Domingo and PLA soprano to hit high note Ting Shi Updated on Aug 16, 2008 Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, 67, will hit the high notes with a prominent People's Liberation Army soprano at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, the Shanghai-based Liberation Daily reported on its website.Song Zuying , 42, who was promoted to major general by the navy this year, is as big on the mainland as the "Three Tenors" are overseas. Song, who works for the PLA art troupe, is said to be a favourite artist of former president Jiang Zemin . The two will perform together on August 24, and organisers have promised the closing ceremony will be "a huge carnival-style party for the human race". "It's going to be very different from the opening ceremony, which was burdened with heavy responsibility to show Chinese culture to the world," Miao Pei , one of the directors for the closing ceremony, was quoted as saying by the Southern Metropolis News. "The end of the Games should be celebrated in a much more light-hearted atmosphere ... should be a mixture of rowdy relief, joy ... and euphoria." Hundreds of brightly clad professional dancers from Yunnan province in the southwest, home to more than half of the country's ethnic minorities, will dance the party to a dynamic end, the Liberation Daily said. Renowned film director Zhang Yimou - the chief architect of both opening and closing ceremonies - previously said that the highlight of the closing party would be putting out the Olympic flame, which will have burned for 17 days during the Games. Rumour also has it that in the closing festival, Zhang will try to use some of the programmes that were dropped from the opening ceremony. A Chinese leather silhouette show featuring the terracotta warriors - one of Zhang's favourite cinematic subjects, which was killed off during the first rehearsal of the opening ceremony - is probably going to be resurrected for the party. At the end of each Olympics, the next host city also traditionally puts on an eight-minute show. Guo Jinlong , the mayor of Beijing, will hand the Olympic flag to Boris Johnson, the mayor of London - the host for the 2012 Games. Beijing organisers said yesterday that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown would arrive in Beijing on Thursday. Soccer heartthrob David Beckham, the former England captain, will lead a star-studded London team for the handover segment, during which Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page will perform a duet with the former X Factor winner Leona Lewis. The finale will feature Beckham arriving on top of one of London's iconic red double-decker buses - before he kicks a football into the crowd to celebrate.
Beckham to star for London at closing ceremony By Du Wenjuan chinadaily.com.cn Updated: 2008-08-23 13:57 England footballer David Beckham will kick a handover ball on Sunday at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics to London, the next Games host city, according to a press conference held on Friday. Organizers of the 2012 London Olympics has revealed the details of London's eight-minute slot, which includes cyclists Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and Shanaze Reade. Musicians Jimmy Page and Leona Lewis will also perform during the London's part. According to Beijing Morning Post, US R&B singer Beyonce Knowles will also be on stage for London. Among the performers are also three dance groups - the Royal Opera House, street dance theatre group ZooNation and CandoCo, a contemporary dance company of disabled and non-disabled dancers. London's set will start with a symbolic red London double-decker bus driving around the Bird's Nest chased by Hoy, Pendleton and Reade on their bikes. When it slows down at a bus stop, the three groups of dancers will surround the double-decker. Afterwards the bus will transform itself, with the top half folding down in segments to show a hedge cut into shapes of the London skyline such as Tower Bridge, Battersea Power Station, the Houses of Parliament, and a phalanx of black umbrellas beside will be unfurled, BBC reported. English pop singer Leona Lewis will emerge from the roof to sing a song and then guitarist Page appears to perform with Lewis a new version of Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love.' As the song nears its end, the former England captain Beckham will stand on another lift with a London girl and kick a football into the crowd of spectators in the stadium, switching everyone's attention to the handover party outside Buckingham Palace. "We will not compete with the (Chinese) ceremony, it will be simple, youthful, athletic, loud and proud like London, entertaining and fun," said Bill Morris, Culture, Events and Education chief of the 2012 London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG). Chairman of the LOCOG Sebastian Coe said Friday would mark the start of Britain's four-year "cultural Olympiad" and also provide the opportunity to present Britain's appeal to a global audience.
It was!! soo happy she's recognised for her achievement.. i was hoping LCW could have carried the flag for msia, but no unfortunately.. haiz.. but so happy for Zhang Ning!!
The preparation.. ..for the closing ceremony actually started a few days after the Opening Ceremony had ended. Heard, in the news, that they will re-use the same Olympic torch for the upcoming Para-Olympics next month. And yes, as mentioned, the closing ceremony's atmosphere will be more like a "party"/semi-formal atmosphere..
Awesome!! I was hoping it was her! She must be over the moon . I was looking desperately to try and see who was holding the Malaysian flag, but it was too small on my screen .
i too feel bad that lcw been used like that. He has little control of it. When the initial rumor of him been kidnapped, in actuality, it is not far off. As the only medal earned in this OG, LCW deserve 100% rights to parade the final ceremony flag for MAL. What good is the datuk title when he can't even get to exercise this honor?
Agreed 100%. I'm sure anyone wouldn't want to pass off the only opportunity they are probably gonna get to carry their country's flag in the olympics.... Very sad....
