100 candidate families to be disclosed soon

“中国移动伴你行--奥运家庭游北京”活动主办方宣布，100个候选家庭近期将产生，50个来自中国，五十个来自海外。在20日上午举办的“奥运家庭游北京”羽毛球赛中，中国家庭“钟奥”摘得桂冠。

Members of the German family "Greenlink" who took part in the badminton contest

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' participation¹, and the ten winning families will be picked for the tour to begin in August 2007, on the occasion of the 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 them casting 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