10,000 People In Line
As promised, some pictures of what a line of 10,000 people looks like:
The crazy thing was people were still streaming in from all directions. By the time tickets actually went onsale, it was estimated some 50,000 people had lined up.
It was a crazy 36 hours or so. We were busy through the night and somewhere around 2am we noticed the security forces that had assembled to protect our box office.
One part of the process involved counting batches of 250+ tickets. Around four in the morning, I realized people count sheep to fall asleep. Here I was trying to stay awake, having to count tickets! |
With such high demand, things sold at a fairly brisk pace. So when things calmed down, Hui & I decided to head to the Olympic Green, and check out a few of the venues. Unfortunately, the entire area was blocked off by security fences, so we could only take pics from afar.
The last thing I’ll mention involves the elevator of our hotel. In the West, it’s not uncommon to skip the 13th floor. But I still can’t figure out why this particular hotel skipped not just 13, but 2 & 14 as well. I hope it wasn’t a cheap knock off of an elevantor — sorta how a “Rolex” in China might be missing a 5 or 9. |
UPDATE: By coincidence, youtube just featured this AFP video about the final onsale.
August 17th, 2008 at 8:37 am
I went and visited Matt & Farah Clarkson in Hong Kong last month and commented on the same thing in their building elevator. It turns out that in China the number 4 is considered unlucky the same way we consider 13 unlucky. So instead of not just having a 4th floor, they won’t have any floors with the number 4. So no 4, 14, 24, 34, 40-49, etc. It was pretty freaky because they live on the 73rd floor of their high rise, but in reality its a good 16 floors lower.