Students from Chengdu, the capital of southwestern Sichuan Province, made a huge picture of a panda from pieces of cloth Monday to support the rare animal's bid to be the mascot of 2008 Olympic Games to be held in Beijing.

The large-scale quilt show started at 9 a.m. when 2,008 students from Chengdu Experimental Foreign Language School stepped onto the playground holding 29 large pieces of red cloth, which were printed with different parts of a panda. About 30 minutes later, a large black and white panda figure was assembled.

The picture, which covers 2,008 square meters, will be sent to Beijing to support the panda as the choice for the 2008 Olympic Games' mascot, said Su Yuandong, an official with the Sichuan Provincial Office for Applying for the Olympic Mascot, who was also responsible for organizing the show.

Called the "home of pandas," Sichuan Province has campaigned for the panda to be chosen as the Olympic mascot since June, when The Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) began to look for a mascot to the Games, which will be held in China for the first time.

The provincial government has committed to award one million yuan to the designer of a panda that wins the mascot competition.

BOCOG said on its website that by Dec. 1, the deadline for submission, it had received a total of 662 valid entries, including 37 works of overseas designers from Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Britain and the United States.

Besides the giant panda, China's mostly treasured wildlife, the Tibetan antelope and the "Monkey King," the widely beloved figure in China's noted classic work Journey to the West, are also among the proposed images for the Olympic mascot, according to BOCOG.

According to an Internet survey conducted in May, the giant panda enjoyed 58.42 percent of support, closely followed by the Monkey King and the Tibetan antelope.

The winning design will be announced next June. It will then need approval from the International Olympic Committee and trademark registration by the BOCOG, the website says.

(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2004)