Monster solution for stadium
By Linda Gibson (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-15 10:07
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Here's a three-word answer about what to do with Beijing's beautiful, costly, often empty Bird's Nest: monster-truck shows.
This fits in with the city's growing car-culture. As the nation able to boast so many superlatives related to bigness, China's Olympic stadium is the perfect place to stage these eye-popping, ear-splitting, fume- and smoke-spewing celebrations of automotive mayhem.
Monster trucks, for those who haven't heard of them, are normal-sized pickup trucks transformed by huge tires, jacked-up chassis and big engines into behemoths. Sporting names such as Bulldozer, The Reaper, Grave Digger and Cardiac Arrest, they perform stunts involving speed, noise, danger, lots of crushed metal and occasional fatalities.
Whole families attend these events, usually stopping by the display trucks to have their photos taken next to the 1.7-m high tires. Inside the arena, trucks take turns racing each other and competing in free-style events that showcase driving skill.
Most stunts require drivers to get their 5700-kg trucks airborne - at least the front ends - so they can slam down on top of and crush hapless vehicle victims. Cars, vans, buses, airplanes and ambulances get smashed into wreckage.
In between races, human cannonballs and daredevil motorcyclists perform.
But the attraction that might appeal most to Beijingers is Draco The Dragonator, "The world's only mutant, bionic mechanical, fire-breathing creature with jaws of steel."
Draco has a horned head, enormous metal fangs and a long neck anchored in the body of a tank, as well as his own website. He's impressive, but I'll bet a Dragon-monster designed and built here, in the land of the dragon, could out-chew, out-spew and out-do Draco.
The Chinese model could start by nibbling on tidbits like pedicabs, then snack on Hummer limosines. For added thrills, legions of taxi drivers and bicyclists could be released into the arena to test their mettle against the monster. Vendors could hawk toy replicas and meat sticks and good-luck dashboard charms, and every event would end with a huge fireworks show.
Beijing isn't the only city to wonder what to do with a big stadium. Monster-truck shows fill stadiums, arenas and coliseums all over the United States and Europe.
The US city of Tampa, Florida, for example, boasts a football team that won a Super Bowl. But the only event that sells every one of its stadium's 66,000 seats is a monster-truck show. A Chinese version, staged and choreographed with hundreds of beautiful young women dancing for the brave drivers, would certainly fill the 80,000-seat Bird's Nest.
Besides, the idea of any country other than China having a Dragonator just isn't right. This is the home of dragons, the land that invented gunpowder, and the biggest car market in the world. People of Beijing, rise up and issue a challenge to Draco The Dragonator! There must be countless mechanics, designers, engineers and auto-parts makers here. You have the entrepreneurs, the finance guys and the insurance wonks to make it happen. If one of the trucks blunders into the audience, this city has the medical facilities to handle the casualties.
Come on, Beijing. Don't let the US continue to dominate a field that should be China's by cultural birthright. Build a car-crushing giant of your own, get the Dragonator to the Bird's Nest and send him home as scrap metal.
