Savoring the Olympic Spotlight

A Chinese tourist poses for a photo on the plaza in front of the Olympic Water Cube, where the aquatic events will take place, with the "Bird's Nest" stadium in the background. (By Jill Drew -- The Washington Post)
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In Shen's view, China's Communist leaders are guiding a supple society where life for the average person is improving each day. "Our state is stable and is at peace," Shen said. "I can do what I want to do."

Foreigners often focus on the harsh aspects of China's one-party rule, where those who speak out against the government face jail or hard labor. But many Chinese have a strong bond with the party, whose policies have shaped most aspects of their lives. They say it is natural to feel an emotional connection to the Olympics as the fulfillment of a decades-long quest for personal well-being and international respect.

Wang Xueguo felt so strongly that he bought tickets for his siblings and their families to fly to Beijing to join him this month. "I wanted my whole family to share the atmosphere of the Olympics. It symbolizes the unity of the family," said Wang, 42, as he sat in his Beijing restaurant.

Wang's life traces the arc of modern China. He was one of five children raised on a farm in what is now southwestern China's Chongqing municipality. In 1959, before Wang was born, a sibling starved to death during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, a misguided attempt to forcibly transform China's agrarian economy into an industrial powerhouse that ended in disaster. His family farmed for the party, not themselves.

The year Wang was born, the party sent his oldest brother to work in a mine. The rest of the children stayed with their parents on the farm, enduring the throes of the Cultural Revolution and later enjoying the fruits of the party's 1978 launch of its reform and opening up policy.

Wang came to Beijing at the end of 1991, when China first bid to host the Olympics. Then 25, he was recruited to help build the stadiums China thought it would need. But in 1993, those Olympics were awarded to Sydney. Wang was out of a job.

The party's increasingly flexible residence policy allowed him to stay in Beijing as a migrant worker, taking jobs in restaurants. Wang worked hard and saved money, and in 1994, opened a small restaurant of his own. In 2005, he opened a bigger one. Today, he is scouting locations to expand and perhaps start a chain.

"I can afford for the family to come to Beijing," Wang said, as he ladled soup during a family dinner at his restaurant, Hongmei Shen. The Chinese characters combine his wife's name and the word for prosperous. "It's a sign the reform policies are working for us."

Wang's oldest brother, who is 62, lives comfortably on a pension from a state-owned steel company. His older sister lost her farmland when it was flooded by the Three Gorges Dam. She used a government compensation payment to buy a couple of houses to rent out for income.

Wang's younger sister also came to Beijing and opened a restaurant. Only one other brother remains on the farm. He now grows oranges under a new government policy that encourages alternative crops.

For three days last month, the three brothers took turns standing in line for the chance to buy tickets to an Olympic basketball game. They were able to purchase only two tickets, so the siblings asked Wang to decide who should go.

He picked his two older brothers, because that's what families do.

Researcher Liu Liu contributed to this report.