Shi Sha, a 22-year-old tourist from Huangshi, Hubei province, on Tuesday visited the irrigation project here, which was damaged in the May 12 earthquake.

"I was impressed when I saw people watching the Olympics on TV in front of shops on both sides of the street and the Nanqiao Bridge near the 2,200-year Dujiangyan, which is the world's oldest irrigation project still in operation," Shi said.

"So many people were drinking beer and watching TV it was hard to believe the quake wreaked havoc in the city," he said.

The Dujiangyan irrigation project, which is on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List, is a famous visitor attraction, as it was key to Sichuan's development by diverting water from the Chengdu plains and turning the city into one of the country's granaries, he said.

Wang Jin, deputy mayor of Dujiangyan, said many locals in the city had been glued to their TV sets since the Olympic torch relay visited Sichuan on Aug 3.

"Some have even gone to Qinhuangdao and Beijing to watch the events live," he told China Daily.

Wang Xiuqun, a farmer from the town of Yutang in Dujiangyan, said that just before the May 12 quake, she booked three tickets for the Olympic football match between Italy and Honduras in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, on Aug 7.

Her house collapsed in the quake, but after she and her family moved to a prefabricated home built for them by the government, she decided to go to see the game.

After watching the match, Wang, her husband and their son visited the resort of Beidaihe, where they saw the sea for the first time in their lives.

"The next day, we went to Beijing for two days, and visited Tian'anmen Square, the Forbidden City and Wangfujing," Wang said.

Because of my accent, people asked where I came from. When they learned we came from the quake zone, they asked us lots of questions and were impressed with our optimism toward life," she said.

Zhang Jian is a 51-year-old farmer from the village of Huangli in the Sichuan city of Pengzhou, also lost his home in the May 12 quake.

For the following two months, he and his family lived in tents, but last month moved to a prefab in Xiamen.

Feeling more at home, the family of four decided to go to Beijing to watch the Games.

"We didn't have any tickets, so we just looked at the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube from a distance," Zhang said.

"Then we took our first ever ride on the subway. We just wanted to feel the ambience of Beijing during the Olympics."

Last month, people enjoyed 70-80 percent discounts on air tickets from Beijing to Chengdu, but now they get only 20 percent because so many Chengdu people have arrived in Beijing for the Olympics, Deng Gongli, deputy secretary of the Chengdu municipal government, said.

(China Daily August 22, 2008)