For some, the business of the Games is...business. Beijing-based financial journalist Fergus Naughton explains how Li Ning Co. Ltd. -- named after the Chinese gymnast who lit the Olympic flame Friday at the sensational finale of the opening ceremony -- is cashing in:

Since winning three gold medals in the ‘84 LA Games, Li Ning has again left his competition in the starting blocks—after his company’s stock soared the in the first day of trading since the gymnastics hero ignited the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on Friday night.

Li Ning’s sports shoe and apparel brand, established in 1990, left its two Olympic sponsorship rivals eating Beijing dust as its stock raced up 3.52 pct in trade Monday. Adidas came in silver, hitting the finishing line up USD 3.29, or 1.05 pct, at USD 32.96 whilst Nike was last trailing the field up USD 0.32, or 0.51 pct, at USD 63.27.

It was Li Ning—and not a Sichuan panda with a flame-throwing device attached to his noggin, as multiple rumors had speculated it would be—who lit the Olympic flame that will burn until the end of the Games.

And what a coup it turned out to be.

The man, the legend, the brand label that looks like Nike’s “swoosh,” has managed to usurp global sportswear giants in a corporate battle ground that has seen millions of dollars pumped into grandiose market penetration drives.Adidas has Yao Ming, Nike has Yi Jianlian, and Li Ning has China.

If you walk down Wangfujing, Beijing’s downtown retail strip, your senses are bombarded with highstreet logos, brand names and mottoes.However the one that demands a double take are those appearing above two stores virtually facing off on opposite sides of the street.

“Anything is Possible” the nearest Li Ning store roars from letters several feet high.

“Impossible is Nothing” the Adidas store across the road chants back.

A laughable situation—and much debated IPR issue (if memory serves, Li Ning’s slogan came out first)—it may be. But Li Ning has succeeded in coming to the world’s attention as a serious player in the global sportswear market. As well as sponsoring several individual Chinese teams, the company also snatched deals with the Spanish and Swedish Olympic squads.

But global domination can wait. Li Ning is building on its current 10 pct share of China’s burgeoning sportswear sector. Over the past several months—and despite turbulence in global markets—textile and sportswear stocks in mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore have seen sturdy trading volumes and buttressed investor confidence in the belief that China’s leisure industry is set for robust growth in the aftermath of the Olympics.

Who could blame them?

Walk into any downtown department store and you see the usual suspects—Adidas, Nike, Puma, Reebok—and in amongst them all, with the bombast befitting a global sports brand, is Li Ning.

However, it may take some time for western consumers to latch on to China’s born-again sports star.“The stuff is kind of cool, in a cheesy kind of way,” an American Olympic tourist said at the aforementioned Li Ning store on Wangfujing.“The guys back home will love it,” he said, adjusting his Van Dutch baseball cap.

Had he ever heard of Li Ning before Friday night?

“Li who?”

Touché.

Chinese gymnastics coach Huang Yubin can keep his job—and for that matter, his life. The pressure on his charges to ante up gold to China’s mounting haul was colossal. They all knew it, too. In Sydney, the team took China’s virgin gold in the event. Then in Athens they distinguished themselves as the goats in an otherwise stellar Chinese campaign, bringing home only a lonely gold on pommel horse. Still, they’ve won seven of the last eight world team titles and China's leading star, Yang Wei, is the reigning all-around world champion. Yang and two other seasoned Olympians were back for Beijing. The day they entered the athletes village, Huang remarked confidently that if his squad flopped again as in Athens, “I’ll jump off a building.” The Chinese press duly took note.

As it turned it out Huang’s charges landed enough of their jumps to save his hide. China won by a hefty margin of more than seven points. Perennial rival Japan took silver in an unmemorable showing. And how about those gimpy Americans: smarting after twin brothers Paul and Morgan Hamm went down to injury just before the Games, they managed to nip the Germans and pick up a cathartic bronze of their own. But they’d came in with little to lose, in stark contrast with China. At the news conference afterward, a Chinese journalist informed Huang that he was off the hook. Huang indulged him with a smirk. “Thanks for not making me jump off a building.”

