The Ward Diaries

For the next year, RTÉ Foreign Editor Margaret Ward will be covering one of the 21st century's most intriguing stories: China.

In this diary, she reveals thoughts, insights and stories, so check back often.

26-06-2008

The 'no fun' Olympics?

If there's ever a sign that things are different in China, it's how the authorities are going about preparing to host their biggest party ever. Some foreigners in Beijing are already starting to call it the 'no fun Olympics'.

Foreign students and teachers whose visas expire at the end of the academic year are not being allowed to get extensions to stay on for the Games. Some think that's because these are the kind of people who might just be tempted to unfurl a 'Free Tibet' banner on the Great Wall or wear a Dalai Lama t-shirt inside the Bird's Nest.

Not a day goes by without another anecdotal example of the lengths to which the authorities will go to make the Games a perfect showcase. The trouble now is that the whole thing may look perfect on the TV screen but be lacking in atmosphere for those actually here. And that would be real pity.

The venues are stunning, the attempts to improve the infrastructure particularly the metro have been impressive, and after the earthquake there is probably a lot more goodwill towards China than previously.   

Some of the precautions are minor but tedious annoyances in daily life. A few weeks ago it was a notice that all residents needed an entry card for the compound where I live.

Bring your photo, passport and copy of your rental agreement. Just to be allowed in your own front door. The pizza delivery man isn't allowed in anymore either, lest he threaten the security of the foreigners who live here.

Now my assistant tells me that there's a notice in her compound telling people not to walk their dogs during the Olympics. She lives several miles from the Olympic Village - so what is this all about? Making sure athletes don't get bitten - or that dog poo isn't anywhere to be seen in Beijing? Don't they realise that there is dog poo all over the world - and I have to say I've never noticed that it's a particular problem here.

Her dog already lives in something of a legal limbo. He's taller than the regulation limit for dogs in the city (I kid you not) but as he's registered in inner Mongolia she can tell the authorities that he's just a tourist.

The human tourist industry is already suffering with hotels complaining that far from an Olympic boom, they are actually losing out. China's new visa restrictions have put people off - if people aren't on a package tour they needs letters of invitation, and embassies around the world have become more sticky about who is allowed  in.

It's all supposed to be part of China's security operation (yesterday surface to air missiles were installed not far from the Olympic Green) but it means that businesses here are not reaping the benefits they thought they would. Yes, many five star hotels are full for the Games themselves, with officials, corporate sponsors and media, but not for the weeks before and after. And a recent report said four star hotels are only 44% booked.

Originally it was planned that there would be huge outdoor screens for the public to watch the opening and closing ceremonies and the Olympic events. But no one can confirm if those are still going ahead.  Beijing's biggest music festival was cancelled recently on security grounds, and even an annual street party was refused permission.

Pubs and cafés with outdoor seats on the streets of the embassy area have been forced to take their seats inside, even though temperatures on a summer night can be close to 30C.

Beijing has quite a nightlife scene, one that surprises and usually pleases many visitors - but it looks like it won't be as lively as usual during the Games.

A crackdown on prostitution and drugs is understandable and the authorities do have real security concerns - but if things keep going the way they are Beijing risks being seen as a real party pooper.

19-06-08

For the past few weeks cyberspace has been buzzing with speculation about the role of China's Olympic mascots in the series of incidents and tragedies that has blighted China since the beginning of the year.

But no more - the cyber police have been removing posts that suggest that the five symbols have anything to do with the Tibetan crisis, the recent earthquake or the floods.

The Five Fuwas - or Five Friendlies - are Beijing's official Olympic mascots. They are seen on everything from key rings to T-shirts. Human sized versions of them have paraded at Olympic test events to spread the message of goodwill.

But when the recent floods hit the south of the country the speculation that had been building seemed to be confirmed.

One mascot is called Yingying, the Tibetan antelope. Earlier this year the Tibet protests and subsequent crackdown grabbed worldwide attention and led to tension between China and the West

Another mascot, Huanhuan, symbolises the Olympic flame. Following the Tibet crisis the Olympic torch relay was dogged by protests as it travelled around the world.

