Yao ming, a basketball player, carried the Olympic torch into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, starting the final leg of a relay that had begun in Greece on March 24th. On the eighth day of the eighth month, 2008 (supposedly, an auspicious date), the national teams enter the Olympic stadium ("the bird's nest"), though not, as usual, in alphabetical order. According to the head of the Australian Olympic committee, the order of the teams will be determined by the number of strokes in the first character of a country's Chinese name. That would put Guinea and Japan first, Australia and Zambia last.rnThere is much grumbling in Beijing about security measures, including checkpoints circling the city, baggage searches on the underground and home visits by the police to check identity documents. The capital's secret police, the State Security Bureau, published notices calling on citizens to be on the alert for a host of potential threats, including people "using religion to threaten state security" and foreigners making contact with Chinese subversives. A resident quoted by a Chinese newspaper said this was the first time in 40 years of living in the capital he had seen such a notice.
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