I watched the 'Parade of Nations' part of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.It was a long winded affair. There are a lot of nations in the world.
I was waiting for my people, who came in 20th from the bottom. That took a while, but then I got to see them for about five seconds. Yay!
Obviously the parade of nations was a highly symbolic affair. Most nations chose to wear outfits that were nationalistic, or at least showed off the design talents of the country.
The Swedes? Not so much. The women wore Chinese inspired tunics, and it looked like the men's sports jackets had Chinese collars. Not very stylish, and not very Swedish.
Still those outfits struck me as very Swedish choices. In their quiet ways Swedes are cultural extroverts. We might come across as shy, but we like to try new things, travel, and be changed.
However many political interpretations can be made of those Chinese collars, to me they are endearing. Wearing those frumpy tunics the Swedish women attempted to do one thing no other nation did: communicate with the Chinese in their own language.
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