The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing China got underway on what is considered a very lucky day for China, 08/08/08. They celebrated by performing the opening ceremonies at 08:08 pm.

The first ceremony ever for the Olympics was held in London in 1908. Could it be doubly lucky for China that their opening ceremonies are 100 years from the first ceremony every held for the Olympics?

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will run from August 8th – August 24th. China has built twelve new sporting venues for the event to add to the eleven existing venues and eight temporary venues that are needed for all the 302 events to be held. That's a total of 31 places holding sporting events for the Olympics in China.

One of the venues is called the Bird’s Nest. They opened the Olympics from the Bird’s Nest and it was spectacular with 2,008 beating drums and fireworks. It was cool how they lit the torch and created the outline of the Olympic rings from the Olympic flag with the fireworks.

The history of the flag is important to the Olympics. It was created in 1914 by Pierre de Coubertin. It is white with five rings that represent the five continents. The rings of five different colors are for friendship. There is a blue, yellow, black, green and red ring. The importance of these colors is that any of the colors on the Olympic flag can be found in other flags. At least one of these colors is found in the flag of any country. The first Olympic game to see this flag was in 1920.

China borrowed the five colors of Pierre de Coubertin’s flag to create their Offical Mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The mascots are called Fuwa and each represent a color of de Courberin’s flag and four of them are a symbol of one of China’s animals.

The Fuwa are Beibei the Fish (blue), Jingjing the Panda (black), Huanhuan the Olympic Flame (red), Yingying the Tibetan Antelope (yellow) and Nini the Swallow (green). The combination of the Fuwa’s names mean “Welcome to Beijing” (Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni).

There is controversy so many games may be contested or not played because of the way China treats its people. It is a big country filled with many who are different on ideas and ways of living. Sometimes the Chinese government is not kind. They want to change the world’s way of thinking about them but the government would have to change the way they do things first before that happens.

For now the world will watch the athletes that have trained so hard for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and support their country’s teams.