journal3

I watched the opening ceremony of beijing olympic game once again this weekend. Here is some ideas of mine.

Firstly, I was very proud of my country when I watched the opening ceremony. It , indeed, showed the specialty of the culture which has long history and unique inventions from compass to firework. However, it expressed so many the historical factors that I doubt whether foreigners would understand.

Thus I would like to explain a little bit of the cultures in the opening ceremony and why I would like to call the ceremony as the Zhang(Zhang Yimo is a famous film director in China.) style ceremony.

Phenomenon #1:
Many people are doing a great show
If you have watched the ceremony, You may find out the great hit to your feeling will be the show is operated by a great bunch of organized and united people. This could be a reflect of an old saying:"This could be done better and easier by more people"(人多好办事) Chinese people think highly of the union of the whole group and we are great team players. From the beginning of the history, we knew a high efficient job needs allocation. It is a great style of how Chinese people work.

But it is also a way that Zhang likes to show the character of China. He also organized 2 very great show played by many people to advertise the 2 places that many people like to travel.

It seems that using many actors and actresses for the show has become a stereotype of Zhang Yimou. Like the first part of the ceremony, many men were hitting the drums and counting backwards. It was the most magnificent backwards counting I have ever seen!

Phenomenon #2:
Historical Factors

1 the Spirit of the Art
Before I explain the those historical factors ,I would like to say something about the art of Ancient China. Not like oil paintings or any other European art, Chinese art concentrate the spirit and emotions on the paintings, which means what were in the ancient paintings may not look like "real" but feel "real". The magnificent poetry of the ancient paintings would make people feel they were inside the art!
As we may know, the whole ceremony were begun with painting and ended with the poetry of the paintings.

2. The Ancient Literature
Because China has a long long history, literature of ancient China is like a universe!! The style, script,types of ancient literature are various from different periods of the history. Ancient literature, compared with Chinese modern literature, is short, brief in length but enormous in meanings, which makes it seem very abstruse for people to understand. However, nowadays, Chinese students still need to learn ancient writings because they are the classics of Chinese culture not only because of the spirit of the nation but also the fine tradition of the country. Among all the great ancient writings, the ideology of Kongzi(孔子),also called the RU philosophy （儒学）,which advertises the manner,kindness,and beauty of humanity, is the most known and accepted around the world.
During the opening ceremony, there was a show that many men dressed in ancient costume,holding bamboo slips(Ancient Chinese used bamboo slips as books before paper was invented) and reading singing something. What they singing about was from the Ru philosophy.