BEIJING — How to top what happened here on a steamy summer night 13, going on 14, years ago?
Remember: precisely at the stroke of 8:08 p.m. on the evening of August 8, 2008, 2,008 drums sounded out the powerful beat of China rising. The drums carried an unmistakable message. Take notice! We, more than 1 billion people with a great and glorious history, have arrived, to stake our claim among the great powers of the world, now, at the dawn of the 21st century.
On Friday night, back at the Bird’s Nest, the iconic stadium where in 2008 Usain Bolt would go on to light up the track, across Olympic Park from the cube where Michael Phelps would go 8-for-8, Beijing formally became the first city in Olympic history to become host of both the Summer and Winter Games, athletes Zhao Jiawen and Dinigeer Yilamujiang lighting the cauldron — a torch placed in a latticed snowflake-style sculpture (cue: environmental sensibilities).
Dinigeer Yilamujiang, left, and Zhao Jiawen approaching the latticed snowflake-style sculpture at the Bird’s Nest during Friday’s opening ceremony // photo by Anthony Wallace - Pool/Getty Images
The symbolism? Again, unmistakable. Yilamujiang is a cross-country skier from China’s ethnic Uyghur Muslim minority. The message from China in 2022: we’ll do it our way. Why? Because we can.
The show Friday did not end and neither did it start with a 2008-style bang. It didn’t need to. China doesn’t need to impress anyone or anything about its place. Instead, the ceremony, in the midst of winter, began by noting a lunar year has 24 phases, counting down to spring, sparking an elaborate light and fireworks display. The parade of athletes got underway a mere 17 minutes into the show — no need, like 2008, for China to put on a seeking-validation production when the world knows by now who’s who.
As Zhang Yimou, the director who oversaw both the 2008 and 2022 shows, told state media, “China’s status in the world, the image of the Chinese and the rise of our national status— everything is totally different now.”
One other very big difference between 2022 and 2008. Then, it was so ferociously hot and humid, conditions exacerbated by the stadium’s oval roofing. On Friday night, the stadium grab bag came with a Beijing 2022 hat and gloves. By the time the show ended, the thermometer read 21 degrees Fahrenheit.
Spring? Not for a while yet. These are the Winter Games.
Not so very long ago, the odds that Beijing would be the first city to stage both Summer and Winter would have been long, indeed. The People’s Republic made an appearance at the Summer Games in 1952 but then did not send a team again until 1984; in Winter, the People’s Republic’s debut came in 1980. Beijing won for 2022 in 2015 when the race thinned to only it and Almaty, Kazakhstan, and even then Beijing won by only four votes, 44-40.
The International Olympic Committee has since revamped its bid-city process. And China has seized the seven years since winning for 2022 to effect something that IOC president Thomas Bach, in remarks Friday night, called an “extraordinary achievement” — some 300 million people, about 20% of the population, roughly the number of people in the United States, have become active in ice and snow sports.
Though it may not show up in the 2022 medals counts, Bach was dead-on when he said at a pre-Games news conference that China is now a winter sports nation.
The ceremony Friday will, if tradition holds, perhaps signal a shift to the sports, and a focus on the athletes — U.S. Mikaela Shiffrin and skater Nathan Chen are expected to headline, along with Eileen Gu, the Chinese-American freestyle skier — and away from weeks of controversy over geopolitical issues, human rights, environmental issues and more.
Perhaps.
Chinese president Xi Jinping was met Friday with roaring applause. The Chinese flag took a good long time being passed down a line that stretched about halfway down the stadium, from person to person dressed in costumes representing China’s many ethnicities, before being raised.
Russian president Vladimir Putin, who eight years ago played a key role in oversight of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, was in the stands Friday for the opening ceremony. He and Xi met earlier Friday, the first meeting that Xi has held in person with a head of state in nearly two years.
When the Russian delegation — formally here, “ROC” — marched into the stadium, Putin stood and waved.
The U.S. government had weeks ago announced a “diplomatic boycott” of these 2022 Olympics.
Of course, these Games, like the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games not even six months ago, will play out against the global coronavirus pandemic. China’s Olympic strategy is rooted in what it calls a “closed-loop” — essentially, a bubble in which essentially everyone involved with the Olympics, but for a very few exceptions, is vaccinated and tested daily, and permitted access only to select locations, basically places to compete or work, eat or sleep.
Friday’s opening ceremony saw the Bird’s Nest about half-full.
“Thank you,” Bach said Friday night to the Chinese, “for making these Olympic Winter Games happen — and making them happen in a safe way for everyone.”
Every edition of the Olympics brings critics. This one, given China’s role as world power, meant the criticism was long, loud, fierce and often unyielding. A constant refrain: the IOC needed to do more.
More what was sometimes if not often unclear. More — something. Just — something. Make the Chinese government do — something.
For its part, the IOC resolutely stuck to its position that the mission of the Olympics, as Bach said in an address Thursday to its general assembly, is to bring “humanity together in all in our diversity,” the Games “beyond all differences and political differences and political disputes.”
“In our fragile world,” Bach said, “where division, conflict and mistrust are on the rise, we show the world: yes, it is possible to be fierce rivals, while at the same time living peacefully and respectfully together.” The crowd applauded.
A moment later, Bach, keenly mindful of political, diplomatic and military maneuvering in eastern Europe and elsewhere, made note of the essential Olympic mission and said, “In this Olympic spirit of peace, I appeal to all political authorities across the globe: observe your commitment to this Olympic Truce. Give peace a chance.”
Again, the crowd murmured its applause.
As Beijing was hosting that 2008 opening ceremony, the Russian military moved into Georgia. In 2014, Russian troops stormed into Crimea just days after Putin returned to Moscow from Sochi.
And now?
In their meeting earlier Friday, Xi clearly backed Putin in his showdown with the West over Ukraine, a joint statement saying, “Friendship between the two states has no limits.”
So here we are. At the 2022 Winter Games. Now underway. It’s not 2008. That is already long ago, as Friday night made crystal clear.
The day before, Xi had said, in a message to the IOC members, “The world is turning to China, and China is ready. We will do our best to deliver a streamlined, safe and splendid Games.”