Winners and losers among venues

Toting backpacks and wielding cameras, visitors to the Olympic Green won't let the heat of a summer afternoon in Beijing keep them from seeing China's two most recognisable venues for last year's Games.

They come to the expansive land parcel in the north of the capital from not only across the mainland but the whole world. The queues grow ever longer, but for the ticket-sellers to get into the 'Bird's Nest' National Stadium and the 'Water Cube' National Aquatics Centre, it's just another prosperous day.

Amid all this, the once-loud expressions of fear that the Games would leave a legacy of a cluster of white elephants sounds more like a whisper. The latest available statistics showed that the Bird's Nest, which hosted both the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies and most of the athletics events, rang up 260 million yuan (HK$295.4 million) between October and May, and the Water Cube, the swimming venue, racked up 104 million yuan over the same period - 70 per cent of it in admissions sales.

What's more, a tourism survey by Beijing authorities this year declared the Bird's Nest the favourite tourist site in the capital, ahead of the more traditional attractions, such as the Forbidden City.

However, most of the 36 sites built for the Games are idle, as operators have struggled to establish viable business or social uses for them. Their long-term well-being is overshadowed by question marks.

'The waves of tourists have indeed brought us enormous earnings, but you can't count on the sustainability of the revenue streams,' said Zhang Hengli, deputy general manager of the Beijing National Stadium.