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Not long ago, during a trip to China to visit family, Zehou Zhou - Z.Z. to his friends - bought his daughter a model airplane. It was about a foot long, made of Styrofoam. It had a remote control.
When he got home, he wanted to get another, so he asked his sister to pick one up. He told her where he got it and what it looked like and all of that. A couple of days later, his sister told him she was unable to buy the airplane. It was no longer available.
Z.Z. was kind of surprised. He'd purchased the model airplane not that long ago.
His sister told him that the toy was pulled from the market because of the Olympics.
The Olympics?
What could the Olympics have to do with a toy airplane?
The Chinese government ordered the toy pulled from the shelves because of the Olympics.
Did the toy reflect poorly on the government? Was it a symbol of Tibetan independence? Did it have anything to do with any of the variety of things the Chinese government doesn't want the world to see when it takes center stage for the next couple of weeks?
Nope.
It was security thing.
The remote-controlled toy airplane, purchased at a shop 2,000 miles away from Beijing, was seen as a security risk, Z.Z. said. Terrorists could use it to disrupt the Olympics or strap a bomb to it and fly it from a remote location, say, from a couple thousand miles away, and blow something up.
It would have to be a pretty lightweight bomb. The plane is Styrofoam, remember?
"It shows how paranoid the government is," Z.Z. said.
You know, it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. And the Chinese government, well, let's just say there are a lot of people out to get it.
And it also shows the amount of control, the amount of micro-managing, the amount of picking of nits that the Chinese government exerts over life in the most populous nation on Earth.
That the government would go to the trouble to pull toy airplanes from shops thousands of miles away from the games certainly says something.
Tonight, the curtain will go up on the show in Beijing. The spectacular stadium will be the site of spectacles intended to bring honor to China.
And that's China's right. The country won the games and it wants to show its best side.
But underneath the banners and behind the walls, painted with murals, is something uglier.
George Walden, writing in the British newspaper, The Telegraph, put it this way: "Unbreathable air, stepped-up arrests of dissidents, restrictions on journalists, terrorist alerts, mournful echoes from Tibet - the Beijing Games do not seem set to earn a gold medal."
The Chinese government spent untold billions - a lot of them our dollars - to make Beijing look good. The slums were torn down and the people who lived there were sent away so their poverty wouldn't sully the image of the new China. What wasn't torn down, Walden reported, is hidden behind large screens, intended to shield the world from the reality of the city.
Beijing is supposed to be all friendly. CNN reported that Beijing cab drivers were taught to say "Welcome to Beijing" in English and were instructed to smile and be friendly. The one cabbie on the CNN report wore a kind of forced smile, as if his dog was being held at gunpoint.
There is some progress. Walden reports that people who protested the destruction of their homes were merely beaten and arrested. In the not-so-distant past, they might have been taken out and shot or sent to forced labor camps.
Not long ago, there was the story of Hu Jia. Hu was sent to prison for 3½ years. His crime? Writing a letter about China's poor record on human rights.
China: The Country Where Irony Went To Die.
Z.Z. knows all about this stuff. He's a librarian at York College, but before that, long before that, he was imprisoned in a forced labor camp for six years in China because of his father's nonconformist political beliefs.
He said he has mixed feelings about the games. He enjoys the games, and he said he hopes people will use the occasion to learn more about China's rich cultural heritage. At the same time, he said he hopes the games do not convince the world that all is well in China.
Certainly, China has become a world power, economically speaking. It is where American manufacturing went. The country holds most of our national debt.
Yet, that prosperity means little to people who do not have basic freedom.
"The government spent all that money on the Olympics when tens of millions of children are illiterate, and millions have no health care, and basic rights are not protected," Z.Z. said.
He said he always thought economic progress would lead to political progress.
It hasn't happened.
Tonight, when you tune in to the opening ceremonies of the Summer Games, you will see a different picture of China. It will be nice and shiny and upbeat - sort of like an Up With People show with an Asian feel.
You won't see any of the things the Chinese government doesn't want you to see.
And if the government is so thorough that it can remove Styrofoam model airplanes from shops thousands of miles away, you can bet it'll be successful in hiding its ugly side.
Mike Argento's column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints. Reach him at mike@ydr.com or 771-2046. Read more Argento columns at www.inyork.com/ydr - click on the opinion section - or visit his blog at www.mikeargento.com.
