The Olympic Games get under way

Beijing looks so much better at night. The smog that has been enveloping the city by day is far less visible after the heavens darken. Street lights penetrate the gloom and the rainbow colours of innumerable neon advertising signs along the skyline are reflected in the glass-dominated structures of newly-built skyscrapers. The National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, glows red after dusk. And the Water Cube aquatics venue, across the Olympic Green, turns a brilliant blue.

But there has probably never been a light show like the one that illuminated Beijing to mark the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games. Fireworks from the Great Wall outside the city through Tiananmen Square to the National Stadium, the main Olympic venue, located in the north of the Chinese capital, were so vast in number as to have constituted an environmental hazard in probably any other country. The smoke from the fireworks would be enough to ensure a covering of smog over Beijing on the day after the ceremony.