Travel, Cruise

Our own femme fatale, Monica Guy, has the pre-Olympics buzz from Beijing for us this week.

How many people with disabilities are there in China? It’s a tricky question. The China Disabled Persons’ Federation say it’s 60 million, a recent BBC report says 83 million and estimates based on the World Health Organization’s population model are upwards of 125 million. But discrepancies of few million make little difference in a country of 1.3 billion people, and until now at least, nobody has much cared about the actual number.

In fact, when Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, Britain’s Paralympic athlete who’s earned 11 gold medals, first went to Beijing, locals would to poke her to determine whether or not she was real.

The expected visit of just 4,000 more disabled people to Beijing this September seems, bizarrely, to have galvanized the Chinese authorities into action over accessibility. In terms of numbers, it’s like a pinprick on an elephant’s rump. But these disabled visitors are special: They’re the Paralympic athletes, and they’ll be trailed by 6,000 journalists.

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