The spirituality of the Chinese people is still intact from the presentation of last night’s opening ceremony of the Olympics Beijing 2008. I felt goose bumps during the first few hours and felt somewhat teary-eyed as I imagine the connection to people with whom may be but my left over past reincarnated memories of ancestors long gone beyond that of my great-grand parents.
The center of the stage opened up to a large scroll, whereupon dancers dressed in black painted the sea, mountains and one sun on the upper right with their bodies in blank ink from their hands. (Children later on filled in this picture with colors of green for the mountains and placed two rosy cheeks and a smile on the sun).
Then the very synchronous, watery waves were made by people handling the character blocks, forming mostly the symbol for harmony. Then flowers blossomed out from the lower right hand corner of the blocks to the upper left hand corner and out popped out the people who made this visual effect spectacular. I truly liked their friendly smiles as they waved back to the audience warmly.
The overall feel of the visual presentation was quite smooth. The peace dove created by dancers in green and white electric bulbs. The dancers first formed an ovoid shape in the center and later I noticed a very brief, vertical half-slit eye was the piano against the dancers.
The almost perfect geometric formations by martial artists of over 2,000 impressed me the most. The martial artists garbed in their white outfits have done quite well since they have practiced their art form all their lives. There were tai-chi dancers and more participants making waves with their verticals flags (of ships) as another dancer performed on top of several people below.
Acrobats in the beginning were tethered to cables. So there was a little girl who flew a dragon kite and the torch bearer, who ran the full 360 degree span of the stadium above, where projections of waterfall, children and colorful birds were shown. The lighting of the torch was done and fireworks of ovoid shapes, stars and circular ones ended the ceremony.
‘One world, one dream’ is the theme. That’s nice and so is unity. I don’t know what else could go wrong when people are brought together to have some fun and games from all over the world, starting from inside a nest-shaped stadium. I also don’t understand the significance of their superstitious belief in even numbers as lucky from the triple digit of the number eight, hence 08/08/08.
All I know is everyday is a good day without the baggage of superstition. I noticed, too, throughout the ceremony that there were lots of symbols in the number five: the five colorful rings of the Olympic; the five yellow stars to the Chinese flag; and the five petals of flowers painted on the third eye chakra (or between the eyes) of the dancers in full costumes. And the number five is an odd number, which is bad luck, right?
Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.
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