Well, not quite the Bird’s Nest, but from the Reuters office at the Main Press Centre, just down the road.

Thanks for coming by and making this blog such a lively place during the Olympics. It might not quite be the end — the blog will still be here, the comments will remain open and we may well have a few more posts on Games-related issues — but I’m on my way out of Beijing (the office is being dismantled around me, as you can see).

Thanks too to China for hosting such a great Games, and to all my colleagues from Reuters text and pictures who posted here.

If you’re just stumbling across this blog, have a scroll down, check back through previous pages and look at some of the many brilliant pieces from long before the Games started and all the way through to the end. You could while away a good few hours here if you want to relive the Olympics. 

If you’re a fan of soccer/football you may want to drop by the Reuters Soccer Blog here. Otherwise, roll on London 2012….

Kevin Fylan 

This is the seventh and last in our series of Beijing snapshots — moments from the Games that will live long in the memories of all who witnessed them.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt in the 100m, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: Matthew Mitcham, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 5: Fair play gets forgotten, by Lindsay Beck here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 6: Michael Phelps, by Derek Parr here.

PHOTO: Usain Bolt of Jamaica looks up at the scoreboard as he crosses the finish line to win men’s 200m final of the athletics competition in the National Stadium at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 20, 2008. Bolt set a new world record with a timing of 19.30 seconds. REUTERS/David Gray

I’d expected the worst when I got to Beijing three weeks ago. I remember what it was like in another Communist country — East Germany with its suppressed and scared people coupled with deplorable service and shoddy quality everywhere you turned.

That’s roughly what I had in mind for China, although I knew Beijing itself would certainly be a more prosperous and modern place than East Germany, and with a bit of window dressing for the Olympics.

But China has turned out to be a lot different than I imagined. Even if it is perhaps a facade for the multitudes of foreign journalists like me getting their first taste of China, the single-most overwhelming aspect for me has been the wholehearted friendliness of the people.

I’ve been looking everywhere for that proverbial half-empty glass and the fly in my soup ever since I got here but instead have found mostly kind, helpful and friendly Chinese people who have been doing perfect 10-score back-flips to keep me and the fraternity of curmudgeon-like journalist colleagues from Seattle to Saigon happy.

I’m sure they’ve been drilled on how to be friendly and helpful to Lao Wai (foreigners) like me. The volunteers in Athens were all pretty friendly too, until the last day of the Olympics when they started ignoring my questions and the smiles disappeared. Here they haven’t stopped smiling or being helpful yet.

It doesn’t mean there haven’t been angry, tense, frustrating moments. And no one here can forget the ostracised and punished dissidents in China (you wonder why free speech runs into limits in such a powerful and proud country with so much going for it).

I’ve also had a few minor run-ins with rather inflexible local officials. But there is still no escaping the kindness, smiles and friendliness of the Chinese people everywhere you turn. It’s contagious.

Just before an interview with an athlete the other day, the battery on my tape recorder died. I turned to a local Chinese volunteer to ask if she knew where I might be able to buy, find or borrow a new one. “Sorry, no.” No worries, I told her. I’ll manage.

A few minutes later she ran over with new batteries. It was unreal. She had made it her personal mission to search the venue for a battery for me. Could anything like that happen in London in 2012?

My favourite line of the Olympics has been this one from a 22-year-old student walking on Tiananmen Square just before the opening ceremony. It sums it all up best: “My heart is bursting with excitement about the Games. I want the people to see what is special about China.”

PHOTO: Volunteers stand near targets with arrows during the men’s archery individual ranking round at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 9, 2008. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich

Kevin Fylan adds: This is the sixth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: Matthew Mitcham, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 5: Fair play gets forgotten, by Lindsay Beck here.

One more to come.

PHOTO: Michael Phelps of the U.S. competes during his team’s victory in the men’s 4×100 meters medley relay swimming final during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the National Aquatics Centre, August 17, 2008. REUTERS/David Gray

As Olympic visitors started to worry on Sunday about airport return traffic, cars in Beijing were being parked on sidewalks again.

Night clubs were open after an anti-prostitution blitz a few weeks ago. Once banished vendors scrummed on sidewalks to sell Olympic pins, the collection of which had grown to a competitive roar among locals close to the Games.

In shopping districts, you’d win gold for walking 100 metres in under an hour, a silver to stay standing amid shoves and a bronze to hear yourself talk on the phone.

China’s athletic dominance at a terrorism-free Olympics motivated celebratory locals to re-emerge into the streets over the final days of the Games, clogging venues with bodies and cars, basically returning to life as usual.

The coming-out followed a chill over Beijing orchestrated earlier this summer to reduce the risk of upsets during the country’s signature event.

“There’s a happy atmosphere now in Beijing,” said Sky Zhou, 23, a government employee, on Sunday as he joined crowds of police, military and athletes in lining up for the closing ceremonies. “Two weeks ago there was an atmosphere of anticipation.”

Before the Olympics, Beijing sent migrant workers home, removing the ubiquitous din of hammers and the smell of poured cement at construction sites. Beijing car owners can drive only on alternate days, hollowing out once gridlocked intersections the size of small sports fields.

