19th Asian Games open in Hangzhou, China

The 19th Asian Games opened on Saturday in Hangzhou, capital city of east China's Zhejiang Province. It saw about 12,500 athletes from 45 countries and regions competing in 40 sports for 481 gold medals over 15 days.

Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the opening ceremony, along with the dignitaries including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at Hangzhou's 80,000-capacity Olympic stadium, also known as "the Big Lotus". Hangzhou, a city of 12 million people, an hour's bullet train from Shanghai, is the unofficial home of China's tech industry and the Games will feature driverless buses, robot dogs and facial recognition.