A highlight of any Olympic Games opening ceremony is of course the Parade of Nations. Meet the young lady from Nanjing who held aloft a snowflake and walked ahead of the Philippines’ flag bearer out into the Bird’s Nest at the winter Olympiad in Beijing.
Millions the world over tuned in and swiped up on 4 February, to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games. The Philippines paraded out number 68 of 91 competing nations, and leading them was a 19-year-old girl by the name of Li Xiang.
Li, who is a student at the Education College in Beijing’s Dance Academy, gave an insider lowdown to Nanjing Daily.
Li explained that the first rehearsal was held as far back as October of last year. Then in December, rehearsals moved into the Bird’s Nest.
Needless to say, Li needed to practice walking and her standing posture, but China is known for considering every last excruciating detail when it comes to planning events of this magnitude. The height at which the Philippines snowflake was to be held was a big deal, while Li’s facial expressions, eyes and even her frequency of blinking were all carefully predetermined.
“It was also my first time on such a big stage. The director, Zhang Yimou, screened me three times”, Li said.
When the big day finally came, Li and her 90 other colleagues were not permitted their mobile phones while waiting back stage. Li also said none of them had been previously told to which countries they were assigned to lead out.
“Very excited and proud” was how Li described her feelings during these final nerve-wracking moments.
Up north over the new year, Li had a message for her parents back here in Nanjing. She said, “Everything is fine in Beijing. And now isolation is also very safe. When I’m done, I’ll come back. We must have a reunion dinner together”.
In every Olympics, after Greece comes out first, the Parade of Nations follows the alphabetical order of the host country’s language. At Olympic Games in China, alphabetical is defined by the number of strokes in the initial character of each nation’s Chinese name, from fewest to most.
At the back of the pack marches (or dances) in the host nation, and in a new tradition, it is preceded by the host nation of the next Games, by way of providing a little boost to their future success.