Jiang Xiaoyu (second left), executive vice-president of Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) and three other guests launch the "Olympic Families Tour Beijing" campaign in Beijing April 9, 2007. [Photo: Xinhua]

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 the rest of the world, 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. The tour through Beijing and the co-host cities will begin on August 8, 2007.

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, after being invited through the Internet, are expected to remain in close contact in order to better understand each other's culture and enhance 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 will function as the main platform for the campaign, which will unfold in three successive stages: during phase 1, from April 9 to May 31, 100 families, 50 Chinese and 50 overseas, will be selected; during Stage 2, from June 1 to June 30, the top ten winning families will be picked for the tour, which will start during Stage 3, from July 1 to August 16.

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 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.

The campaign receives 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 http://family.beijing2008.cn/en/index_en.html.