April is the cruelest month...

Harking back to the opening line of T.S. Eliot's landmark modernist poem The Waste Land, April 2008 has come and gone with something of the ferocity of a wrecking ball. Now that the Olympic torch has finally completed its tortuous journey to China and been put out of its misery, it left in its wake not harmony and friendship but the debris of a contorted mass of hurt feelings, misunderstandings and colliding expectations between those in and outside of China.

In April, the supposedly sacred flame has scorched two cultures. So writes former People's Daily deputy editor Huangfu Ping, translated by EastSouthWestNorth:

We (in China) did not anticipate that the Olympics would be like an astronomical telescope that magnifies all the unsatisfactory flaws... we did not realize that the people, the mass media and the NGO's of the world would use the Olympics to criticize our government's governing and administrative styles... The two sets of expectations inside and outside China collided, and created the embarrassing situations during the Olympic torch relay. The opportunities and challenges of the Olympics are two sides of the same coin.

Yet actually, he continues,

..there is no need for people to become immensely hostile to the foreign mainstream media on account of certain inaccurate and malicious reports...

Because with the appropriate authority, transparent and open, Huangfu Ping claims, public power in China should be able to effectively maintain social stability.

Yet in this cruel April, with so many hurt feelings and angry voices where there were supposed to be Olympic friendship and unity, what happened to the appropriate authority? Between a rock and a hard place in the midst of popular anger, foreign resentment, and frightening moods, it just ain't easy being Chinese, as Mutant Palm finds on the historical influence of humiliation and reclaiming lost dignity weighing heavily on Chinese shoulders. One can hardly blame the Chinese government for reaching out to religious leaders (while insisting that some of these closer to home stay no more than just that). With another icebreaking concert in mind, the China Philharmonic Orchestra is set to perform for Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican today. Yet as The Guardian reports, an anonymous priest in the Vatican (which still recognizes Taiwan) told Reuters that he doubted whether the Chinese government is doing it out of love for the Pope or the Holy See, while another source in the papal city said that the Chinese were shopping for goodwill.

Sometimes it can indeed be very hard being Chinese.

And now as the contentious opening ceremony beckons with less than 100 days before the start of the long-awaited (with bated breath) Olympics, the divisive, flame-torched preludes have played their part in inducing visa restrictions and tighter controls over daily life for the 250,000 foreigners who have settled in China in recent years, all with the aim of presenting a blemish-free image of Beijing for the big event (thus street beggars and some migrant workers in the capital are also being given their marching orders). Yet while the unexpected tightening of regulations may be a source of much frustration and irritation for some, to Richard Brubaker at All Roads Lead to China, the sense of entitlement among the foreign community about their contribution to China is not going to make it to the podium:

China is not ungrateful for investment, technology, management training, loans, etc... It is that they are unwilling to continue a pattern of behaviour and development that they do not feel is in their best interests long term... They have 1.4 billion people to manage, and at all times that number will trump anything else offered.

In China, Brubaker recommends, you should be prepared for anything, nothing is consistent and anything can change. And if, in these at least temporarily very complicated times, you are wondering whether global sourcing is really still worth it, you can either completely lose your sense of economic optimism (like the way U.S.-based industrial manufacturers are feeling about the U.S. economy)...

- or you can wait for the Olympics to end. So here's to a momentous, exciting, peaceful (and short) Olympics.