Inside the Olympic bubble, looking for China — or ‘China’

By SARAH DiLORENZO
Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — The Olympics are usually an opportunity for the host country to showcase its culture. That’s a challenge when the athletes, coaches and others traveling to this year’s Winter Games are entirely sequestered in a bubble so complete it even has its own intercity trains. This is all part of an elaborate effort to control the spread of COVID-19. Nothing is supposed to leave this alternative universe. Still, here and there there are glimmers of China that seep in. In the end maybe the bubble merely highlights what is always true: that a foreign place is ultimately inaccessible to outsiders. Whether the barrier is physical or cultural.