Olympics - Beijing National Stadium First Design

chinese-olympic-stadium_web, originally uploaded by sokkmonkey.

As breath-taking as the current "Bird's Nest" design of the Beijing National Stadium is, this one -- an onion -- was favored before it. But the enormity and scale of the design reflects just how much in resources China committed to these games.

The total cost of the China Olympics was $40 Billion. That's more than twice as great as the current cost of the London games, which is at $18 billion. The cost of the Beijing Opening Ceremony alone is about $300 million.