Early on it appeared he just might have to make that leap. China started out jittery. Chen Yibing skirted the line on the floor exercise, costing the team a steep deduction. Yang Wei had a clean swivel on the pommel horse but got stingy marks, eliciting hisses from the crowd. Meanwhile the U.S. was hot, particularly Jonathan Horton. After the first two rotations China lagged behind in fifth place. During the competition I spotted Huang seated up in the stands. His arms crossed, he appeared catatonic. The only consolation was that Japan was doing worse.

China looked like it would take control on their next rotation, the Rings. Huang Xu came down flawlessly. Yang Wei’s legs quivered visibly, but he held his landing to a single hop. And Chen Yibing nailed his. The National Indoor Stadium was enrapt in a chorus of Zhongguo jia you, Go China. The home crowd was waving more five-star Chinese flags than I’d seen at all the previous events I'd attended combined. That the Chinese were paired with the Japanese only enhanced the suspense in the stands. People went practically mute whenever it was Japan’s turn, but they never crossed the line to booing or hissing.

Chinese had edged within one point of the lead. But the Americans put up a valiant fight. In the fourth rotation, Horton and Spring both hit sure landings. This set off an intriguing clash of cheers in the stands. America supporters scattered around the stadium joined together in a chant. “USA, USA,USA…”. Whereupon the Chinese majority quickly drowned them out in “Jia you, jia you, jia you”. I asked a Beijing newspaper reporter to my side what he made of the moment. “Every country’s fans are the same,” he observed.

China responded to them in style on the Vault. For a second time, Chen Yibing teetered outside the line on landing. But Yang Wei came through solidly and the third-time Olympian Li Xiaopeng was near perfect. China edged ahead. On the parallel bars, Yang Wei and Li Xiaoping both landed strong. Heading into the final rotation, China was in command with five point-plus in breathing room.

Technically speaking, this really was the Chinese men's contest to lose. The higher level of difficulty of their routines gave them a distinct advantage coming in. The Americans had a chance to take the competition down to the wire but the effect of the loss of the Hamm brothers, the only team members with Olympic experience, became apparent. Joey Hagerty wobbled and went out of bounds on the Floor Exercise. American Alexander Artemev was positively boogeying on the Pommel, but it was not nearly enough.

The finishing touch, an elegant landing off the high bar, came from a diminutive 20-year-old named Zou Kai, who is from earthquake-stricken province of Sichuan. After the quake in May, the story goes, Zou lost touch with his family initially and was anxious to leave training to search for them. But they turned up before he left so Zou stuck with the team. Now he can go home with a gold medal.

One big question we've all pondered in the run-up to the Games was how jingoistic the home crowd might seem, especially given the chauvinism exhibited by some Chinese when the torch relay ran into European protests in April. Author and Tsinghua University professor Daniel A. Bell, who contributed a guest blog yesterday on "Confucius and the Games", gauged the mood as he joined Chinese spectators for what turned out to be one of the most electrifying events of the Olympics thus far:

The swimming competitions were in full swing on Day Three of the Games. I was lucky enough to get tickets via the first round of the lottery system that was open to Chinese citizens: I used my Chinese wife's ID along with the IDs of her parents to apply for various competitions, including swimming. But we got only two tickets and I brought along my 13 year old son, who holds an American passport because he was born in the US (I'm Canadian). We sat in the "Chinese" section, though there were a few foreigners who must have deployed a similar strategy.

The stunning aquatics venue is surprisingly intimate. On our side, there could not have been more than a few thousand seats, with journalists, dignitaries, and official team supporters on the other side. Strangely enough, there were a few thousand empty seats on that side, perhaps because they didn't want to mix ordinary supporters with the official crowd. Security was not overbearing, with several hundred college volunteers apparently doing the bulk of the work.

An elderly couple from Heilongjiang, China's northernmost province, was seated on my left. They'd come to Beijing because they had succeeded in getting tickets for this event. We chatted for a while. Two younger males with Chinese flags sat on my son's right.  The events began with introductions of two referees (I didn't even know there were referees in swimming). One was Ukrainian and the other Japanese, and you can guess which one had more applause. Then they introduced the judges, including one Chinese who was cheered loudly.

