The Olympic Torch Delay Hits Shenzhen

The Olympic flame came to Shenzhen today, more or less as had been planned. The intended route seemed a relatively convenient one for me, though not convenient enough for me to view it from my balcony.

The running route for the torch was set to go to the 海王 (hai wang, or Sea King) building which is just a few minutes walk from my place, and it was supposed to do so relatively early in the morning. Just before I went to look at the crowd and see whether I might be able to squeeze in close enough to see, I ran across the announcement that the relay would be starting a bit late, so I waited until around one o'clock to head there.

By the time I arrived there, the crowds were massive: probably fifteeen to twenty thousand people packed into a single block and swarming onto the streets. For some reason, rather than adding to the permanent fences built alongside the road to stop pedestrians, the powers that be had decided to use little movable barriers to control the crowds. Little to no police presence attended the event and people were pretty much left to do whatever they wanted: mostly clambering onto the roofs of bus stations, scaling light posts or trees in order to get a better view; a number of banners had been ripped down by these climbing attempts, and branches were ripped off trees in a few places. Most of the rest of the crowd's energy was devoted to trying to push through to find a better place, pounding drums, and chanting: "加油，中国，高兴" and what sounded like "一三" ("jia you, zhongguo, gaoxing" "yi san"--"Add gas (Go!), China, Happy" "One, three"); it seemed anytime someone decided to yell out a two-syllable phrase, the crowd just picked it up and screamed it for a few minutes.

Early on, I got caught up in one group's decision to push through the crowd, and I wound up opposite Children's World--a store about halfway between the 海王 building and the Haiya Baihuo overpass. I managed to get near the permanent fencing on the side of the road and, thus, stay out of the pushing contests.

Around three-thirty, there was a bit of a louder roar well off in the distance: people got excited for a few minutes, but then the cheering and chattering faded back away. Twenty minutes or so later the torch finally arrived ... sort of. Since the crowds had pushed the movable barriers on both sides of the streets to nearly touching, the officials apparently deemed it unsafe for the runner to continue. So instead of watching the torch run past, I got to watch a bus and a van pass, preceded by a handful of men in uniforms marching. Ahead of the bus ran a bunch of people shouting at the onlookers and shoving back the barriers. I did get to see, presumably, the runner, sitting and looking tired and discouraged in the van as it drove past, and then the whole thing was over, the crowds pushing and shoving to get home.