Following a troubled build-up overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic and human rights concerns, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics officially opened in the Chinese capital Friday.

Held on the first day of Spring by the Chinese calendar, the event began with a performance by dancers waving glowing green stalks meant to convey the vitality of the season, followed by an explosion of white and green fireworks that spelled the word "Spring."

After that, the Chinese flag was passed among 56 people representing China's different ethnic groups before the flag was raised and the national anthem performed.

On a three-dimensional cube resembling a block of ice, imagery from each of the previous 23 Winter Games was carved by lasers. The block was then "broken" by ice hockey players, enabling the Olympic rings to emerge, all in white.

That was followed by the traditional "parade of nations," with the announcement of "Hong Kong, China" generating applause in the stadium.

Friday's ceremony began shortly after President Xi Jinping and International Olympic Committee Chairman Thomas Bach entered the iconic Bird's Nest stadium, its rim bedecked by the flags of the 91 competing nations and regions.

Xi declared the Games officially open and was joined by more than 20 world leaders including Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the two presidents having met earlier in the day.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, reprising his role from Beijing's 2008 Summer Games triumph, the event was to feature 3,000 performers on a stage comprised of 11,600 square meters of high-definition LED screen resembling an ice surface.

All of the performers are ordinary people from Beijing and nearby Hebei province, with "the Story of a Snowflake" its central thread.

With temperatures of about minus 4degrees Celsius (25 Fahrenheit) at the start, the show was set to be about half as long as the four-hour marathon that opened the 2008 Games, also at the Bird's Nest.

The crowd itself was pared down, with organizers deciding last month not to sell tickets to Olympic events to curtail the spread of COVID-19. A "closed loop" separates competitors and other personnel from the Chinese public throughout the Olympics.

More confident China

Though smaller in scale than the Summer Games, the Beijing Winter Olympics are being staged by a much more prosperous, powerful, confident and confrontational China under Xi.

China's hosting of the Winter Games has drawn criticism since the International Olympic Committee selected Beijing in 2015, and countries including the United States, Britain and Australia staged diplomatic boycotts, meaning they did not send government representatives to the Games.

Russian President Putin, the headlining foreign guest, arrived Friday for a meeting with Xi ahead of the opening ceremony, bringing a to increase natural gas supply to China amid rising tensions with the West and winning a pledge from Xi to deepen mutual cooperation.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV noted that Putin, like China, expressed opposition to the "politicization" of the Games.

Winter wonderland

Zhang, the director, said the ceremony takes into account the changed global backdrop, including the pandemic and what he said were hostile forces "suppressing and blackening" China.

"In this new and complex global situation, the Winter Olympics will show the confidence and pride of the Chinese people, the love of Chinese people, the affection of Chinese for the people of the world," he told state news agency Xinhua.

The official start of the Games would come as a relief to organizers navigating the extreme complexity of staging them during a pandemic while adhering to China's zero-COVID policy.

Organizers also hope it quietens a steady drumbeat of criticism from activists and governments over China's human rights record in its far-western Xinjiang region and elsewhere - criticism that China rejects.

"I believe that at the instant in which the Olympic flame is lit, all of this so-called boycott banter will be extinguished," Zhao Weidong, a spokesperson for the Beijing Games, told Reuters.