Beijing "Wecomes" The World to its "Coming Out Party! Oh, The Irony!

As if visa restrictions and embassy staff weren't discouraging enough, from the NYT today:"...when an American called the China Travel Guide Tourist Agency last week, a sales clerk even discouraged the person from visiting Beijing during the Olympics.“You really don’t want to go there,” said Lorna Liu, the sales representative at China Travel Guide. “Why don’t you try Xi’an or Shanghai and visit Beijing a little later?”If you can get in, there will be no party; they've all be canceled due to security concerns.  Since I'm already "in" and the hotels are empty...hmmm...maybe this is not such bad thing after all.It's also not just Olympic travelers that are having issues.  Entire tradeshows in Guangzhou have been canceled and the part of the Chinese economy that is bassed on exports is taking a hit too.  Doing things legally, I was able to get the necessary visas for myself and family with no problems in the US in March.  But others are not so lucky. If you go to Hong Kong, the usually just so-so busy consulate in Wanchai is PACKED to the gills (with new security and new crowd controls).  And the official China Travel Agencies have lines stretching out the doors and around the blocks. Tons of "businessmen" from all over the world are hanging out in Hong Kong waiting for visas.The only hassles I've ever had was getting stoped at the HK boarder for an hour or so with other noticalbly foreign foreigners (yea, I have a beef with the fact that "Asian" foreigners are not stopped too).  We were stopped, asked to provide documentation and then questioned about the number of visits in our passports.  Nothing sinister but tourists without confirmed hotel reservations were turned back.  The biggest annoyance was the at the top of the hour, when the boarder guard shift changed, we were all just let through.  The new shift just didn't want to deal with us.