The world could hardly be more different from the last time Olympic athletes entered Beijing's bird's nest stadium.
Back then, action-star Jackie Chan stood atop the Great Wall belting out "Beijing welcomes you" as part of a star-studded anthem opening China to the world.
The country was at the absolute peak of its economic rise, growing its economy at a rate of more than 10 per cent per year.
Chinese tourists were at the beginning of a travel boom that would see their numbers rise threefold in just a decade.
Facebook and YouTube were accessible in China. Google still had an office there and no-one had ever heard of WeChat.
The 2008 Olympic Games appeared to signal the country's desire to move away from decades of isolation that defined Mao's China, towards more interaction and "win-win cooperation" with the world.
More than a decade later, however, China seems to be reversing course.
Nowadays it is, in many ways, cut off from the rest of the world.
Its borders are closed to visitors amid a raging pandemic abroad and restrictions on flights and three-week hotel quarantine requirements upon return have stopped the flow of Chinese tourists to other countries.
China's online world is now largely cut off too. The country is devoid of international tech services such as Google and Whatsapp, and a parallel set of highly censored, homegrown equivalents have replaced them.
Within both the government and the general population, there's a view that China is making a very different statement to the world with this year's Games, compared to the one it made at the outset of the 2008 Summer Olympics.
China's move from welcoming the world to isolation
Chang Yu, a Beijing Games official, signalled the shift in China's approach on state TV last month.
"2008 was the first time China hosted an Olympics. It was to introduce ourselves to other countries and to let them understand who we were," he said.
A new, government-released English theme song with lyrics "Come, join us in winter, we are waiting" sums up the contradiction.
Beijing's choice of a heavily nationalistic rap group — who are known for insulting and mocking perceived Western enemies of China — to feature on the song is telling.
"Welcome to Beijing, so glad we meet again, we fight for one dream, walk this road hand in hand," raps CD Rev's Luo Jinhui, in a departure from the sometimes offensive language his group has used to describe Western journalists.
CD Rev last year released a song promoting a Chinese government-backed conspiracy theory that the US military unleashed COVID-19 on the world.
The band's leader, Wang Zixin, has also previously described Chinese who work for international media as "f***ing worthless" and called several major foreign media outlets "our enemies".
His group is also known in China for being dutifully loyal to the government, against drug use and suitably antagonistic to Taiwan "separatists" and Hong Kong protesters, a telling choice for a song supposedly aimed at foreign audiences.
And, unlike the star-studded cast of 2008's Beijing Welcomes You song that featured international icon Jackie Chan, none of the singers this time are recognised outside China.
But that's not the only noticeable change.
The telling clues in Beijing's Olympic's invitation list
The goodwill of 2008 — that saw Australia's then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, US President George W. Bush and close to a dozen Western leaders attend the Games — has evaporated as China's government has doubled down on domestic nationalism.
Repressive mass-detention policies targeting ethnic minority Muslims in China's west, and a brutally swift political crackdown in Hong Kong, has put China increasingly at odds with Western countries and closer to Russia's authoritarian leader.
Vladimir Putin is in Beijing for the Games, as is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, perhaps best-known abroad for being suspected of involvement in the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 (which he denies).
Despite claims last year from officials that China isn't inviting dignitaries, Beijing clearly is welcoming political leaders, even from countries with no history of competitive winter sports.
Most Central Asian leaders, several Eastern European and Middle East heads of state, and political representatives from a smattering of Asian and South American countries will be there.
A few European and South-East Asian royals add to the tally of dignitaries from 25 countries that, notably, also includes James Marape, the Prime Minister of Australia's near neighbour, Papua New Guinea.
A diplomatic boycott by four nations — including Australia and the US — is keeping other political figures and diplomats away, while COVID-19 is being cited by many more countries, such as Japan, New Zealand and France, as a reason not to send envoys.
Not that Beijing locals seem to care.
"In 2008, China amazed the world because the Games showed China had become great and powerful," said Shi Mou, a 63-year-old Beijing resident who the ABC spoke to at an ice-skating park.
"And, since then, China has greatly developed further, but the biggest change has been people's mentality as their motherland has grown powerful.
"If it wasn't for people's spirit, the country couldn't become great."
A 19-year-old student at the ice park who only wanted to be identified by her family name, Man, remembered watching the 2008 Olympics in primary school.
She said China was in a stronger position to host a second Olympics.
"You can say that, since 2008, China has developed at full speed," she told the ABC.
"The economy has rapidly grown and with this comes soft power and cultural development.
"I think China's relations with other countries now, compared to 2008, are generally much better because our country has developed and now can help many other countries.
"But I think, with a small number of countries, the relationship might not quite be as good".
A dramatic shift in China's global strategy
A rare feature of Beijing's Olympic build-up is the lack of publicly-expressed concern about hosting the Games, which has plagued other countries over the years.
Tokyo's government faced street protests, urging the cancellation of last year's summer Olympics in Japan. Ultimately, those events were delayed and restricted due to COVID-19.
In 2016, Brazilian police fired tear gas outside venues to disperse protesters who opposed government financial mismanagement related to the Games.
China's government prohibits protests and dissent in normal times, but the lack of public questioning about holding the Games during a global pandemic is striking.
Wu Qiang — a former academic and outspoken public commentator in Beijing — says the political environment has tightened since 2008.
"In the past decade, China's politics has completely changed," he told the ABC.
"And, in the lead-up to the Winter Games, China is in unprecedented isolation, while the nationalism inside China is becoming stronger and stronger."
Along with a rise in nationalism, Mr Wu argues the global pandemic, which started in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has created anxiety towards foreigners.
Chinese health authorities have cited high COVID-19 case numbers in other countries as a reason for keeping the country's borders shut, with no timetable for reopening in sight.
Multiple COVID-19 outbreaks in different Chinese cities have been attributed to surface contamination on frozen imported products, which have raised eyebrows among some experts abroad.
Things took a surreal turn just before the Olympics when authorities in a Beijing district encouraged residents receiving international mail to seek testing, after a woman tested positive to COVID-19.
Authorities initially said she likely contracted the virus from a cardboard parcel sent from Canada, before higher-level health officials weighed-in to ease concerns about foreign deliveries, saying there wasn't sufficient evidence.
"Beijing residents, after going through the torment of the pandemic over the past two years, at times led by deliberate misinformation, are very wary of people or goods from overseas," Mr Wu said.
"In 2008, Beijing residents had a genuine friendly and welcoming attitude from the bottom of their hearts.
"From what I've observed this time, people are worried, even Olympic volunteers at the venues are scared.
"The distrust generated by China's zero-COVID measures extends to the foreign athletes."
For those stepping into the Bird's Nest for the second time, it will be a very different experience from 2008.
