Reuters 
 
Beijing, Aug 8: The Beijing Olympic Games started on Friday with a dramatic opening ceremony featuring a cast of thousands directed by acclaimed Chinese movie director Zhang Yimou.   

The performance, which began with thunderous drumming, celebrated the arts and achievements of imperial China but skipped the fraught 20th century altogether. 

A chanting troupe intoned the Confucian proverb 'Friends have come from afar, how happy we are'.  

Flying acrobats and a lone beribboned female dancer recalled the grottos of Dunhuang, painted in the Wei and Tang dynasties when camel caravans plied the Silk Road. Many view the Tang dynasty as the golden age of China, when it was wealthy and open to the world.   

Blue-robed oarsman enacted seafarers travelling between Southeast Asia and the coast of Fujian, in southern China. Their oars became sails, painted with the 'treasure ships' of the eunuch admiral Zheng He who reached Africa in the Ming Dynasty.   

Dancers clacking bamboo props represented some of the oldest Chinese records, whose delicate brushstrokes are preserved on bamboo strips over 2,000 years old.   

Undulating grey blocks symbolised the printing blocks of ancient China, which invented moveable type.   
They morphed into the Great Wall, a frontier defence whose Badaling section near Beijing is an instantly recognized symbol of China.