Inside the "Water Cube;" plus, the German Embassy was under wraps during the Olympic Games

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Olympic Games showcased two iconic sports facilities. One was the Niao Chao track and field stadium. The other was the equally stunning “water cube” swimming and diving arena.

According to my friend, Flora Lu, the Chinese have two names for the water cube: 水立方 and 国家游泳中心. The first set of characters, a falling and rising tone “shui”, a falling tone “li”, and a flat “fang” can be translated as “water cube.” The second set of characters, a rising tone “guo”, flat tone “jia”, rising tone “you”, falling and rising tone “yong”, and flat tone “zhong” and “xin,” means National Swimming Center.

I alas never got inside the Water Cube. However, my Chinese friend who did the Niao Chao that appeared in a recent post did pass on one of her photos of it to me. As you can see, it truly is an amazing and beautiful facility.

This bit on the Water Cube gives me an excuse to note something interesting about the German Embassy during the Olympic Games. Beijing has two embassy areas: the one off the Jianguo Dajie mentioned in the previous post and another near Dongzhimen, fairly close to where I live. Indeed, if I'm not in any kind of hurry, I can walk to the German Embassy from my apartment.

Alone among all of Beijing's foreign embassies, the German Embassy really got into the Olympic Spirit by putting some blue plastic bubble wrap around its exterior. This bubble wrap had large bubbles, resembling the ones gracing the exterior of the Water Cube. I guess the Germans figured that if they let the visionary artist Christo wrap the Reichstag during its renovation, why not do something similar to their Beijing Embassy to mark the Olympic Games. They at least got my thumbs up. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of this, but the memory will last quite a long time!