Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony: Zhang Yimou Keeps Everyone Guessing

I really can’t tell you anything about the opening ceremony,” Director Zhang Yimou says with a smile. Presently, Zhang’s “official” identity is chief director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics in August. More broadly, he is probably China’s best-known film director, who first came to prominence as part of the so-called “fifth-generation” in the late 1980s. He has garnered numerous awards globally, including the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes for To Live (1994) and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) and Not One Less (1999). More recently Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) have all been box office hits in China and abroad.

Although Zhang has decades of experience under his belt, the opening ceremony may well be his biggest and most public challenge. The final version of the event was approved a few months ago by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). “We can’t disclose any details for we’ve signed a confidentiality agreement,” explains Zhang. “But I can tell you the ceremony will start at 8pm and end at 11.30pm, and the artistic performance will last about one and a half hours. We also guarantee the quality of every minute,” he adds assertively.

So it seems the world at large won’t know what the ceremony holds until 8pm on August 8, 2008. But as the big day draws near, speculation about the ceremony’s content is rife.

A “Meal” for Foreigners?

Pleasing every one of the millions who will watch the opening ceremony is a big task. “If the audience can’t read the visual performance immediately, it means we have wasted an opportunity,” says Zhang Yimou emphatically. “Of course, that’s a huge challenge!” he adds. Zhang’s primary aim is to ensure foreigners understand the imagery and symbolism he presents. “A good host should prepare dishes that are to the guests’ taste,” says Wang Chaoge, one of Zhang’s long-term collaborators who is also working on the event. “We will offer ‘Chinese cuisine’ which suits foreigners’ palates.”

Zhang has harbored ambitions to direct the ceremony since making a short film for Beijing’s successful bid back in 2001. As well as his movie career, Zhang has been at the helm of several stage productions, notably the 2001 ballet Raise the Red Lantern. He has also directed several large-scale outdoor spectacles. In 1999 Beijing’s Forbidden City provided the setting for his epic production of Puccini’s Turandot. Even more ambitious was 2003’s Impression of Liu Sanjie, staged amongst the mountain and river scenery of Yangshuo in southern China. Zhang regards these productions as mere “warm-ups” for his current assignment.

“As a large open-air performance, much of what we did in Impression of Liu Sanjie has been a useful reference for the opening ceremony,” said Zhang. “Like Impression of Liu Sanjie, the ceremony will utilize the landscape in which it is staged – in this case the new National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest.” The much-trumpeted concept of the “green Olympics” may also be drawn on to conduct a dialogue between humankind and nature.

Another cinematic “visual master,” Steven Spielberg, is a consultant for BOCOG, and is very familiar with Zhang Yimou’s work. He singles out Hero for its use of color in narrating the story and conveying emotional and symbolic meanings. “Compared with sound and written language, the visual image is the most direct means of reaching and moving people, therefore we need to make great efforts in this area,” says the American director.

In an effort to expand the ceremony’s universal “visual language,” Zhang Yimou spent a year collecting photographs of children’s smiles from all over the world. These photos, he says, “will be applied in the opening and closing ceremonies.” For Zhang, a child’s smile transcends the boundaries of race and national borders, representing a common human emotion to people the world over. “We need to find a simple but central form of human expression,” believes Zhang, who also emphasizes the need to create lasting memorable moments. “We hope to provide the foreign media with many excellent photo opportunities.” Just as a remarkable opening ceremony is essential for a truly successful Olympics, the lighting of the Olympic flame is the key to a memorable opening ceremony. Zhang Yimou hopes the final raising of the torch will be the most “unforgettable moment.”

Inviting Confucius

As a central part of any Olympiad, the opening ceremony reflects the Olympic spirit of peace, unity and friendship. This spirit is particularly evoked in the slogan of the Beijing Olympiad: “One World, One Dream.” Crucially, the ceremony also showcases the host country’s national culture and local customs. Zhang Yimou sought advice on this point from 97-year-old Professor Ji Xianlin, a master of Chinese national culture and a BOCOG art consultant. Ji enigmatically suggested Zhang “invite” Confucius to the opening ceremony.

In 490 B.C., while the Greek solider Phidippides was running from Marathon Plain to Athens to deliver a message of victory in a battle with Persian forces, the 62-year-old Confucius was proclaiming that “Harmony is the most precious thing” in ancient China. “I hope the whole world can accept the concept of harmony,” says Professor Ji. “Then the world will be more peaceful.” Whether Confucius actually “appears” at the ceremony or not, as a fundamental part of traditional Chinese culture his symbolic presence seems inevitable.

There are those, however, who are critical of what they regard as the superficial presentation of Chinese culture in modern spectacles. The question of how to present thousands of years of history in combination with China’s modern face remains a vexing question. Zhang Yimou’s 8-minute contribution to the closing ceremony of the Athens Olympics in 2004 featured red lanterns, Peking Opera and Chinese women in mini-skirts playing traditional instruments. It was heavily criticized by some Chinese commentators for what they regarded as “the reduction of an ancient culture to a set of superficial clichés.”

“Chinese culture is still a mystery to most of the world, so we need to graft new things onto it so it may enter the global consciousness,” says Sun Jianjun, president of Pegasus & Taihe Entertainment International, one of the companies tendering to handle the technical aspects of the opening ceremony. To prepare for their bid, company personnel watched footage of many large-scale events of the past decade, analyzing the structure and contents, as well as the technology. “The criteria we used to access ideas were firstly the technical feasibility, secondly whether the cultural symbols employed could touch the world, and thirdly whether the presentation heightened Chinese culture and effectively aroused emotion.” Their conclusion was that China suffers no lack of technical means, but has yet to successfully integrate the presentation of Chinese culture and contemporary technology.

Yu Qiuyu, famous cultural scholar and consultant for the 2007 Shanghai Special Olympics, concurs with Sun’s sentiments. “Presently, the aesthetic symbols of Chinese civilization that we habitually present to the world are the remains of a declining period, that don’t represent the basic genius of Chinese culture.” Yu also believes these symbols only represent China in the most superficial of ways, feeding the international community’s desire for novelty and ornate direction, but not conveying the substance of Chinese aesthetics, art and philosophy.

Wang Chaoge rejects these criticisms and defends Zhang Yimou’s work at Athens. “We will meticulously select the various Chinese elements, and unfold the essence of Chinese culture for the world,” she says confidently. “Athens,” she adds, “left behind a profound impression on people.” In August, all eyes will be on Beijing to see what Zhang Yimou will deliver.