Sky light: The Olympic Games opened in truly spectacular style in Beijing Photo: Getty ImagesTelegraph.co.uk
By Kevin Garside
08 Aug 2008
A global TV audience of four billion witnessed the burial alongside 91,000 in the Olympic Stadium. It was some send off.
Fireworks numbering 20,000 at goodness knows what cost, torched the sky, fairies floated in a constellation of incandescent beauty and 56 children representing China's ethnic mix paraded the flag of the People's Republic.
Soft power academics call it; the flexing of muscle via cultural means.
This was the eighth day of the eighth month, 2008, ground zero for the new China. President Hu Jintao sat alongside Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee.
Before them 4,000 years of Chinese history was condensed into the mother of all floor shows ostensibly to mark the opening of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. Hardly.
This was the choreographed demonstration of might the like of which the Olympic Games has never seen; a rebuke to George Bush and Nicolas Sarkozy, vocal critics of Chinese foreign and domestic policy sitting in the audience, and the Beverly Hills radicals lounging by pools in Bel Air. Keep your noses out of Chinese affairs.
Vladimir Putin, his focus shifted by the military offensive in Georgia, was a study of quiet admiration for the global confidence his neighbour radiated. Tibet, Burma, Sudan and the colonisation of Africa are the issues routinely raised to keep the dragon in check; human rights the moral stick to beat the beast into submission.
Don't waste your time. This was history set to music and dance, every step reminding Bush and assembled world leaders that Beijing stands at the centre of a universe every bit as legitimate as those born of Greece and Rome.
Gunpowder, or the burning of medicines in these parts, we were reminded in a series of heady detonations was invented this end of the Silk Road half a millennia before the Mayflower set sail from Southampton carrying its cargo of English separatists to Massachusetts.
Paper, another creation of ancient China, and writing utensils made of bamboo slips dating back to the fifth century BC, featured heavily in a display of artistic hegemony worthy of the great nation China believes herself to be.
China has been down the reform road before. Change it must. Human rights abuses persist. But it does not have a monopoly on state oppression or international coercion.
Stand on any street corner in any major metropolis in America or Europe, and the great dispossessed of liberal regimes will nod their hooded disdain. In Baghdad and the Middle East, defiance is measured in blood.
The political messages arrowed inward, too. The China of Mao and the minimalist certainties of the old communist regime are gone.
China, and the 1.3 billion who sail in her, are on the move. For better or worse the embrace of wealth creation is irreversible.
For all our sakes, let's hope the next steps taken are the right ones. One world, one dream, as the slogan goes.
Day simmered mercilessly into night. The one aspect beyond the control of the ruling politburo, the weather, withered those from cooler climes. A toxic haze clung to the city all day, the roof of the Olympic Stadium bleeding into a grey canopy that passes for sky.
Everywhere young men in military green and white gloves marched dutifully, tapping out obedience in shiny black shoes. At 9am a city of 16 million was already unfeasibly traffic free, lending an unreal air to proceedings.
One conjured a vision of a thousand micromanagers, all volunteers, staring at surveillance screens, monitoring with pride every prescribed footfall, every staged greeting at the airport, the empty passage to the Olympic stadium.
The welcome is unnerving rather than reassuring despite the obvious willingness of the uncritical masses to please. A block or two removed from the pageant, riders bolt across junctions on expiring scooters with infants hanging to their belt loops; authentic China going about her business in parallel with the packaged version. Authentic China was not invited last night.
It is not enough to set the sky ablaze. The 21st Century opening ceremony requires a pre-show, a formidable confection of 28 elements introduced to keep China's uber-elite entertained before the medicine burning began.
Oh for the early days of the modern Olympiad when the games kicked off with a short oration from the president of the organising committee and a declaration from some royal or other.
As is nearly always the case in China, the numbers overwhelm; all 2,008 members of the Fou Band wheeled their ancient instruments into the centre of the arena to light the fuse with their percussive brilliance.
