Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium: Ish Meets China

Being Filipinos, the Olympics were obviously not as big of a deal to us as many other people. However, being a sports fanatic and travel freak, I have, in my time visited a good number of Olympic stadia and other Olympic related sites.

My last post was about the Panathinaikos Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece which was the site of the first organized Olympic games back when it was still just played among the city states of Ancient Greece.

For this post, I’d like to jump right into the modern Olympic era where host countries battle it out for a chance to host the games and in the end, spend millions upon millions of dollars in new infrastructure.

I’d like to share some pictures that I took from the Olympic park in Beijing, China which I visited last year. Beijing hosted the 2008 summer games and the amount of infrastructure that was built in preparation for the games was just phenomenal.

 The Water Cube

Olympic park facilities

Bird’s Nest

The entire complex has now been converted into a huge tourist spot. They sell all kinds of knick knacks like stuffed toys and replicas of the stadium etc. Apparently, the stadium has been used as a venue for several concerts. The question is, was all the spending worth it?

In the Rio Olympics in 2016, many of the venues now stand abandoned. The cities are left in debt while the venues rot and continue to deteriorate. Despite the influx of tourisim that the games bing, are the benefits sustainable? Share your thoughts!