Today, the Olympic Torch relay came to Harbin. I found out about this a week ago, while planning a short vacation trip to Chang Baishan (“Long White Mountain”). I found a web site with information about cities near to Chang Baishan, and it was showing a zigzag route for something (small symbols on the map were hard to read). Clicking on a symbol showed up a large torch, and a city timetable.
So, I’ve been looking forward to it coming, and got out early (about 6:15am) on the bus to go down near to the route with a Chinese friend. We got there, walked for about 15 minutes, past numerous hawkers, all selling little Olympic and China flags to wave. Some sold for 1 yuan each, others said “3 yuan for a pair”, others said “5 yuan each”. I guess with this many people (there were a lot of families and single people!), it doesn’t matter if your price is “competitive” – haha.
When we finally arrived (following the flow of people), we started encountering a counter flow (people coming the other way). We stopped and asked a couple of policeman, as they had blocked off complete access past a certain street. That was about 2 blocks away from the route, by the way. The first policeman also hadn’t a clue where to go. They’d been there since 4:30am, and were just there to keep people from passing that point without a badge (as I found out later).
We found the chief of police (local area anyways), and he basically said that only people earlier than 5:00am could have gotten through, since that’s when they closed it up. We stayed about 20 minutes, thinking they might have a plan to open it near starting time, etc. but finally decided to return home and watch it on TV!
So, basically a wasted trip 
for us and for (I estimate) several hundred thousand others (I kid you not!).
Good news is that because we “left early”, we were able to get a seat on a bus going back! haha
Next: How I used the “extra” time I had!