The "sacred" flame: On July 7, the Olympic Torch relay made its way through Lanzhou. The earthquake on May 12 had put only a brief damper on local hysteria over the Olympics. As the arrival of the torch approached, the people of Lanzhou were once more in a lather. Vendors appeared on every street corner, selling flags and T-shirts. The shirts were something new in my observation of Gansu styles. In the past, there were plenty of imprinted T-shirts, but few of them said anything meaningful. Many were gibberish, while others were made-for-export projects gone wrong. With the Olympic spirit came T-shirts with a message; China has discovered a new propaganda device. The use of the heart shape as shorthand for "love" is new in Gansu. The use of English is surprising, since only a small minority of local people can read it. (I saw a few shirts printed in Chinese, but very few.) The fine print on the shirt says, "China, jia you, Chinese, jia you." Jia you means, idiomatically, "rah, rah!"