I’ve been to 13 Olympics. Have I mentioned that? Oh, I have.

And one of the human-behavioral realities you can count on … almost set your watch by … is the breakdown of discipline by just about everyone involved with the Games in the final hours, before and after Closing Ceremonies.

The alcohol comes out. The inhibitions go down. Noise goes up. Discipline bombs out.

It’s just been a brutal two-plus weeks, and everyone is ready to blow off steam, and the Olympics somehow turns,  in the span of an hour or so, into shore leave for about 10,000 guys back from six months at sea.

I’ve been in Main Press Centers where I was surrounded by drunks, that final night. Journalists and volunteers. Where the locals were abandoning their stations and running around and giggling and basically telling the journos to go to hell, thank you. Even as technical guys were already breaking down the venues, putting away televisions, disconnecting phones.

I predicted the same here. But, turns out, the Chinese are too disciplined for that.

The Fall of Rome, fin de siecle, party-like-it’s-1999 mood I insisted would overtake the Games … didn’t happen.

Everyone just trudged along. Noses to grindstones, all that.

It was quite impressive. Vaguely depressing (does anyone here get to have fun, eventually), but impressive, too.

Even today, Monday, with the Main Press Center nearly empty, with most of my colleagues at the airport or out on a tour … the workers here still are at their stations. Still doing what they do. Still serious.

They are going to follow this to the end.

China strikes me as a very disciplined society. There isn’t an inch of grafitti in this town, and if it has juvenile delinquents (never mind thieves or muggers) … I haven’t seen a one of them.

That’s probably a function of a dictatorship. People learn it doesn’t pay to get out of line. It could be cultural, as well.

It also makes for the populace soldiering on, right to the end.

I’m leaving this room 21 hours after the Olympic torch went out, but it’s still business as usual in here.

So, my claim that the final night is always something like a frat party … No longer true. The Chinese have ended that streak.