Olympic torch burns bright - for a select few
By Matthew Engel
Published: August 7 2008 03:00 | Last updated: August 7 2008 03:00
The huge red gates of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing were closed yesterday - access was denied, except to those who had not merely Olympic accreditation but a special accreditation on top of that. Heaven itself probably works on a similar basis.
Outside the wall a large crowd built up, even by Chinese standards - it can't have been less than 25,000 - to see the Olympic torch reach its final destination for the day, 48 hours before the 2008 Games get under way. The newspapers had told them the torch was coming here, and by mid-afternoon people stood eight to 10 deep behind the barriers near the entrance.
The flame had begun its day in the Forbidden City, once home to China's emperors, held aloft by Yang Liwei, the nation's first man in space. It weaved its way through the city's west and south before reaching the temple, carried by celebrities including Chinese basketball giant Yao Ming, who bridges an east-west divide by also being a superstar in America's NBA.
The Chinese authorities needed an enthusiastic crowd, after the torch relay's protest-hit journey around the world, and particularly after a demonstration yesterday morning by four foreigners near the city's Olympic stadium. They had unfurled banners demanding Tibetan independence, and were detained by police.
The crowd was expectant, exuberant. Middle-aged ladies began leading a chant: "Beijing! China!" Everywhere there were red flags for China, and white flags for the Olympics.
Then suddenly a huge cheer rose. It was the convoy of media buses! Another 20 minutes passed, and the red-and-white flags came out for the red-and-white float of Coca-Cola. "Everybody give it out for Beijing City!" roared a cheerleader. "Make a noise!" And they did. Surely the torch would be here soon.
A Beijing summer's afternoon moved languidly, humidly, smoggily onwards. Zhou Ling, a student from Szechuan, had been there for five hours; she had come to the city with her mother just to catch the Olympics atmosphere.
"I'm tired," she admitted eventually. Was the torch relay coming here or not? I asked a policeman. "It's a secret," he said.
Eventually a dark realisation took hold. The secret was that the torch's arrival was itself taking place in secret. The Olympic flame was being paraded inside the temple gates, for the benefit of the privileged and the TV cameras. The thousands waiting outside were of no consequence, and they had no idea how the torch had got into the temple.
I asked another policeman why the crowds were still waiting. "They're waiting for groups of cars. But I think groups of cars can be quite interesting. If you like that." I assumed this was meant to be funny.
But the crowd didn't think the cars were interesting. And now the mood was altogether less exuberant. Realising they had been tricked - or had allowed themselves to be tricked - the people trudged away, sensing that their one chance of seeing live just one tiny sliver of China's great event had been thwarted. "So did you see anything?" I asked one man. "Nothing," he snarled back. "And I waited three hours."
China's zest for the Games is not in doubt. Nor is the efficiency of the operation the country has put together. But the small incident at the Temple of Heaven - admittedly involving just a few tens of thousands, a tiny fraction of China's population of 1.3bn - was a sign that the magnificent welcome China is giving the international elite is not a reliable guide to the treatment of the ordinary Chinese.
Parallel games, Page 2
www.ft.com/olympics2008
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
，我就说小K看到过很多猪跑嘛。