The link with Nini - the swallow  - is a bit more  tenuous, but chatrooms were abuzz with its resemblance to the kite, the symbol of Shandong province where a major train crash happened recently

Jingjing the Panda is the symbol of Sichuan the scene of last month's deadly earthquake

And now Beibei, the fish, is being connected to the floods that have swept through southern China.

The Chinese love symbolism and despite the best efforts of the communist party, superstition is still an important part of life.

Indeed the Beijing organizers themselves chose 8.08pm on the 8th day of the 8th month 2008 for the opening ceremony of the Games, eight being a lucky number here.

And after  the year China has had, one would have to hope that the luck of its people will turn soon.

24-03-08

Light the passion, share the dream, is supposed to be the motto of the Olympic Torch relay. But the Olympic dream has gone sour.

2008 was supposed to be China's year on the world stage, and it still will be. But now, it seems, for all the wrong reasons.

Tibet was always going to be on the agenda. Overseas protestors were expected to use the occasion of the Olympics to draw attention to China's repressive rule there. But the scale of the protests inside Tibet and the riots that followed there and elsewhere seem to have caught China by surprise.

The Chinese authorities are busy pointing out that the protests in Lhasa last Friday week (left) were anything but peaceful, and this is true, but they reflect the fact that many young Tibetans are angry and frustrated at what has happened to their people, and have no other way to express that.

More ridiculous are China's claims that this was all masterminded by the Dalai Lama, a man who has dedicated his life to the cause of non-violence.

These kind of claims and the repressive nature of China's crackdown are now exposing the fact that while China has changed greatly since 'reform and opening up', the attitude of the Communist party to those who disagree with its right to rule has not changed at all.

But China now faces a real problem. There are four and a half months to go to the Olympics. The Olympic torch relay which begins today in Greece will undoubtedly provide a ready made mobile protest site to Tibetan activist groups around the world, who will use it to keep this issue on the agenda for the next few months.

The relay is supposed to go through Tibet in June and a separate flame is supposed to be brought to the top of Mount Everest by climbers in May. That is seen by many Tibetans as a highly provocative symbol of Chinese dominance.

Apart from the challenge of dealing with world opinion, China also faces the task of keeping the restive Tibetan areas calm without the level of repression that could lead to a wholesale boycott of the Games.

So far western governments have been relatively mild in their criticism, calling for restraint and dialogue, with little outright condemnation. Part of this is based on the desire of these governments to engage with China and its vast potential market, but the lack of independent information also means the pressure to respond is reduced.

If there are no international journalists with their own images of what has happened in places like Aba county in Sichuan (exile groups have produced pictures of dead bodies outside monasteries) then there is no independent proof of the repression.

And that of course is why China has cast aside its much publicised claim that it opened up China to foreign media in advance of the Olympics.

A researcher working for RTÉ in Sichuan tried to get to Aba last week to find out what is going on. It was gently suggested to me that there was no point in bringing along a 5ft 10 red-haired reporter with hardly any of Chinese and no Tibetan, who was unlikely to make it through the police checkpoints.

Our researcher managed to meet a handful of Tibetans, one of whom had been in the town of Ganzi when young Tibetans began a protest. He said that he saw the army encircle the protesters and break them into small groups. Later he was told that three people were shot and ten arrested. Verifying these kinds of reports is impossible.

Yesterday we heard that a government official in Aba had told a contact in Sichuan that executions had already begun. Another thing that is impossible to verify. Tibetan exile groups in Dharamsala in India, with whom we checked, have no way of speaking to their contacts in Aba anymore either.

Last week prime minister Wen Jiabao told the foreign and domestic media that 'truth is the first virtue of a system of thought'. If this is so, and if China is so convinced of its version of events, then the question has to be, when will it allow the foreign media to go and see for themselves.

14-03-08

Shortly after I arrived in Beijing last autumn I was stopped in the street by an earnest young woman with a clipboard.

She explained she was doing a survey to find out the attitudes of foreigners to what the form described as the public behaviour civilisation of Beijing citizens

In one of the early questions I was asked which of the following matches peoples performance: they throw the rubbish no matter where it is,they spit no matter where it is, they use the tissue or paper bag to spit.

