By Sky News China correspondent Peter Sharp

Wow - I can report that Beijing's Olympic Stadium does not fail to impress.

From tier three, nearly 200ft above the track, you can look down and across one of the biggest and most spectacular sporting stadiums in the world.

The Bird's Nest is a fiendishly complex tangle of brutal steel beams that swoop and loop but somehow, even in Beijing's ubiquitous smoggy skies, manage to retain both grace and a kind of beauty.

More than an icon and not just a national stadium, the Bird's Nest has already become the symbol of these games even before they have begun.

Around 41,000 tonnes of steel were used to build the outer nest. It measures 320 metres by 297 metres and from the inside resembles a vast red concrete bowl. It is almost circular, providing excellent views from every tier. Behind its girded exterior nestling in the nest are shops, bars restaurants and meeting places.

A small army of migrant workers toiled for four years to build the stadium At times there were more than 7,000 labourers on site. Their average pay was just £3 a day.

It was the Chinese who dubbed it the Bird's Nest on the day its design was unveiled in 2003. It's the creation of Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron working with the British design company Arup. The partnership has achieved design standards that the London Games will struggle to match.

Adjoining the Bird's Nest is the Cube.

Beijing's National Aquatic Centre is a £50m steel and concrete box surrounded in sheets of ETFE, a lightweight substitute for glass. It is the same material used to clad the domes of the Eden Centre in Cornwall. At night it is lit up and looks like blue coloured soap bubbles. Inside there is seating for 17,000 people. Swimming wunderkind Tom Daley competed at the pool in February and said it was the most amazing venue he had ever seen.

Both buildings have one thing in common. They were both completed on time and in budget. And they couldn't really have been built anywhere else.

China's huge supply of cheap labour and building development industries, unfettered by planning permissions and residents' concerns, give the country's mammoth construction industry an edge and a commercial advantage found nowhere else in the world. Only in China could you build these Olympic masterpieces with this sort of money and in this timescale.

But to get back to the Bird' s Nest, if I have to nit pick, the seats are a disappointment. They are too low, too small and they are murder your back. But hopefully the rest of this Bird's Nest experience, and of course the Games themselves, will take your mind off your aching back.

Comments

[jaster london 21 Apr 2008 13:55:11]

when we blame China's human right, how about ourself, what we did for the human right? we attack Afghanistan and Iraq, we know how many people is killed, we know how USA and us treat prisoner in the private priosn, Did these demonstrate our huamn right? How about 7.7 attack to london, sometimes we need to think about the Chinese goverment military the way they treat terrorist, at lest, the majority of people in the country are safe and happy.

on the other hand, we know there are more than 300,000 chinese student in the uk, at least they paid 9000 pounds overseas tution fee, i think lots of us can not afford this payment, when our media talk about how poor they are, i would like to ask what hell does money come from? how can they afford this?

sometimes if we want to know the true, the best way is going there and find out, our Meida just make us to feel, the UK is best country on the world, however we still struggle with credit crunchs,
chaos in Terminal 5 and more

[LYDIA REID EDINBURGH 20 Apr 2008 23:14:20]

Their is a famous saying in Scotland, fur coat and no k..underwear.
We have seen the ghetto's
We have seen the hungry children
We have seen the lack of human rights
We have seen the demonstrations.
Now we are asked to admire a stadium and buildings. sorry this does not impress.

[london 20 Apr 2008 16:38:22]

I PAID 40% WAGE FOR TAX, WHAT I GET IS signal problems on the transport every day.
although they only get 3 pounds every day. what about i get?

[Elizabeth Davies Cape Town 19 Apr 2008 14:15:43]

Colin Belfast
Cheap, cheerful and Chinese, including the people according to you, happy to work for three quid a day. The west is full of these poorly made goods, some with poisoned paint.
Yes I do care, but will the rest of the world care enough to stop buying their rubbish, probably not, it's called greed.

[Colin ...Belfast 16 Apr 2008 17:06:52]

at least these people will work for 3 pounds a day rather than waiting ages for a better pay jobs, these people have no educational backgrounds, not because they are stupid, its becos that they are so poor, and the people in china dont have the luxury state benefits claims like in uk ...in the far east there is a saying " start working or stop eating "......
dont critise the poor migrant workers from china, just be cos you were born lucky at the right place ,and the right time... Did Uk have benefits claims 100 yrs ago ?
and are you people from the west enjoying the cheap consumer goods made by these £3 wage per day poor migrant workers in the last 10 yrs ?
Do you really care ? NO ..ask yourself deeply inside your heart ?

[Khalid 16 Apr 2008 13:28:27]

OK, so looking [Up On The Catwalk-Simple Minds] China does provide everything on time and on budget. But what choice did the locals have or did democratic times not matter? None the less, I'm sure your back will be that much better after a sushi or two. How do they say in Chinese Let the non-political games begin!

[Elizabeth Davies Cape Town 16 Apr 2008 08:49:26]

However spectacular the stadium, 3 pounds a day pay...makes me want to be sick!

[Rob, England 16 Apr 2008 08:43:06]

Where do the armed guards sit?