China Has Arrived

Wow. That's really and truly the only word I have for the past four hours- just wow. I mean, I know it was already said and done- and it was just a tape delay, but the Opening Ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Games were without a doubt on a whole other level entirely.

Zhang Yimou deserves an Oscar just for planning this and I shudder to think how much the whole thing cost and the sheer amount of human effort that was put into the artistry and the timing of the entire show. And everything went perfectly. That was the incredible thing about it all- it seemed entirely flawless. From the opening drum sequence with 2,008 drummers to the incredibly technologically innovative display of China's history that followed. I think Bob Costas said that the LED screen on the floor of the Bird's Nest (as they call the Olympic Stadium) was something like 73 feet tall and an insane 230 feet long. There are things that baffled me (a display of Olympic rings projected onto the floor of the stadium somehow lifted off the floor of the stadium into the air. Damned if I don't have a clue how they did that.) A scroll of calligraphy gave way to immense ancient Chinese printing blocks that moved into patterns with such precision that everyone would have sworn that they were powered by something under the stadium. But, in a final surprise- it turns out people were powering the whole set-up and it was staged to perfection.

The greater significance of all this was the political and historical moment you were witnessing right there on the television screen in front of you. Without a doubt, China has, once and for all stepped out onto the international stage. Tonight excised the scars of Mao and pushed China even past the foresight of Deng and was an incredible break with the past. China has been expanding its economy at an hellish pace and stepping into future with a truly generational event for their country that can, as the Olympics often do, mark a sea change for China and certainly a massive shift in perceptions about China across the world. For all the controversy surrounding the games about China's political record and their human rights record, you can imagine that the people and everyone would only stop and think. The controversy only feeds the Olympic fervor, good and bad. At the end of the day, I think if the Opening Ceremonies are any indication, these games could be the most talked about, most successful games we see for quite sometime.

And, just when you thought there could be no more spectacle, beyond the awesome pyrotechnics and incredible gigantic pyrotechnic footprints that 'walked' their way from the Forbidden City out to the Stadium- they had to light the torch. 8 runners ran inside the stadium and then the last runner was elevated into the air and rose up to the outer rim of the stadium. He ran around the outside and then lit the torch. Which, not unlike peeling away a label, peeled away from the upper lip of the Stadium and rolled up to form the torch. According the commentators, it hadn't been there thirty minutes before.

In a word: incredible. Let's see if the competition can match up.