Opening Ceremonies!

Vocab word of the day: 鸟巢 (Niao chao) Bird's Nest

Tonight there were 26 venues around Beijing which had big screens for the general public to watch the Opening Ceremonies. 5 venues had its own additional fireworks. We tried to go to Ditan Park to watch, but as we were standing in line to buy a 2 kuai ticket at approximately 7:55, they closed the door and said it was too busy. While this situation was slightly frustrating as we heard the Opening Ceremonies begin to play on the big screen, we hailed a taxi and raced back to our school to watch it.

My first impressions: Extremely creative, well-done, and impressive. I think China would be proud to hear a foreigner say this because this is exactly what their goal was. It also looked really hot in the Bird's Nest as every shot of the audience showed people fanning themselves. The Opening Ceremonies smartly, in my opinion, stayed away from drawing attention to Mao Zedong, Cultural Revolution, and current controversial events. Rather, they focused on the other two centuries of Chinese history and culture, with performances containing things such as tai chi, calligraphy, puppets, kites and references to ancient Chinese stories. Everything appeared to run very smoothly and I definitely thought the lighting of the torch at the end was pretty amazing. Among the other prestigious athletes to be picked to finish the torch relay in the Bird's Nest, I thought it was cool that the first Chinese gold medalist, Xu Haifeng, was included as well as the gymnastics superstar, Li Ning. Since we were watching the Chinese broadcast, it was fun to see how much we could understand. After the ceremony ended, we could still hear (but not see) the fireworks from our campus.

To read more about Li Ning: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/09/content_9061594.htm
To read more about Xu Haifeng:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/sports/5931877.html