You might wonder why one of Beijing's most prestigious universities would spend time asking foreigners about spitting habits

But this is a city that is preparing at every level for the Olympic Games and if there is one things that has got the authorities of Beijing exercised - it is how will Olympic visitors react to the admittedly rather gross habit of spitting loudly and publicly.

Anyway four months after my encounter with the survey lady Beijing now has information boards in local neighbourhoods with cartoons urging people not to spit or throw their rubbish around.

Large red signs painted on walls urge people to be civilised citizens to bring honour to Beijing

The authorities are also worried about how the home audience will behave. In the survey I was asked whether I thought audiences boo and hoot, cheer for the host team only and if there is too much of what they called scurrility.

My fellow ex-pats must have given a low score on this - because Beijing has now set up cheerleading schools to teach people how to cheer at the Olympics. Let me warn you that the noise will be unbelievable - at the Special Olympics in Shanghai we were all issued with a box containing clappers, whistles and other devices and urged to use them in unison more or less all the time.

The last question was the most revealing - the government wanted our advice on how to improve the public behaviour of its citizens

Among the options given for me to suggest were that schools should give lessons in civilisation and the citizens should be taught to improve their self-consciousness and responsibility

The last and slightly spooky one was that the government should form the social atmosphere and the public surveillance power, whatever that is. CCTV cameras to shame spitters on national TV? In China anything is possible

The authorities like to believe that people can be managed, and told what to do. After all that's how they ran the country until relatively recently.

Some of the things they are trying to do like teach Beijing taxi drivers 100 words of English are at least well intentioned and practical.

Many of the others are all about face, about making sure China looks good, and perhaps trying to stop the tabloids of the world running articles on Beijing citizen's bad habits

But all this fails to take account of the fact that one of the charms of Beijing is the absolutely random and fascinating nature of ones interactions with the lao bai xing, what people here call Old one hundred names. The closest translation is ordinary people

Anyone adventurous enough to come to China for the Olympics doesn't want a standardised experience. They want to see China, not something manufactured for the period of the games.

Its true that Beijingers push and shove in the metro and the bus queue, that taxis stink of garlic, and that people sometimes spit in the street.

But in my experience they are also a pretty friendly bunch and will usually help out a waiguoren - a foreigner, who is lost or needs help.

I haven't once been cheated by a taxi driver and some of them have gone out of their way to carry my bags or find an address that I cannot pronounce properly.

And all of this was without being told to do so by the city government.

The reassuring thing is that for all the posters and campaigns the lao bai xing of Beijing are likely to carry on as usual. They are enthusiastic about the Games, keen to welcome foreigners and proud they will be on the world stage.

But I haven't met a single taxi driver with more than five words of English, the driving is as bad as ever and unlikely to improve. And my taxi this morning stank of garlic.

04-03-08

The evening light shimmered on the hills beyond as we entered the Nu river valley. Sugarcane and mangoes grow by the side of the road. The vegetation is lush, there are palm trees. And always the river on our right, rushing by on its long journey from the Tibetan glaciers to the sea in Burma.

As late evening turned to dusk, we passed through a few villages. All was quiet although it was only 8pm. Already we were far away from Han China and its karaoke bars, car horns and endless noise. As we climbed further up the valley the stars came out. No light pollution here, in what is one of China's last wilderness areas. 

So it was something of a surprise to reach our destination, Liuku, the capital of the Nujiang autonomous area. The people may be Lisu, one of Chinas 55 minorities, but Liuku looks like any other Han town, with the same white bathroom- tiled buildings that have shot up all over China and the same brothels masquerading as hairdressers or massage parlours. Liuku makes its money from the timber business across the border in Burma and now its hoping to be a hydropower boom town.

That is why we came. We had heard through contacts that a dam project that was put on hold by Beijing is already underway, but that a group of farmers were refusing to leave their land because they had not been compensated.

In the morning we went straight to the farmers' old village, Xiaoshaba. Two families still live here, but the rest of the villagers have moved to town, their houses demolished.

In 2003 the local authorities got together with the power companies to harness the Nu river. They wanted to build 13 dams and eight power stations producing more electricity than the well known and controversial Three Gorges Dam. But for once China's fledgling environmental movement scored a victory - the country's prime minister Wen Jiabao ordered an environmental impact assessment.

