The long-awaited opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics was meant to be an extravaganza that would herald to the world China’s rise as a great nation on the world stage.
Directed by the movie director Zhang Yimou, the ceremony was certainly long, involved, and giant in scope, featuring a cast of 15,000 performers. While some early reports admired the ceremony, it has also found critics inside and outside China.
Fascist Aesthetics
The Chinese political critic Cao Changqing called the opening ceremony “a work of fascist aesthetics.”
According to Cao, Zhang Yimou imitated in many ways the style of the opening ceremony of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games directed by the infamous director Leni Riefenstahl. At the Beijing opening ceremony, a human sea of formations marched in uniform, recalling the masses gathered in Riefentsahl’s propaganda films.
On Chinese internet forums, many anonymous Chinese criticized Zhang Yimou’s consistently extravagant style and propaganda.
One post said, “Let’s pretend we were watching a propaganda film! Old Zhang tried to make a modern film, but apparently he is at his wit’s end!”
Cao predicts that the Beijing Olympic Games will be a rerun of the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympic Games during the Nazi regime.
Cao said, “Individualism and freedom will be wiped out again and replaced by nationalism.”
Boring
There were three parts to the opening ceremony. It started with the welcoming ceremony where the Olympic flag and PRC flag were raised. The second part featured art performances titled “Beautiful Olympics.” The arts performances were divided into two parts, including glamorous civilizations and magnificent ages. Finally, athletes from the world marched into the stadium in the order of their country’s names translated into Simplified Chinese.
One internet post read, “It lacked passion and strength. It brought shame to the Chinese people!”
While another chimed in, “I only watched a few minutes before I gave up. It was boring. I hate it!”
The Chicago Tribune, in its report on the opening ceremony noted “For all its in-your-face grandiosity, there was a muted, monotonal quality about much of the cultural exposition that reached a dramatic climax with 2,008 white-clad martial arts performers.
Mrs. Li watched the broadcast of the ceremony in the United Kingdom on the BBC. Her general impression was that there were a lot of performers during the one-hour performances and that there were a lot of lighting effects. She couldn’t remember the content afterwards except that there were a lot of performers.
Mr. Liu of the United Kingdom also watched the ceremony on the BBC. He recalled watching thousands of people shouting a countdown together before the ceremony started, and drumming, painting, Chinese opera singing, dancing, Taichi, Chinese character displays, sailing, compasses, and fireworks.
His general impression was that there was a human-sea of formations and lighting effects, which reminded him of the movies “Hero” and “Curse of the Golden Flower,” both directed by Zhang Yimou.
According to Liu, smiles were missing from the performers’ faces, and they looked tense and nervous. Liu was repulsed by the ladies of the Tang Dynasty being dressed like witches with ghostly makeup.
Expensive
Internet posters also complained about the cost of the ceremony. One post read, “The authorities wasted the common man's flesh and blood to show off their wealth.”
And another said, “It was vanity! The fireworks may be glamorous, but they are a passing fancy. The Chinese people work hard in sweat and blood. The common people have to think about survival first.”
The games have certainly already been very expensive. In an interview with Eastern Morning News (Dong Fang Zao Bao), Huang Wei, a senior economic advisor of the Beijing Olympic Games Committee, said, “For the past seven years, our nation has invested 520 billion yuan (US$75.8 billion) on the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Between July 13, 2001 and August 8, 2008, we spent an average of 200 million yuan (US$29 million) each day.”
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