Bird’s Nest or White Elephant?

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  01.13.09 | 5:09 PM ET

Photo by AudreyH via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Say it ain’t so. A mere five months after the Beijing Olympic Games, has the Bird’s Nest stadium become a tourist trap? With no permanent tenant signed, that’s how it’s looking. I’m a big fan of the building and would happily pay the $7 fee to walk around inside, but at the same time hope the Chinese find a dedicated revenue stream to maintain it.

For a behind-the-scenes look at how the stadium was built, check out the documentary, Bird’s Nest: Herzog and de Meuron in China.  The best parts are the unintentionally hilarious culture clashes between the building’s two “make-the-trains-run-on-time” Swiss architects and their Chinese partners. You can imagine.

 

Tags: Architecture, Movies, Sports, Asia, China, Beijing, News and Briefs

Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


1 Comment for Bird’s Nest or White Elephant?

Emily 01.14.09 | 9:47 PM ET

Oh dear! It would be such a shame (not to mention incredibly wasteful) to see this beautiful building go without use. I’m not sure who’s going to pay $430 for a replica torch kit, as the AP describes.

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