August 14, 2008
China claimed four more gold medals yesterday, and most papers chose to feature the women’s gymnasts, who won the country its first gold in the women’s team event yesterday by beating out the US and Romania.
There’s a large photo of the team on the medals stand on the front page of the Dongguan Times, underneath the breezy headline, “Girls make history” (小丫头开创大历史).
The team has been dogged by questions about the age of its members; Olympic gymnasts are supposed to be 16 by the end of the year, and while the girls are all eligible according to the birthdate found in their passports, Chinese media stories prior to this year imply that some of them might be considerably younger. This Xinhua report from last December gives an age of 13 for He Kexin (third from right). CDT has more.
August 14, 2008
At the bottom of the page is a “heroes list.” Unlike most media outlets, which rank the top participating countries according to the gold medals they’ve won, Dongguan Times lists the events China won the previous day. Other gold medals came in men’s 3m synchronized springboard, women’s 25m pistol, and women’s 69kg weightlifting, where 2004 gold medalist Liu Chunhong broke several world records to win the title for China.
The front page of today’s Guangming Daily is also dominated by Olympics-related news. The gymnastics team’s victory is reported in a small story at the bottom of the page, but the main article is #9 in a series of feature stories on various Olympics-related topics. Today’s piece revolves around the smiles of the Olympic volunteers.
The paper also reports on the movements of CPPCC chairman Jia Qinglin, who visited an Olympic exhibition of Thangka paintings portraying scenes from the Tibetan epic “King Gesar” yesterday. Jia also visited the Olympic Fine Art 2008 exhibition.
Who will win China’s next gold medal? Where will Jia Qinglin go today? Stay tuned.