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"One world, one dream" - China's Olympic vision. Photo: Wu Hong/EPA On the eighth hour of the evening of the eighth day of the month of the eighth year of the millennium, the lucky numbers all fell into place for China - like a game of mah-jong you cannot lose. This opening of the 29th Olympic Games was an orchestrated marriage of superstition and military precision on a scale only a one-party state could deliver with such confidence. It was a show not so much riveting because of its artistic merit (which was considerable) but the self-conscious reaching for grandeur that has become the Olympic movement's parodic symbol of excess. Yes, it was bigger and better than Athens - which matched Sydney, which left Atlanta in a cocked hat, which was miserably worse than Barcelona, and so on back to the first of these beautiful... [read full story]
