Monday, May 26, 2008

My moment of stardom

A great deal of Suzhou was there...

Been sick all wknd, but yesterday I managed to get myself out of the door in order to watch the Olympic torch arrive in Suzhou. Unfortunately, I got out too late and when me and my bf arrived at the ‘toch goal’ in SIP the flame had already come and gone. Very typical me. I had been told the flame was gonna be there at 11, my bf thought 12, so we went around 10.30. But they must have had some really fast runners this time.. or something?

Anyways, the spot was still crowded and everywhere Chinese in Olympic t-shirts, ‘I love China’ t-shirts, flags and banderols were singing and cheering. It was a bit like a street party in the middle of the day with no booze?

Once we entered the scene we became aware of the fact that we were close to the only westerners there. And soon, a lot of Chinese people became aware of that too, and started photographing us. Constantly. Some asked, some didn’t. Some posed with us, some just came and stood next to us, some put their arms around us and a lot of people said: ‘Welcome to China!’ I guess this is a pre-taste of how the Olympic Games in Beijing is going to be like. Sure, I’ve done some posing with strangers at the Bund or at the Great Wall before, but this definitely counts as my biggest moment of stardom since we came to China. Since everybody photographed us, I took the liberty to snap back. Here are some picks of the people:

People photographing us meanwhile I am photographing them

Olympic baby.

The three musketeers?

Father and son

Ps. Wanna see more pix from the day? Leave a comment to let me know. I've got tonnes of pix still!

4 comments:

  1. Wow! Coming from Australia I just cannot imagine people swarming over a westerner (or anyone) like that. I can see how it would get annoying after a while, but the friendliness and welcoming attitude sounds really nice.

    It sounds like China is gearing up for the Olympics nicely.

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  2. Well as I see from your profile pic, you've also got nuclear blonde hair and the only thing Chinese people love more than girls with blonde hair are little babies with blonde hair. When I go swimming, the cameras come out cause I'm all inked up, but otherwise I blend in pretty well. Sometimes people ask me if I'm from Xinjiang :-P.

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  3. Stupid Chinese nationalism! I can't stand this Olympic torch relay anymore. BTW, I am Chinese and fortunately do not live in China anymore.

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  4. *hihi* Ja sånt känns ju igen, men det var ju lite extremt att det var så många! :-)

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