Beijing manufactures its own scenery for Olympics

They have taken a dusty metropolis with thousands of cranes hovering over construction sites and sought to create an idealized Beijing. Enormous murals in shades of blue and green, many showing off towering palm trees and blue skies, rise like Hollywood backdrops to hide the reality of the Chinese capital.

Beijing Olympics emblems are often used to hide unfinished construction projects. Some of the make-believe scenes are pastoral, showing a path wandering through a tangle of trees, or rolling green hills that suggest a quaint village lies just out of view. The murals typically hide a bare concrete wall, an ugly hole in the ground or a building site.

Feel like a game of golf? One mural guides the urban viewer down a lush, green fairway complete with sand bunkers.