The 2008 Beijing Olympic slogan will be announced during the third Olympic Cultural Festival from June 23 to July 16 in Beijing and Qingdao, a co-host city of the 2008 Games.

According to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), the slogan, with a Chinese and an English version, will be officially presented at the opening ceremony of the annual festival on the night of June 25 at the China Millennium Monument.

"The slogan of the Beijing Games was selected from about 210,000 entries that people submitted to BOCOG from across the country and around the world," said Jiang Xiaoyu, BOCOG's executive vice-president and secretary-general of the organizing committee for the cultural festival.

"After careful consideration and discussion, the final choice of the slogan is the crystallization of wisdom of experts and judges of various fields, including language, media and public relations."

A total of 210,000 ideas were sent in by mail or e-mail for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games during the selection campaign from January 1 to January 31.

The letters came from all over the world, including China's mainland, Hong Kong, the United States, Britain, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Cuba, Norway and Brazil. Most of the authors wrote the slogans in Chinese and English.

The final theme song for the Beijing Games will be chosen from the winners of the annual theme song solicitation events which will last till 2007.

(China Daily June 7, 2005)