Long dream fulfilled, but miles still to go

In June in Beijing, when I got into a taxi, I was amazed to see the white cotton seat cover, the kind I would hesitate to use on my home sofa. When I complimented the driver on the shining clean seats, he smiled shyly. There are many small things like this that reflect the eagerness of the people in Beijing be a good host. The taxi-driver, along with a quarter of the world's population, is ready to welcome the world to China for the Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing. Just as President Hu Jintao said: all that the Chinese people want is to host them successfully.

It was in 1932 that China had its first Olympian. Liu Changchun, a sprinter, made an exhausting, 25-day sea journey to the Los Angeles Games, only to be eliminated in the first round. It was not until 1984, again in Los Angeles, that Xu Haifeng won China's first Olympic gold medal - in shooting.

Hosting the world's greatest sporting event for the first time, 114 years after the first modern Olympics, is a matter of great pride for the 1.3 billion Chinese people, particularly the young generation born in the 1980s and 90s, who grew up in an era of rising prosperity and the information explosion.