A student from the Tagou martial arts school from Henan practices in front of the National Stadium. REUTERS

Behind the glitz and the glamour lies a story of intense devotion by performers at the Olympics opening ceremony.

Thousands of Chinese martial art students rehearsed daily for months on end in order to peak for just a few minutes before a worldwide audience of four billion people.

The Beijing Shaolin Martial Art School was inundated with applications from 3,000 students for the chance to appear at the Bird's Nest.

Eventually, just 400 young men were picked to act as "cultural envoys" in the "Silk Road" part of the performance. They carried heavy iron frames on their shoulders and supported a huge canvas that weighed nearly a ton. The youngsters had to be perfectly steady, so a dancer could perform on the canvas resting on their heads.

"The most important thing was to be steady and orderly," says 19-year-old senior high student He Jun from Xinjiang. "The moves were not very difficult but we sometimes had to walk on only one leg, and sometimes with our legs bent."

Schoolmaster Fu Biao says strict criteria were applied to whittle down the hordes of would-be performers. They had to be 1.7-1.8 meters tall, of medium build and good looking. The students first started practicing at school in March, then switched to a base in Daxing district, before finally moving to the Bird's Nest three weeks before the opening ceremony.

"I feel really happy and honored to be able to participate in the opening ceremony," says He. "So many of my fellow students envied me because they couldn't be there."

Another eye-catching part of the opening ceremony was the tai chi and martial art performance by 2,008 students from Henan Shaolin Tagou Martial Art School. The four-minute segment entitled "Nature" combined tai chi, Shaolin martial arts and other typical disciplines.