Olympian Ghosts: Apprehensions and Apparitions of the Beijing Spectacle

Abstract

Choosing not to follow the more popular approach of addressing the Beijing Olympics by critical attention to the political, economic, historical or even ideological meaning of the Olympics to China, this article situates the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the fragmentary everyday life of contemporary Chinese people. The grand spectacle of the Olympics is dissolved into the rumours and stories which reveal the deep sense of fear, anxiety, ungroundedness, uncontrollability and anxiety that is rooted in the heart of a Chinese life. Ostensibly trivial rumours and stories, mutually affecting and reinforcing one another, are juxtaposed with materialized forms of the pursuit of safety (Olympic lanes, subway security checks, limits placed on the access to Beijing etc.), the felt outcome of which has come to be reacted to on a spectrum ranging from ‘the grand 2008 Beijing Olympics’ or ‘Ao ni ma de yun’. This constellation of rumours and creative apprehension in the commonplace reactions of ordinary people to the Beijing Olympics event represents a ghostly character of the event worth paying attention to, and the very specific way in which the Olympics was received in the everyday life of Chinese people points to a theme in the Chinese notion of life, manifested in the commonly used term guo ri zi (‘passing the days’ or ‘living life’).