WThe 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad and commonly known as Beijing 2008, was an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008 in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) competed in 28 sports and 302 events. This was the first time China had hosted the Summer Olympic Games, and the third time the Games had been held in East Asia, following the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. These were also the third Summer Olympic Games staged in a developing country after the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
WAT&T Team USA Soundtrack is a sporting compilation by various artists, created for the 2008 Summer Olympics, in Beijing.
WBeijing 2008 is the official Olympic video game of the 2008 Summer Olympics held in Beijing. Developed by Eurocom and published by Sega, the game was the second video game based on the 2008 Summer Olympics to be released, the first being the fantasy-based Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games which appeared in late 2007; however, Beijing 2008 is a realistic sports simulation.
WBeijing World Park is a theme park that attempts to give visitors the chance to see the world without having to leave Beijing. The park covers 46.7 hectares and is located in the southwestern Fengtai District of Beijing. It is about 17 km from Tiananmen, the City center, and 40 km from the Capital International Airport. The park opened in 1993 and is estimated to receive 1.5 million visitors annually.
WTen cities submitted bids to host the 2008 Summer Olympics and Paralympics that were recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), five of which made the IOC Executive Committee's shortlist. The games were awarded to Beijing, China on July 13, 2001. The other shortlisted cities were Toronto, Paris, Istanbul and Osaka. Beijing won an absolute majority of votes after two rounds of voting, eliminating the need for subsequent rounds of voting. IOC delegates and the media identified a number of factors in its favor, including the size of the country, improvements in Chinese anti-doping enforcement, and its close loss to Sydney, Australia eight years earlier. In that bidding process, which chose the host city for the 2000 Summer Olympics, Beijing led every round of voting but lost in the final round to Sydney by two votes.
WThe 2008 Summer Olympics cauldron is the Olympic flame holder that was used during the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, China. It was first lit on August 8, 2008, as part of the opening ceremony of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad and last extinguished as part of the closing ceremony of the games of the Paralympics on September 17. Originally located on the inside roof of the Beijing National Stadium, it was relocated to outside the stadium on the Olympic Green following the completion of the Games.
WDancing Beijing is the name of the official emblem of the 2008 Summer Olympics, which took place in Beijing in the People's Republic of China. It was unveiled on 3 August 2003 in a ceremony attended by 2,008 people at Beijing's Temple of Heaven.
WThe Digital Beijing Building is located northwest of the intersection of Beichen West and Anxiang North roads, on Olympic Green, in the Chaoyang District of Beijing, China. It is a 57-metre-tall (187 ft) block-shaped building erected to serve as a data center during the 2008 Summer Olympics. Since then it has served as both a museum devoted to the use of computing in the Olympics, and exhibition space for digital technology companies.
WThe Fuwa were the mascots of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The designs were created by Han Meilin, a famous Chinese artist. The designs were publicly announced by the National Society of Chinese Classic Literature Studies on 11 November 2005 at an event marking the 1000th day before the opening of the games.
WLeaving Fear Behind, also known as Leaving Fear behind: I Won't Regret to Die, is a documentary movie from Dhondup Wangchen and Jigme Gyatso about communist Chinese repression of Tibet. It was premiered in 2008 in the year when the 2008 Summer Olympics took place in Beijing, China.
WThe Ling Long Pagoda or Linglong Tower (玲珑塔) houses a part of the International Broadcast Center (IBC). It is located near the Olympic Cauldron, on the northwest side of Beijing National Stadium. "Ling Long" (玲珑) means delicate, and is referred to as the Delicate Tower in Chinese.
WLiu Qi is a retired Chinese politician. He formerly served as the Communist Party Secretary of Beijing, and also a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China. He was also the President of the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee.
WMario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is a crossover sports and party game developed by the Sega Sports R&D Department. It is the first installment on the Mario & Sonic series. It was published by Nintendo in Japan and by Sega in other regions, and released on the Wii in November 2007 and the Nintendo DS handheld in January 2008. The first official video game of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, it is licensed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) through exclusive licensee International Sports Multimedia (ISM), and is the first official crossover game to feature characters from both the Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog series.
WThe 2008 Summer Olympics medal table is a list of National Olympic Committees (NOCs) ranked by the number of gold medals won by their athletes during the 2008 Summer Olympics, held in Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China, from 8 August to 24 August 2008. Approximately 11,028 athletes from 204 NOCs participated in 302 events in 28 sports.
WThe 2008 Summer Olympics were held in Beijing, People's Republic of China, from 8 August to 24 August 2008. Approximately 11,028 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOC) participated. Overall, 302 events in 28 sports were held; 165 events were opened to men, 127 were opened to women and 10 were mixed events. In total there was one more event than in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.
