The New York Times watched the Olympics opening ceremony from a home in the hutongs with a architectural preservation activist:
“Beijing,” Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, would say with his trademark solemnity as the long and lavish opening ceremony of the Beijing Games neared its conclusion, “you are hosts to the present, and gateway to the future.”
From his couch, Zhang Wei could also look back more than a century.
“That window is 120 years old,” he said, pointing to a complex weave of pinewood on the wall behind the big screen. It was all he could save from the house in the narrow Beijing alleyway known here as a hutong that Zhang’s family had inhabited for 80 years.
Read all the Times’ Olympics coverage here.
Here are some photos taken by a photo journalist on the Wall Street Journal: Beijing locals view of the Games.
