One World One Dream

Yesterday morning, after much ado about nothing (NBC, which purportedly paid $900 millions for the exclusive broadcasting rights of the 29th Olympiad in US, decided to delay the televised opening ceremony by 12 hours), we resigned to waiting for the delayed telecast by trying to occupy ourselves with other gainful pursuits to pass the intervening hours. For example, both Wify and I blogged about the impending historic moments that would open China, its culture, its people, its sights and sounds, its charm, to a global audience through staging the world's greatest sporting event.

We planted ourselves on the sofa seats dutifully at 7.30pm to first watch the pre-opening segments on the local NBC station (Channel 7). It included an interview with Tom Brokaw on what it meant for China to be bestowed this honor to host the 29th Olympiad, starting from the moment when the announcement was made way back in 2001, to an euphoric eruption of applause from the host delegates.

The planning and construction of the many venues then started in earnest, and architectural wonders such as the Bird's Nest (for the opening ceremony that can seat just under 100,000 spectators), the Water Cube (for basketball that can seat 11,000 spectators), etc. gradually took shape, extending laterally and skyward, a convergence of form, beauty, and utility.

Inevitably, the segment also touched on the gradual opening up of China from its self-imposed isolation to economic prosperity of today, and the attendant environmental issues, primarily air pollution, which were addressed in greater detail in The Nightly News hosted by Brian Williams telecast earlier in the evening at 6.30pm.

I learned then that the problem of air pollution in Beijing has been aggravated by the presence of Gobi Desert to the west that acts as the source of aeolian sand as well as its geographical makeup, it being surrounded by mountain ranges that discourage air dispersion. I also learned that the Chinese Government has shut down more than 50% of the industrial operation in the Beijing area and imposed a moratorium on vehicular transport in the city during the three-week period of the Olympics to alleviate the enshrouding haze that hangs over the city, that these being stop-gap measures notwithstanding.

At 8pm sharp, the TV lens zoomed in on the Bird's Nest, with Matt Lauer and Bob Costas providing the running commentary. But first, there was a far-field view of the approach to the venue with bursting fireworks from the ground at discrete locations one at a time, simulating the marching sequence of 29 (since it is the 29th Olympiad) giant spatial steps that would culminate in their arrival at the Bird's Nest. And then the whole venue reverberated in pyrotechnics, signaling the start of the greatest show on earth, showcasing the 5,000-year progress of Chinese history, in two segments: Ancient and Modern China.

Some of the figures that are bandied about are staggering indeed, reflecting the gargantuan scale of the undertaking: just under 100,000 for the capacity of Bird's Nest; 15,000 performers, none of whom repeating; 11,000 athletes/delegates to take part in the Parade of Nations; and $300 million as total expenses, ten times the amount of the previous game opening in Athens, Greece in 2004. As one of the commentators put it, this is a scale befitting China's size.

Apart from the official logo featuring the Dancing Beijing above the Olympics' logo of five intersecting rings, and the mascots whose names would spell out the translated text of Beijing Welcomes You (as blogged here and here), of the 29th Olympiad, the theme of the Game is One World One Dream, a noble aspiration indeed, as calligraphed by Wify below:


The entire show is the brainchild of Zhang Yimou, a household name in China and also in international movie directing scene who has won numerous accolades for his screen works such as Riding Alone (2005) (read my review here), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and Hero (2002). I read from an online transcript (in Chinese) of an interview with him that the show encapsulates the elements of passion, romance, and dream through pictorial representation that appeals to the affective faculties of the audience, thus moving them into an appreciation of the evolving beauty of the Chinese culture through snapshots in time.

Instead of providing a narrative of the show's progress, I thought it would be more telling if it were presented in a series of captioned images as visual symbolism of the convergence of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, with a brief description below recounting my reaction to each scene. For this purpose, I have elected to use a combination of my own screen shots that are necessarily of lower quality, and images from the official website, with thanks (the difference between the two sources would be immediately apparent, obviating the need for further attribution). And action!


An inscription of the logo of the 29th Olympics on a hill side bidding a fond welcome to athletes, delegates, and visitors alike.

The falling twinkling stars collapsing into the Olympics' five rings on the floor and being pulled up like a virtual drape, imbuing the entire stadium with the sublime spirit of Olympism.

The unfolding of the giant scroll, which is in fact a giant LCD flat screen. This is the traditional Chinese way of storing an art form, be it painting, calligraphy, or a poem, as opposed to the two-dmensional framing popular in the west. The lone human figure on the as yet empty space is the start of the unique body painting that would soon emerge (see next image).

The human figures dressed in black in the midst of the well-coordinated and masterfully executed painting endeavor, one of the mountain and water genre (roughly equivalent to landscape painting), tracing out each brush stroke with hand sleeves (I suspect the hand sleeve is equipped with some kind of touch sensors that could enable lines to materialize on what is essentially a computer screen (scroll) upon contact).

This is like a giant dot matrix printer, the individual printing blocks rising and retracting to form different patterns or words, symbolizing the invention of machine printing by the Chinese that revolutionized the way the printed word and what it embodies is propagated. The Chineses character shown here is Harmony. Initially, I have thought that the block movement was powered mechanically, much like a hydraulic jack but perhaps with speedier response. That was debunked at the end of the performance when heads started to pop up from each block. It's actually synchronized human-powered movement underneath the mechanical facade.

This segment of the show continued with the grandeur of Chinese dynasties that climaxed during the Tang Dynasty characterized by an open society featuring the famous Silk route and various dances; but here the focus is on the maritime tradition, the Chinese naval history represented by the oar movement. One prominent figure during this age of epic forays on the high seas is Admiral Cheng Ho who was reputed to have made seven trips to Southeast Asia, including the then Malaya.

The 2,008 performers coalescing to form the dove, the universal symbol of peace.

The 2,008 Tai Chi performers forming concentric circles enclosing the open scroll upon which children study and frolick, sending out a message of health (the harmonious flow of Qi, the energy) and hope for the future.

This is one visual symbolism of contrast employed by Zhang Yimou to highlight the depth, the breadth, and diversity of the Chinese culture, in this instance, the tall (in the person of Yao Ming, a NBA player as the center of Houston Rockets who has become arguably the best known face of Chinese prowess in sports both in China and the world over) and the short (in the person of Lin Hao, a 9-year old survivor of the recent Sichuan Earthquake during which more than half of his classmates perished but he helped save two of the surviving ones). Both were seen here leading the Chinese delegation during the Parade of Nations that followed the performances. Other symbols of contrast include the dark and the lighted, and the black and the white.

The Malaysian contingent, resplendent in traditional Malay dress.

And the grand finale of the opening ceremony: the spectacular lighting of the Olympic Torch, the fire being first ignited at one end of of a long chute by Li Ning, an ex-Olympian and multiple gold medalist in gymnastics who entralled the crowd at the 1984 LA Olympics, hung in mid-air by a wire harness (the figure in the spotlight near the right of the image). Before this, he had seemingly sliced through air, torch in hand and legs making effortless strides around the top rim of the Bird's Nest while keeping pace with the unfolding scroll display around the same rim. All seemed like a page taken out of a Chinese martial arts series, my favorite genre of Chinese writing, where the hero levitates and zooms through air using the kungfu technique known as Qinggong (the art of speedy locomotion).