Peek inside the 'Bird's Nest'

CNN's John Vause takes us inside the centerpiece of the Bejing Summer Olympic Games, the Olympic stadium.

Well this is the centerpiece for Beijing's Games, officially it's called the National Stadium. It's better known as the "Bird's Nest" because of that avant-garde design of the interwoven steel beams on the outside and until now that's all we’ve been able to see. Inside here, 91 thousand people are expected to gather for the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the track-and-field competition and also the soccer finals.

There is still some last-minute work going on here but now construction of all Olympic venues is complete, most of them finished well ahead of time. It took just over four years and about 400 million US dollars to build this stadium. And architects say the same project in the United States or Europe would have cost many times more and taken a lot longer, but here in China a cheap pool of labor, one stage as many as seven thousand workers kept cost down and kept construction on an almost nonstop seven-day week timetable.

And the original plans here had a retractable roof but that was scrapped because of cost. So there’s now some concern that it might rain during the opening ceremony but a bigger concern for Games' organizers is just who will be sitting up there on the second level. That's the area which is being reserved for world leaders and heads of state. Some have said they won't be coming, others have said they are checking their diary.

Now once the Olympics are finished, the designers say they hope that the stadium will become an icon for Beijing, much like they say the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.

John Vause CNN Beijing.

WORDS IN THE NEWS

1. avant-garde : adj

Avant-garde art, music, theatre, and literature is very modern and experimental.

2. interweave : v-recip

If two or more things are interwoven or interweave, they are very closely connected or are combined with each other.

3. track-and-field : n-count

Track and field refers to athletics as opposed to other sports.

4. retractable : adj

A retractable part of a machine or a building can be moved inwards or backwards.

5. scrap : verb

If you scrap something, you get rid of it or cancel it. (JOURNALISM or INFORMAL)