In recent years, when America has shown its face to the world, it hasn't always been very attractive or indeed very well received. The country seems to have lost a step or...maybe even three when it comes to the kind of symbolism with which it once dazzled the planet.

But this week in Beijing, the U.S. Olympic team demonstrated impeccable judgment with a remarkable gesture, a symbol of the very best of the United States. For an honor usually reserved for a longtime and accomplished American Olympian, it named Lopez Lomong, a first-time, 23-year-old Olympian and likely also-ran in the 1,500 meters here, as the U.S. flagbearer for Opening Ceremonies. "I'm here as an ambassador of my country and I will do everything I can to represent my country well," Lomong said after he was told of the team selection.

That honor caps a remarkable odyssey for Lomong, who came to the United States as one of the so-called "Lost Boys of Sudan." As a six-year-old, he was kidnapped by rebel forces and thrust into that East African nation's seemingly eternal civil war. He somehow managed to escape and spent a decade in a Kenyan refugee camp. He recalls hiking five miles and paying a few cents to watch the Sydney Olympics on a black-and-white TV run off a car batter. It was then he began sketching—but not really believing—his own Olympic dream.

In 2001, he left a world of hoplessness for one of hope in America. He landed with a foster family in upstate New York and later became a top collegiate distance runner at Northern Arizona University, winning NCAA titles at 1,500 and 3,000 meters. And at the U.S. Olympic Trials earlier this summer, Lomong, who became a citizen last year, just squeezed onto the American team, finishing third in the 1,500 despite a gimpy ankle.

That entire 1,500 team is a snapshot of "melting pot" America and, in an era where anti-immigration sentiment resonates loudly, the fulfillment of the classic American dream. Besides Lomong, the U.S. 1,500 team includes Bernard Lagat, the reigning world champ and a native Kenyan, and Leonel Manzano, whose family crossed the border from Mexico to Texas when he was four years old. "The American flag means everything in my life," said Lomong. "I don't even have words to describe how happy I am."

So should be all those who hoped that President Bush and Olympians might speak out or make some gesture to call attention to the Chinese role in the Sudanese tragedy of Darfur. Lomong is a most powerful symbol of both tragedy in Sudan and hope in America.

Today I decamped at dawn to watch the torch relay in you-know-which-famous-square. A couple dozen other journalists and I were herded to a spot facing Mao’s portrait. We waited and waited. The last time I’d waited that long in that place, that early in the morning, was in 1989 during a brief and ill-fated Beijing Spring.

Waiting for Yao Ming and the torch relay

Back then I was waiting for Chinese police to come clear the square of hundreds of youthful protesters who’d hung colorful silk banners off official flagpoles in front of the granite obelisk known as the Monument to the People’s Heroes. (Chinese look down on your political movement if you don’t have flags made of luxuriant silk, and if you don’t

 
Aritz Parra/AP

The first skirmishes in the guerrilla war between Chinese authorities and human rights protesters took place on Wednesday. Plenty of what China doesn't want to happen has happened here today, but so far it's been small-scale, with a scrappy, subterranean feel, and very little of it has occurred in public. By the end of the afternoon, four Free Tibet protesters had been detained and a film show was canceled. Human rights groups staged at least four protests.

The day's most successful stunt came from Students for a Free Tibet. Two men--American Phil Bartell and Briton Iain Thom--climbed pylons near the showcase Bird's Nest National Stadium at dawn and hung out banners saying "Tibet will be Free" and "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet". Police detained the climbers and their two helpers–one man and one woman–who were acting as spotters at the base of the pylon, and there has been no word of them since. It's likely they've been deported. Despite the small scale of this incident, the stadium is the icon of the Games and will be the site of the opening ceremony on Friday. It's blow to the police for activists to get so close so such a sensitive site.

Free Tibet activists also organized film showings in hotel rooms, notifying reporters by text message. The first show went ahead, attended by Reuters and BBC reporters, but Newsweek's invitation was to the later event in a second hotel. There was a distinctly amateur feel to this occasion as two dozen reporters milled round the lobby of the modest Hotel G (no secrecy here, that's its full name) in east Beijing, trying to gain entry to Room 612. While management insisted that 612's occupant did not want us admitted, reporters dialed the room and were told to come up. After a while, though, Room 612 stopped answering. Seven journalists who did make it inside appeared and said that management had switched off the TV and ordered them out. The UK-based organizers included Dechen Pemba, a Tibetan woman with a British passport who was deported from Beijing in July. Before the film, Pemba gave a 10 minute introduction by video, Reuters reported.

Hotel rooms were a creative theme of the day. If the film show was art-house, the day's third event was more like an art school degree show installation. Selected reporters were invited to go to two hotel rooms a couple of miles apart, locate the room key taped to the back of the "Do not disturb" sign and let themselves inside for a private viewing. What they found, according to a photographer with the Spanish paper El Mundo, were walls daubed with slogans and a life-size black-clad figure laid out on the bed with a splash of red paint at its neck. Daubed directly onto the walls was the slogan "Speak out for those who have no voices", the Beijing 2008 logo and the names of five jailed dissidents. The names in both rooms were the same: AIDS activist Hu Jia, Pastor Zhang Rongliang who supports unregistered churches or "house churches", journalist Shi Tao, human rights activist and lawyer Guo Feixiong, and Falungong member Xu Na. There was no sign of the organizers (who presumably paid cash for their rooms) according to Richard Spencer of the UK-based newspaper The Daily Telegraph. It's not clear who organized these spectacles.

