they ran the 100-meter dash.
Seven years and $40 billion later, the Chinese have had remarkable success on many fronts. Practically every construction project is running ahead of schedule. The Chinese can brag of heroic feats of logistics and engineering: the "bird's nest" latticework of the 91,000-seat Olympic Stadium, the shimmering blue skin of the Water Cube aquatics center, a 70-mile high-speed railway, four new subway lines, an energy-efficient airport terminal.
But Beijing still has not conquered its pollution. Nearly 50 years after Mao Zedong's "war on nature" felled trees to make room for steel plants in the administrative capital and reversed rivers to provide irrigation, the Chinese government is finding that undoing the environmental damage and turning Beijing into a green showcase in time for the Olympics is no small task. China has only 16 months before 550,000 overseas visitors pile into a city of more than 15 million.
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