RPCV Mike Meyer Writes About Beijing One Year After the Summer Games

Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) author of The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed which won the Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award for 2009 given by PeaceCorpsWriters returned to Beijing recently and has written an article about his visit to the site of the 2008 Olympics for Sports Illustrated. “One World, One Dream One year Later” is in the August 3, 2009, issue of the magazine, but you can read it here: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1158404/index.htm

By many measures, writes Meyer, “the 2008 Olympics were a smashing success, but for the people of Beijing, the Games have left a mixed legacy.”

Meyer’s book on Beijing, published by Walker & Company in 2008, detailed the life in one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods and the dislocation and overturning of its storied culture as the city prepared to host the ’08 Summer Games.