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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
The 1 p.m. scheduled start for the torch relay came and went with no sign of official activity. Rumors swirled from cellphone to cellphone. They'd put it on a boat. Somebody saw it on Eighth Street. It was on the Golden Gate Bridge.
It became clear the plans had changed, that the torch may have come to San Francisco, but organizers were damned if they were going to let too many San Franciscans see it. If China intended the torch relay as propaganda, turning it into the stealth torch, while anti-China protesters stood center stage, looked a lot like defeat.
But still the throngs marched and chanted, argued and -- ceaselessly -- photographed each other.
"I know China has some big problems," said Zhenwei Song, part of a group of red-clad Chinese nationals waving giant China flags and chanting. He said he's a Beijing native studying agriculture at UC-Davis, about 75 miles away. "But we have changed, and a great change has taken place, and I think we're going to do better and better. I think the Olympic Games are a party for the whole world, not politics."
A young man dressed as the Dalai Lama stumbled through the crowds along the barricades lining the curb in front of the Ferry Building. He was moaning. Another man walked behind him, waving a Chinese flag and hitting the ersatz Dalai Lama with a rolled-up magazine. "Get out of here!" the second man yelled as he swung.
"Yeah!" yelled a Chinese woman who saw them. She waved her red flag at the men. "Good job! Good job!"
A man with a South Asian accent turned to his friend. "I don't think she got it," he said. "I think she missed the satire."
A white man in a Washington Nationals baseball cap walked on the street side of the barricade showing a large picture of a little boy to people dressed in red or waving Chinese flags. "What'd you guys do with him?" he asked, smiling. "Where'd you put him?"
The boy in the photo is Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, whom the Dalai Lama named as the 11th Panchen Lama, the second highest ranking lama, in 1995, when the boy was 6. Soon after, the Chinese government removed the boy from Tibet and named its own Panchen Lama. China says the boy is living a normal life in China. Opponents say he's a political prisoner, at best.
The man in the Nationals hat, 33-year-old Jason Helmar of Sacramento, an "unemployed peace protester," continued along the curb. "You know who that is? No? No? You're going to deny it?" An elderly Chinese man in the crowd shouted, "Keep quiet!"
"Where's the lama?"
"Keep quiet!"
"What'd you guys do with him?"
"Keep quiet!"
"Why'd you kidnap an 8-year-old?"
Helmar's opponent waved his hand and turned away. A cop said the torch had been bused up to Van Ness and the relay runners were carrying it up that street instead of along the waterfront. The bay sparkled and winked at all the politicians who don't understand that the Olympics aren't about politics.
"Let him out of jail," Helmar chirped to the next group along the sidewalk. "Shoot, he could be an Olympian. Who knows?"
Previous column: Tennessee wins Tournament - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. You can e-mail him at king at salon dot com or visit his Facebook page.
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