Olympics ceremonies

How China Saw the Olympic Opening Ceremony

Since the opening of the Beijing Olympics four years ago—a declaration of national arrival which awed some and terrified others—the question has lingered of how London would follow it. Comparisons were inevitable, and perhaps...

Still Dancing in Her Dreams

The New York Times tells the story of dancer Liu Yan, who was paralyzed while rehearsing for the Olympics opening ceremony last August in Beijing: Today, after recuperating for more than six months at No. 306 Military Hospital...

Time Magazine on Zhang Yimou

Time Magazine has named Zhang Yimou as a runner-up to Person of the Year, citing his work for the Olympics ceremonies: In telling China’s story, Zhang explored the character he, or peaceful harmony — an ideal critical to...

A Great Leap Forward or Backward for China

The Times questions what impact the Paralympics will have on disability rights in China: In the Olympics ceremony, the 56 children who organisers claimed came from the 56 ethnic groups in China were from the dominant Han group....

China’s Olympic Ceremony Features Sacrifices

Gillian Wong reports in AP: Martial arts student Cheng Jianghua only saw the army barracks he stayed in and the stadium where he performed at the spectacular Olympics opening ceremony. But his sacrifices were minor — other...

The Only Games in Town

Anthony Lane is at the Olympics for the New Yorker, and in a long piece about the first week of the Games, writes about attending the opening ceremony: In the course of a long evening, billions of viewers were induced not so...

Lacking A Great Voice, But Not Film Contracts

Lin Miaoke, a cute Chinese girl, is by now a poster girl all over the world. There’s yet more to come about her. Here is a brief round up, translated by CDT from news stories and blogs: Lin Miaoke became famous overnight...

“The Way Art Works”: An Interview With Zhang Yimou (1)

Southern Weekend has a lengthy interview with Zhang Yimou, the General Director of the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony. The following sections of the interview, translated by CDT, help illuminate the political machinations...

Opening Ceremony: The Naked Truth

From the Bangkok Post: Thousands of young Chinese women applicants for the 200 jobs to lead each country’s athletes into the National Stadium for last week’s opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games had to be at...

Olympic Artists Angry

From Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten: The Kung Fu pupils in the opening ceremony of the Olympics have spent the last year cooped up in a military camp outside Beijing. Conditions have been bad. “They weren’t even...

Behind the Opening Ceremony, a Paralyzing Fall

A dancer rehearsing for the Olympics Opening Ceremony was seriously injured in a fall during rehearsals and may be paralyzed for life, according to a report in the New York Times: The organizers of the opening ceremonies seemed...

China’s Ode to Legerdemain

Howard French comments on the Olympics from his new perch in the U.S.: Paeans to the grandeur of the state and the manipulation of history in an unsubtle celebration of racial identity and doctrinaire solidarity seem terribly...

Chinese Children in Ethnic Costume

From The Wall Street Journal: In the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, a procession of children bore a large Chinese flag into the Bird’s Nest stadium, each child wearing a costume representing one of China’s ethnic...

Haiyan Lee: The Right to Party, en Masse

Haiyan Lee, Assistant Professor University of Colorado, writes on the ChinaBeat blog: Everything about the Beijing Olympics was meant to sweep you off your feet. But above all, it was the number of performers—15,000—in the...

A “Double-pipe” Show About Two Girls

More on the scandal over the lip-syncing performance in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. Yang Binbin (杨彬彬), senior reporter of China’s leading finance and business magazine Caijing write the following...

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