Route of the Olympic flame: Beijing as a guardian of the antique cult of the European nations

It is without doubt that the 2008 Olympic Games in Peking will be remembered as the most grandiose, most spectacular and most expensive sport manifestation ever organized. Ratings are uniform: it will be very difficult to attain a standard posed by Peking in any recent time. Again, through the organization of this manifestation, China resurfaced as a powerful, wealthy and modern country, ready for the challenges of the 21st century. However, a shadow is cast upon China, in spite of its economic power, due to the country's autocratic political system. China's lack of democracy, human rights and liberties and position of minorities have provoked a harsh criticism among the Western countries, reflected at the time when China was granted Olympic games for 2008. Since then, the criticism continues especially directed at the decision of the Olympic committee, with several calls to boycott the Games itself. Anti-Chinese rallies were intensified this spring, when the Olympic torch started its way from Greece to Peking. Thousands of demonstrators worldwide- defenders of the Tibet's freedom- have tried to stop the carriers of the torch, trying to put out 'the eternal flame' and disable its route to the final destination. The torch has changed its route many times in order to deceive the protestors and takeover was also a subject to change and many manipulations. In any case, the broadcasted scenes of conflict between the demonstrators and Chinese official escorts and citizens, charged with emotions at both sides, will remain as a recall of the Olympic Games 2008 for a long time. Regardless of the possible justified cause of this protest, in the worldwide broadcasted scenes for many months there was a totally paradoxical change of roles: the Olympic flame, as well as the idea, China has defended as its own, as a highest value and also as a source and holiness of its own past and identity, while the Europeans, on whose territory that same idea and values were once created, attacked fiercely those same notions. How are we to understand these contradictory images? How it came about that China experience itself as heiress of the Olympic tradition and how it happened that the pride of the Chinese nation concentrated in the flame, be hurt by the attempts of the European demonstrators to put it out? Modern Olympic Games, founded in 1896, presented itself as one of the echoes of centuries' long fascination of the Antique era experienced by the Westerners. This phenomenon of the Antique admiration has brought about a new redefinition of the European past and civilization ra