WThe Olympic Adventures of Fuwa is a Chinese animation portraying the 2008 Summer Olympics mascots, known as the Fuwa. The series began running on 8 August 2007. Prior to the television release, Kaku TV distributed copies of the series to foreign embassies and cities.
WThe Olympic Green is an Olympic Park in Chaoyang District, Beijing, China constructed for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Since then, the streets around the park have been used for an exhibition street race of the FIA GT1 World Championship in 2011, after a race at Goldenport Park Circuit in the vicinity. It will again serve as an Olympic Park when Beijing hosts the 2022 Winter Olympics.
WThe 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony was held at the Beijing National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest. It began at 20:00 China Standard Time (UTC+08:00) on Friday, 8 August 2008, as the number 8 is considered to be auspicious. The number 8 is associated with prosperity and confidence in Chinese culture. The artistic part of the ceremony comprised two parts titled "Brilliant Civilization" and "Glorious Era" respectively. The first part highlighted the Chinese civilization and the second part exhibited modern China and its dream of harmony between the people of the world. The stadium was full to its 91,000 capacity according to organizers.
WThe 2008 Summer Paralympic Games, the 13th Paralympics, took place in Beijing, China from September 6 to 17, 2008. As with the 2008 Summer Olympics, equestrian events were held in Hong Kong and sailing events in Qingdao.
WSongs for Tibet: The Art of Peace is a music album with contributions from a number of musicians from throughout the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and South Africa. The artists include Sting, Garbage, Rush, Suzanne Vega, Jonatha Brooke, and Alanis Morissette. The album is an initiative to support Tibet, the promotion of peace, basic fundamental human rights, including freedom of speech and religion and the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. Songs for Tibet is a project from the Art of Peace Foundation in Washington, D.C. The executive director of the Art of Peace Foundation, Michael Wohl, is executive producer of the album. Producer Rupert Hine oversaw the musical direction of the project.
WOlivier Strebelle was a Belgian sculptor.
WThe Tibetan Olympics 2008 was held from 15 to 25 May 2008 in Dharamsala, in northern India. Its purpose was to ensure that Tibetans could also celebrate the excitement of world's biggest sporting event – the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing – following the approach of sports and communication.
WThe 2008 Tibetan unrest was a series of protests and demonstrations over the Chinese government's treatment and persecution of Tibetans. Protests in Lhasa by monks and nuns on 10 March have been viewed as the start of the demonstrations. Numerous peaceful protests and demonstrations were held to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising Day, when the 14th Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet. The protests and demonstrations spread spontaneously to a number of monasteries and throughout the Tibetan plateau, including into counties located outside the designated Tibet Autonomous Region. The arrest of monks at Labrang Monastery increased the tenseness of the situation. Violence began when Chinese police and People's Liberation Army units used force on non-violent protests by monks and nuns, and spread when protesting Tibetans later clashed with security forces. Clashes also occurred between Tibetans and Chinese Han and Hui residents, resulting in Han and Hui stores and buildings being destroyed and numerous Chinese civilians being injured or killed.
WThe 2008 Summer Olympics summit of Mount Everest was the special route of the torch relay as part of the 2008 Summer Olympics taking place in China. Torchbearers reached Mount Everest at 9.20 in the morning on May 8, in parallel with the Shenzhen route. Another name for the climb is the Beijing Olympics Torch Relay Qomolangma Leg.
WThe 2008 Summer Olympics torch relay was run from March 24 until August 8, 2008, prior to the 2008 Summer Olympics, with the theme of "one world, one dream". Plans for the relay were announced on April 26, 2007, in Beijing, China. The relay, also called by the organizers as the "Journey of Harmony", lasted 129 days and carried the torch 137,000 km (85,000 mi) – the longest distance of any Olympic torch relay since the tradition was started ahead of the 1936 Summer Olympics.
WThe 2008 Summer Olympics torch relay route involved 21 countries where the Olympic torch was carried between its lighting in Greece in March 2008 and the Olympic opening ceremony in China's host city of Beijing in August 2008. The relay took place in four separate legs: in Greece, an international leg, in the Special Administrative Region of China, and in mainland China.
WWorkers is a book of 143 portraits of migrant workers who participated in the construction of the Olympic Green in Beijing, China in the lead up to the 2008 Summer Olympics. The book is the work of British artist Helen Couchman and consists primarily of photographs of the workers on the building site. The workers were photographed with the iconic buildings of the Beijing Olympics: The Beijing National Stadium (国家体育场), known colloquially as the "Bird's Nest" (鸟巢), and the Beijing National Aquatics Center (国家游泳中心), also known as the "Water Cube" (水立方).
WYang Peiyi is a Chinese former child singer.
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