GUANGZHOU: The Guangzhou Asian Games Organizing Committee (GAGOC) recently launched a contest to collect stories for mascots of the 16th Asian Games - to be held in this southern mainland city in 2010.

According to GAGOC, entries should be stories or comics including novels, tales, humorous stories or comic strips.

"The official mascot has been widely acclaimed by the general public since its unveiling at the end of last month," said Luo Jingjun, publicity director of GAGOC.

The official mascots for the 2010 Asian Games include five cartoon images of rams. They are named A Xiang, A He, A Ru, A Yi and Le Yang Yang.

Rams have a long historical association with Guangzhou, which is also known as City of Five Rams. In the ancient Chinese language, the character yang (ram), is identical to the character xiang (luck).

The mascots are quite similar to those of the Beijing Olympics' Fuwa. Also, the Asian Games' mascots represent the five colors of the Olympics rings.

"Works for the contest should be closely associated with the name and figure of the mascots, and fully embrace the theme of Asian Games," Luo said.

"When you put the five names of the mascot image together, they represent the hopes of local people that the Games will bring peace, auspiciousness and happiness to the people of Asia. So, stories related to the mascot should have strong local characteristics," Luo added.

According to Luo, prize-winning works will be made public between September and October.

Besides having their works officially publicized and edited for comics, prize winners will become members of the China Comics Talent Bank, and are likely to attend the award ceremony for the fifth-annual Golden Dragon Awards for Animation and Comics Competition and the second-annual China Comic Artist Conference.

Jin Cheng, editor-in-chief of the Guangzhou-based Comicfans magazine, said: "The story collection contest will help better promote the Asian Games among the public. It will also help boost the city's image".

Comicfans is the official sponsor for the story collection contest, which was launched in a local primary school last week.

According to GAGOC, licensed products related to the five cartoon images of rams have also been very popular since the mascot unveiling.

(HK Edition 05/19/2008 page2)