Citing personal reasons, the organizer of yesterday’s naked bike ride around Guangzhou’s University City tried to cancel the event, but it went on more or less as authorities felt it should.

A few guys showed up with their shirts off, a larger group showed up out of curiosity, and the whole procession had an escort of around 6 police cars and campus security guards on bikes. By 9 pm it was over and photos began trickling in on Weibo (see below).

Dayoo.com, a news website run by Guangzhou Daily, quotes organizer Donkey as saying all the public attention killed the event. Whoops. He said that after all the press coverage, the endless phone calls from media, gawkers and “photographers” interested in the 30-minute naked bike ride, he felt pressured to cancel. No word yet on how much talk there was afterward about carbon footprints, etc. According to this student, media were told to stay away, and there was a fair amount of opposition on campus to the event.

Here are some photos of the event, scraped off Weibo:

‘Carpooling, FTW!’