With the 2008 Olympic Games less than 150 days away, Beijing vice mayor Liu Jingmin proposes that a museum be set up to preserve and exhibit the memorables relating to the event.

"There are lots of materials and documents that witnessed the whole process of the Beijing Games from the bidding period to the conclusion," said Liu, also an executive vice president of the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee (BOCOG).

"We should set up an Olympic museum for them so that people from around the world could know how the Beijing Games were many years later."

The bidding book, the draft design of the mascot, the garment of the first Beijing Olympics gold medalist and the torch that carries the Olympic flame atop Mount Qomolangma, are on Liu's long list of the memorables.

"They are all very precious and mustn't be lost," said Liu.

The Beijing Olympics will open on August 8.

(Xinhua News Agency March 14, 2008)