The flags were everywhere when I returned home. I had been reporting in the western desert right before the start of the Olympic Games, and in the 48 hours I had been gone, my gray alleyway in Beijing had been splashed with the bright red of dozens of Chinese flags.

There were grand flags and faded flags and flags that billowed at the slightest gust of wind. But my doorway was conspicuously bare. I was a man without a flag, and the afternoon before the Olympics began, I decided to get one.

Edward Wong (’98) reports from Beijing for The New York Times.
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