When you have been watching too much CCTV -- "The opening ceremony was a success! We truly are one world, one dream!" -- and running into too many volunteers -- "Welcome to Beijing!" -- and smacking into enormous banners where whole neighborhoods used to be -- "Together we will build a new Beijing!" -- it is hard not to just. Hate. The. Olympics. Straight up.

If every taxi driver in New York had to get a makeover* because of a few weeks of athletic competion, and people were constantly dissing my city's air that I had been breathing for decades, I would seriously be over it.

I did find one treat to sweeten the sour, though.

At Jing Shan school, which is a model school founded for Deng Xiaoping, every kid in the school is roped into the Olympic games. While the adolescents stand outside and scratch their backs with Olympics flags, the little girls inside are performing this dance:

Is it over the top or is it... awesome?

The girls were really excited, but ask the parents what the kids are rehearsing for, and they don't know. "The Olympics," they said, shrugging.

It turns out they were performing with the actual singer of "Beijing Beijing, Wo Ai Beijing," Wang Zheng Zheng, who has taken Chris Brown's place in my life!

Censorship note: I cannot get access to the China Digital Times -- a fantastic blog to get your China on. Maybe this is why:

Olympic Secret: Most Firework-footprints Faked in Broadcast

Translated by CDT from the Beijing Times, via qq.com: In yesterday's Opening Ceremony, a step-by-step series of fireworks-sequenced footprints that "walked" from Yongdingmen along the central axis to the Bird's Nest pushed the whole night into its climax. Many viewers, via live TV broadcast, were amazed by the spectacular Beijing nightscape. ...

*: The cabbies dress really well in Beijing. Every taxi driver I have met, which is a lot at this point, is wearing a pressed linen shirt.

Editor's note: Zoe Chace is an independent public radio producer who is in Beijing for the Olympics. She is traveling with her friend and advisor Lizzy Berryman, who is fluent in Mandarin and lived in China four years ago. She'll be filing periodic dispatches for Passport about what it's like to be in the middle of the world's biggest spectacle, the 2008 Olympic Games. Got any questions or thoughts on what she should report on? Post your thoughts in the comments below.

Previous posts:

• Olympic Diary, Day 2: China's lonely chairman
• Olympic Diary, Day 1: Where is everyone?