These guerrilla actions are small scale affairs, but the Games haven't started yet. There almost certainly will be more protests in the days ahead.

The Hotel G was shut down after this incident, according to an email from the film show's organizers. "According to many sources the guests of Hotel G. were forced to leave their hotel and find other places for the coming night," it said.

Ning Ning, a 26-year-old from Urumqi who moved to Beijing for a Master's painting program at Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts, is excited. The city's newly opened Line 10 subway brings other parts of the city closer to her, faster, than ever before: “I just want to ride around and explore with my friends!” Generally considered a private city whose hulking outer shell is tough to penetrate, the expanded underground—which opened Saturday, July 19—is making China's capital more accessible and, yes, possibly more democratic in the one area of public administration that touches virtually every resident nearly every day: transportation.

The varied territory covered by Line 10—a 25-kilometer, 22-station long inverted ‘L’ shaped route that traces the East Third Ring Road north-south and then tacks east-west—is a crash course in understanding Beijing as a city. The train travels from the ancient universe of Panjiayuan market's old-world curios in the city’s southeast to the Haidian hangouts of youth and high-tech in the far northwest—with the Central Business District (CBD), Embassy compounds, and Sanlitun entertainment quarter in between.

Formerly a 90-minute car ride (even when traffic is light), the journey can now be covered in under 40 minutes. It was launched as part of a progressive transportation package in time for the Olympics which also boasts the Airport Express elevated train and the 4-stop Olympic Park line. Moving around the city during the Games has been transformed further by anti-pollution measures that include alternating driving days for even and odd numbered car license plates and banning industrial vehicles that don't meet emissions standards.

For Ning Ning and friends, wandering about the city just for curiosity's sake “in the past was just too far, wasted so much time.” Ning Ning also fretted that “we wouldn’t know how to get back home,” which is something many in Beijing feel. Here, citizens must contend with street names constantly under revision, new thoroughfares that sprout up in just weeks, and whole neighborhoods disappearing in the time it takes one to return from a business trip. “In order to get around,” explained Annie, a 30-something administrative assistant who traveled from her office in the CBD to the Haidian Hospital in the technology hub of Zhongguancun, “you had to spend time figuring out what combination of buses and taxis to take to get around. Now, it will be much easier.”

Opaque is one way to describe travel through Beijing transport. Michael Armstrong, an American who writes a bi-weekly local column focusing on the expatriate experience and who has lived in Beijing for three years, thinks of the Chinese capital “as a bunch of little villages—and people just stay within their own townships.” The center of town is circumscribed by the circular subway Line 2, and Line 1 traces east-west artery Chang’an Avenue; Line 5 travels north-south through this central area. With the launch of line 10, those not living along one of these main thoroughfares can now connect with the sites and neighborhoods that made Beijing famous.

Three days before the Olympic swimming competition begins in Beijing, the top stars of the American team were out and about, dutifully fulfilling their media responsibilities. Michael Phelps was talking about his preparations, but not about the challenge of surpassing Mark Spitz's record of eight gold medals in a single Olympics. ("You are the guys who are talking about it, I haven't said anything about breaking any record.) Dara Torres, the 41-year-old "Supermom" swimming in her fifth Olympic Games, talked about becoming a hero to the 40-something set. And Amanda Beard, the next oldest member of the women's team at 26, talked about why she felt compelled to disrobe for he cameras again--this time for PETA's anti-fur crusade.

But it was 24-year-old Eric Shanteau who commanded the most attention. Under other circumstances, Shanteau, a runner-up in the 200-meter breast stroke at the U.S. Olympic Trials, would have been a bit player in the pool scene, unlikely to command a microphone let alone a crowd of reporters hanging on his every word. However, Shanteau revealed after the Trials that he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer and that he had decided to postpone surgery in pursuit of his Olympic dream.

Shanteau doesn't pretend that it was a simple decision--in July he described learning of his diagnosis as a "huge bomb"--and says that while his teammates are overwhelmed by his positive attitude and upbeat demeanor, it isn't as simple as all that. "It's been a rollercoaster ride," he said. "This isn't the flu, this is cancer." And he wrestles with the burden all the time. "It's on my mind constantly. I can't help that." Still, he says, he is confident that "I will be cured, I will beat this."

In a strange way, Shanteau says, the disease has taken some of the pressure off him in this Olympics. "I've kind of got an out in cancer," he says. "It keeps things in perspective for me, There are a lot more important things in life than an Olympic Games."

Brendan Hansen, a fellow breastroker and one of the team captains, says that for the team watching Eric deal with cancer makes dealing with the Olympics seem a lot smaller and perhaps easier. "What we're doing here is not on as big a pedastal as we put it," he said. It is a perspective that may be hard to maintain amid all the hoopla here in Beijing. But today it wasn't lost on anybody who heard Shanteau.