Saturday, August 09, 2008

2008 Beijing Olympics: Parade of Nations

One of the coolest things from the opening ceremonies has always been the parade of nations. This is where all of the athletes and coaches of different nations are announced to the crowd. They then march along the track while waving to the fans and the world.

This year, the traditional parade of nations had a twist. The procession is usually done by alphabetical order (A to Z) with Greece (the origin of the Olympics) first and the host country (China this year) last. This time it was not done with Alphabetical order but with the number of Chinese strokes in the first character of the country's Chinese name.

For example, the USA (美国, meiguo), where the character 美 has 9 total strokes. That makes it the 140th country compared with Japan (日本, riben), where the character 日has 4 strokes - making it the 23rd country in line.

Not only is the Olympics being held in China, but this is a sign that the Chinese are doing much of it in its own terms. It is a vastly different approach to a traditional event.

Go China.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what will be the place of U.S. team in that order? Can you even tell in your head? I didn't think so. This is a very dumb order.

Mike Bai said...

ignorant people who dont read please refrain from posting on my blog. as i said... 140th.

i guess this suggest that your dumb

Anonymous said...

What's dumb is the first poster's comment that the order is dumb simply because they don't understand it. News flash: not every country in the world uses the same alphabet, particularly in Asia and Europe. Get over it. Better yet, educate yourself and open your mind a bit, and maybe you might find that its those very differences from America that make other cultures so interesting.

Danielle Carter said...

agree with anonymous #2