BEIJING — Under blue skies and in front of handfuls of preselected spectators, a Communist Party official from Wuhan carried the Olympic torch next to China’s historic Grand Canal in southeastern Beijing on Friday as the flame journeyed to the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.
The torch was ceremonially lit last fall in Olympia, Greece, at the site of the ancient Olympic Games. It normally takes a monthslong, very public journey through a number of countries to reach the Olympic host city. For the 2022 Games, that was reduced to a three-day relay in and around the Chinese capital, with the torch carried by athletes, Communist Party officials and a Chinese military hero.
Wary of a coronavirus outbreak, the authorities have limited crowds to small clumps of preselected spectators at a few locations.
Vice Premier Han Zheng, president of the Beijing Olympics organizing committee and one of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee that runs China, lit the torch Wednesday morning from a flaming cauldron shaped like a zun, a traditional Chinese wine vessel used in rituals 3,000 years ago.
The first torch bearer was Luo Zhihuan, a former speedskater who became China’s first world champion in a winter sport when he won a title in 1963. Another early torch bearer was Yao Ming, the former N.B.A. star who played for the Houston Rockets.
The Beijing Olympics organizing committee had prepared for the torch to travel briefly aboard a traditional ferry on the Grand Canal, a waterway with some segments that are more than 1,400 years old. But a powerful, subfreezing wind blew down the length of the canal on Friday, and the route was moved to land.
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