Chinese Culture and Beijing 2008 Olympic emblems

The official emblem of Beijing 2008 entitled "Chinese Seal-Dancing Beijing" cleverly combines the Chinese seal and the art of calligraphy with sporting features, transforming the elements into a human figure running forward and embracing triumph.

It is said that the figure resembles the Chinese character "Jing" in Beijing, Nanjing, Tokyo(Japanese), which means "capital city", and stands for the name of the host city "Beijing", but actually that figure in the emblem looks more like another character "Wen", which means "character, script, writing, literature, culture", etc. Originally, this character on Oracle Bones resembles a person figure with tattoo on its body, which is custom of south-east Chinese many thousands of years ago.

The Pictograms play an important role in identifying the Olympic sports as well as in Olympic marketing. Named "the beauty of seal characters" and with strokes of seal characters as their basic form, the Pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games integrate pictographic charm of inscriptions on bones and bronze objects in ancient China with simplified embodiment of modern graphics, making them recognizable, easy to remember and easy to use.

Skillfully using the effect of sharp contrast between the black and white colors which the typical Chinese traditional artistic form of rubbings have, the Pictograms of the Beijing Olympic Games display distinct motion character, graceful aesthetic perception of movement and rich cultural connotations, thus arriving at the harmony and unity of form with conception.

The Beijing Olympics Pictograms comprise of 35 sport icons, namely those of athletics, rowing, badminton, baseball, basketball, boxing, canoe / kayak flatwater, canoe / kayak slalom, cycling, equestrian, fencing, football, artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline, weightlifting, handball, hockey, judo, wrestling, swimming, synchronized swimming, diving, water polo, modern pentathlon, softball, taekwondo, tennis, table tennis, shooting, archery, triathlon, sailing, volleyball and beach volleyball.