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China, a country which once departed from the rest of the world, opened its doors wide on Friday to hold its first opportunity to host the Olympic Games, with a spectacular display of pomp and fireworks in just about unparalleled in its mixture of problems and potential.

As a rising world power, China welcomed numerous foreign dignitaries at an opening ceremony witnessed by 91,000 spectators at National Stadium and striking with a global audience of 4,000 million people. He described the gala as most immense and costly in Olympic history, used some 30,000 fireworks.

At the pace of the roar of explosions fireworks, the crowd at the stadium Korea the countdown of the last seconds before the spectacle to begin, including acrobats colgándose on cables and a total of 2,008 musicians doing Repic drums.

Three hours later, the parade of athletes ended with the entry of 639 Chinese team, led by its flag and stellar basketball player Yao Ming, along with nine years of a child survivor of the earthquake that struck in May Sichuan Province.

The reaction from viewers was absolute frenzy, just a few moments following when President Hu Jintao declared the games officially opened.

The pinnacle moment came with the dramatic lighting of the Olympic flame, in which the retired Chinese gymnast Li Ning fleet in the air, charged by a cable, reaching a high point of the stadium, where they seized the cauldron that until arderá August 24.

Not surprisingly, Li was responsible, since Los Angeles in 1984 became the first major Olympic figure when China won three gold medals in a few games in which China reappeared after 30 years of ostracism.

The American president George W. Bush and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stood out among the group of leaders present at the event in which China proclaimed that already is among the powers. Bush, who rebuked China to express its concern over the condition of human rights in the country, is the first U.S. representative to attend an opening ceremony on foreign soil.

Already become an economic power, China has an opportunity to overtake U.S. in the harvest of gold medals with their legions of athletes trained intensely since childhood.
A clash between the two will be crucial in the women's gymnastics, in which their respective teams are the favourites. In the pool, swimmers clavadistas Chinese and Americans also must master the skills.

The prelude to the games had ingredients epic. China to invest 40,000 million dollars in infrastructure, recovering from a catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan Province in May, the stubborn fighting to reduce pollution in Beijing.

The detention of political activists in China, repression in Tibet, economic ties with Sudan in times of war in Darfur, all of which fed criticism from human rights organizations and orders to boycott the games.
The International Olympic Committee remained steadfast in its decision to award the games to Beijing, considering that it was time to bring them to a country that is home to 1,300 million people.

For a long time, China dreamed of opening their doors and invite the athletes of the world to Beijing for the Olympic Games, said IOC president Jacques Rogge in his speech. Tonight that dream has become reality.

Rogge urged athletes to be role models for meeting the world's youth, rejecting doping and trap.
The history presented at the ceremony sought to present 54,000 years of history china, including from the Great Wall until the puppet opera and astronauts. Highlighting the achievements in art, music and science. Some 15,000 people participated, including 2,008 drummers, all under the direction of Zhang Yimou, whose films in the past often disgustaron government and the censors for their stark description of the problems Chinese.

For locations, the omens were good. The ceremony began at 8 o'clock in the evening, the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008, something auspicious in a country where the number eight is the luckiest.

The show touched not political issues. There were no references to Mao and the class struggle, nor the more recent conflicts and disputes.
A record 204 delegations participated in the traditional parade of athletes, including professional luminaries such as Rafael Nadal, Kobe Bryant, Manu Ginóbili and Roger Federer.

Unlike previous occasions, the parade was not in alphabetical order, but the sequence in the number of strokes it takes to write their names in Chinese characters. The exceptions were Greece, the birthplace of the Olympics country that went first, and finally the Chinese team made up of 639 athletes.