Just watched the Olympics opening ceremony at Hong’s neighbor’s house, and got two words to describe it. Freaking awesome. The compliment goes to the performances, the spirit, and the neighbor’s gigantic HDTV.
It was truly fantastic. Not sure whether the powerful choreography, the flashy technology, or the enormous budget was more impressive, but I was amazed by the huge number of performers involved. At first I thought they just went on the Tiananmen Square, grabbed a few thousand volunteers and trained them for a couple of weeks. But when the martial arts group did 2008 synchronized flying twist kicks, I realized that these weren’t just random average people… but then again, it’s China, aren’t we all kung fu masters? 😉
Those on the luckier side of Earth got to watch it on TV real time. The rest of us watched the “replay” 12 hours later. Everyone that I knew had religiously watched the whole thing and engaged themselves in the passion. I had never cared about any of the Olympics games; but now I’m a fan.
You can find more of these high quality photos at boston.com. There’s also a blog dedicated to the Beijing Olympics. Of course, let’s not forget the official website of the Beijing Olympics.
Ariel
August 10, 2008 at 9:45 pmactually, i think it might’ve been better to not watch it live. mom was saying how some parts of their showing got cut off by commercials. i think our broadcast was 1/2 hr longer but better in a way…
i like the fireworks in footprints and the globe thing… and yea i thought it was realli impressive how those tai chi masters can stand and run around in such perfect circles
Peter
August 14, 2008 at 9:29 pmThat’s probably a good thing about this. But I downloaded this Australian broadcast of the event and realized that NBC cut two parts of the show off! And the Australian reporters definitely knew what they were talking about better than the NBC guys (who threw out a lot of “if you’re Chinese you definitely know this…”).