From 2008 to 2022: Road of my country's and my growth

As a sentimental person by temperament, I kept telling myself to manage my emotions as the countdown to the grand opening ceremony on Friday neared. I never thought it would turn out to be so easy at the end.

For an individual or a country, a period of 14 years is long enough to become mature, poised and sober. Together, on the road from 2008 to 2022, I learned to grow up with my country and the Olympics.

In 2008, hosting the Olympics was brand-new to China and I was then new in covering the Olympics as a journalist. Seven years later when we won the bid to host the Winter Games, with the 2008 Summer heat still burning in my heart, I did not foresee what it would be for Beijing to be the world's first-ever dual-Olympic city. Now it was a reality and I was simply enjoying the moment.

Turning up as simple but splendid, the opening ceremony lasted for about two hours with less performing artists but much visual and acoustic technologies to tell the story of "togetherness" rather than introducing "myself" 14 years ago at the same stadium. The snowflake-shaped Olympic cauldron, formed by smaller snowflakes with names of the participating countries and regions on them, was lit by two young Chinese athletes, newcomers to the Olympics from sports that aren't yet that popular in China - cross-country skiing and Nordic combined.

I looked around the stadium trying to find the cauldron in vein as I entered the stadium before the ceremony and waited with bated breath for the next step after the two bearers laid the torch in the heart of the big snowflake. It was not until the announcer declared the end of the ceremony that I realized that the last torch was the cauldron itself.

Then it was there - the country's second home Olympics and my personal first Olympics attendance.

As the chief director of the opening ceremony Zhang Yimou said, the 2022 would not repeat the 2008 though the latter was "exceptional", not only because of the pandemic situation but also because there was a different China now - more confident in its culture.