Tiananmen Square. The Forbidden City. The Great Wall. The Three Gorges Dam. Dozens of high-end malls in Beijing. China has thousands of years of doing things in a really big way, reinforcing its perceived place in the world and the political power of its leaders from emperors to Mao Zedong to the current leader,…
Beijing becoming the first city to hold both the Winter and Summer Olympics may not be a feature on the actual landscape. But it s in the same realm for the world s most populous country, which has long framed itself at the center of the world, evident in its name in Chinese, “Zhongguo,” or “middle country.”