The Beijing Olympic torch is held aloft at the top of Mount Everest on Thursday in this image taken from television footage.

Three months to the day before the Games open, members of a 31-strong team reached the top of the 8,848-metre (29,030-ft) peak carrying the Olympic flame in a lantern before lighting the torch.

The climbing team, which included 22 Tibetans, eight Han Chinese and one man from the Tujia minority, had been on the mountain for more than a week preparing the route along the north-east ridge.

Take a look at Nick’s story about the moment so many Chinese have been waiting for.

But the trip is more than just another stopover on the Olympic torch’s journey around the world, read about the controversy and the deep symbolism surrounding the project.

Our Reuters team of Nick, Dave and Mark will be in touch with a us soon to give a personal account of today’s achievement.

You can also catch all the latest Olympics news at our website .

Pix: REUTERS/CCTV via Reuters TV.

At an early press conference today the novel inclusion of information we hadn’t heard before briefly raised spirits in what has become quite a downbeat media camp.

As the weekend snowstorms destroyed the careful preparations the Chinese had made on the mountain and a second week in Tibet became an inevitability, there has been a lot of talk about going home. Not just from journalists, either. Many of the officials who travelled with us from Beijing or joined us at Lhasa airport barely attempt to disguise their low spirits any more. I don’t know whether the cause is the altitude, the cold, the increasingly predictable diet, the lack of showers or just day after day of telling news-hungry journalists that there is no news. One of the senior officials told me again today that he thought we were getting “closer and closer” to “our goal”, while another said he thought our fond farewells would not be not too far away.

Perhaps I’m clutching at straws.

Still, at today’s briefing, the full team of 31 Chinese on the mountain was listed so at least we have names, ages, sexes, and, quite interestingly, ethnic origins to flesh out the “climbers” we refer to in our stories. They are a bit more human now. The continuing good weather has also raised expectations that the end might be nigh. It’s quite windy down here but on the mountain, the tell-tale flag of snow coming off the peak suggests the wind is not too strong and is blowing in a westerly direction. A mountaineering official has told us that it is the east wind that brings snow.

So the hopes are high that they might summit on Wednesday or Thursday and we could all be off the mountain in time to celebrate Dave’s birthday with a few beers at the weekend.

Picture by David Gray

More negotiations over whether we should delay our departure for base camp kept us off the road for an extra couple of hours and stretched the patience of the Chinese journalists.

All was forgotten, though, a couple of hours later when got our first real look at Everest from the top of a pass.

Arrayed in front of us was not only the famous mountain itself but four more of the world’s 14 8,000m-plus peaks.

It was a whole lot more impressive than I had thought it would be. I was not really aware of how much my concept of a mountain had been based on Everest itself.

Two hours later, we were at Rongpo Monastery (5010m) where the Everest Base Camp media centre is located.

There followed a frustrating evening and the first casualty of our rapid rise to altitude, read more about it here.

Pix from the top: The peak of Mount Everest, also known as Qomolangma, can be seen behind the Olympic flag (R) as it flies next to the Chinese national flag (C) and the official Beijing Olympic Games flag on the outskirts of Everest Base Camp April 28, 2008. Foreign and local journalists look from an observation point at Mount Everest, also known as Qomolangma, near the township of Shegar. A Chinese policeman salutes as a convoy of official Chinese government vehicles passes his checkpoint near Mount Everest. REUTERS/David Gray (CHINA)

Until a few months ago, a few weeks in some cases, the Jingshun Highway, once one of the main arteries out of Beijing heading for skiing in the mountains and the Great Wall, was lined with scrappy auto-repair workshops, metal yards, tyre stores, manual car-wash services and other businesses.      

I am talking about the stretch of highway northeast of the huge conurbation of Wanjing, beginning where the airport expressway veers off to the right and surrounded by the suburbs of grandiose villa compounds with names like Beijing Riviera and Grand Hills, temporary homes to CEOs and other rich expats.      

They weren’t the prettiest of shops in Beijing, but they bustled. Roads and pavements were packed as red-cheeked children ran to and from their village homes and mums and dads ate squatting on the flagstones outside their stores.

In short, this was a sprawling, busy trading community supporting hundreds of
families, if not more.

Now, suddenly, many have been wiped from the face of the Earth.

Where once there were workshops, there are now thin lawns, bushes and spring flowers. On one stretch, a long, pretty, one-storey building, in the style of old China, houses several businesses, presumably uprooted from their uglier previous incarnations.

But the rest have been erased. Where did they go?      

And why all the effort to make this road, no longer a major artery with huge, fast, state-of-the-art highways being built all around, pretty?      

