If you're a musician or an aspiring one, you won't want to miss the chance to compose an Olympic theme song.

 

A group of four primary school children from Tianjin, 150-kilometer southeast to Beijing, were the latest to present their composition to the Beijing Olympic office. The students called themselves "20088", as all four kids are going to be eight years-old next year.

 

 

Formed a year ago, the four children were chosen by their teacher Li Hongyu from a pool of 400 candidates from a local club in Tianjin.

 

The parents of the members of the youngest electronic band in China said the trainer assured them their children would have enough time to study as well as work on their song. If anyone ended up with poor marks, the students would have to withdraw from entering.

 

The Organizing Committee for the Beijing Olympic Games made the call for entries, which is ongoing until March 2008, will decide on the themes songs for both the Beijing Games and Paralympics, a song for the volunteers, the torch relay, and the music for awards ceremonies.

 

American Giorgio Moroder, the theme song composer for the 1984, 1988 Olympic Games and the 1990 World Cup submitted his work earlier in May after working with Chinese pianist Kong Xiangdong.

 

"Our composition will make it easy for people to hum the song after listening to it three times so that everyone can participate," Kong said.

 

Former Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing also had tried his hand after a music school teacher composed a tune for his poem on the Beijing Olympics.

 

In his poem, One World One Dream, Li writes, "Let war fires end here/ Let feud reconciled here/ Let peace and friendship extending from here/ Let the sun shines with seven-color light".

 

(China Daily June 1, 2007)