By Margaret Ward in Beijing
Today the hot news in Bejing is the taxi drivers' new uniform, a yellow shirt, blue trousers and a black and yellow striped tie. Beijing's taxi drivers are not always the tidiest so this is part of the clean up of the city's image.
They'll be fined €20 a day for not wearing it and some of the city's 100,000 taxi drivers are finding the tie a bit too much in 35 degrees of heat. But it's the Olympics and every Chinese, it seems, has to make a sacrifice of sorts.
No effort is being spared to spruce things up, but it means there's a certain lack of spontaneity or atmosphere and everyone has to be on their best behaviour.
One local journalist told me that Chinese culture means that hosting the Olympics is like having a big party at your home. You want it to look beautiful, you hide the dirty laundry, you tell the kids to stop fighting, you're worried someone will criticise you, and will feel embarrassed if they don't enjoy themselves.
There are times when you have to feel sorry for the Chinese people. They are putting up with all kinds of inconvenience, only allowed to drive their cars every second day to reduce pollution, squeezing onto the subway, enduring endless security checks, and so on.
And even after all that, the pesky western media arrive in town and start criticising everything in sight. From human rights abuses - usually justifiably - to the fact that English when it's spoken at all is always rather strange. But how many of those journalists have bothered to learn even a handful of Chinese phrases before they arrive to make their snap judgements? I'm often embarrassed to discover that a 19 year-old from China's poorest province speak more English than I speak Chinese - and they've never left the country.
This Olympics is the biggest thing to happen in China since reform and opening up in the late 1970s and it's a matter of huge national pride.
Yes, of course its about the government showing the world a major power has emerged.
It's also about a government showing its own people it can pull off a spectacular world class event - and thus give the Communist party greater legitimacy.
But despite all those things it is also a chance for ordinary Chinese to feel proud of their country and all it has achieved, with many sacrifices from them.
Last February I travelled with a migrant worker home to his village near Xian. He only gets home once a year for the spring festival.
He had been working on the roads around the Olympic venues, and when he showed his photos to his family his pride and theirs was obvious, even moving.
We spoke to him last week and he had to leave Beijing because migrants aren't wanted during the Olympics, construction has stopped to reduce pollution. But he wasn't complaining, even though there was no compensation. He was off to Shanghai to try his luck there - and he hoped the Games would go well.
Many Olympics have produced a story, a narrative that defines the event in later years. Terrorism in Munich, cold war boycotts in Moscow and LA.
In Asia, the Olympics marked Japan's rise from the ashes of World War II and encouraged Seoul's move to democracy.
Beijing's legacy has yet to be written, though no one expects it to include democracy. Those who promote engagement say it has made China more open, though recent events would suggest that not much has changed. China is certainly hosting the Olympics on its terms.
This has probably been the most anticipated Olympics ever.
It is certainly the most choreographed with a government determined to stage manage as much as it can, and taking some very extreme measures to keep protest at bay.
But they too are at the mercy of events. Will the defining images be the glittering stadia, a spectacular opening ceremony, the Chinese at the top of the medal table, or will it be smog, protesters, cultural misunderstandings and mutual recriminations?
A country of 1.3bn people cannot be reduced to a few labels. Many Chinese I've spoken to are hoping that by hosting the games the world will at least see more facets of their country and its people.
The rise of China is the global phenomenon of this decade.
How China and the rest of us deal with that is a story still unfolding.
Let the games begin.
Margaret Ward's piece also appeared on the RTÉ Radio One programme World Report
