The Five Friendlies: Bei Bei, Jing Jing, Huan Huan, Ying Ying and Ni Ni

The Five Friendlies, the faces of the Beijing Olympics, are to tour the world spreading friendship, peace and blessings.

The Olympic mascots' first stop will be the United States, where the five Chinese cartoon figures, also known as Fuwa, will tour football fields, performing fairy-tale dramas and playing with local fans. >>>Detail

2008 Olympic's preparation work processing well

With just two years remaining before the 2008 Olympic Games open in Beijing, the Chinese capital is getting closer to meeting the standards of an Olympic host, chief organizer said.

Liu Qi, President of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG), made the remarks during an interview with Chinese reporters this week.

"Our preparatory work is progressing very well as planned," said Liu. "Beijing's conditions are almost ripe for the Olympic Games." >>>Details

Over 7 mln tickets available for 2008 Olympics

"Excluding those reserved for the 'Olympic family', which includes sponsors, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and sports federation officials, over 7 million tickets will be sold to the general public," BOCOG president Liu Qi told reporters during an interview this week. >>>Details

Convenient, clean Beijing promised for Games

"The problems that exist in Beijing, such as traffic jams and environmental pollution, are things we have to solve, whether we are hosting the Olympics or not," said Liu, who is also secretary of the Party's Beijing municipal committee.

"Preparing for the Games should allow us to bring solutions to these problems ahead of schedule."

Beijing has made great steps in improving the air quality in recent years and the situation is getting better and better, said Liu.

Statistics show the number of "blue sky" days last year days when the air quality reached Grade II or better accounted for 64 per cent of the year. This year's goal is 65 per cent, or 238 days. >>>Details

Pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games unveiled

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) released the Pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on the occasion of the 2-year countdown to the opening of the Games.

One of the basic image elements of the Olympics, the Olympic Games Pictograms are widely applied in areas such as Olympic directional instruction system, advertising and communications, landscape and environmental arrangement, TV broadcasting and souvenir designs. The Pictograms play an important role in identifying the Olympic sports as well as in Olympic marketing.

Named "the beauty of seal characters" and with strokes of seal characters as their basic form, the Pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games integrate pictographic charm of inscriptions on bones and bronze objects in ancient China with simplified embodiment of modern graphics, making them recognizable, rememberable and easy to use. Skillfully using the effect of sharp contrast between the black and white colors which the typical Chinese traditional artistic form of rubbings have, the Pictograms of the Beijing Olympic Games display distinct motion character, graceful aesthetic perception of movement and rich cultural connotations, thus arriving at the harmony and unity of form with conception. >>>Details

Public etiquette stressed in preparation for 2008 Olympics

Ungracious behaviors such as spitting and jumping queues became the top concern instead of pollution and traffic congestion among many Beijing residents with the Beijing Olympic Games only two years away. >>>Details

Editor: Donald