We hurtle past rows of new apartment blocks on the outskirts of Beijing. The train glides into a tunnel 1,400 feet beneath the Great Wall of China, and emerges onto a plain where the 110-foot-long blades of hundreds of wind turbines tower over rows of newly planted pines.
This is the passing panorama on the high-speed train from Beijing to the Taizicheng mountain venue for the 2022 Winter Olympics, and like the Games itself, this 50-minute journey has been designed to impress with a story of China’s progress.
Journalists covering these Olympics have been escorted from hotel to media center to sports venue in special buses, taxis and train carriages, in line with China’s zero-Covid strategy of trying to eliminate infections.