F ireworks explode from the stadium roof during the opening Ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympics at the National Stadium in Beijing, on Friday. Resurgent China opened the Olympics with a burst of fireworks at a spectacular ceremony that celebrated ancient Chinese history and aimed to draw a line under months of political controversy. F irecrackers rippled around the rim of the arena, strobe lights flickered and the forest of drumsticks turned a luminous red, flashing bright in the hazy, humid air.

Drums thundered, strobe lights flickered and 14,000 performers poured through the Bird's Nest stadium in a dazzling extravaganza that offered up a vision of global harmony in line with the Games' motto "One World One Dream".

T he Olympic rings are pictured during the opening ceremony in Beijing.

The Games carry a $43 billion price tag, dwarfing the previous record of $15 billion splashed out by Athens in 2004, sweeping thousands of people out of their homes to make way for state-of-the art stadiums.

D rummers perform during the opening ceremony.

An army of 2,008 drummers pounded out the countdown to the Games, which mark China's emergence from impoverished isolation to economic might, but have also galvanized critics of the Communist government's human rights record.

T erracotta soldiers were portrayed returning in triumph in a traditional scene from Chinese opera.

The "Silk Road" that linked China to the west was marked by an exotic tableau of blue-robed oarsmen with giant paddles. Its sheer scale was breath-taking.

M artial arts dancers perform during the opening ceremony.

Flying acrobats soared like fairies through the air and illuminated Olympic rings rose above the arena.

P erformers with lights make a formation.

Traditional landscape paintings were projected on to a huge scroll and actors spelt out Chinese characters with their twisting bodies commemorating papermaking, one of China's great inventions.

O ne thousand dancers covered in sparkling lights weaved intricate patterns across the arena and transformed themselves into a fluorescent Bird's Nest as a little girl flew with her kite high above.

Giant grey boxes representing printing blocks from Ancient China surged out of the ground, rippled across the arena and morphed into The Great Wall, one of the world's most instantly recognisable monuments.

A 16-tonne crystal-blue globe came out of nowhere and rose from the floor to gasps of astonishment from the 91,000 spectators on a hot and humid night.

Actors who trained for 10 months were suspended high above the arena and ran rings round a gyrating globe, some of them suspended upside-down.

T he show was delivered with cinematic panache and a cast of 14,000 by "House of Flying Daggers" director Zhang Yimou, whose work was once banned in China

"This job is both glorious but arduous," he said after being entrusted with the task of showing the face of China to the world.

T wenty-nine colossal "footprints of fire" shot into the sky and "marched" through the city to Tiananmen Square in a dazzling, rolling display of pyrotechnics. It was like a giant army of lights stamping across the heavens.

The vast cast -- wave upon wave of humanity -- chanted a famous Confucian greeting: "Friends have come from afar, how happy we are."

I n the land that invented gunpowder, fireworks exploded around the arena and then erupted across the heart of Beijing.

The extravaganza, cramming 5,000 years of history into just one evening, avoided many of the cliched images of China -- no pandas, no red lanterns and no dragon dances.

China was taking no astrological chances -- opening the Games at the auspicious moment of eight o'clock on the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008. It paid dividends. The rain held off.

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