CHINA:The smog stayed away, spectacular lasers lit up the Forbidden City and thousands of couples tied the knot on the luckiest day of the year, as China pulled out all the stops to launch the one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympics.
The Games are due to start at 8.08pm on the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the new millennium, a seriously auspicious day in China, and the countdown ceremony was a dazzling affair, with fireworks, a performance by the pianist Lang Lang and an appearance by movie star Jackie Chan, all watched over by the famous portrait of the founder of communist China, Chairman Mao Zedong.
Thousands of Chinese showed up to celebrate on the sidelines. Chinese people are intensely proud that Beijing will host the games as they feel it symbolises China's re-emergence on the world stage. "It has been a century-long dream for the Chinese to host an Olympic Games," top Communist Party official Wu Bangguo said at the ceremony. "With these games, the Chinese will have better understanding and co-operation with the rest of the world."
Close to 3,400 couples in Beijing got married on Wednesday, hoping that the "eighth of the eighth" luck would rub off on them. The day was the start of autumn in the lunar calendar and is already considered an ideal date for marriage.
More than half a million foreign visitors are expected for the games and about two million Chinese. They will see a city transformed into a modern metropolis.
While the celebrations were indeed spectacular, it has been a fairly fraught week for the Beijing organisers. The skies were clear and the sun shone yesterday - most likely with the help of airforce jets firing silver iodine and dry ice rockets at the clouds to make them disappear - but the preceding days had been badly polluted, prompting International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge to warn that some endurance events at the games would have to be postponed if the air quality was not up to scratch at the times they start.
There are three million cars in this city of 12 million people, but Mr Rogge said the Beijing organisers had promised to take 1.3 million of them off the roads and close factories for the duration of the games, from August 8th to 24th next year.
Civil rights activists took advantage of the attention of the world on the Chinese capital to highlight various human rights issues, such as Tibet and media freedom.
A group of Tibetan protesters unrolled a banner at the Great Wall calling for a "Free Tibet" - China faces international censure for keeping a tight grip on Tibet, the Himalayan region it annexed in 1950.
The protesters were deported to Hong Kong after two days in detention, but the Tibetan movement has promised more demonstrations as the Olympic flame travels around the world. The government has also been trying to combat the poor publicity surrounding the "Made in China" brand following a series of complaints worldwide about the safety of Chinese food and drugs.