He knew it the second he landed.

Gymnast Yang Wei knew that mathematically, emotionally, historically and rightfully the men’s all-around Olympic title was his – and the overwhelmingly partisan home-town crowd knew it too.

There was no need for Yang or for his supporters to wait the seemingly interminable minutes for the judges to review his performance on the horizontal bar – as the final participant in the sixth and final rotation of the championship, his lead was so strong that it would have taken a disaster to knock him out of first.

And there had been no disaster.

So Yang played to the crowd.

He flexed his bulging muscles. He raised his arms in triumph. He draped himself in China’s flag. He played cheerleader, waving his arms to encourage the crowd’s roars.

And all this well before the judges had announced their decision.

China’s historical sage Confucius might have been appalled.

In XIII:27 of The Analects it is written — “The Master said: The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.”

Of course, in XIV:29 it adds: “The Master said: The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.”

And with a 2.6 point win over the Silver medallist, Japan’s Kohei Uchimura, and with his win wiping out eight years of personal frustration, Yang, only the second Chinese man to capture the all around title at the Olympics, knew his actions had indeed exceeded.

He knew it. The crowd knew it. And at long last, the judges announced it.

Photos REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

Facts may be facts.

But putting meaning to those facts can be very tricky.

The fact is, China’s People’s Armed Police parked an armoured personnel carrier outside the main press centre of the Beijing Olympics on Tuesday.

The fact is, photographers and videocameramen swarmed the vehicle taking images that will travel the world. These pictures were all taken by Reuters Reinhard Krause.

The fact is, everyone who sees those images will see something different.

I’m pretty sure China meant to send the message: “These Olympics and this Olympic Village are as safe as they can possibly be.” That’s been an important theme for officials keen to counteract the news of a series of attacks in restive Xinjiang and the murder of an American in Beijing.

I’m pretty sure many outside China will see in the pictures the heavy hand of an oppressive government.

Which is right? Are both? Are neither?

What do you see?

I’ll admit that I’m not a professional sports journalist, but I like to think of myself as a decent amateur watcher of sport.

As an American living in London, I’ve even fallen deeply in love with cricket. Fencing, however, foxes me completely.

It all sounds so marvellous:

“Take the romantic, swashbuckling epics of Errol Flynn, add some rules, protective clothing and an electronic scoring system, and you have fencing at the Olympic Games. Two rivals stand opposite each other and feint, lunge, parry and riposte until one scores the required number of hits to win”  — so says the official Beijing Olympics website.

The photographs are even more alluring to me. White-suited warriors stand out sharply from pitch-black backgrounds; metal swords gleam; alien-looking bodies are captured in a state of grace.

In person, the venue oozes with romance — hall lights off, the heavy humid air envelopes all. The fencers emerge, swaddled from top to bottom in electrified suits designed to record every hit. They put on their masks. The referee, wearing a powder-blue jacket, puts them en garde and we get three minutes of violent dance-like movements: thrust, parry, fleche, reprise, riposte and goodness knows what else.

On contact, the electronic lights flash, the contestants let off wild almost inhuman screams, and the referee glances at a slow-motion replay before contorting his body into a an arcane gesture indicating analysis and scoring.

I must admit, on almost every single contact I witnessed I couldn’t figure out who should have been awarded the point — and when I guessed the referee was invariably of an opposite view.

After a while, baffled and confused — but still entranced by the beauty — I left, knowing that at least one more career route is now closed off to me.

Photo: Giovanna Trillini of Italy (L) competes against Nam Hyunhee of South Korea during their women’s individual foil fencing semi-finals at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, August 11, 2008. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini

With a circulation of three to four million, it is one of the world’s biggest papers; with its direct ties to the top Party leaders, it has long been the way official policy shifts have been announced or hinted at.

When I was Reuters China bureau chief  from 1991-94, the unalterable start of every day’s routine was to study the newspaper from front to back, trying to piece together the hints contained in an article, an editorial, in the choice of words or in the selection and placement of pictures.

This was the practice of journalists and scholars from the very founding of the newspaper in 1948, a year before the People’s Republic of China was formally established.

Even today, China watchers and journalists believe little gets into the newspaper by accident

Imagine my surprise, then, when my own face appeared on page 17 of today’s edition above an interview on Reuters coverage of the Olympics.

In the old days, such a presentation might have meant I was destined for high office — today, it just signifies how China has changed its attitudes towards the foreign media.

But as if having the Olympic cauldron lit by a “flying” gymnast Li Ning, suspended by wires high above the heads of 91,000 spectators, wasn’t proof enough that even gravity could be conquered by the world’s most populous nation, the government defied the elements as well.

China “blew away” threatening rain clouds with a barrage of more 1,000 rain dispersal rockets, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Chinese meteorologists told the agency it was the largest rain dispersal operation in China, and the first time that such technology had been used to ensure the weather condition for Olympic opening.

Photo: This combination picture shows former gymnast Li Ning of China suspended in mid-air as he lights the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the National Stadium August 8, 2008. The stadium is also known as the Bird’s Nest. REUTERS/Jerry Lampen

In a brutally competitive world like this, nothing can be left to chance.

One of our most experienced Olympic photographers and editors, Gary Hershorn, attended rehearsals of the opening ceremony in order to plot out key moments that simply had to be captured.

