Olympic Village Opens in Beijing (PHOTOS)

AP:

The Athletes' Village for the Beijing Olympics held its official opening ceremony Sunday, an all-Chinese curtain raiser with basketball stars Yao Ming, Yi Jianlian and Wang Zhizhi heading a 265-member delegation of athletes and officials.

A few foreign delegations were in town Sunday -- just 12 days before the opening ceremony of the games -- but none appeared officially at the inauguration, which was festooned with confetti and dozens of Chinese children handing out Olympic mascots to some of country's most powerful politicians.

"We now welcome athletes from around the world to come to the games," said Chen Zhili, speaking from a stage draped in red. Chen is the so-called mayor of the village, and a vice president of the organizing committee.

Here is a slideshow from Sunday's opening:

• • • • • Yao Attends Olympic Village Ceremony

"We will try to satisfy the needs of people from different cultural and religious backgrounds," said Chen, who received a symbolic gold key to the village from organizing committee president Liu Qi. Liu is also the head of Beijing's Communist Party.

The opening came on a hot, muggy morning made more uncomfortable by the thick haze of pollution hanging over the village, which is to house about 16,000 athletes and officials.

Despite drastic pollution-control measures that have been in effect for a week, Beijing's air quality appears much the same as it did before. The Athletes' Village was cloaked in choking smog, making it invisible from the main Olympic Green area just a half-mile away.

Read the whole story: AP

Comments

[You]

Whose idea was it to put all those athletes in all that smog?

[XMauiGirl]

Right....I didn't think any view not complying with HuffPost’s agenda would be allowed expressed here including this particular post.

Yes, that’s fair and unbiased journalism.

[darthdarcy]

Free TIBET...!

Stop murdering Buddhists..!

End Red Chinese support for genocide in Darfur.....and The murdering Sudanese government..

End Chinese support for the murderers of Burma..

Boycott watching this abomination of an Olympics..

[XMauiGirl]

Do you even know where Tibet, Darfur and/or Burma are?!

How many hard facts do you really know about each country and culture? Other than what you have “learned” from the Western news media that only allowed you to see world events from their view point reported from THEIR biased agenda, what do you TRULY know?

Rather than stating our truth based ONLY from empirical experiences, people often express “their” opinion solely based upon dis/information as they are TOLD.

Have a mind and heart of your own, people!

[walsenberg]

hasn't china and tibet been in conflict for thousands of years? Why watch any olympics if you go by the atrocities each country who has ever hosted a game?

I for one will watch the olympics and hope goodwill comes out of people exhanging personal pleasantries rather than beat a 1000 year old horse.