The day after the Olympics officially ended, the Bureau found ourselves at Silk Street Market off of Jianguomen Wai in Beijing’s CBD. Silk Street is a massive 6-floor market filled with stalls of hawkers selling everything from baby clothes to fake Panerai watches to tailored suits.

We figured it would be a fun place to visit today; there were many people leaving the city, and they must need souvenirs, we thought. We were right. We saw Brazilian tourists haggling for teacups, Belarusian Rhythmic Gymnasts buying pearls; we got our picture taken with the women’s head basketball coach of Mali, of all places. In fact, we saw people from just about every country, from Croatia to Eritrea, all bemusedly bargaining for their last minute gifts at Silk Street. Because nothing says “Beijing: 2008” like a fake Paul Smith button-down.

We thought the scene going on inside Silk Street was a cool microcosm of an integral aspect of China’s relationship with the world: Foreigners from every continent colliding here to haggle for and buy cheap (often fake) goods.

But yeah, the Olympics are over. The ubiquitous, yellow accreditation-clad visitors begin their sweaty shuffle home, returning with new suits and stuffed Fuwas, all with stories to tell about how wonderfully exotic the last three weeks were. Soon, migrant workers and prostitutes will begin to poke their heads out of their suburban hiding spots and slowly return to the city center. Maggie’s will probably re-open. Our DVD store will restock (pirated) new releases; for some reason the only DVD’s available during the Olympics - in tourist areas, at least - were pre-1960 classics like Greta Garbo flicks, "Poseidon Adventure" and "Killer’s Kiss." We expect the normal pollution to return, like a warm, poisonous blanket you just can’t get to sleep without. Hopefully Beijing takes down the temporary walls it erected to (partially) conceal the city’s “grittier” neighborhoods.

We’re interested to see what happens to Beijing over the next few months. There are no more stadiums being built or anything, but skyscrapers and super-malls are still going up all over the place. Beijing, as opposed to, say, Athens or Sydney, is actually going to grow into the shell it’s built for itself during the Olympics. (Over the next four years, they’ll finish building four more subway lines.) The city will probably continue to have a use for the Bird’s Nest, Wukesong Arena, & the Water Cube (supposedly being turned into a mall) and that mysterious plaza of buildings near the Olympic Green. And by the time the Olympics roll around in 2016 (when the statute of limitations runs out on He Kexin, by the way), it’s not much of a stretch to think Beijing will have 25 million residents.

In a NY Times article about the handing over of the torch to London mayor Boris Johnson, we can begin to see the more relaxed approach to the next Olympics:

“Guo and Rogge were thin, erect and serious, encased in creased dark suits. Johnson shambled out, his middle button undone, a hand in his pocket. He waved, pointed, pumped his fist and grinned: a naughty schoolboy out with the grown-ups.”

We had a great time, but we’re ready to settle back into our normal, China-hued lives. And we’ll be happy to watch the next Games’ as outsiders, to see an Olympics that won’t take itself too seriously. One that won’t be a, gulp, “coming out party” but just… a party.

On the next post from the Deadspin Beijing Bureau: the Bureau searches for a new job as the Paralympics roll into town.

Out of all the problems that could dampen the mood of the Beijing Olympics, this bizarre tragedy comes furthest out of left field. Beijing and Shanghai - all of China’s densely populated cities for that matter - are rather safe when it comes to violent crimes of this kind. Pickpockets, business scams - these happen all the time (though Beijing has done a remarkable job of limiting their visibility). But an unprovoked attack on a Western tourist at one of Beijing’s most important monuments is unheard of, frankly.

The tragic incident is a black eye for China – which made security top priority for the games – and the attack was a jolt of reality after euphoria of last night’s opening ceremony. Crimes against foreigners are especially rare here.

For the Olympic games over 100,000 security officers have been deployed and the city is teeming with elderly neighborhood watch patrols, security guards, police, paramilitary officers, heavily armored SWAT teams, soldiers, and an unknown number of plain clothes officers. In some areas, soldiers are posted every 15 feet. X-ray machines have been placed in every single subway station. Even run-down restaurants have installed closed-circuit security cameras.

Beijing certainly seems secure these days - to the point of inconvenience for locals & visitors – but events like this demonstrate how difficult it is to stop one determined person from doing, well, anything; how does a government prepare for a lone man with a knife and, as it stands, no apparent motive? The area around the Olympic village and the Bird’s nest is a fortified zone; your ticketless & un-credentialed Bureau, not to mention other undesirables, haven’t even come close to approaching it. But the whole city can’t be locked down like that, and unfortunately there will always be open targets for someone with sinister intentions.

The Bureau took in the opening ceremony Friday night in the company of about 10,000 other people on Beijing’s Wangfujing Street, one of 26 live-sites where thousands of Beijingers and visitors could watch coverage on giant public screens. While there was a police presence, there were no security checks, and once we found ourselves packed into the sweaty center of a crowd there was no way out. Dense crowds like these are attractive and vulnerable targets. And there are dense crowds all over the city. If the Bureau takes anything away from this attack it is the disconcerting realization that security – no matter how tight – can’t prepare for every last potential perpetrator, and that just one person can make a deadly impact.

The opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics starts tomorrow morning at 8:08 am (for you guys, that is). It seems undeniable that this moment, rather than any upcoming competition, is the glorious and controversial culmination of more than 7 years of planning and 40 billion dollars worth of infrastructure that has left indelible physical and social changes to the fabric of Beijing.

It’s going to be a stunning spectacle, for sure — no country does festive explosions quite like China. For instance, we become aware of our excruciating hangovers every Sunday morning around 9 am after being awaken by the crackle of fireworks exploding in the courtyard of our apartment complex (it’s just like an alarm clock)… Don’t ask us what’s being celebrated, exactly. The point is, the fireworks you’re going to see broadcast on NBC tomorrow morning will make the scene on the 4th of July in Manhattan look like electrified foil in the microwave. It’s going to be bizarre, fascinating, awkwardly over-the-top and presented on an unimaginable scale.

We are sports fans and frankly, we’ve never cared too much about the Olympics. Vague excitement has always dissipated into fleeting interest of daily medal count graphics on SportsCenter amidst the distractions of summer. In our old lives in America, we’d watch basketball, maybe some diving or whatever, as background noise from our televisions. So we understand why one might be disinterested in the Games.

But the opening ceremony tomorrow night isn’t about sports; it’s world history. Soon, the rest of the world will refer to a pre- and post- Olympic China and the point between the two eras will be, definitively, 8/08/08 at 8:08 pm. This thing is as symbolic as an event can be. The way the world is going, seminal events in social history won’t be battles or speeches… but heavily produced, made-for-TV spectacles. Like this one. And if that interests you, well, you might want to tune in.

Remember, the Deadspin Beijing Bureau can be reached at deadspin.china@gmail.com