Let me be misunderstood

I went to watch the Olympic torch relay on its way through Chengdu the other day.

But I couldn't find it.

Where else in the world could that possibly happen? For the previous few days I had hounded my Chinese friends for information about the route and timings and, in a very Chinese way, got many helpful suggestions, rumours, apologies even, but no facts whatsoever. It wasn't much use talking to the ex-pats here either: they just had their own rumours about how only Party members were being invited, that the whole city would be cordoned off and that crowds lining the route were to attend a rehearsal the day before...

Even on the day itself there was no word about what was going on. No website with a schedule. No AA signs on lamp posts pointing you in the right direction.

As I cycled rather forlornly around the city centre I saw lots of indications that something was happening. Public buildings had armed police and even a few troops with plastic riot shields outside. There were lots of otherwise ordinary people wearing red armbands who seemed to be waiting for something along most of the major roads. I finally caught up with a group of about one hundred white tee-shirted students as it processed through the city centre behind large Chinese national flags. I asked them if they were following the torch. But no, they hadn't any idea where the torch was. They seemed a little wary of my interest to be honest but eventually concluded I wasn't very subversive. Then, rather furtively, one girl asked me "Do you love China?". Well, there's a long answer to this question and a short one. I gave her the short one and she stuck a China sticker on my chest and presented me with a little Chinese flag and a little Olympic flag to wave. Which I did.

I rode on. Still not a sign of an Olympic entourage. So eventually I gave up and called into a bar for a beer, like you do. The TV was on and I caught the last few minutes of the torch's procession somewhere way outside the centre of town in a new exhibition complex a mile or two beyond the city's third ring road.

What struck me about all this wasn't the authorities' reticence (or secrecy?). Nor its rigid control. Nor the fact that the final ceremony was before a carefully chosen audience who had indeed been drilled in how and when to cheer. What got me is the fact that people in Chengdu let this happen. Nobody I spoke to thought it at all strange that, even though the procession was going past their home, they had been told to "stay indoors and watch it on TV". Can you imagine Boris Johnson telling Londoners that in four years' time? The person whose house it had gone past told me the government had done this "for security reasons". Another person told me that the arrangements had been made because there would just be too many people to organise (Chengdu is just a tad smaller than London). But all the Chinese I spoke to about it thought it was quite normal. None felt aggrieved that they were being ostracised from their own Olympics or denied their chance to show their passion for their games.

As I said in another blog recently I will never understand this place.

The final ceremony was pretty wooden and charmless. Officials spoke. People cheered on cue. And the Olympic flame was marched off by the same officious looking figures who had caused so much offence in London. (What was it Seb Coe called them?)

Behind the dignitaries on the stage, the backdrop carried the city of Chengdu's latest marketing slogan - in English, so it must be intended to appeal to the western visitor - which reads: "All because of you, Chengdu will be better". Is this really what they meant to say? Or is it - as with most bits of Chinglish you see around the city - a sign that the Chinese really don't give a damn whether they're understood or not.