The Bird Nest The Night Of The Clos­ing Ceremony

Last Sun­day, we attended the Bei­jing Olympic Clos­ing Cer­e­mony. We left early, expect­ing a huge crowd: the pre­vi­ous days, we had attended a cou­ple of vol­ley­ball games and track and field, and get­ting to the Olympic Green was… chal­leng­ing.

First of all, sub­way sta­tion are now equipped with X-ray machines and all bags have to be checked. This is quick though and I haven’t seen any bag been searched. Things were get­ting a bit more com­pli­cated at the entry of the line 8, the three-stops line which goes to the Olympic Sport Cen­ter, the Green, and the Olympic For­est. To take this line, we first had to get off of the trans­fer sta­tion at Beitucheng, show we had ticket for an Olympic event that day and be searched. That meant going out­side and cross­ing a huge crowd of scalpers, tourists and ven­dors, then tak­ing the actual line 8 to reach the Green. Not to men­tion that at the end of the event, roughly 100,000 peo­ple leav­ing at the same time just doesn’t work well in the sub­way.

But the day of the clos­ing cer­e­mony, the secu­rity was a bit tighter and those with­out tick­ets couldn’t hang out out­side of the line 8 sta­tion. We just passed a quick secu­rity check and we were in. The only dif­fer­ence with the pre­vi­ous days was the chop­pers fly­ing around the sta­dium and the army try­ing to secure the area for the fire­works later that night.

Every­body was so excited. Peo­ple were tak­ing pic­tures, kids were run­ning around, a few were try­ing to buy bot­tles of cold water and we were all march­ing up to the sta­dium, sweaty but happy. Inside the sta­dium we were given a goodie bag as a sou­venir, but also to par­tic­i­pate in the event: we had a pro­gram, an olympic torch replica, a small drum, wrist­bands, a fan, water etc. The cer­e­mony started soon after we found our seats. The sta­dium was packed: 91,000 spec­ta­tors! It was hot, like Bei­jing hot in the sum­mer, and I could see steam com­ing out of the stadium.

In a word, the cer­e­mony was a lot of fun. The pro­to­col was respected: there were flags bear­ers, a lot of ath­letes, speeches from offi­cial such as Jacques Rogges and Liu Qi, the Olympic flag was pre­sented to the mayor of Lon­don etc. But the per­for­mances in between were just awe­some. The lights, the chore­og­ra­phy (by Zhang Zhi­mou)… Every­thing was well-organized but spon­ta­neous and fun at the same time. Jimmy Page (of Led Zep­pelin) per­formed “Whole Lotta Love” while David Beckam kicked a few foot­balls in the crowd. The ath­letes, prob­a­bly tired of sit­ting around on the field, started to run around. Jackie Chan sung (yeah, I know…). We all freaked out when we heard loud explo­sions, only to real­ize that was the fire­works around the sta­dium that, of course, we couldn’t see (being in the sta­dium, it felt like they were set­ting us on fire). Here are a few pic­tures I took:

Related posts:

1. The Olympic Green (奥林匹克公园)
2. Col­or­ful Boca
3. Lama Tem­ple (雍和宫)
4. The Olympic Torch Relay In Ottawa (2÷2)
5. Lake Placid, NY State