A chance to help others

Nearly 40 percent of the volunteers who assisted during the Olympic Games will remain in Beijing for next month's Paralympics.

More than 74,000 Olympic volunteers were in Beijing this summer, including 320 overseas Chinese, 219 volunteers from Hong Kong, 84 from Macao and 74 from Taiwan, says Li Shixin, vice-director of the Volunteers Department of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG).

Liu Jian, BOCOG's volunteer department head, said at a press conference that the oldest volunteer was 103. He added that about 70 percent of volunteers were young people, drawn from all walks of life.