The problem is, no one has seen it yet, but the local authorities moved the villagers out last year and gave them houses in town. Now they want their farmland, but only want to rent it, not fully compensate the farmers for the loss of use.

The old village chief came to meet us. His house overlooking the river is in ruins. He lives in town, but has no job and still comes back to the village to  search for firewood.  'If we get one days work in town we get one days pay' he says. 'If not we have no income. Land is the root of life for farmers; all the generations lived on it. If we have no land we have no income.'

A few hundred metres upstream is the site for the first power station. Just a few weeks ago the bulldozers and diggers moved in and started building access roads and strengthening the river bank. The dam may be officially on hold, but all the signs on the ground are that it is going ahead.

Two weeks ago a group of construction workers tried to start works on the farmers land - but a group of 50 farmers managed to send them packing. We met He Xiuying and her husband as they chopped firewood for their nightly fire. They have built a shack and are sleeping every night on their land to stop the construction workers from occupying it. They have a mobile phone and say they will call the other farmers if anyone turns up.
As we chat, a car pulls up with two men inside. They want to know who we are, we ask them who wants to know. They drive off. 'From the construction company,' He tells us.

When we get back to our hotel the police are waiting.  They are relatively friendly and say they just want to know who we are and why we are here. We produce passports and press cards and explain that the new rules in China allow us to report without obstruction.

They say of course, no problem. And then proceed to tell our translator that we cannot film at the sensitive place, the dam site. When she asks innocently why not, the reply almost makes me burst out laughing. 'Because it hasn't been decided yet', they say. After a few more attempts to get us to explain what we have been doing they head off. A half an hour later I hear a commotion in the corridor. The local government has sent two officials of the propaganda department to our translators' room and a lively discussion is in progress. They too want to know what we are doing and tell our translator that she is not to bring us to the site.

By now we are getting calls telling us that the people we interviewed today have been questioned by police. Two local contacts, who helped us, decide its time to leave town for a few days and take our tape with them, in case things heat up.  Next day there are police in the car park watching where we go, but we do not go to the dam site. We have that footage in the can already. We head off up the valley to see the beautiful scenery that the dams will probably destroy and meet some of the minority people who live along the river.

International media attention may mean that the farmers along the Nu get better compensation but it seems that, as far as the river is concerned, the die is cast. China's last major undammed river will go the way of the others. Environmental activism is growing here, but so far it has had few real victories.  When it comes to a trade off, it seems the environment usually loses.

22-02-08

When Steven Spielberg announced he was quitting as artistic advisor to the Beijing it was the first real blow to China's image-making activities in a year when it plans to show the world just how far it has come.

Spielberg said he was resigning because of what he called China's failure to use its position to pressurise the Sudanese over Darfur.

China was slow to react, but what has happened since has been instructive. First of all it took time. The Chinese authorities do not put out a statement after a couple of hours, about anything.

The Foreign Ministry was forced to react a few days later because it holds an open press conference twice a week. But it was bland stuff about the need to enhance communication about China's role in Darfur.

A few days later the domestic press were let off the leash - with China Youth Daily saying that the director was famous for science fiction and now seems to live in that world and can't distinguish dreams from reality.

Next came the commentaries in the English language government- controlled Chinese media with pointed references to Iraq.

What is interesting is what has happened since. China rapidly upped its diplomatic activity on the issue with its envoy on Darfur, Liu Guijin, now heading back to Khartoum for his fourth visit. Chinese Prime minister Wen Jiabao has been on the phone to Gordon Brown outlining what China is doing to improve the situation.

Guijin told the BBC today that China's foreign policy is based on non interference and that sanctions will not be considered. But it still clear that China has felt the heat and the loss of face.

Last year it changed its tone on Darfur when Mia Farrow floated the phrase Genocide Games and put so much pressure on Spielberg (comparing him to Leni Riefenstahl who made films at the 1936 Olympics) that he wrote to the Chinese president calling for action.  Soon afterwards China sent an envoy to Sudan who was credited with persuading the Sudanese at the time to accept UN peacekeepers.

