I can’t remember the last time I opened a newspaper or magazine and didn’t see a photograph of some brilliant, gleaming new monument to the extraordinary rise of China. The 2008 Olympic Games was time to show the rubes what a new superpower looks like.

Here is the Egg; the astonishing, curvilinear structure that is Beijing’s new performing-arts center. Here is the Bird’s Nest, another staggeringly elegant feat of engineering in which the world’s athletes will compete. Here, too, is the stunning, assembled-overnight marvel of modern Shanghai, laid out in miniature for the wonderment of all.