Things The Chinese Love: The Opening Ceremony

The Olympic Games maybe be sappy, but they are also captivating. After the Opening Ceremony set records for viewership in the United States — one reason why NBC shelled out $894 million for exclusive broadcast rights (and made $1 billion in ad sales) — China’s People’s Daily reports that 842 million people in China saw at least part of the four-hour event. That translates into roughly 65 percent of the country’s 1.3 billion people. By comparison, only 13 percent of Americans watched.