But presumably Farrow got to Spielberg again, as there has been very little progress on the ground in Sudan, with the Sudanese holding up the deployment of the main body of peacekeepers.

The reality is that China appears to be doing just enough on the Darfur issue to avoid being seen as completely obstructive. They seem to have carefully calibrated what the international community will accept.

George W Bush has already said he is coming to the Olympics, and did not add any caveats. Gordon Brown more or less asked for a ticket when he was here recently and was invited on the spot. There is no appetite for a boycott among western nations, who argue that it is better to engage with China than shout from the sidelines.

Sometimes that kind of engagement seems a bit half-hearted.

When the EU was here for its annual meeting with China in November, a journalist asked the Portuguese prime minister (Portugal held the EU presidency at the time) about the human rights discussion at the meeting.

The answer was 'We didn't have time to talk about human rights.' As he quickly realised that this was not a good answer to a roomful of journalists, he hastily added 'But we will talk about it over dinner.'

However the Spielberg incident is the first sign that the honeymoon of 2008 is over. China can expect more critical journalism over the next few months as more journalists come to Beijing to cover the Games and the stories around it.

China is learning, perhaps slowly, that if it wants to be seen as a major power then it will have to get used to the idea that its policies on a whole range of issues will be subject to far more scrutiny than before.  And it is becoming clear that outside pressure can pay off, but is difficult to sustain.

A postscript: today China launched its strangest comment yet on the whole Spielberg affair. Someone in HR obviously alerted the authorities that Spielberg had never actually returned the signed contract for the role of artistic advisor. So now the line is, how he could resign, he was never employed!

18-01-08

I was frozen by the time I reached the clinic to visit the doctor and tried out my pidgin Chinese on him. 'Jiantian tianqi tai leng',  today is very cold, I offered.

'Oh today is the coldest day of the year', he said. And he explained that according to Chinese tradition Laba, which fell on Tuesday, is always the coldest day of the year.

And it certainly was the coldest so far at minus eleven degrees. In Chinese la means the twelfth lunar month and ba means the eight day.

In a rapidly developing China, which is constantly announcing new growth levels, greater car ownership, internet penetration and so on, tradition may seem to be disappearing.

But some truly Chinese things live on.

Like laba porridge, which is also called eight treasure porridge for its high nutritional content. At the Lama temple on Tuesday the monks distributed the porridge which is made of glutinous rice, red beans, millet, sorghhum, dried lotus seeds, dates and chestnuts.

And the government took the opportunity to launch a booklet on healthy eating called the China Diet Guide. They are alarmed at the rise in obesity and diabetes linked to the change from a traditional Chinese diet to more Westernised  pattern of consumption of meat and dairy products.

I didn't have any laba, but I skipped my usual lunchtime sandwich and instead stopped by on the way home from the doctor at my favourite place in Beijing, the Stoneboat Café in Ritan Park.

Watching the kids skating on the icy pond I tucked into a big dish of rib-sticking pork dumplings and a few mugs of jasmine tea. Which did the trick too.

And then back out into the cold again. It will be bitter here until March, and a lot of dumplings will be needed to get through it.

22-11-07

It was on my sixth visit to the foreigners' visa office of the Beijing Public Security Bureau that I finally took possession of the essential RTÉ 'chops', seals which represents RTÉ in China in a way that my signature cannot. Ours have RTÉ in the middle in Roman letters and Radio Teilifis Éireann, Irish radio and television, in Chinese characters around the edge.
 
I was expecting beautifully carved ones like you can buy in the markets. These were plastic and not so impressive. But very necessary. Until I had them I could not apply for my residence permit or sign a lease.

So now we have both and are officially registered as a news bureau in China. And the ladies who issue them were extremely helpful to the foreigner who was in a tizzy to get the seal so she could apply for her residence permit before her visa ran out.
 
One seal is for legal documents and letters, the other far more valuable one is the financial seal to be used for banking transactions. Although it was hassle to get the seals, I kind of like the fact that China has kept this tradition, when so much here is being swept away in the rush to modernise.
 
Every day you pass by another neighbourhood that has been demolished to make way for another skyscraper, some of them extraordinarily impressive, others bland concrete blocks tiled in white.