Giant street party as London takes the baton by Guy Jackson 1 hour, 10 minutes ago Around 40,000 people including record-breaking American swimmer Michael Phelps gathered Sunday to celebrate 2012 host London taking over from Beijing as the Olympic city. The spectators watched the Olympics closing ceremony in Beijing on giant TV screens set up on the Mall near Buckingham Palace, the official residence of Queen Elizabeth II, before enjoying a pop concert. The flag-waving crowd roared their approval when the big screens showed the Mayor of London Boris Johnson taking possession of the Olympic flag during the ceremony in Beijing. The cheers grew even louder in London when, thousands of miles away in the Chinese capital, England football star David Beckham kicked a football from the roof of a red London double-decker bus. As the curtain came down in Beijing, British rock acts including McFly, Will Young and soprano Katherine Jenkins entertained the crowd in London. The star attraction at the party was Phelps, the 23-year-old from Baltimore, who won eight gold medals in the pool, the highest number ever by one competitor at the Olympics. He promised that he would be back in Britain in 2012 in search of more gold. "I still have things that I want to do in the sport, I've never competed over here in London and I'm looking forward to really experience more of the city and be able to prepare myself to hopefully swim some fast times." As the lanky figure of Phelps took to the stage, he was greeted by a flypast by the Red Arrows, the British Royal Air Force's aerobatics team, trailing red, white and blue smoke. The jets also swooped over the British capital on the day in July 2005 when London was awarded the 2012 Games. Organisers said more than 200,000 people took part in Olympic handover parties across Britain, including in the central English city of Birmingham, which will host some of the Olympic football matches, and in Weymouth on the south coast where the sailing will take place. Bradley Wiggins, a double gold medallist in Britain's phenomenally successful cycling team in Beijing, had jetted back to appear at the party, along with Phillips Idowu, who won silver in the triple jump. The British team's success at the Beijing Olympics, where it won 19 gold medals and finished fourth in the overall table, has taken many here by surprise and some commentators say it could help dissipate some of the cynicism about how much the London Games will cost. The original budget was 3.4 billion pounds but has already risen to 9.3 billion pounds (11.7 billion euros, 17.2 billion dollars). Even the queen has been caught up by Olympic fever -- she said she had been following Team GB's successes "with great interest and admiration". "As a nation, we now look forward to holding the Olympic games in London in 2012," the monarch said in a statement released Sunday. "The golden triumphs of the present British team can only serve as further inspiration to those who will be working hard over the next four years to make the London games a shining example of Olympic success." Organisers say the London Olympics will not try and emulate the scale of the Beijing extravaganza but aim to be "sustainable" Games which leave a lasting legacy for the deprived area of east London where they will be based. Organisers should aim to put their own distinctive stamp on the Games and not try to one-up Beijing's effort, British newspapers said on Monday. Several newspapers called for a "quirkily British" take on the Olympics. "The handover was marked with a quirky eight-minute cameo of the capital that smacked more of the swinging Sixties than of the 21st-century cosmopolis that will stage the next Games," The Daily Telegraph's editorial read. "If this is a statement of intent from the 2012 organisers that they will not try to match Beijing in scale or spectacle but will instead rely on flair and wit, it is commendable. "As an emerging superpower, China felt it had something to prove. London should -- in keeping with our nation's character -- be a little more understated." The Daily Mail chimed in, noting that the "burden of expectation weighs heavy, and hopes are high", adding that the organisers of the London Games "are no doubt nervous, wondering how on earth they follow that." -taken from AFP through Yahoo!News- London Olympic countdown has started from last night to 27 July 2012...
Watched it.. ..and it lived up to its pageantry. Although the opening ceremony still wins hands & feet down.. Best of luck to London in its preparation for the opening/closing ceremony. Maybe they can ask Zhang Yimou to help them a bit in preparing the opening/closing ceremony??..
The commentator said there were 1.3 million Chinese volunteer working on the opening/closing ceremony. Can London find 1.3 million volunteers...
That's their advantage.. ..and that should be expected. Anything less than that number would make one scratch one's head. Actually i'm not sure if all of them are from Beijing though, as there are only about 17 million residents in Beijing alone. If England/UK can come close to 1.3 volunteers for the opening/closing ceremony, in 2012, then i would say that's even more quite remarkable. *Side story: Actually another of my roommate, in Beijing, was one of the many hundred thousands of volunteers (those wearing the blue with white/yellow colored designed tees). She worked about 5 days a week, with schedules of about 8 hrs a day, in the media/press room. She usually worked 2 days in a row, with a 1 day break in between. She would work 1 day for 8 hrs in a morning to afternoon shift. And then the following day she would work 8 hrs from afternoon til late at night. She said the organizers provided all the meals, even some really good gourmet food. Too bad i wasn't in the mix..
08 OG is china's first olympic. Like they say, first impressive is count. London will be hosting the olympic for the 3rd time come 2012. London doesn't need to prove themself.