We went to the Botanical Gardens yesterday (along with much of the population of Beijing), where an electronic countdown board alerted us to the fact that there were only 131 days left until the Olympics. In fact there was no danger of us forgetting. This morning there was traffic chaos because the Olympic flame arrived at the airport. It's route into town was kept secret, presumably because of security concerns (controversial things, these flames…). In fact, it must, surely have been driven down the airport expressway – there's no other way of getting into town, unless they helicoptered it in, and perhaps they did. Anyway, apparently the whole area around Tiananmen Square was closed off to real people. A great foretaste of what's to come. I can't say Beijing's population is waiting with breathless anticipation. I asked a taxi driver the other day whether he was expecting to make a lot of money during the Olympics, and he grumbled that no one would make money except the government. All the people who visited Beijing would be in tour groups, and would travel around on big buses, he predicted. I suspect that may well be right. I don't think this Olympics is going to be a celebration of the individual. On our way back from the Botanical Gardens, we drove past the Bird's Nest, the main Olympic stadium, and the Water Cube, where the swimming events will be held. There's a lot of building still going on, including a tall block built, apparently, to look like an Olympic flame. You could almost see a Tibet-shaped cloud hanging over the stadium. The riots and protests in Lhasa and throughout what used to be Greater Tibet, are confronting the authorities here with a nerve-wracking Olympics. Now they must walk a diplomatic tightrope at the same time as cracking down on protesters – but if they set a toe out of line, the whole thing will come tumbling down around their ears. At a time when they're about to welcome the greatest number of journalists ever to China, they are busy attacking the western media in their newspapers, accusing them of misreporting what happened inTibet. The only journalist the state-run media has praised is James! This because he was the only foreign correspondent to witness the violence, and of course he reported it as he saw it. The government here has seized on this to bolster their claims of evil Tibetan plots. But like state-run media the world over, they pick and choose. They choose not to report much of what James says – like the fact that the riots were an explosion of rage against years of Han oppression, and that the crackdown on those rioters will be brutal.