Opening Night

My friends and I decided to go watch the Olympic Opening Ceremony in the Temple of the Earth, where two big screens had been placed on top of the altar. This setup struck me as somewhat sacrilegious, but, I don’t know, perhaps the ancestors would have found it fitting. After all, the run-up to the Olympic Games here in China had taken on a kind of religious fervor.

Along with thousands of other Olympic fans, who chose to sweat it out in the crowds rather than stay in the air conditioned confines of their home, we watched the ceremony on the big screen and were not disappointed. The finale I found particularly gorgeous: a man was lifted up and ran in the air, torch in hand, almost as if he were on the moon. He ran like this around the entirety of the rim of the stadium and, when he reached the final resting place for the flame, touched his fire to it in dramatic fashion.

When the Chinese delegation entered the stadium, the crowd erupted in cheers.

They are chanting the ubiquitous “Jia You Zhongguo!” which means “Let’s go, China!” This certainly won’t be the last time we’ll hear this.

The order in which the various delegations entered the parade of nations I found quite interesting. Initially, I thought that the Olympic ethos of world peace and harmony dictated the order when Turkey followed Greece into the stadium, and I half-expected Israel to follow Palestine, and Japan to follow China later on. But, as it turned out, with the exceptions of Greece, who came first, and China, who arrived last, the countries entered according to the number of strokes in the first Chinese character in each of their names. As we’ve come to expect, all things come with a bit of “Chinese characteristics…”

This was the first and—now that I know these occasions last for four plus hours—probably the last time for me to watch the entire event from beginning to end. It was a wonderful evening, though. Click here to see a photo a New York Times photographer took of some of us.