Epilogue
********** the time of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony, to hear the Western pundits narrate the elaborate performances orchestrated by star director Zhang Yimou, one would have taken progress itself for a size-queen — the bigger always the better.
There were 15,000 people performing labor-intensive shows for a crowd of 91,000 in a newly minted stadium, made of 42,000 tons of steel. That is to say, the stadium was well over capacity. That stadium — a structure known as the Bird’s Nest, reviled by many Beijingers as an eyesore — was no less than the very largest steel structure in the world.
Torn between two hegemons, the rest of the world got bigger, in the way Americans and subsequently Chinese prepared food and amassed fortunes. My purpose is not to say that
