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Chinese always want to show the world a friendly, peaceful, prosperous and open nation. However, what the foreigners see may be really different. This essay will use Beijing Olympics Games opening ceremony as an example to analysis the issue.
“The opening ceremony can tell us much about how Chinese see themselves and how they see the world.”The 2008 Beijing Olympics began officially on Friday 8th August 2008 at 8p.m. in front of a crowd of 90,000 eager spectators in the Bird’s Nest stadium. It was divided into 8 parts, and each part had a lot to do with the Chinese old stories.
One of the 8 parts of the opening ceremony showed the audience the Silk Road. It reconstructed Zheng He’s sailings from Quanzhou, China to the west-Asia and east-Africa which involved in 27000 people on the seven journeys during 28 years. In the performance, Zhang Yimou described Zheng He as the peace envoy, and described the sailings as the nervy feats, which brought the friendliness and riches to the foreign countries. Also, from the textbooks which are used as Chinese students’ teaching materials, we can see that our propaganda usually presents Zheng He as a great man and gives the sailings high appraisal. “(Zheng He’s) navigation activities were earlier than any other famous navigators in the world. We can say that he was the earliest, greatest and the most accomplished navigator in the history.”
But foreigners see the differences. When mentioning the great navigator, the first name in their mind is Columbus; if referring to the Chinese navigators, they may just think of the closure policy of the ancient China. And the facts were that Zheng He’s goals of navigating were not his own desire or interests, but the personal aims of the ruler at that time, maybe just to show off national strength and prestige or to seek the victim the political struggle.Even some important information was destroyed, such as the shipbuilding methods and the names of member of staff. What we know today all comes from the history records written by the governing class with their own purposes. Foreigners feel confused why Chinese accord great importance to Zheng He because to some degree, they hold the idea that Zheng He was a performer who just followed the ruler’s orders and was even not a clear character in the history. They can’t find the courage to open up the world and the determination to explore the unknown field in Zheng He’s navigation. This kind of thoughts really runs the different direction against the goals of Beijing Olympics Games opening ceremony’s performance.
Another interesting phenomenon is the different opinions to the Chinese identification with the State and the nation, especially talking of minority nationalities. One of the significant elements of the opening ceremony is the raise of national flag. To show the solidarity of the whole nation and to prove the harmonious relationship of China’s all nationalities, the national flag was held by 56 children from 56 different nationalities with the singing of the famous song Ode to the Motherland. But later, some of the foreign media pointed out that all those 56 children were professional Han actors. They thought this was a fakery, but Chinese didn’t take it seriously. The foreign media described it like this: BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee of Olympic Games) vice-president Wang Wei dismissed foreign media criticism, asserting that the incident was “not worth mentioning” and “completely normal” in Chinese tradition.
“The opening ceremony can tell us much about how Chinese see themselves and how they see the world.”The 2008 Beijing Olympics began officially on Friday 8th August 2008 at 8p.m. in front of a crowd of 90,000 eager spectators in the Bird’s Nest stadium. It was divided into 8 parts, and each part had a lot to do with the Chinese old stories.
One of the 8 parts of the opening ceremony showed the audience the Silk Road. It reconstructed Zheng He’s sailings from Quanzhou, China to the west-Asia and east-Africa which involved in 27000 people on the seven journeys during 28 years. In the performance, Zhang Yimou described Zheng He as the peace envoy, and described the sailings as the nervy feats, which brought the friendliness and riches to the foreign countries. Also, from the textbooks which are used as Chinese students’ teaching materials, we can see that our propaganda usually presents Zheng He as a great man and gives the sailings high appraisal. “(Zheng He’s) navigation activities were earlier than any other famous navigators in the world. We can say that he was the earliest, greatest and the most accomplished navigator in the history.”
But foreigners see the differences. When mentioning the great navigator, the first name in their mind is Columbus; if referring to the Chinese navigators, they may just think of the closure policy of the ancient China. And the facts were that Zheng He’s goals of navigating were not his own desire or interests, but the personal aims of the ruler at that time, maybe just to show off national strength and prestige or to seek the victim the political struggle.Even some important information was destroyed, such as the shipbuilding methods and the names of member of staff. What we know today all comes from the history records written by the governing class with their own purposes. Foreigners feel confused why Chinese accord great importance to Zheng He because to some degree, they hold the idea that Zheng He was a performer who just followed the ruler’s orders and was even not a clear character in the history. They can’t find the courage to open up the world and the determination to explore the unknown field in Zheng He’s navigation. This kind of thoughts really runs the different direction against the goals of Beijing Olympics Games opening ceremony’s performance.
Another interesting phenomenon is the different opinions to the Chinese identification with the State and the nation, especially talking of minority nationalities. One of the significant elements of the opening ceremony is the raise of national flag. To show the solidarity of the whole nation and to prove the harmonious relationship of China’s all nationalities, the national flag was held by 56 children from 56 different nationalities with the singing of the famous song Ode to the Motherland. But later, some of the foreign media pointed out that all those 56 children were professional Han actors. They thought this was a fakery, but Chinese didn’t take it seriously. The foreign media described it like this: BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee of Olympic Games) vice-president Wang Wei dismissed foreign media criticism, asserting that the incident was “not worth mentioning” and “completely normal” in Chinese tradition.