The finals of the 28th World Memory Championships will be held at East Lake High-tech Development Zone (Optics Valley of China) in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province, from Dec 6 to 8 in 2019, with participation by competitors from more than 40 countries worldwide.

The announcement was made at the finals of the 27th World Memory Championships held in Hong Kong on Dec 22.

Initiated in 1991 by Tony Buzan and Raymond Keene OBE, the World Memory Championships is the top level memory sports competition organized by the World Memory Sports Council.

The World Memory Championships consist of 10 different disciplines, with the competitors each having to memorize as much as they can in a defined period of time, such as 5-minute numbers, 15-minute names and faces, and 30-minute binary digits.

The event has been held in 11 countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and Australia. December 2019 will be the first time that the event has been held in Central China.

Optics Valley is now home to 42 colleges and universities, 56 national and provincial research institutes, 300,000 professionals and technicians, and over 800,000 on-campus students, representing one of the three most knowledge-intensive areas in China. It also boasts more than 70,000 technology companies.

The event was introduced by Wuhan Haijing education technology, a company based at Optics Valley of China. The firm will also be responsible for organizing the event.

Organizers give the flag of the event to representatives from Optics Valley at the finals of the 27th World Memory Championships held in Hong Kong, on Dec 22. [Photo provided to China Daily]