That advanced planning helped the team of 12 photographers in the stadium, nine immediately outside and six in Tiananmen Square and on the Great Wall get ready to tell the story in images through a mixture of bread-and-butter set-up shots and imaginative compositions that matched the dreamy romance of the show itself.

The 12 in the stadium had set positions from the roof catwalk down to the stage and scattered all around the Bird’s Nest. Four were directly cabled into the editors’ computer system (and, in fact, we had two senior editors, including the global head Tom Szlukovenyi, in the stadium itself to do on-the-scene selection of the key shots); the rest sent their computer disks to the editors via runners.The gargantuan task of editing the file was split between the editors in the venue, six editors and 15 processors in the main press centre and a further specialist desk in Paris that selected photographs of VIPs for magazine use.

This type of volume would have been absolutely impossible in the days before digital photography -18,000 prospective shots would have taken some 600 rolls of film, a physical and financial impossibility!

After the dramatic spectacle, the grind of chronicling 204 delegations began. Editors made sure we had shots of the delegation from every place we have clients as well as every place that was somehow newsworthy.

After just a couple of hours sleep, the team regrouped to start the work of capturing the actual sport.

Photo credits: (from top) Mike Blake/Reuters, Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters, David Gray/Reuters

In the representational role, I was invited to Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state banquet along with a score of other media leaders — among them News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, the BBC’s Mark Thompson, AP’s Tom Curley, Russia’s Rianovosti’s Chief Editor Svetlana Mironyuk and Dr. Dinh The Huynh, member of Vietnam’s Communist Party Central Committee and Editor-in-Chief of the Nhan Dan newspaper.

Held in the vast and imposing Great Hall of the People off Tiananmen Square, the banquet was an amazing opportunity to see Chinese leaders in a rare informal pose and to chat with a variety of current and former world leaders.

“Reuters? I have no problem with Reuters, but of course I’m out of all that now,” former U.S. President George H.W. Bush said to me.

Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew asked me sharply if we’d report the Olympics fairly. I replied that China’s Xinhua news agency had already quoted my assertion that we would! (I think if you read all our coverage you’ll see that we are applying our usual, global standards of good journalism to everything we do here).

The banquet itself — each large round table graced with a pair of huge peacocks carved out of radishes — went off with military precision, plates presented and then whisked away to make sure that everyone would get out in good time to do some business in the afternoon before the grand opening ceremony.

I was told that two practice banquets had been held, one five days before and one 10 days before, to get the timing and the presentation exactly right.

“Doubles” from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs played the part of every guest.

In the event, the real guests seemed to eat faster than expected — or perhaps the diplomatic doubles simply relaxed and drank more than we felt like doing on a hot, sticky summer’s afternoon.

For the record, we ate:

• Lantern-shaped Assorted Delicacies as starters
• Pine mushroom Chicken Soup in a White Gourd Cup
• Beefsteak Wrapped in Lotus Leaf
• Seasonal Greens in Bird’s Nest
• Peking Duck
• Cod with Soy Sauce
• Cheesecake
• Fruit
• Ice Cream

What I really want to know is: in the rehearsals did my body double also spill ice cream down his tie, just like I did?

Photo: Chinese President Hu Jintao (at podium) delivers a speech during a banquet at the Great Hall of people in Beijing August 8, 2008. REUTERS/Minoru Iwasaki/Pool

            Situated in the main press centre in the Olympic Village, the centre is home to the more than 30,000 journalists and support staff from the world’s media who gather to cover the games.

The halls are filled with impromptu reunions of people who last saw each other at the last summer Olympics in Athens or the last winter ones in Turin.

Reuters has been covering the Olympics since the modern Games began in 1896, so we’re well prepared for the logistical puzzle that will spit out 150-200 stories, 1,000 photographs and many minutes of video highlights every day, along with a complete run of results.

Our team is a mix of sport experts, China experts and all-around journalists who bring myriad talents to bear on a story that runs from results to human interest to politics and economics. And, of course, the technical geniuses who make sure that the temporary set-up in Beijing works as well as, if not better than, our permanent bureaux around the world.

            As soon as the actual competitions begin, the newsroom will house only a steady crew of editors while the reporters and photographers will fan out to various events in a complex logistical dance. With 28 sports, 302 events and demanding subscribers interested in every country represented and nearly every athlete competing, the combinations are mind boggling!

((Photos: Laszlo Balogh/Reuters. From top: the newsroom, planning photo coverage, editors at work)

Comedian W.C. Fields is reputed to have said, “Never work with animals or children.” There’s no question that cuteness done right can upstage anyone or anything.

For my money, this picture taken by Reuters photographer Alessandro Bianchi of a panda in the Beijing zoo happily munching away upstages most of the pictures of smog, arriving dignitaries and assorted preparations we’re getting as we wait for the Olympics opening ceremony on Friday.

At the coffee bar inside the main press centre, the price of a double espresso tumbled from RMB 23 (almost $3.40) to RMB 12 ($1.76) overnight.

Asked why, the young barista simply said “The Olympic committee ordered it.”

Anyone who has been around journalists knows that a newsroom is fueled by caffeine. The lack of coffee causes scenes quite similar to this one from Airplane! 2.

(you only need to watch the first 50 seconds to get the idea!).

((photo: Australian Olympic swimmer Grant Hackett is swamped by presumably caffeinated journalists as he walks through the arrivals hall at Beijing airport to participate in the 2008 Olympic Games August 3, 2008. REUTERS/Tim Wimborne))