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Factbox: Beijing Olympics opening

The Beijing Olympic Games started on Friday with a dramatic openingceremony featuring a cast of thousands directed by acclaimedChinese movie director Zhang Yimou.

    The performance, which began with thunderous drumming, celebratedthe arts and achievements of imperial China but skipped the fraught20th century altogether.A chanting troupe intoned the Confucian proverb "Friends have comefrom afar, how happy we are".Flying acrobats and a lone beribboned female dancer recalled thegrottos of Dunhuang, painted in the Wei and Tang dynasties whencamel caravans plied the Silk Road. Many view the Tang dynasty asthe golden age of China, when it was wealthy and open to the world.Blue-robed oarsman enacted seafarers travelling between SoutheastAsia and the coast of Fujian, in southern China. Their oars becamesails, painted with the "treasure ships" of the eunuch admiralZheng He who reached Africa in the Ming Dynasty.Dancers clacking bamboo props represented some of the oldestChinese records, whose delicate brushstrokes are preserved onbamboo strips over 2,000 years old.

 Undulating grey blocks symbolised the printing blocks of ancientChina, which invented moveable type.

 They morphed into the Great Wall, a frontier defence whoseBadaling section near Beijing is an instantly recognized symbol ofChina.

 Landscape paintings and scenes of court life were projected on agiant scroll that unfurled on the stadium floor, while musiciansperformed traditional airs.

Absent were references to the Qing Dynasty, when Western powersmade inroads on the disintegrating empire, or the divisive 20thcentury, when civil war, the Japanese invasion and Mao Zedong'sabsolute rule drove China into deep poverty.

    Diverse Population Children clad in the outfits of China's 56 ethnic groups carriedthe flag into the stadium. A male and female representative of eachethnic group sang the national anthem as the Chinese flag wasraised, illustrating China's claim to unite its diverse populationunder one nation and party.

 Three astronauts "flew" through the stadium. China has sent threemen into space and plans another manned mission later this year.

 The ceremony concluded with an ode to regreening the Earth and acelebration of water, both important issues in China which isstruggling with choking pollution and loss of farmland after nearlythree decades of economic reform.

 A glowing globe recalled the Olympic ideal of internationalharmony and China's growing role as a world power.