Forever Dancing:

The paralympic never fails to move me.

This time, it's the girl in pink, among the azure back ground, like a bloomed rose in the dark night, captured the beauty of the whole nature.

She is twelve, and she dances, which recalls my childhood, when dancing class was my favourite.

And then, there's May 12th, 2008. Maybe for her, there's no memory about that three days, only darkness. The fragile school building collapsed in the earthquake, pressing on her little body and her other classmates, her left leg stuck firmly in the relics.

The fainted girl was discovered the next day, but the rescuors couldn't pull her out without massive machineries which were unavailable to them for the roads were destroyed by the quake too.

The whole nation was watching her, anxious, helpless. For seventy hours, she stayed there, among the relics and probably, bodies of her former classmates. For seventy hours, she watch rescuors coming and going. She Struggled for life. She is twelve, the most blithe age.

Worrying that she couldn't survive anymore hours lying down the relics severly injured, the doctors decided to ampulate her leg to save her life.

Can you imagine the pain? You know you can dance the prettiest balad, you know you'll shine with your nimble limbs, but now, you watch yourself to be ampulated.

Luckily, she survived all.

And here she is, dancing in the center of paralympic opening ceremony, in the center of the world too. Elegantly did she sit on wheelchair, and the other dances around her mimic the movement of her legs. Yes, with our help and support, she can dance forever.

So she danced, with music, in pink dress like a princess in fairytale, who had survived the disaster and will be rewarded with all the happiness in the world.

She'll dance forever. Although real life maybe be crueler than the fairy tale, but she will dance forever.

Who Needs Who?

The official saying is that Olympic needs China as well as China needs the Olympic Games.

Is it that Chinese audience was expecting an ecstatic party for their own happiness or that the country is in need of international recognition? The two interpretations are inextricably entwined. Since the Opening Up reformation took place two decades ago, it’s the first opportunity ever for China to meet the world on an equal basis and on such a large scale. China is like a kindergarten kid who had worked hard in the hope of being praised by his teacher but had hardly achieved any. He is eager to please the world.

Besides, Chinese expectations for the performances on the ceremony are soaring, as high as the index of their economy. For the majority of the Chinese population who grew up in the adversary environment of 60’s, they have devoted their youth to the rocketing economic development in the 80’s. The Olympic Games is their show. They are yearning to witness a powerful and prosperous China nurtured under their effort. It’s a sense of achievement essential for a people, especially a people that are not usually looked up by the world.

Fortunately, as the praise from around the world flush in for the organized games, resourceful volunteers and enthusiastic audience, Olympic is all successful for everyone and every purpose. The question at the beginnning really doesnt matter any more since whoever the Olympic is for, he had get it.

On the Openning Ceremonies

Nothing imbues the essence of Chinese Culture better than the scroll--it rolls open bit by bit, like the ancient Chinese wisdom: A real touch of beauty can hardly be an extravaganza, but a careless, yet mysterious encounter. What has revealed on the canvas is a stunning picture at its best, but the exhilaration of the moment you see the dreamed beauty captured by the picture can be breathtaking, exulted, and tasteful. That’s way Chinese Art always looks simple, and elegant, and sometimes, remote.

That’s what the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies strives to achieve. If one of the moment, you are touched by the beauty, or the awe, the color and the fireworks, the thunderous drum or the extramundane nature of the background of Kungfu, bravo!

The scroll unfold in the center of National Stadium, as extensive as a football field. After a few moment’s aerobic-like dancing, the rueful light shot from the top of the venue shifted and the image ascended to be suspended in the air. The picture reveals itself to be a scribbled outline of rolling mountains and the sun hanging on the right. An abstract picture with unutterable Orientation taste, leaving much the blank for your imagination, that’s what China had for the world for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games.

The Olympic Ceremonies have tried to compass the five millenniums civilization into a few dances. In other words, they imparted a profound topic that worth decades of study in UC Berkeley to a Sports Fan in front of TV in an hour! No wonder it’s so compounding.

But art is a universal language that should transcend time and spaces, cultures and backgrounds. Like the spirit of Olympia, it’s a legacy for the whole human beings, not a particular nation, nor a particular culture.

The problem is it seems that the director of the ceremonies, Zhang Yi Mou, seemed disagree. His logic is "The more traditional and ethnic, the more global." As a movie director who had won numerous awards for his specialties in setting exotic and photogenic scenes, he is obsessed with traditional settings and effects. Individuals are nothing to him, they're uniformed to emerge into a larger picture to shock the audience and strike awe.

Notwithstanding all the thrills the show had brought to the audiencelack , the young people find it "over-Chinesenized". It's more of a grand royal ceremony paying tribute to gods than a modern international event. Critics of the sourt bubbled on to the internet blogs the next day, immediately after the show. Zhang had snatched to Olympic to his own benefit, but we're expecting a more open and cosmopolitan China.

When Olymic Games is comming to the town

Eight o’clock in the evening, the streets in this city with 3milliom population is empty.
No pedestrians wondering alone the road to enjoy their daily after-lunch walk, no sideway fruit sellers out for their last deal of the day. Most of the stores are closed hours before their close time. It’s not the New Years Eve when people nesttle at home with their family and friends, nor do the people take exodus; it’s the August 8, 2008 in China, the evening for opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games.

People finish their work early and come home to watch the live opening ceremonies on TV. Their expectations for the performances on the ceremony are soaring, as high as the index of their economy. A scarlet dancing man, the Olympic symbol become an everyday decoration in every city in China, on clothes and windows, jewelrys and road signs.

A gathering of the world is what modern Olympic games for. This times, however, it's a show of China to many Chinese.

The volunteers of the Beijing Olympic game is exorbitantly 170000, more than two times larger than the Athens, 70000. The major source of which comes from University students because they’re the only group of people that can speak English well enough to communicate with the foreign travelers. What may surprise the world, although the number is large, the enthusiasm of Chinese is so intense that there pose no difficulty at all to recruit such a group. College students from all around the nation have applied to serve the games, but only those in Beijing were accepted. In fact, dating back to two or three times ago, when the students were choosing the place for college, to volunteer for Olympic were in their minds during decision making.

To welcome the Olympic Games, the whole country is like the symbol, dancing in exhilaration, waving their hands to welcome the world.