As an Olympic reporter in China, you have to be happy about the contact with people who actually have nothing to do with the Olympics.
One is in the gondola to Mount Xiaohaituo.
He is a pilot – and flew a sports official to Beijing on a private plane.
That's how it is in the Olympic system: Those who do the show sit in one machine (not uncommonly in economy class, shoulder to shoulder, aerosol particles to aerosol particles).
And those who enjoy the show, in the other (where there is no economy class).
You can find that unsympathetic, but the pilot, who of course can't help it, is a likeable guy.
On the gondola ride, a reporter has just made a political gag, he gets up, touches the ceiling and says: "Wait a minute, I'll turn off the hidden microphone for you." There's cackling in the gondola.
Christopher Meltzer
Sports correspondent in Munich.
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You can have fun with gags like this if you're not afraid of surveillance in your everyday life (which doesn't mean that they don't also exist in the West of the world, book tip for the Olympic-free hours: Glenn Greenwald's "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State”).
In the gondola, the pilot then tells a story that he doesn't find that funny.
When he landed in Beijing, Chinese in protective suits crowded on board and disinfected the plane.
The chemicals they used were probably not good for the leather seats.
A return flight in a private plane with ruined leather seats?
You wouldn't wish that on your worst sports official!