Leading singers, actors and musicians from home and abroad will
attend the opening ceremony of the 2007 Special Olympics World
Summer Games Tuesday night at Shanghai Stadium to perform their
masterpieces or interact with athletes.
Chinese entertainers Karen
Mok (L) and Vicki Zhao (R) pose with 19-year-old Special Olympian
Zhao Zengzeng, at a press conference for the 2007 Special Olympics
World Summer Games, on Monday, October 1, 2007. Both stars will
perform at the event's opening ceremony on Tuesday in Shanghai.
[Photo: xmnext.com]
Olympics global ambassadors Vicki Zhao and Karen Mok said they
began to work for the Special Olympics last year.
"As the Olympics global ambassadors, we visited many schools for
the intellectually disabled last year to communicate and play with
them," said Zhao.
"The experience let me learn more about them - a group of people
with their own pleasure, dejection and hopes."
Working as the ambassador, Karen Mok felt a strong sense of
mission and thanks for the chance to do something for the Special
Olympics athletes. As international stars, both Mok and Zhao said
their main task is to promote the Games and the spirit they embody
to the world.
In the opening ceremony, Zhao will guide the audience to play
the flute with the performance of cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk
Road Ensemble.
They will for the first time publicly perform the song they
composed for the event. It is named Joy, the core of the
Special Olympics. Thousands of simple Chinese bamboo flutes will be
provided to the audience to join in playing the song.
Tan Dun, a prominent Chinese musician, has composed music for
the Special Olympic Flag march-in ceremony and will conduct the
symphony orchestra during the ceremony.
Tan Dun is a Chinese contemporary classical composer. He is most
widely known for his Grammy and Oscar-award winning scores for the
movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and
Hero.
By attending the event, Tan said he had a stronger feeling of
loving or being loved and will bring the feeling into his works in
the future.
In the opening ceremony, pianist Lang Lang will play
Horses with his father Lang Guoren on erhu.
"The composition is known worldwide and is always played as an
echo in my concerts," Lang said, explaining why they chose to play
it.
(Shanghai Daily October 2, 2007)