In 20 year the Chinese have turned a city of flat buildings into a high-rise, neon-lit metropolis. And while many people are sorry to see the old neighbourhoods go, they are often glad to get the hot water, hearing and conveniences of a modern apartment.
 
On the surface Beijing feels like an international city, at least in the CBD, or central business district. There are Starbucks (left) galore with free wireless broadband and ATMs on every corner. We bought our office furniture in IKEA and our stationery in Carrefour.

Both were full of middle class Chinese, the first generation with real purchasing power. You can buy Kerrygold butter in Jenny Lou's supermarket, which is geared up for expats, and Baileys in the Seven Eleven. 

But under the surface things work very differently here. You find out in subtle ways how things work if you are Chinese and not a pampered expat.

Like having to show your passport to be allowed to order foreign publications like the South China Morning Post or the International Herald Tribune. Like discovering that unless there are at least 85% foreigners in the apartment building, you cannot have satellite TV with channels like BBC World.

Both these measure are designed to make sure the vast bulk of Chinese do not have access to critical outside coverage of their country. BBC's website is blocked, though the front page is accessible so you can tune into the World Service through the net.
 
And if I think my paperwork is complicated, it can be far more challenging if you are Chinese. Beijing residents need a hukou or residence permit to live in the city. In some ways it is very understandable, as otherwise the place would be even more swamped by people from the countryside looking for work.

But until recently if you did not have a hukou your children could not go to school or get hospital treatment. That is changing but there still are not school places for all the children of migrant workers. 

Passing by building sites you sometimes get a glimpse inside the tents of the workers who live beside their sites. It is getting cold in Beijing now and life is pretty harsh for those at the bottom of the ladder. But the dream of life beyond the rural farm is a powerful one.

13-11-07

SMOG!

The first time I came to Beijing, in November 2005, I felt sick before I even reached the city centre from the airport. We were on our way to North Korea and had a 16 hour stopover in the city. The smog was so bad I never left the hotel and swore I would never come back.

The song, 'There are nine million bicycles in Beijing' kept coming into my head. It felt like there were more than nine million cars.

It still does, but now I'm back with a year in Beijing to look forward to.

When the smog rolls in, as it has done on about four days this past month, Beijing feels ghostly. Buildings disappear, the sun struggles to shine through. It feels like twilight in the middle of the day. On the worst days it catches in your throat and those with asthma, and small children, need to stay indoors.

Beijing is in a bowl with mountains to the north and west and when there is no wind the pollution from cars, factories and coal burning power stations serving 16 million people has nowhere to go, so it just sits above us all. 

Not surprisingly it's one of the biggest concerns about the Olympic Games. Who would want to run even a short distance in such conditions, nevermind testing events like endurance cycling or the marathon. As it is the mercury will be in the 30s in August testing athletes to the limit. The International Olympic Committee has not ruled out the possibility of delaying certain events if air quality is not up to scratch.

While praising the Beijing organisers on many scores, recent reports by both the UN environment programme (UNEP) and a conference on Sport and the environment have highlighted air pollution as an issue that still needs to be tackled.

Beijing points to the fact that it had what it calls 241 blue sky days in 2006, up on previous years.

But as UNEP's tables point out the standards that Beijing aims for are not World Health Organisation standards, and in some cases are five times less demanding.

UNEP has pointed out that 'particulate matter' exceeds WHO standards by 200% or more.  This is caused by many factors including coal burning and construction dust.

The Beijing organisers and the city and national governments are pulling out all the stops to try and make sure no one has anything to complain about come Games time.

Last week we visited Beijing's number two chemical plant which is being moved lock, stock, and barrel to a new location on the outskirts of the city. Bulldozers were carving out a new industrial location right up against the mountains. The city's biggest steelworks is also on the move. Officials say they aren't just moving the pollution elsewhere, they are also putting in new, cleaner technology in the new locations.

But Beijing's biggest problem is the motorcar. There may not be nine million cars in Beijing, but there are at least three million. More than a thousand new cars hit the road here every day, in a city that had only 170,000 cars in 1996. Earlier this year officials tested a system that may be used come Games times. Every second day cars with odd numbered registrations can come into the city, and the next day it's the turn of the even numbers.