A long-term resident suggested an answer. The road is not as important as it once was, but it is the road athletes and spectators will take to the Olympic rowing and canoeing.

They won’t want to see slums.  

Pictures of the rowing/canoeing venue at the end of the road by David Gray (top) and Alfred Cheng Jin.

After laying out our spread of spicy Sichuan food, the waitress returned with four slightly stale slices of white bread, each on their own glistening plates.      

I wondered briefly if DIY chili chicken and peanut sandwiches were a new fad in Chinese restaurants, but when I asked her how I was supposed to eat mine, she looked at me as if I was mad.     

Silently she fished a sliver of our fish from its oily sauce and showed me what would perhaps have been obvious to someone not brought up on a diet of toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, more toast for tea and sometimes bread and soup for dinner.  

The bread was just a sponge, for draining the oil from carp cooked in a traditional and much-loved way that left it a little too greasy for some modern eaters. No one in the “Spicey Seduction” restaurant would dream of eating it.

Which is not to say that there isn’t a lot of bread consumed in China, where bakeries dot most towns and an advisor to parliament admonished athletes last year that they needed to follow Westerners in consuming more milk and beef if they wanted sporting success.      

But two weeks enjoying what I think is one of the world’s great culinary traditions may bring a few surprises for Olympic tourists who have not been to China before.      

I don’t mean the strange translations which this blog has explored before, or the more exotic animals and birds favoured by some Chinese diners, just small differences in eating and cooking habits that can be a little disconcerting for first timers.      

Soup is served at the end of the meal, as are rice, noodles and other staples (beware of filling up because you think that an order for sour and spicy soup has been forgotten).      

Then there is vegetarian meat, which looks like meat and when done well tastes pretty like meat — but is made out of tofu.      

The squeamish may prefer not to be shown the fish they are about to eat flapping around in a net as proof of its freshness,  or have chickens and ducks served with their heads and claws still attached.      

And I learnt years ago not to expect too many sandwiches outside of Western restaurants.      

In one of the first Chinese textbooks that I studied a mother warned her children not to be naughty. Otherwise, she threatened,
they would face …. sandwiches for lunch.

Picture of Chinese breads by China Daily. Beijing restaurant by David Gray  

On Wednesday, reporters will have a first chance to get inside the completed Bird’s Nest National Stadium, where some dreams will come true but many more will be dashed at the Olympics.

It’s been two years since I set foot in the stadium, which was then just a concrete bowl surrounding a muddy oval all shrouded in a twisting, dull, steel mesh.

Despite being so unique, it could be one of the last of a type.

Many people think that the era of the iconic Olympic stadium may soon be over.

Few bidding cities are able to justify building an arena capable of housing close on 100,000 spectators (91,000 in Beijing’s case) .

There is no doubt that the Bird’s Nest is an iconic structure and I am quite excited to get a first glimpse of it in its finished state.

At least, after the security checks being carried out on Monday (picture by a Reuters stringer), we know it should be safe.

Last week was a busy one in Beijing after events surrounding the torch relay took over the news agenda.

I spent six days in the bowels of a five-star hotel in central Beijing chasing comments from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge and his colleagues on events in London, Paris and San Francisco.

Unfortunately, the blog went into hibernation. But the glorious spring weather here has awoken the sleeping bears, and we’re clawing away at some interesting stuff for this week. 

Picture of Jacques Rogge at the China World Hotel by Alfred Cheng Jin

Jonathon Newton, a Reuters account manager in Australia, has been a competitive swimmer for over 20 years. Last weekend, clad in one of Speedo’s newly released LZR racing suits that take at least 15 minutes to peel on, he came third in the 50 metre freestyle at the Australian Swimming Championships, but his time of 22.15 seconds was 0.13 seconds short of taking him to the Beijing Olympics. Newton, 27, talks about getting into his suit, how it affects his swimming and the debate around swimwear that boasts to improve times by up to 3 percent.

“You really need to wear socks or plastic bags over your feet to get the suit on as there is a kind of sticky rubber on the inside leg. If you’re even slightly wet it is impossible. They are not comfortable but you get used it. You don’t put the suit on until just before you go to the marshalling area and take it off straight after the race so it is on for maybe 30 minutes. You need two people to help with the zip on the back. They pack up very small — about the size of a bag of sugar — and people can’t believe you will fit into the suit when they see it packed. 

These suits cost about A$800 each and they are only good for four or five swims at the most. I feel sorry for parents with young swimmers who grow out of them quickly. I’m grateful that when I was young we all just wore briefs.

