Beijing 08-08-08

[The "Bird's Nest" all lit up]

The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony - what a great way to spend a night at home with a summer cold (one of those hot-outside-A/C-inside colds that always creep up). I was very impressed by the overt and symbolic displays of the Chinese culture throughout the night. I don't know what part was the best... maybe just one long "best". Here's some facts I grabbed onto while watching and listening to Lauer & Costas:

China:
> With a population of 1.3 billion, China makes up 1/5th of the World's population. Yowza.
> China only has one timezone for the entire nation. No dilly-dallying with CST, MST, PST stuff... right now, on the western side of China, the sun rises at 8AM and sets at 11PM. Done and done.
> The opening ceremony used 15,000 people (no performers repeated). When the man in charge of all the proceedings was asked something like "How?" or "Why?", he replied, "Well, we have the people."
> The Olympic Stadium, or "Bird's Nest", currently holds 91,000 people. This is on par with some of the biggest college football stadiums in the US. After the games, it will be the home of Beijing's soccer team, and will then hold only about 80,000.

[I thought this was one of the nicer small things they did - Yao Ming and a boy who survived their recent earthquake went into the stadium for China's delegation together. The boy survived by digging himself out of the rubble, then saving two of his classmates b/c it was his duty as he was a chosen hall monitor.]

Others:
> Out of the 204 nations represented in the games, here's some nations I'll admit I don't think I'd heard of until they walked into the stadium - Vanuatu, Malta (I know this one, but it always sounds fake), Benin, Comoros, Cote d Ivoire, Kiribati, and Nauru (at 8sq miles, it's the smallest nation in the games).
> Palestine has an Olympic swimmer in the games, but they have no Olympic sized pool in the country.
> Chinese Taipei (uhhh, Taiwan) has a special flag for the games as they are not allowed to use their national flag in international competitions (esp in China). They will be involved in some heated games with China, esp in table tennis (I knew those shoes would need to keep their cool).
> Japan has the oldest competitor in the games, a man that is 67 years old. He will be competing in some of the equestrian events.
> Only the opening procession of nations can justify these kinds of combinations following each other into the stadium - Mauritania>Denamrk>Uganda or Australia>Zambia>China. To be fair, I didn't hear how they line up the countries, but it's not strictly on the English spelling of their country's name, it's something more official, I suspect.