Planes all but exceeded passengers at the normally packed Beijing airport. Chinese outside Beijing stayed home to avoid newly mandated interrogations at highway or railway checkpoints about their reasons for visiting the capital. For a while it was oddly reminiscent of the outbreak of SARS in 2003, when 2,500 people got sick in Beijing, at least 190 died and there was a ghostly feel about the city.

“The Olympic atmosphere is better than the normal one,” said university student and Games spectator Long Su, who has lived in Beijing for four years. “The construction sites have faded out, and my feeling is that Beijing has gotten cleaner.”

Riding a wave of sporting euphoria after its best Olympic performance in a century, Britain accepted Olympic host-nation status from China on Sunday with a huge street party in front of Buckingham Palace.

Owen Wyatt catches up with Olympic gold medallists Michael Phelps and Bradley Wiggins as London throbbed with 40,000 partygoers at a live concert to start the countdown to the London 2012 Olympics.

Kevin Fylan adds: This is the fifth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: The greatest dive in Olympic history, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

More to follow over the course of the day.

PHOTO: Angel Valodia Matos of Cuba kicks referee Chakir Chelbat of Sweden during his men’s +80kg bronze medal taekwondo bout against Arman Chilmanov of Kazakhstan at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 23, 2008. REUTERS/Issei Kato

The million dollar question on the minds of many: Will China change after the Olympics?

I’ve worked intermittently in Beijing for 11 years and in Taipei for 15, but analysing the world’s most populous nation, and an opaque one for that matter, is like a blind man feeling an elephant.

In many ways, I expect it to be business as usual for the Communist Party post-Olympics, resisting political change and tightening the security noose in restive Tibet and Xinjiang. But my money is also on ordinary Chinese clamouring for greater freedoms and forcing their government to be more transparent and accountable.

Chinese have never had it this good since the 1949 revolution, enjoying unprecedented personal freedoms after three decades of liberalisation transformed the country from an economic backwater into the world’s fourth-biggest economy.

They have traded their Mao suits for business suits. They are no longer rationed food and have more than enough to eat. They can choose where to live, travel, study and work and don’t need Party approval to tie the knot.

There is no turning back the clock. As China seeks its rightful place in the world, it is likely to be more open and integrated with the rest of the world.

The word “Westernisation” is still taboo among Chinese leaders, but many of my Chinese friends fancy jeans, McDonald’s hamburger, Kentucky fried chicken, Coca-cola, Hollywood movies and rock and roll. Many Chinese have yet to forgive and forget Japan’s wartime atrocities which Japanese ultra-nationalists claim were fabricated, but Beijing’s roads are filled with Japanese cars and Chinese youth are obsessed with Sony Playstations and Nintendo Game Boys.

With or without the Games, China will change at its own pace.

There is no need to gaze into the crystal ball to find out what China’s future will be. The weather in recent days may be a barometer: cloudy one day, thunderstorms another and finally bright sunny skies.

PHOTO: This combination picture shows the Olympic flame before (L) and after it was extinguished during the closing ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the National Stadium August 24, 2008. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

Kevin Fylan adds: This is the fourth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.

More to follow over the course of the day.

PHOTO: Matthew Mitcham of Australia competes in the men’s 10m platform diving final at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, August 23, 2008. REUTERS/Phil Noble

The Beijing Olympic Games closed on Sunday, as China passed on the flame to London.

Former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch was in the habit of describing each Games as “the best ever”, with the notable exception of Atlanta in 1996.

His successor Jacques Rogge does not go in for such superlatives. He described Athens in 2004 as “unforgettable, dream Games” and on Sunday he pronounced the verdict on Beijing, saying they had provided “an exceptional Games”.

Perhaps that was a fitting phrase for an Olympics that began with an opening ceremony on an unparalleled scale and went on to provide highlights that will live on in the memory of all of us.

American swimmer Michael Phelps won eight gold medals, with a little help from his friends on the relay team, to break the record of seven at a single Games, achieved by Mark Spitz in 1972. Usain Bolt took the breath from all of us in the Bird’s Nest stadium when he won the 100 and 200 metres, breaking the world record in each.

Matthias Steiner broke our hearts by offering up his weightlifting gold to the wife he lost in a car crash, while Matt Emmons made us all gasp when for the second Olympics in succession he blew a certain gold medal with a ridiculous mistake on his final shot.

But were they the best Games ever? China provided us with a wonderful experience at and away from the venues and I will never forget the friendliness of the legions of volunteers, and the ordinary Chinese people too.

One thing that did get me after a while is that this was a Games that was taken extremely seriously, by everyone (apart from Usain Bolt).

Faster, Higher, Stronger goes the Olympic motto, and China seemed determined to host a Games with those goals in mind. They did it too, but I sometimes longed for an Eric the Eel in the pool, or even a cock-up in the organisation, just to prove that not even the Chinese are perfect when it comes to running a big event.

The short segment given to London 2012 during the closing ceremony promised a much more modest scale and perhaps a touch of irony and self-deprecation, what with the umbrellas and a double decker bus. I almost expected Austin Powers to come somersaulting out.

For now, though, let’s focus on China. The Games were brilliant, but were they the best ever? Please let us know in the comments.

PHOTO: Fireworks explode during the closing ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the National Stadium, August 24, 2008. REUTERS/Claro Cortes