In the year leading up to the Olympics, I was working as a speed typist for the Ministry of Propaganda and I had agreed to spend the first night of Chinese New Year at the apartment of my roomate's aunt. She lived in the far North of the city and the cab that took us up there skirted the stadiums that were still being built. You could smell the construction — an awful, coppery whiff — and see the things hulking there, but that was as close as you got. Shoddy plywood fenced the park, with guard huts at various intervals illuminated to show stern-faced bao an grumbling inside.