Spectacular opening to Beijing Olympics

Spectacular opening to Beijing Olympics

Fireworks explode from the stadium roof during the opening Ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympics at the National Stadium in Beijing, on Friday.
Resurgent China opened the Olympics with a burst of fireworks at a spectacular ceremony that celebrated ancient Chinese history and aimed to draw a line under months of political controversy.

Firecrackers rippled around the rim of the arena, strobe lights flickered and the forest of drumsticks turned a luminous red, flashing bright in the hazy, humid air.
The ceremony caps seven years of work that reshaped Beijing and sets the seal on an industrial boom that has boosted China's international standing.

The Olympic rings are pictured during the opening ceremony in Beijing.
The Games carry a $43 billion price tag, dwarfing the previous record of $15 billion splashed out by Athens in 2004, sweeping thousands of people out of their homes to make way for state-of-the art stadiums.

Drummers perform during the opening ceremony.
An army of 2,008 drummers pounded out the countdown to the Games, which mark China's emergence from impoverished isolation to economic might, but have also galvanized critics of the Communist government's human rights record.