On April 9, the official website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, in cooperation with
China Mobile, launched the "Olympic Families Tour Beijing"
campaign, which will make it possible for ten families, five from
China and five from other countries, to tour Beijing and the
co-host cities ahead of the Olympic Games.
For this initiative of BOCOG's Media and Communications
Department, selection will take place via the Internet. In August
2007, on the occasion of the one-year countdown to the Beijing
Olympic Games, the ten winning families will come to Beijing to
start their tour.
The campaign will serve as an illustration of the Olympic theme
slogan "One World One Dream." Families with a keen interest in the
Beijing Olympics from China and abroad are invited to take part in
the activity, aimed at enhancing understanding of each other's
culture and the friendship between the Chinese people and the other
peoples of the world. At the same time, the campaign will provide
foreigners with a unique opportunity to gain a first-hand
understanding of Beijing and China, and to see how the 2008 Olympic
Games are being prepared.
A bilingual, Chinese and English, website
(http://family.beijing2008.cn/en/index_en.html) will function as
the main platform for the campaign.
The participants must be families with at least three members
and register with the official website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic
Games. Meanwhile, the website users can establish blogs at
Sohu.com, in which they can express their feelings and wishes for
the Olympic Games and exchange their views on the Olympic
spirit.
This campaign includes three phases:
Phase One (from April 9 to May 31): Preliminary selection
This phase includes the "Online Olympic Tour" and "Beautiful
Family Stories" program.
Steps:
Step One: Join an "Online Olympic Tour" that includes quizzes
and games at the cyber-checkpoints throughout the Olympic cities.
You are free to choose the set of tests (two quizzes and one game)
at any checkpoint. Once you have passed the tests, go on to the
next step.
Step Two: Submit your family information and get a family ID and
password. This will put you on a short list of winning
families.
Step Three: Join the "Beautiful Family Stories" program by
uploading data (texts, pictures, etc.) about the Olympics and
sports. After appraisal, these will be displayed on a web page; web
surfers will be able to vote for their favorite families.
The official website will choose the top 50 ranking families on
the basis of the votes received on both the Chinese and English
versions of the campaign. So by the end of the first phase, 100
families will remain for the second round selection.
Phase Two (from June 1 to June 30): Second round selection
During this phase, the 100 families have to run a theme blog for
the "Beautiful Family Stories" program and continually update its
content with photographs and texts illustrating the topics chosen
by the official website.
The website visitors can access the family blogs via the
"Beautiful Family Stories" webpage, and vote for their favorite
family. The voting will be open to the public.
The final winners -- the top five families on the voting rank of
each version -- will thus be selected.
The short-listed families that don't make it through the second
round will receive Olympic souvenirs and tickets to the "Good Luck
Beijing" sports events.
To encourage participation, the website will present Olympic
souvenirs to randomly chosen visitors.
Phase Three: The winning families are taken on a tour through
the Olympic cities (from July 1 to August 16)
Steps:
Step One: Get prepared for the tour, i.e. get all your traveling
documents.
Step Two: Gather in Beijing, travel to the Olympic co-host
cities, watch the "Good Luck Beijing" sports events and tour the
Olympic venues.
Step Three: Return to Beijing and attend the closing ceremony of
the campaign.
The campaign has received strong support from Coca-Cola (China)
and SOHU.com Inc., the official sponsor of Internet Content Service
(ICS) for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
For more information of the campaign, please visit the official
website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games www.beijing2008.cn.
(China.org.cn by staff reporter Li Xiaohua, April 9, 2007)
