MALAYSIA ATHLETES AT THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE 2008 BEIJING OLYMPICS.BEIJING, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Resurgent China opened the Olympics on Friday with a burst of fireworks at a spectacular ceremony that wove ancient Chinese history with modern wizardry and aimed to draw a line under months of political controversy.
Drums thundered, strobe lights flickered and 14,000 performers poured through the Bird’s Nest stadium in a dazzling extravaganza that offered up a vision of global harmony in line with the Games’ motto “One World One Dream”. Around 80 world leaders watched the show which celebrated imperial China, and skipped the fraught 20th century, when civil war, the Japanese invasion and hardline Communist rule left the nation mired in poverty.
“Friends have come from afar, how happy we are,” an army of 2,008 drummers chanted, quoting the celebrated sage Confucius.