An hour after the first Roman Candle fizzed Greece led the 204 competing countries into the arena.
We have London to thank 100 years ago for the parade of athletes, a predictably garish caricature badly in need of a working over by Trinny and Susannah.
Chinese Taipei followed Japan out of the tunnel. Guess who got the bigger cheer?
And who decided dressing Britain's finest as Avon reps was a good idea? Diver Tom Daley, at 14 the youngest competitor in the British team, rose above the bad taste with a smile that reminded all why we are here; to marvel at the very best of human endeavour on a sporting stage.
Enough of deconstructing dress codes. The party is about to start. While the great armies of medal prospects waved their way around the perimeter, the structure housing the Olympic flame was discreetly slotted on to the roof of the cat's cradle.
The flame, which made its first appearance in Amsterdam in 1938, commemorates the mythical theft of fire from Zeus by Prometheus. Here it might have represented the rather more real transfer of geo political dominance eastwards from the United States to the Orient.
The cheer for Chinese standard bearer Yao Ming, a fiscal pile driver all his own in the field of basketball, must have woke departing US president Bush from his vacant reverie.
Every inch of Ming's 7ft 6 ins frame radiated menace, a behemoth symbolic of his country's new global standing.
In Los Angeles in 1984, the space traveller was a central theme, illustrating America's universal hold on the levers of global power. In Beijing China rolled out its past to under line her credentials as a player on the evolving world stage.
Who knows what the next fortnight of competition might bring? What feats of athletic genius might reshape the sporting landscape? The host nation will bag its share of plunder, no doubt.
Michael Phelps might take a record eight golds back to America. On wheels and water Britain will have a say in the drama, too.
But the point that really matters was made in a four-hour ad of inescapable force, topped by the circumnavigation of the stadium roof, aided by chain and pulley, of the final torch bearer, gymnast Li Ning.
The protests that blighted the start of the torch's journey in London and Paris, heroic though they were in the eyes of Tibetan freedom fighters, were obliterated by the audacity of the coming power. China; no longer the sick man of Asia.
By Kevin Garside
08 Aug 2008
A global TV audience of four billion witnessed the burial alongside 91,000 in the Olympic Stadium. It was some send off.
Fireworks numbering 20,000 at goodness knows what cost, torched the sky, fairies floated in a constellation of incandescent beauty and 56 children representing China's ethnic mix paraded the flag of the People's Republic.
Soft power academics call it; the flexing of muscle via cultural means.
This was the eighth day of the eighth month, 2008, ground zero for the new China. President Hu Jintao sat alongside Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee.
Before them 4,000 years of Chinese history was condensed into the mother of all floor shows ostensibly to mark the opening of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. Hardly.
This was the choreographed demonstration of might the like of which the Olympic Games has never seen; a rebuke to George Bush and Nicolas Sarkozy, vocal critics of Chinese foreign and domestic policy sitting in the audience, and the Beverly Hills radicals lounging by pools in Bel Air. Keep your noses out of Chinese affairs.
Vladimir Putin, his focus shifted by the military offensive in Georgia, was a study of quiet admiration for the global confidence his neighbour radiated. Tibet, Burma, Sudan and the colonisation of Africa are the issues routinely raised to keep the dragon in check; human rights the moral stick to beat the beast into submission.
Don't waste your time. This was history set to music and dance, every step reminding Bush and assembled world leaders that Beijing stands at the centre of a universe every bit as legitimate as those born of Greece and Rome.
Gunpowder, or the burning of medicines in these parts, we were reminded in a series of heady detonations was invented this end of the Silk Road half a millennia before the Mayflower set sail from Southampton carrying its cargo of English separatists to Massachusetts.
Paper, another creation of ancient China, and writing utensils made of bamboo slips dating back to the fifth century BC, featured heavily in a display of artistic hegemony worthy of the great nation China believes herself to be.
China has been down the reform road before. Change it must. Human rights abuses persist. But it does not have a monopoly on state oppression or international coercion.
