Curtain up on Beijing Games

BEIJING  - The 29th Olympic Games, costing an estimated 40 billion dollars and shrouded by political controversies, burst into life Friday with a spectacular opening ceremony.

President Hu Jintao officially declared the Games open at the "Bird's Nest" stadium at 11:04 pm local time (1504GMT) in front of 90,000 spectators and a worldwide television audience of up to four billion.

The Olympic cauldron was to be lit by Li Ning, the Chinese gymnast who captured three gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

The three and a half hour opening ceremony, directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Zhang Yimou, saw around 5,000 competitors from 204 nations parade in a lavish event, where 35,000 fireworks lit up a typical Beijing smog-filled evening.

In a country where eight is a lucky number, the ceremony burst into life at eight minutes past eight on the eighth day of the eighth month.

Organisers would welcome a dose of good fortune after seeing the Games, planned as the crowning achievement of the country's breathless economic transformation, often overshadowed by disputes over human rights, press freedom and unease in the West over Chinese foreign policy.