As in 2008, the opening ceremony will take place at the distinctive Bird’s Nest stadium, its rim bedecked with the flags of the 91 competing nations
As in 2008, the opening ceremony will take place at the distinctive Bird’s Nest stadium, its rim bedecked with the flags of the 91 competing nations and regions, under the guidance of film director Zhang Yimou. The ceremony will culminate in the lighting of the Olympic cauldron.
Though smaller in scale than the Summer Games, the Winter edition will be staged by a much more prosperous, powerful, confident and confrontational China under President Xi Jinping, who was set to attend the opening.
Friday’s show promised a spectacle of music, choreography and technology – nothing less would do after China wowed a global audience of billions in 2008.
“This time we will show less about ancient culture,” Zhang said in a video clip released by state media. “We will convey a sense of modernity, which is looking forward. This is a new era,” he said.
The ceremony was set to be about half as long as the four-hour marathon in 2008, to the relief of attendees who will shiver through temperatures forecast at -4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit) for the 8 p.m. (1200 GMT) start.
The fireworks used on Friday night will equal only 10% of those used in 2008, and only in silver, white and green.
The crowd itself will be smaller, with organisers deciding last month not to sell tickets to Olympic events to curtail the spread of COVID-19. A “closed loop” separates competitors and other personnel from the Chinese public throughout the Olympics.
WELCOMING OLD FRIEND
The make-up of the attendees, most of them subject to strict COVID protocols before and during the event, is also different from 2008, when more than 100 heads of state or government were present.
China’s hosting of the Olympics has drawn criticism since the International Olympic Committee selected Beijing in 2015, and countries including the United States, Britain and Australia mounted diplomatic boycotts, meaning they did not send government representatives to the Games.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, the headlining foreign guest, arrived on Friday for a meeting with Xi ahead of the opening ceremony, bringing a deal to increase natural gas supply to China amid rising tensions with the West and winning a pledge from Xi to deepen mutual cooperation.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV noted that Putin, like China, expressed opposition to the “politicisation” of the Games.
Following a Washington Post report saying that U.S.-based human rights activists had been working with athletes from several western countries to boycott the opening, the U.S. team said it expected about 80% of its athletes to take part in Friday’s ceremony, with possibly record-level participation.
Friday’s show was set to feature just 3,000 performers, according to state media, a tiny fraction of the roughly 15,000 who took part in 2008, all of them ordinary citizens as part of an emphasis on “people” and expanding participation in sport.
WINTER WONDERLAND
Zhang, the director, said the ceremony takes into account the changed global backdrop, including the pandemic and what he said were hostile forces “suppressing and blackening” China.
“In this new and complex global situation, the Winter Olympics will show the confidence and pride of the Chinese people, the love of Chinese people, the affection of Chinese for the people of the world,” he told state news agency Xinhua.
While exact details of the ceremony were being kept under wraps, including who would light the cauldron, a promotional video depicted scenes of winter wonderland, with activity on snow and ice and a snowflake flying around the world.
“No two snowflakes are alike, but today people are gathering in Beijing and becoming one shining snowflake,” Zhang said.
The official start of the Games would come as a relief to organisers navigating the extreme complexity of staging them during a pandemic while adhering to China’s zero-COVID policy.
Organisers also hope it quietens a steady drumbeat of criticism from activists and governments over China’s human rights record in Xinjiang and elsewhere – criticism that China rejects.
“I believe that at the instant in which the Olympic flame is lit, all of this so-called boycott banter will be extinguished,” Zhao Weidong, a spokesperson for the Beijing Games, told Reuters.
(Reporting by Tony Munroe, Muyu Xu and Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Shri Navaratnam and Alex Richardson)
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