To make China more accessible to foreigners, Beijing will offer free multi-lingual help lines and is working to correct English mistakes on road signs and menus, where misspellings and direct translations often mystify diners.
"For a foreigner, eating in a Chinese restaurant can be daunting, especially when you have a choice of dishes on the English menu ranging from 'Swallowing the Clouds' to 'Hot Crap,'" a misspelling of carp, the China Daily reported when it announced the English clean-up campaign earlier this year.
Last year, Beijing hired thousands of people to force residents to form orderly lines when waiting for public transportation and to spit in bags rather than on the ground.
"The Olympic Games will provide lots of opportunity for education," Sun said. "We're trying to encourage the public to use elegant language, provide good service and of course to refrain from all kinds of spitting or cutting in line."
But in a city where businesses routinely bend and ignore laws to cut costs, some experts have voiced concerns about public health during the Olympics.
In May, Chinese national broadcaster CCTV investigated indoor air quality and found that managers routinely ignore regulations requiring maintenance of air-conditioning systems.
In one case, dozens of Chinese athletes and coaches caught influenza from a rarely cleaned air-conditioning system in China's chief sports ministry and at least one was forced to drop out of an international competition.
A slew of food safety problems have raised further concerns.
Tainted Chinese exports made headlines in the US this year, with scares involving pet food, seafood and other products.
In 2003 and 2004 at least a dozen Chinese infants died after eating fake baby formula with little or no nutritional value. Last November, officials in China's northern Hebei province seized carcinogenic duck eggs after farmers fed dye to the animals, one in a string of similar cases.
To improve food safety for athletes, Beijing will contract with exclusive vendors and will test food samples on mice, the China Daily reported last month.
Traffic will be another problem. To reduce congestion on Beijing's overly crowded streets - which carry 1,100 new cars daily - the government will limit traffic on some roads to buses carrying athletes and Olympic ticket holders and will ground many state-owned vehicles, Sun said.
The sudden world attention during the Olympics will be a "catalyst" for positive change, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said on yesterday.
"I am convinced that as much as the Games will enable the people of China to develop a new vision of their own society, they will help athletes and visitors gain a fairer perspective on China," Rogge said.
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