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The two most recognizable Canadian Olympians of their generation are sitting at a corner table at the Goose and Duck pub in the leafy Chaoyang district of Beijing.

Catriona Le May Doan and Mark Tewksbury, six medals between them, are having a meal at the lively, Canadian-owned hangout for expatriates, Westerners and Chinese twentysomethings.

Outside, a long table of Estonian delegates and their children are enjoying the relatively cool Beijing night, its sky alight with the colours of the Olympic opening ceremony. Inside, the television sets are tuned to an event beamed to a potential television audience of four billion, and when the show begins, the foosball games come to an abrupt halt and conversations turn to murmurs.

"I didn't know what to expect," Tewksbury said. "The images of China we have are that it is an agrarian society that is drab, insular and grey. It's so not that.

"I don't feel like I'm in Berlin," he added, referring to Adolf Hitler's Olympics in 1936. "I'm convinced that this place is the future."

John Harkness, the Montreal native who owns the sports bar and has lived in China since 1993, when he came to Beijing on holiday and never left, said that when he first heard the Games were coming to the Chinese capital, he thought "it will be tough, but they will accommodate and conform."

Harkness, 45, grew up in the Ville de La Salle neighbourhood and said he named his bar for the Canada goose and the Peking duck. He also owns a resort outside the city that he has rented to visiting Olympic delegations. His proudest decoration is a wall-sized photograph of the Montreal Expos' last game at Olympic Stadium in 2004, and he has equipped his bar with a batting cage and a small basketball court.

"They have had a lot of challenges," Harkness said of his adopted homeland. "Some they met, some they rose up to, but I think they fell short on a lot of international expectations."

Inside Harkness's sprawling establishment, however, expectations were more than met.

The crowd cheered wildly throughout the night, most notably when the host delegation entered the Bird's Nest. They chanted "Zhong guo, jia you," echoing the "let's go, China" refrain inside the immense stadium several kilometres to the northwest. This eclectic gathering also applauded the United States, Canada, Australia, Ukraine, Estonia, Greece and Taiwan. They even cheered Communist party functionaries, Beijing Games organizers and U.S. President George W. Bush.

"I'm so pumped for China right now," said Emily Boberg, a 22-year-old exchange student from Las Cruces, New Mexico, who has fallen for China in just two months. "I feel like the generation before was greatly biased against China, that they can't get past it and see all the great things here. I hope the Olympics show the rest of the world that China is trying."

At the Goose and Duck, the atmosphere was so relaxed that state security, who had been gearing up for this night, was watchful but not intrusive. Their subtle presence was barely felt.

Inside these walls, there was no dissent and no protest.

To wit, a scene from North American sports rivalries: two Americans, one wearing a New York Yankees cap and the other in a Boston Red Sox cap, sitting beside each other on barstools. They are friends from Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., who scored tickets to basketball, beach volleyball and judo, and they talked excitedly about their excursions to Beijing markets and tourist attractions.

"We've all gone to Europe and travelled the States, and our friend here told us that you have to come to China, it's a totally different experience and what better year than the Olympic year," Brooklyn native Paul Apostolakis said. "You get used to the food, you get used to the people. We're here for another three weeks, and by the time we get back, we'll have to get used to the States again."