Stand on any street corner in any major metropolis in America or Europe, and the great dispossessed of liberal regimes will nod their hooded disdain. In Baghdad and the Middle East, defiance is measured in blood.
The political messages arrowed inward, too. The China of Mao and the minimalist certainties of the old communist regime are gone.
China, and the 1.3 billion who sail in her, are on the move. For better or worse the embrace of wealth creation is irreversible.
For all our sakes, let's hope the next steps taken are the right ones. One world, one dream, as the slogan goes.
Day simmered mercilessly into night. The one aspect beyond the control of the ruling politburo, the weather, withered those from cooler climes. A toxic haze clung to the city all day, the roof of the Olympic Stadium bleeding into a grey canopy that passes for sky.
Everywhere young men in military green and white gloves marched dutifully, tapping out obedience in shiny black shoes. At 9am a city of 16 million was already unfeasibly traffic free, lending an unreal air to proceedings.
One conjured a vision of a thousand micromanagers, all volunteers, staring at surveillance screens, monitoring with pride every prescribed footfall, every staged greeting at the airport, the empty passage to the Olympic stadium.
The welcome is unnerving rather than reassuring despite the obvious willingness of the uncritical masses to please. A block or two removed from the pageant, riders bolt across junctions on expiring scooters with infants hanging to their belt loops; authentic China going about her business in parallel with the packaged version. Authentic China was not invited last night.
It is not enough to set the sky ablaze. The 21st Century opening ceremony requires a pre-show, a formidable confection of 28 elements introduced to keep China's uber-elite entertained before the medicine burning began.
Oh for the early days of the modern Olympiad when the games kicked off with a short oration from the president of the organising committee and a declaration from some royal or other.
As is nearly always the case in China, the numbers overwhelm; all 2,008 members of the Fou Band wheeled their ancient instruments into the centre of the arena to light the fuse with their percussive brilliance.
An hour after the first Roman Candle fizzed Greece led the 204 competing countries into the arena.
We have London to thank 100 years ago for the parade of athletes, a predictably garish caricature badly in need of a working over by Trinny and Susannah.
Chinese Taipei followed Japan out of the tunnel. Guess who got the bigger cheer?
And who decided dressing Britain's finest as Avon reps was a good idea? Diver Tom Daley, at 14 the youngest competitor in the British team, rose above the bad taste with a smile that reminded all why we are here; to marvel at the very best of human endeavour on a sporting stage.
Enough of deconstructing dress codes. The party is about to start. While the great armies of medal prospects waved their way around the perimeter, the structure housing the Olympic flame was discreetly slotted on to the roof of the cat's cradle.
The flame, which made its first appearance in Amsterdam in 1938, commemorates the mythical theft of fire from Zeus by Prometheus. Here it might have represented the rather more real transfer of geo political dominance eastwards from the United States to the Orient.
The cheer for Chinese standard bearer Yao Ming, a fiscal pile driver all his own in the field of basketball, must have woke departing US president Bush from his vacant reverie.
Every inch of Ming's 7ft 6 ins frame radiated menace, a behemoth symbolic of his country's new global standing.
In Los Angeles in 1984, the space traveller was a central theme, illustrating America's universal hold on the levers of global power. In Beijing China rolled out its past to under line her credentials as a player on the evolving world stage.
Who knows what the next fortnight of competition might bring? What feats of athletic genius might reshape the sporting landscape? The host nation will bag its share of plunder, no doubt.
Michael Phelps might take a record eight golds back to America. On wheels and water Britain will have a say in the drama, too.
But the point that really matters was made in a four-hour ad of inescapable force, topped by the circumnavigation of the stadium roof, aided by chain and pulley, of the final torch bearer, gymnast Li Ning.
The protests that blighted the start of the torch's journey in London and Paris, heroic though they were in the eyes of Tibetan freedom fighters, were obliterated by the audacity of the coming power. China; no longer the sick man of Asia.
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