"2008" band contributes song for Olympics

北京奥运大厦四层会议室里，四个七岁的天津小朋友用稚嫩的童声唱响《我的2008》。这支来自天津的“小乐队”在这里向北京奥运歌曲征集评选活动办公室，提交了自己演唱的这首儿童奥运歌曲，并以这种特别的方式迎接六一儿童节的到来。

The impressive performance.

Four 7-year-old kids from Tianjin, a co-host city of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, sang "My 2008" while playing musical instruments in front of an audience at the Beijing Olympic Tower, headquarters of the Games on Thursday.

Zhang Tiehan, Jin Shenghao, Li Bochen and Guo Xinyue, three boys and one girl, and all fresh elementary school pupils, became the youngest members of an electrophonic band in China. As they are all going to be eight years old in 2008, they decided¹ to add an eight to form the "2008" band, for life-time memory.

"I want to run as fast as Liu Xiang, I want to be as skillful as Chinese ping-pong champions…" The lyrics² the children sang and their skill in playing guitar, bass³ guitar as well as shelf drum in a free and confident style were impressive.

After submitting the musical work to the office of the campaign to solicit⁴ songs for the Beijing Olympics, the children said they were longing⁵ to perform at the Olympics opening ceremony to boost the athletes' spirit.

The song was created in 2006. When posted online, it was well received with up to 10 million page views, said teacher Li Hongyu, adding: "The kids chose today to give a performance not only to express their wish to participate in the Olympics, but also their joy ahead of Children's Day.

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) launched a five-year project to seek tunes⁶ from amateur and professional composers in April 2003. The campaign has received a wide response and the number of submissions⁷ in 2007 has surpassed that of the three previous years, according to the campaign office.

Vocabulary:

shelf drum： 架子鼓

be longing to：渴望