The first competition was a 100 metres backstroke women's semi-final. They introduced the swimmers, including one Japanese. My neighbor didn't clap. One of the swimmers was Canadian, and my neighbor clapped loudly, looking at me. I was pleased, and I told my son to clap as well. He refused—he may be entering a rebellious phase—and I took his hands and made him clap, which he wasn't too pleased about. The Canadian swimmer came in fifth, unfortunately, and didn't make the cut.

The next event was the 200 meter men's freestyle and the crowd really came to life when Michael Phelps was announced. The Chinese audience obviously loves a winner—Kobe Bryant had the loudest cheers at the opening ceremony—and will overlook such details as national origin in such cases. The 100 meters women's butterfly final was next. One of the participants was Chinese, who drew loud cheers from the audience. The swimmer, sadly, didn't do well in the race itself, which was won by an Australian.

Then it was the 100 meters men's breaststroke final, which was won by a Japanese swimmer in world record time. My neighbor's wife clapped loudly in appreciation, followed by my neighbor. The young Chinese patriots sitting next to my son left before the medal ceremony: I thought they were objecting to the Japanese victors, but they never came back so perhaps they just went to find better seats.

My neighbors seemed surprised when they had to stand for the medal presentation ceremony, but they did so and solemnly listened to the Japanese national anthem, followed by clapping. I clapped after they did. The Japanese victor kept his cool and didn't shed  any tears during the ceremony.

Then it was the medal ceremony for the women's 100 meter butterfly stroke, and the Australian gold medal winner seemed to win the crowd's appreciation with her somewhat embarrassed look as she was handed the gold medal. My neighbor disapproved somewhat as she went to kiss her partner in the stands afterward, but his eyes welled up when she embraced her mother.

As I was observing all this, it occurred to me that the swimming itself appeared rather boring. Unlike, say, Olympian badminton, where the players seem to have superhuman reflexes and the spectators can just gasp in admiration, the swimmers in the Olympic pool don't seem all that different than fast swimmers in any other pool and even the new world records seemed somewhat anticlimactic.

 But then came the big race, perhaps the most exciting sporting event I have ever witnessed.

The last competition of the day was the men's 4 X 100 meters free style race. The crowd cheered loudly for the US team, led off by Michael Phelps. The race was gripping. The first swimmer—an Australian—beat the world record for the 100 meters freestyle. But his team faded afterward, one of those moments when a team broke a world record  but lost the race anyway. Then the French team took over, and led until the final lap, when they were overtaken by the last American swimmer, who won by 0.08 seconds, shattering the world record by more than four seconds.

The crowd went wild. I've never seen so much enthusiasm for what should be the opposing team—the Americans and the Chinese are competing for the Olympic gold medal count. Being Canadian, I would normally cheer against the Americans. But my son was so happy his emotion swept me along as well.

It was time to go. The elderly man from Heilongjiang gave me a firm handshake. I told him that although China and Canada had fared poorly, we still had a great time. He concurred, his wife laughing along. I'm afraid those looking for Chinese chauvinism at this Olympics are likely to be disappointed.

The Beijing Olympics are in a rather remote and self-contained setting, with very little else (read restaurants or bars) of interests in the vicinity. So getting a little stir crazy, me and pal Al escaped for a few hours for a movie premiere at USA House, the social and business center of the U.S. Olympic Team.

Our business was jumbo shrimp, Thai chicken, crab salad, lamb chops climaxed by a course of pure schmaltz. I am of an ethnicity that does not mean that as a pejorative, be it schmaltz on a plate or schmaltz delivered in non-food fashion.

The latter happened to be the case that evening, delivered in 40-minute film called "Let It Out: The Movie", an emotional recalling of great Olympic moments by Olympians, their family members and, in some cases, just plain fans. The documentary, made by twin sisters Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern, plumbs familiar terrain: the "Miracle on Ice"; Michael Johnson's record-smashing 200 meters; Kerri Strug vaulting on an injured ankle; Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic flame in Atlanta; the golden Olympic exit of Mia Hamm and her "girls of summer."