I truly believe that there really is no difference between all the major suit makers — Speedo, Adidas, Arena, TYR– but it comes down to your personal preference and how it fits your body. I am sure that the major improvement is psychological. When swimmers shave themselves to race it is not about speed but about the way they feel in the water as it makes you feel like you are really cutting through — like a hot knife through butter. It’s the same with these suits. It makes a difference to how you feel you are moving through the water and if you’re feeling good, you make fewer mistakes.

The NCAA in America decided not to allow these suits at their championships this year because they were not available to all swimmers. (Speedo, whose suit is approved by FINA, has promised to provide about 6,000 suits to Olympic hopefuls so that everyone can have access to one as well as the Australian team which it sponsors). This really gets down to a grey area of what is a performance enhancer. The companies that make the suits say they enhance performance but when put on the spot they back down. This has become an issue in the sport and it is a complex debate. Everyone now uses these suits but can you say it cuts your time? The training methods and science of sport has improved dramatically in the last 10 years as well as the suits coming out so it is hard to know exactly how the different factors are helping us.

I missed the Olympic team by 0.13 second. My time was the 4th fastest ever by an Australian, 11th in the world so far this year, but still I did not make it. I am happy that I swam so fast but at the same time it is a bittersweet victory because it still wasn’t good enough for the Beijing team. At least I can take consolation in the fact that I am still getting faster and able to do what I love with such a busy lifestyle and whilst working at Reuters.”

All the tourists, athletes, journalists and other hangers-on flooding to Beijing for the Games need a place to stay, and with hotels already filling up fast, some landlords are more than just rubbing their hands at the prospect of a little extra cash.      

One friend is desperately hunting for a new apartment after her landlord said her rent would jump nine times if she wanted to renew her contract this summer.

Others are also on the market after slightly less avaricious, but still illegal and crippling increases to their monthly housing bill.      

Beijing is worried greedy businesses could ruin the image of the Games and so hotels and restaurants have mostly promised to cap rates at high but just about reasonable levels.      

But private landlords are bound by no such promises — and many are determined to get rid of the tenants currently blocking them from claiming the Olympic jackpot.      

The only possible consolation for those squeezed out by greedy landlords is that their former homes may end up like the hotel rooms in Athens which sat empty during the last Olympics
because of sky-high prices.

The increase in rents is not bad for all Beijingers though — and some of those who own their properties or have more reasonable landlords are getting in on the moneymaking themselves.      

Property pages are scattered with ads for Olympic rentals.      

And one friend has managed to hawk out his two bedroom apartment — usual rent about $1,000 a month — for $2,000 a night. More than enough to keep him and the landlord happy,
though he might not be offering to share.

Picture by Reuters/stringer

It arrived.

Some 5,000 VIPs, cheering workers and media gathered on Tiananmen Square on Monday to welcome the Beijing Olympic flame and launch the 137,000-km torch relay.

Predictably, security on the square was tight. 

The 600 reporters, photographers and television crews were bused from the Olympic media centre some four hours before the flame made an appearance.

As with all Chinese security checks, there were inconsistencies. The metal cigarette lighter in my pocket was confiscated, for example,  but the cheap plastic one in my bag made it through. Many of the security officials themselves were smoking, perhaps they got a light from the flame.

“This is normal, this happens in all countries,” said the policeman who insisted I give up the lighter.  

We sat in the spring sunshine waiting for the party to arrive from the airport, and for President Hu Jintao and the other top Communist Party officials to make their way across the road from their Zhongnanhai compound.

The song “One world, One dream” was played on loop to keep our spirits up as model workers and students in colour-coordinated uniforms waved red pom-poms and fans towards the huge portrait of Chairman Mao that overlooks the square.

Bored, I thought I would try and find out just how many security staff were involved in the operation.

“This is normal, this happens in all countries,” said the policeman I asked, echoing his colleague word-for-word and seeming to think I was challenging the legitimacy of the security operation.

I said that I understood that with China’s president due to arrive shortly, some kind of security was necessary. But how many people were involved?

“You can count them yourself,” he said with a shrug.  

The uninvited were kept at a distance, physically by cordons around the square and temporally by a one-minute delay on the television signal.

Hundreds had already gathered behind the cordons by the time the media arrived and thousands were still milling around when I left the square.  

The ceremony was spectacular. The acrobats and dancers were colourfully clothed and superbly drilled. The climax, when President Hu declared the torch relay open, was an explosion of confetti, doves and balloons.

It’s just a shame so few Chinese were able to witness it live. There was plenty of room. Take a look at our slide show.

Pictures of Hu Jintao, Liu Xiang and the Olympic flame and the climax of the ceremony by Claro Cortes IV.