They're canals actually but they're stagnant and fetid, just the sort of thing you don't want to display to Olympic visitors.
The answer? A massive public works project intended to flush'em out before the games. From the Sydney Morning Herald:
To replenish Beijing's dead waterways, 3 billion cubic metres of water will be pumped 300 kilometres from four dams near the capital of neighbouring Hebei province. It was a mammoth but temporary measure designed to make Beijing sparkle for foreign tourists, said Wang Jian, an official at the Haidian information centre.
The answer? A massive public works project intended to flush'em out before the games. From the Sydney Morning Herald:
To replenish Beijing's dead waterways, 3 billion cubic metres of water will be pumped 300 kilometres from four dams near the capital of neighbouring Hebei province. It was a mammoth but temporary measure designed to make Beijing sparkle for foreign tourists, said Wang Jian, an official at the Haidian information centre.
"This water diversion will make the water in Beijing's rivers all clear and clean," Mr Wang said. "We can't let foreigners come and look at the water when it is still dark and stinky."
The engineering feat will help transform one of the world's driest capitals into an international oasis when the Games begin on August 8.
Beijing residents consume only one-eighth as much water as the average Chinese person and one-thirtieth of the global average.
And after the games? Back to the good old "dark and stinky." Beijing is now home to 18-million people, four times its population in the 60s.
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