We met the man who has the job of sorting all this out by next August. Would he take every car off the road if he had to?

He laughed, but eventually admitted that Beijing will do whatever it takes. And it will.

Environmentalists hope that whatever the outcome for the Games, the lessons learned won't just be forgotten by the closing ceremony. Beijingers deserve better air, whether the Olympics is in town or not.

6-10-07

Carol Swann freely admits that she is far more nervous than her daughter Ruth who is taking her place on the diving board below us at Shanghai's aquatic centre.

21-year-old Ruth is swimming in lane five for Ireland in the 50m freestyle. She is the only one of the six swimmers who will dive in and her coach hopes it will gain her a few precious seconds on the competition.

The noise is deafening, and everyone is sweltering in the heat.

Up in the stand Carol is being supported by her friends Norman and Valerie Davison, whose daughter Kathy won a bronze medal yesterday.

'Carol asked me at the pool ten years ago how come our daughter swam so well', says Valerie. 'Now here she is with Ruth in Shanghai. That is Special Olympics'.

Both girls swim with the Ripples Club in Craigavon, which is affiliated to Special Olympics Ireland. 

The parents started the club because once the children left school they did not have any facilities or training.

Kathy is happy to show off her medal from yesterday.

'I am very proud of myself', she says.  'My sister Yvette is coming out today from England and I will show it to her. And I have more races, the 200m backstroke is my favourite'.

'On your marks', the swimmers take their places, and the race begins.

Ruth very soon establishes herself in second place. Carol has her accreditation over her face, she can hardly look at the pool.

At the turn Ruth starts to flag a little bit, and the Irish contingent raise their voices to support her. 'Don't slow down', her mother yells, 'keep going'.

By now we are all roaring. 

Ruth keeps going to take the silver and the Irish go mad.

Carol and Valerie hug for what seems like a very long time, two mothers who understand just what this means for their daughters, a reward for years of training and patience.

'It's just wonderful', says Carol as she rushes off to ring her husband Colin.

'I think he was a bit emotional', she reports back 'I could hardly talk to him myself, I was about to cry.'

For coach Garda Teresa Mc Cabe from Sligo, it is another great result. 'I am delighted, she really swam very well, and gave her all. I have to pretend that I am calm and cool, but my stomach is in my mouth while they are swimming.'

Down in the pool another race is in progress, it is won by an American in 43sec.

But one swimmer from Barbados stops about 5m from the end, clinging to the rope dividing the lanes.

From up here it is not clear if she is injured or just exhausted.

The crowd rises to its feet to cheer her on, and she inches her way along the rope.

She stops again, about to give up.

The clapping grows and after a few seconds she manages the last few strokes.

A Chinese volunteer holds out her hand and she makes it home.

It has taken her 2mins 31sec, but she has lived up to the Special Olympics motto, 'I know I can'.

2-10-07

There are 18m people in Shanghai, but even so a thousand Irish are making a racket.

Green T-shirts swarm on the famous Bund, busloads of Irish families check out the Fake Market and the athletes get to grips with the steamy heat and the fact that they are served Chinese food at every meal (though I did spot a tray of burgers being brought in to last night's farewell dinner in the host town area of Shanghai).

Chinese volunteers wear Orange, Irish ones wear Green. And the Chinese volunteers are really getting into the swing of things. Many of the volunteers attached to the Irish teams are medical students, who openly admit that they knew very little about disability before they started.

They have been very impressed by the standard of sport. Yesterday the Chinese volunteers played the Irish at basketball, and got hammered 15-1! And this is the country where Yao Ming, who plays in the NBA is a national hero. He's here along with a number of other celebrities including Colin Farrell.

Those associated with Special Olympics hope that the event will do much to overcome people's misconceptions about disability here.

There's no doubt that China has much to do in this area. It's a country of 1.3 billion people, of whom 24 million people have intellectual disabilities, and outside the bigger cities the provision of special education is fairly patchy.

One of the Chinese volunteers told us that before he started, his impression of intellectually-disabled people was that they didn't behave well in public and were very difficult to take care of.

He admits that his mind has been opened during the last few days.