Chinese Olympics + 1.3 billion people = impressive!!

The Olympic park typical evening. Only people with Birds' nest or water cube tickets are allowed inside the park!
The stream of people exiting the Olympic park to one of the subway entrances. Looking carefully one would notice where there is no people walking that's because a volunteer human shield has blocked off the area. Squeezing through the subway entrance was even more exciting.....but unfortunately no pics of that (no physical space to take out a camera from backpack)

No seats in a Olympic park McDonalds!
The Beijing subway handling Olympic traffic. I had to commute on this subway daily for 1.5 hours.

The silk market of Beijing is a large multistory market selling everything one would find in the largest Chinatowns: apparels, garments, souvenirs, jewelry. No Chinese would buy anything from this market. The place is dedicated to ripping off Western tourists and during the Olympics, this phenomenon is especially acute. Employees forcefully compete for the slew of visitors, and the base ask price for most of the souvenirs are usually 10 to 100 times their intrinsic value. The most apt western buyers realize the need to bargain souvenirs' prices down to Chinatown levels. And the sellers still realize over 100% profits.

My hypothesis is that one reason why this market has been so successful in attracting western tourists is the impact of the English name: Silk market. The Chinese name literally translated to English is "pristine water"....no connotation of silk anywhere. Other similar markets in Beijing exist but none nearly as successful in building a base of loyal western customers.

More exotic birds nest and water cube night pics

The color of the cube periodically transitions from dark blue to magenta to purple
The reflection of the birds nest on the exterior of the water cube