the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony: fantastic!

The 2008 Beijing Olympics Games is now open, heralded by a magnificent opening ceremony that showcased the Chinese's renown for pomp, pageantry and precision. And the highlight of the evening was, of course, the lighting of the Olympic flame. Many speculations have come up in the weeks prior to this day with guesses ranging from international star Yao Ming, hurdler Liu Xiang or even a child survivor of the recent earthquake. Well, it wasn't any of them. It was Li Ning who was given the great honor of lighting the cauldron. And, after seeing how he was hoisted to roof level (yikes!) and sky-walked the expanse of the stadium wall a la Spiderman before finally igniting the cauldron's fuse, there was no doubt that only a former gold medal winning gymnast could do the trick. I cannot imagine Yao Ming doing that! And it was fantastic, with Li Ning following an unfurling scroll images of the torch relay all over the world! I wonder how London will top that in 2012?

The paper scroll was the theme of the opening ceremony, starting with a short video on how it is made and used in traditional Chinese calligraphy. All subsequent presentations thus had the scroll as a backdrop complete with different colorful projections to enrich the scene. One innovative item is the use of the 'paper scroll' backdrop. First, a group of dancers in black drew figures and lines on it while they danced. Then a group of school children colored portions of it as they sang. Finally, athletes finished the job by making colored footprints on it in their entrance parade. It was then used as a finished collaborative canvass, an artwork, as a stage in the final part of the opening program. Original and creative, to say the least.

The costumes were glorious, especially the ones worn by hundreds of men with bamboo scrolls in the early part of the ceremony. Layers upon layers of fabric from neck to toes, seemingly making them glide across the floor. And what about the rich traditional Chinese costumes of red and gold? Splendid! But what made all of these look even more magnificent was the precision of the choreography. There were hundreds of performers/volunteers per presentation and they moved across the stadium floor in various formations and alignments that was awesome to watch. What was most impressive was the human puzzle made up of hundreds of cubes - rising, falling and undulating to reveal different shapes and formations. It must have taken many, many hours of hard work and practice to achieve this result.

The traditional parade of athletes started out as exciting. However, with ten thousand participants walking in front of your tired eyes, boredom soon set in. How I wished there was a fast-forward button that I could push! Still, I managed to hang on and see several sports superstars in the process. Roger Federer (my favorite) was Switzerland's flag bearer, and so were Manu Ginobili for Argetina, Manny Pacquiao for the Philippines, Fernando Gonzales for Chile, Yao Ming for China and Dirk Nowitzki for Germany. Of course, I also saw Rafael Nadal parading with the Spanish contingent and Kobe Bryant with the American team. Did I miss anyone? BTW, was that a child earthquake survivor walking with Yao Ming?

It seems everything went according to plan, except during the early part of Li Ning's sky walk when he overtook the unfurling scroll. Nevertheless, it was a fantastic opening ceremony. But tomorrow the competition starts and the race for Olympic gold medal begins. Good luck to everyone!

Postscript: The television coverage in our neck of the woods was horrible. It started out as a live broadcast but slowly degenerated into a delayed telecast as ads were inserted. I couldn't help but curse after I noticed that the local network was inserting three minutes of ads for every 8-10 minutes of broadcast! Thank God for cable as I found a much better Olympic broadcast on a channel from India. (Photos courtesy of Yahoo Sports/Vladimir Rys/Bongarts/Getty Images/Reuters)

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