Photo by Lu Xiaoyin

Olympic Boom for Silk Street
The silk street, one of Beijing's famous commercial streets once loaded with counterfeit apparel brands, has undergone a "cleasing exercise" and now become the shopping paradise for foreign political leaders and tourists during the Olympic Games. Its entrance now displays a billboard calling itself the merchants' Bird's Nest, after the Beijing Olympic national stadium. Taxi drivers also coin the term "Olympic Sideline Stadium" to refer to the market now flooded with foreigners wearing Olympic-related passes.