On April 9, the official website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, in cooperation with China Mobile, launched the "Olympic Families Tour Beijing" campaign, which will make it possible for ten families, five from China and five from other countries, to tour Beijing and the co-host cities ahead of the Olympic Games.

For this initiative of BOCOG's Media and Communications Department, selection will take place via the Internet. In August 2007, on the occasion of the one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympic Games, the ten winning families will come to Beijing to start their tour.

The campaign will serve as an illustration of the Olympic theme slogan "One World One Dream." Families with a keen interest in the Beijing Olympics from China and abroad are invited to take part in the activity, aimed at enhancing understanding of each other's culture and the friendship between the Chinese people and the other peoples of the world. At the same time, the campaign will provide foreigners with a unique opportunity to gain a first-hand understanding of Beijing and China, and to see how the 2008 Olympic Games are being prepared.

A bilingual, Chinese and English, the website will function as the main platform for the campaign.

The participants must be families with at least three members and register with the official website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Meanwhile, the website users can establish blogs at Sohu.com, in which they can express their feelings and wishes for the Olympic Games and exchange their views on the Olympic spirit.

This campaign includes three phases:

Phase One (from April 9 to May 31): Preliminary selection. This includes the "Online Olympic Tour" and "Beautiful Family Stories" program.

Step One: Join an "Online Olympic Tour" that includes quizzes and games at the cyber-checkpoints throughout the Olympic cities. You are free to choose the set of tests (two quizzes and one game) at any checkpoint. Once you have passed the tests, go on to the next step.

Step Two: Submit your family information and get a family ID and password. This will put you on a short list of winning families.

Step Three: Join the "Beautiful Family Stories" program by uploading data (texts, pictures, etc.) about the Olympics and sports. After appraisal, these will be displayed on a web page; web surfers will be able to vote for their favorite families.

The official website will choose the top 50 ranking families on the basis of the votes received on both the Chinese and English versions of the campaign. So by the end of the first phase, 100 families will remain for the second round selection.

Phase Two (from June 1 to June 30): Second round selection. During this phase, the 100 families have to run a theme blog for the "Beautiful Family Stories" program and continually update its content with photographs and texts illustrating the topics chosen by the official website.

The website visitors can access the family blogs via the "Beautiful Family Stories" webpage, and vote for their favorite family. The voting will be open to the public.

The final winners -- the top five families on the voting rank of each version -- will thus be selected.

The short-listed families that don't make it through the second round will receive Olympic souvenirs and tickets to the "Good Luck Beijing" sports events.

To encourage participation, the website will present Olympic souvenirs to randomly chosen visitors.

Phase Three: The winning families are taken on a tour through the Olympic cities (from July 1 to August 16)

Step One: Get prepared for the tour, i.e. get all your traveling documents.

Step Two: Gather in Beijing, travel to the Olympic co-host cities, watch the "Good Luck Beijing" sports events and tour the Olympic venues.

Step Three: Return to Beijing and attend the closing ceremony of the campaign.

(china.org.cn April 9, 2007)