Beijing Winter Olympics 2022: Spectacular opening ceremony marks beginning of controversial Games

Flag bearers Finn Bilous and Alice Robinson lead the New Zealand team into Beijing's National Stadium. Photo / Getty

Beijing has opened its second Olympics in 14 years at the lattice-encased National Stadium overnight, bringing an official start to the two-week sporting competition; held despite challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic and a diplomatic boycott from several governments over the way China treats millions of its own people.

Chinese President Xi Jinping declared the Games open before a limited crowd that included Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met privately with Xi earlier in the day as a dangerous standoff unfolds at Russia's border with Ukraine.

Aided by a dazzling series of digital displays on a massive HD LED floor, hundreds of Chinese students and ordinary citizens ushered in the Olympics with an homage to winter heavy on references to local folklore.

Flag bearers Finn Bilous and Alice Robinson lead the New Zealand team into Beijing's National Stadium. Photo / Getty

The New Zealand team enter Beijing's National Stadium. Photo / Getty

Photo / AP

Photo / AP

Photo / AP

Photo / AP

Children raised lighted doves toward the sky and performed songs wearing traditional tiger-head shoes just days after ringing in the Year of the Tiger. Older performers helped reveal the Olympic motto: Faster, higher, stronger — together.

The athletes were led into the arena by placard carriers in tiger-head hats. Each placard was designed to look like a glowing snowflake, and after the Parade of Nations, they were connected together into a larger flake that formed the Olympic cauldron.

Photo / AP

Photo / AP

Masked-up spectators wait for the start of the opening ceremony. Photo / AP

Photo / AP

President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping wave during the opening ceremony. Photo / AP

Chinese athletes Dinigeer Yilamujian (L) and Zhao Jiawen prepare to light the Olympic Cauldron. Photo / AP

The honour of lighting that cauldron went to Zhao Jiawen and Dinigeer Yilamujiang. The latter was born in Xinjiang, the western China region where human rights groups say China oppresses many in the ethnic Uyghur population.

The third major fireworks show of the night followed, a blindingly bright spectacle floating above the stadium known as the Bird's Nest, signalling to the city and the world that these Games have begun.