Beijing Olympic ceremony director warns off London-Beijing comparisons

The director of Beijing's Olympic opening ceremony has told Event it would be wrong to compare London's ceremony tonight with China's spectacular in 2008.

British countryside scenes will open the ceremony
British countryside scenes will open the ceremony

Tonight's £27 million ceremony in the Olympic Stadium has been put together by film director Danny Boyle and will mark the official opening of the Games. Little has been revealed about the show, which is named after a line in a Shakespeare play and will open with

Chinese director Wang Chaoge said: "Both of the opening ceremonies must be successful events but there is no comparison between them. It's not good to compare the two ceremonies because they are arts, and arts cannot be ranked."

She told Event that London's opening ceremony will be as important to its legacy as the sporting events.

Chaoge, who directed the ceremony when China held the last Olympic Games in 2008, said Boyle's greatest challenge would be the countryside and farming scenes at the start of the ceremony.

She said: "The hardest part will be how they will make the farmland shock people. It will be hard to make it emerge immediately in the stadium. Britain has a long history, and another hard part will be choosing what will represent that."

Chaoge is directing today's fashion show for Innovision's launch of China Day at the British Business Embassy. She said secrecy around an opening ceremony was essential, especially around the final Olympic torchbearer and how the Olympic rings appear in the show.

She added that the one billion television viewers expected to watch the ceremony are more important than the spectators in the stadium. "The most important audiences are the people who are watching the TV screens," she said.

What are you expecting from the ceremony? Will it live up to the hype? Comment below and let us know.

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