{"id":40171,"date":"2021-12-29T14:00:12","date_gmt":"2021-12-29T05:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/dec\/29\/mind-games-china-confidence-soared-between-two-olympics-beijing"},"modified":"2021-12-29T14:00:12","modified_gmt":"2021-12-29T05:00:12","slug":"mind-games-how-chinas-confidence-soared-between-two-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=40171","title":{"rendered":"Mind Games: how China\u2019s confidence soared between two Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The international context and mood music are very different 14 years after the Beijing Summer Games<\/p>\n<p>Spectacular fireworks lit up the summer sky and the air filled with the smell of sulphur as trails of smoke descended on the crowds in Tiananmen Square. The throng cheered enthusiastically. \u201cGo Beijing, go China, go Olympics,\u201d they chanted. The collective pride was palpable.<\/p>\n<p>It was shortly after the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics, which began at 8.08pm local time on 8 August 2008; the Chinese believe eight is an auspicious number. That evening, Chinese-American Kaiser Kuo was watching from the balcony of his apartment in eastern Beijing. \u201cIt was meant to be impressive, and watching as a Chinese person, it certainly was: all the pageantry of history, the flawless performances, the grand scale,\u201d Kuo says.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/dec\/29\/mind-games-china-confidence-soared-between-two-olympics-beijing\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The international context and mood music are very different 14 years after the Beijing Summer GamesSpectacular fireworks lit up the summer sky and the air filled with the smell of sulphur as trails of smoke descended on the crowds in Tiananmen Square. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2096,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,342,203,1716,2464,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-olympic-games","category-sport","category-winter-olympics","category-winter-olympics-2022","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2096"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40172,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40171\/revisions\/40172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}