This photo gallery covers everything from the Tianjin Torch Relay to the Closing Ceremony, but it’s really only one slice of our Olympic experience. A fuller picture should include Tianjin’s massive urban face lift, transformation, and disruption (links go to related blog posts and photo galleries): propaganda slogans everywhere, the campaigns to change public behaviour, street markets and vendors cleared off and our favourite lunch windows being forced to temporarily close, roads paved, buildings painted, fake roofs constructed, ubiquitous migrant worker camps, homes bulldozed and whole blocks of residents relocated, parks and sidewalks getting torn up and replanted, the pollution, and the patriotism and nationalism. And, of course, the Fuwas.

The 2008 Olympics, of course, were about much more than sports, and we wrote on some of that, too:

• What do the Olympics mean to “their China”?
• Why Mainlanders are taking it personally, racially, and facially – the short answer
• The Olympics and the Earthquake: A Regular Zhou’s perspective
• The Olympic welcome China wants us to experience
• Tianjin’s “Old Hundred Names” on the Olympics (video interviews)

This gallery covers, in order: the Tianjin Torch Relay, soccer matches in Tianjin, the Opening Ceremony, a day running around Olympic Beijing, watching matches on the big screen in the park, and the Closing Ceremony. Here’re the related blog posts:

• The “Sacred Flame” comes to Tianjin!
• Watching the Opening Ceremony with a few thousand Tianjiners!
• Olympic soccer in Tianjin!
• Photos & Stories from a day in Olympic Beijing
• Watching the Closing Ceremony with a few hundred Tianjiners

Scroll down to read and write comments!

Click here to see all our Olympics-related posts.