Stylish Diggs

A little background on all this. I just finished my master’s in writing and publishing from Emerson College. This Olympic experience is courtesy of Emerson being selected to send students to work for the Olympic News Service. You can read more about it here, and if that is enough info for you, you can enjoy the photos below of our dorm at the International Center of the Communication University of China (CUC). Note to those with an upcoming bathroom remodel: the shower set-up is extremely efficient for maintaining toilet cleanliness.

CUC is located just outside Beijing’s fifth ring. The city is built on a grid, with important places like Tiananmen Square and Mao’s mausoleum on points of the main access. The concentric circles of the ring roads surround the axis. Being outside the fifth ring puts CUC in the “countryside” of Beijing, though it still is technically the city, and very much an urban area. Think of it like Tufts University in relation to Boston.

As you can see, our dorm rooms are very nice, but almost deceivingly so. While walking to dinner off campus last night, a group of us got a peek into a regular dorm and it was far barer than our accommodation. Once out of the campus gate, we came across a staggering amount of transition. For every storefront on our side of the road, there were three abandoned buildings in the midst of refurbishment, most housing squatters. Assimilating to our new environment, none of us mentioned the varying smells of human waste and construction chemicals.

All of us are very interested to see if these projects will wrap up and transform the area by August 8, the start of the Games, which appears to be the goal. It would be a massive turnaround, but I’m sure there are areas in far worse condition.

July 10th, 2008
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