Chinese go to extremes over Games

By Belinda Goldsmith

BEIJING (Reuters) - Liu Xianghui cycled over 1,300 km (800 miles) to Beijing towing his 98-year-old grandmother in a pedicab to fulfil her dream of attending the Olympics.

Reports of Chinese sports fans going to extremes to support the Olympics have been popping up in Chinese newspapers and websites since the start of the Games on August 8, making stunts like shaving five Olympic rings into your hair look tame.

Wen Shengchu, 58, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, stuck 200 acupuncture pins bearing flags into his head.

Huang Junde, 62, of Chongqing, used 1,860 badges of China's former leader Mao Zedong to make Olympic symbols.

Walking around Beijing and the Olympic venues, examples of fan fever are everywhere as Chinese people take the government's message of fully supporting the Games to heart.

Take the man walking down the street in front of the Bird's Nest stadium wearing a red dress, high heels, and a crown crafted out of palm leaves with Chinese flags draped over each shoulder, or the spectator with a model of the Bird's Nest on his head.

Sun Shijie, 72, from Hebei province, has grown an Olympics Five Rings Tree, painstakingly working on the branches of a winterberry plant, trimming and tying them, to shape them into the rings.

Middle school student Yang Yijie rollerskated 2,300 km from Guangzhou in Guangdong province to Beijing over 16 days, collecting names of Olympic supporters along the way.