Coastal crowds cheer on relay

QUANZHOU: Lin Yongyu, a teacher at the Quanzhou No 5 Middle School, arrived at the 300-year-old Linzhang Gate of the port city of Quanzhou at 7 am yesterday. His student Zhang Min, a torchbearer, was to run past the gate.

"I want to take some pictures of him. He is a good boy and he will have many exciting experiences in the future, but being a torchbearer could be his greatest," the 49-year-old teacher said.

Lin was joined by tens of thousands of other residents to witness the relay. People interviewed by China Daily all said they knew at least one of the 108 torchbearers.

The Olympic torch traveled south along the coast of Fujian province through the cities of Quanzhou and Xiamen yesterday after Fuzhou on Sunday.

In Quanzhou, the relay started from the China Museum for Fujian-Taiwan Kinship - a national museum built last year to display cultural relics of the two provinces, and ended at the newly built Straits Stadium.

The relay was led off by Wang Jiasheng, a former national high jump silver medal winner and coach of the national track-and-field team.

In Xiamen, the relay passed through an area where Zheng Chenggong once trained his navy before he led it to recover Taiwan in 1662.

It also crossed the picturesque Gulangyu - the "piano island" off the coast - which was a residence for Westerners in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The island is famous today for its unique architecture and for being home to China's largest piano museum.

Guo Yuehua, the eight-time world table tennis champion, led off the 100-member relay team in Xiamen and Ji Xinpeng, the Sydney Olympics badminton gold medal winner, concluded it. Both are natives of Xiamen.

Among the huge crowds cheering on the relay torchbearers in Xiamen, were Wang Yan, her father and daughter.

Wang, who works for a trading company, said she had not driven her car for 10 days and had used public transport instead, for the sake of a "Green Olympics".

(China Daily 05/13/2008 page6)