Games bring joy, pride to China's millions

By Kirby Chien

BEIJING (Reuters) - Shao Ge quickly set up his small color television on two plastic beer crates outside his tiny shop as it became apparent the gathering crowd was becoming way too large to cram inside.

The almost exclusively male crowd -- the lone exception being his wife, Wang Yilin -- numbered about 15 and spilled out onto the alley in front of Shao's business for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Shao didn't mind that the crowd was hurting sales of the cigarettes and beverages, both cold and warm, that he specializes in.

"I am very happy, all of China is very happy," he said, in a heavy accent that betrayed his rural upbringing in the fields of central Henan Province.

"Before China couldn't do this, we were too backward," he said as the spectacle of the ceremony was broadcast from the Bird's Nest, the state-of-the-art main stadium for the Games.

"But now we can. It is a good thing," said Shao, shirtless like many in the group to make the stifling Beijing summer evening more tolerable.

Critics say more of the $35-40 billion used to build state-of-the-art stadiums and other infrastructure for the Games should have been spent to improve the everyday lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese who still struggle just to survive.

But Shao, who lives next to his shop with his wife and two grown children, doesn't buy that argument.

"It doesn't matter how expensive that stadium is or if I can't go there myself," he said. "The government is still going to give subsidies to the farmers and take care of us. Look at what happened in Sichuan with the earthquake."

The government was given generally high marks for its speedy recovery efforts after May's devastating quake in the western part of China left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing.

"All of our family back in Henan is watching this on television," Shao added.

(Editing by Alex Richardson)