REGIONAL> Highlights
Sixth Chinese National Farmers' Games opens
By Lei Lei (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-10-27 09:58

Two months after China topped the medal tally in the 2008 Olympic Games, a more joy-oriented multi-sport Games raise the curtain among the country's millions of peasants, since the Sixth Chinese National Farmers' Games opened yesterday in Quanzhou, Southeast China’s Fujian province.

As the largest-ever games of peasants, about 3,000 countrymen athletes from all the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities throughout China will participate in the quadrennial peasants' get-together.

The games will feature over 180 events of 15 sports with 255 gold medals on offer.

The events include dragon boating, kite flying and shuttlecocks. Traditional track events were changed into interesting races like tyre-pushing and food-carrying and field events were also modified from other games, featuring seedling and tug-of-war.

A new sport, Yangko dance, will be also included this time. The Yangko dance is a traditional folk dance commonly performed in China's northern provinces. Yangko dancers usually wear bright and colorful costumes, and their movements are vigorous and quick.

As the starting point of the "Silk Route on the Sea", Quanzhou had once been very prosperous in foreign trade. About 800 years ago in Song and Yuan Dynasties, Quanzhou was one of the largest harbors in the world, as famous as the Alexandria Harbor in Egypt. Now, Quanzhou has become one of the sports equipment production base in China, and its economic growth rate has leapt to the front row among the nine municipal cities in Fujian Province, which is on the west coast of the Taiwan Straits.

Running from 0ct 26 to Nov 1, the games will be the first multi-sport gala in China after the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics.

Unlike most athletic games that highlight the limits of physical strength and competitiveness, the National Games of Peasants emphasizes more on recreation and less on the results.

The first edition of the games was held in 1988 in Beijing.