But all these familiar are tried and true and the interviews, if not necessarily providing fresh insight ( though every moment with hockey hero Mike Eruzione's dad, "Jeep" Eruzione, is a classic), are woven nicely through the film. It is also a clever marketing initiative for the film's sponsor, Kleenex, because the movie tugs on the heartstrings and, for those of us who are vulnerable to that kind of thing, becomes a bit of a "weepie." I had to nab a tissue or two (though nowhere near the number of shrimp I speared.)

While seeing the Ali moment certainly stirred a lot of juices, the single best moment for me was the sole non-American highlight featuring British runner Derrick Redmond in the '92 Barcelona Olympics. During the 400 meters, Redmond pulled a hamstring and went to his knees on the track. But he got up and began hopping toward the finish line. Suddenly a man hurdled out of the stands, forced his way past security and ran to Redmond's side. It was his father and, with his son's arm around his shoulders, he got Derrick across that finish line. Just typing it has me welling up. Where's a sponsor when you need it?

And shrimp jokes aside, it reminded me of a career of special privilege. I have now reported from 10 Olympics and personally witnessed every single moment featured in the movie with the exception of the Jesse Owens/Owen's granddaughter segment and the "Miracle on Ice". They were unbelievable live and hold up terrifically well in the retelling.

The film will be shown in 25 different American cities Wednesday and on Thursday will be available for viewing on letitout.com.

Visiting Western revelers in Beijing can now breathe a sigh of relief. For one, it turns out the city air, however murky, does actually support human life—and even outdoor Olympic exertion. And Beijing, despite widely publicized concerns that it would be host to the “no-fun” Games (through some reporting of my own, admittedly), has turned out to be, well, kind of fun.

Originally, bar-owners reported that outdoor and rooftop seating were likely to be limited, as their al fresco tables were carted away and terraces threatened by shut-down unless appropriate registration steps were taken. It was predicted that a 2 A.M.curfew—a geriatric hour for Beijingers accustomed to service staff that will stay as long as there are paying customers—would be imposed. All live music venues faced a slew of previously un-enforced regulations that darkened many a bandstand—only temporarily, it turns out.

After the first Olympic weekend in Beijing, little evidence of killjoy regulation reared its head. Susan Yan, the owner of Passby Bar, had formerly expected her roof garden to be shut down, along with those of all other bars and restaurants lining the pedestrian walkway and hipster hang-out Nanluoguxiang. Instead, “everything was normal.” Moreover Greg Dover, a Canadian who manages Bar Blu on Sanlitun bar street, had worried about early curfews, but says that instead, “we had a good weekend, with no problems. Everybody was happy...Yes, we stayed open past 2.” Stefano Fin, proprietor of street-side Aperitivo, described the Sanlitun district as “packed.” D-22, which faced a period of uncertainty in regards to its live-music stage, now boasts a busy calendar straight through the month of August.

Jim Boyce, a well-read blogger who commentates on Beijing’s nightlife, argues the regulators simply needed to survive pre-game jitters. “These guys are over the initial hiccup, and they’ve realized the foreigners aren’t gonna go crazy. So we’re fine.”

As for the clientele, prior to the Olympics there was a mood of distrust, the result of stringent and continuous security and identity checks within venues which began two weeks before the opening ceremonies. Certainly, the spate of expatriate departures caused by visa cutbacks didn’t help. There had been rumors of corporate-monopolized venues, which would exclude the common party-person from access to the revelry inside. When the South China Morning Post reported that bars were instructed by local authorities to ban black people (which remains an unconfirmed assertion), the city’s festive mood seemed altogether soured.

Yet, for Edward Wang, a Beijing-based Chinese-American university student, and his group of friends, this weekend was typical: “we stayed out until late—I think 4 A.M.—and it was the same as usual on Sanlitun.” His friend, Jonathan Liu, noticed that nobody was indulging in the illicit drugs that were once common along the bar strip, and “there was a whole lot more security...but otherwise, it was the same [as before].”

Men in Black: security guards man the entrance