When the Torch Came to Town

The torch came through Guangzhou a couple weeks ago which was quite the exciting event. The run ended a couple blocks from our school so we had to go check out the action. I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Getting ready.

The streets

We walked towards the sports stadium (where the torch was finishing it's run) and came to a standstill about here. It was impossible to see a thing. Finally we saw the top of a blue bus roll by and heard a huge roar go up from the crowd. People then started jumping the fence around the stadium and running. We stood around for a bit and then shrugged our shoulders and said "why not?" How often are you in a crowd of hundreds of thousands trying to catch a glimpse of the Olympic torch? So we decided to do as the Guangzhou-vians were doing and hop the fence. We had no idea what we were doing/where we were going, but we ran along with the crowd till it stopped, and then saw this.

The crowd was really getting excited at this point, so being the good husband that he is, Scott boosted me up on his shoulders ....and this is what I saw.

First - a van full of photographers, and then.....

the Olympic torch! Right in front of my illegal, off limits spot! It's a bit hard to see. The runner is a woman in red and white on the left hand side of the picture. If you click on the picture, you should see a larger image. The crowd was incredibly loud at this point, but I did my best to scream a play-by-play down to Scott who could only see a whole lot of cell phones, and black hair in front of him.

The best part of this whole event was actually after the torch passed us by. We just wandered around the crowds for hours, taking pictures, posing with random groups of people ( we get asked to do this a lot!). We recently met someone that was involved with the planning of the run, and she told us that there were half a million people on the grounds that afternoon. Have a look.

The crowd

I don't know these people. They just wanted a picture with me!

China loves its marching bands!

We'll end with a personal favourite. We came across this guy just like this - in a crowd of half a million people reading a scrap of newspaper that he found on the ground. Must have been an interesting article.