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영어

Media events are considered one of the most efficient channels for nations and states to present their national images in a positive way to attract tourists and travelers. Among media events that were launched by the Chinese government since 1990s, there is no doubt that the 29th Olympiad held in Beijing is the most influential media event which intended to demonstrate China’s role on the international stage and to purchase the sense of national greatness and collective identity. The Beijing Olympic Game is about more than just a sporting competition. It is about China’s national image in terms of economic, technological, cultural, social and environmental achievements. Therefore, this paper chooses the Opening Ceremony of the 29th Beijing Olympic Game as a case to analyze how this ceremony constructed the understanding of China’s localism and globalization in the chronological and unified narrative of the Chinese history and modernity. The semiotic framework developed by Roland Barthes and further extended by Judith Williamson is used as the theoretical framework. Focusing on the artistic performance on the opening ceremony in 2008, this paper demonstrates that the 29th Beijing Olympic Game was permeated with symbols, which created the myth of China’s national image. In this myth, China was narrated into a country which has a long history, rich civilization, Confucian morality and contemporary achievements. The strategy of embedding the presentation of Chinese culture and history into the high-tech discourse further fused China’s tradition with its modernity across time and space. The boundary between the past and the present, the localism and globalism, the constructed image and the facts were blurred by this myth. Consequently, the ceremony was engaged in a process of constant meaning transference from one semiological system to another toward the proliferation of the symbolized national image of China, which was associated with the long history, rich civilization, Confucian morality and contemporary achievements. It should be noted here that Olympiads have been associated with the national power of the hosting country in the past one hundred years. The opening ceremony provided a platform to show the host country’s national power to the world. Therefore, the opening ceremony of the 29th Beijing Olympic Games offered a clear depiction of China’s national power, which was displayed on the ground of the long history, rich civilization, Confucian morality and modern achievements. This view of constructing China’s national image can be explained by semiotic theories, which situate the history and the present, the localism and globalism, the constructed image and the facts in the specific socio-cultural contexts context.