In smoggy Beijing China, the 2008 Olympics have finally begun in a strange looking cobweb of a stadium designed for one thing and one thing only...
And oddly, I don't think it was sport.
Rather, this stadium seems to have been devised for the opening ceremony to end all opening ceremonies. Put together by the Chinese Stephen Spielberg, this show was better than just about anything I've ever seen...
And I live in Las Vegas.
The world was invited to China by thousands of coordinated drummers, banging on their drums in unison as the lights turned on and off. If there was a mistake made by any one of them, I couldn't see it. This was a moment of powerful, thought provoking unity of one nation working as a single, finely tuned organism.
It was as intimidating and frightening as it was awe inspiring.
These games have been political from the moment that China was handed the keys to the games, and the real Stephen Spielberg dropped out as a consultant to these opening ceremonies under pressures from Western activists over Chinese Human and Civil Rights violations.
It might be unpopular for me to say, but pick up a newspaper to see that we are guilty of many of the same things that China is being accused of. The inhuman treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and the quashing of Mormon Fundamentalists in Texas could be seen in a similar light as anything China has done to curb religious freedoms and occupy countries like Tibet.
And at the same these opening ceremonies used powerful symbolism as a human version of their "Great Wall" gave birth to renewal in the form of pink flowers, the US openly talks about building a wall on the US/Mexican border.
Does that give China a free pass? No. I'm just saying that all large nations have challenges and stumble, and the US should think carefully before taking a holier than thou stance in regards to China.
Our President, Mr. Bush and his close friend Mr. Putin (Another world leader who could easily be accused of human rights violations, if not genocide) sat in the nose bleeds as the Children sang and flew kites, and as China's history played out on the field on a giant fiber optic scroll that was simply amazing.
Russia and the United States tired of a Space Race long ago, as China boldly declared a new one while the leaders of the west were looking for a hot-dog vendor. The children handed the Chinese flag to the soldiers and more and more fireworks exploded overhead.
Gymnists dressed like Taikonauts ran, strung up by cables, around a globe that reminded me of the Death Star in Star Wars, in all sorts of gravity-defying ways, and it became a theme that would be revisited in a much grander scale at the end of the ceremonies.
The Chinese Michael Jackson sang a duet with Sarah Brightman atop the Deathstar, and it became clear that the Chinese really do want to be friends with the world.
After the Parade of Nations, which lasted long enough for me to go grocery shopping, paint the house, read a novel by Robert Ludlem, AND balance my checkbook, it was time to bring in the torch...
At first I thought that this was pretty uninspiring, as a series of former Chinese athletes relayed the flame into the stadium. Little did I know that this was just the lead-in to the amazing finale...the final torchbearer flew to the top of the stadium and began to run around the edge as a projected image of a scroll continued to unfurl, with historic images and images of children playing and laughing appearing as it unraveled...
In grand fashion the Olympic Flame was ignited, and the games officially got under way.
In just about three hours China announced to the world in epic fashion that they are here.
And they want to play.
No comments:
Post a Comment