100 candidate families to be disclosed soon

The first stage of the "Olympic Families Tour Beijing" campaign will end on May 31 when the participating families will be short-listed to 100 -- 50 from China and 50 from abroad, the organizers said.

Since the campaign started on April 9, a total of 1,972 families from 70 countries and regions have registered with the official website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games to take part in it.

They include 1,685 families from China's mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and 287 from abroad.

In cooperation with China Mobile, the website (www.beijing2008.cn) launched the campaign to make it possible for ten families, five from China and five from the rest of the world, to tour Beijing and the co-host cities ahead of the Olympic Games.

The campaign is unfolding in three successive stages with online users' participation, and the ten winning families will be picked for the tour to begin in August 2007,on the occasion ofthe one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympic Games.

The online users and hand-phone subscribers have shown great interest, with up to two million of themcasting their votes. At the moment, the Chinese family "Twin2008" ranks first among the Chinese families with 50,359 votes, while the group of foreign families is led by the British family "yunfengwu" with 55,884 votes.

On June 1, when the 100 candidate families are disclosed, they will open their own blog pages on the website of Sohu.com. The 100 families and lucky voters will be awarded souvenirs, the organizers said.

On Sunday, six registered families took part in a badminton contest in Beijing. The two-hour event saw the Chinese family "Zhong'ao capturing the champion title in a 15-13 single game against the Iranian family "Harmony makes Prosperity."


Vocabulary:

on the occasion of：在……的时候

casting their votes：投票