The 16-day Beijing Olympic Games, which close on Sunday, are one of the fantastic, ultimate experiences of the dreams of mankind.

Athletes and other visitors from all around the world, under the Olympic spirit of fairness, justice, solidarity and friendship, have been engaged in competition, as well as in mutual contacts and exchanges, presenting an ideal picture of peaceful co-existence and harmonious integration by dwellers of the global village.

Inside the sporting arena, athletes have displayed tenacity and determination in their relentless pursuit of perfection, to the thunderous cheers of the audience from time to time. Outside the competition venues, people from different cultural backgrounds relish the wonderful experience of enjoying the cross-cultural exchange. Both in and out of the arena, every face brims with happiness and friendliness and everyone is being overwhelmed by the joyful and auspicious atmosphere surrounding them.

Peaceful co-existence and harmonious integration are mankind's ever-lasting dream, and the Beijing Olympic Games have offered mankind an experience that transcends the present and looks into the future.

This experience, and the resultant collective memory will stay forever in the minds of all those who have either participated directly at the Beijing Olympics or followed it with great interest, and will exert a potential influence on their view of human and international relations, and on the endeavor to foster common ethical standards for human society and establish norms governing people-to-people contact.

When Russian Natalia Paderina and Georgian Nino Salukvadze hugged each other after taking silver and bronze respectively in women's 10m air pistol, when the 100,000-strong audience at the Bird's Nest sang "Happy Birthday" to Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, when 33-year-old Oksana Chusovitina, a former Uzbek gymnast who moved to Germany to prolong her career for raising funds for her leukemia-hit son won a silver medal, and when German weightlifter Matthias Steiner held high both his gold medal and a photo of his wife who was killed in a car accident one year ago, everyone was deeply touched.

These touching moments have struck a sympathetic chord and inspired their aspirations for a harmonious world. The shared emotional experience will be remembered as an invaluable spiritual legacy left by the Olympic Games for humanity.

At the Beijing Olympics, a strong atmosphere of the Olympic spirit has permeated throughout the 16-day journey of dreams, both in and out of the sporting arena.

Amid the atmosphere, people have crossed cultural barriers, striving to promote mutual understanding and deepen their friendship and advocating equality.

Amid the atmosphere, competing on the same arena, people have exerted all their strength to realize their dreams, regardless of their nationality, race or religion.

During the 16-day journey, a realist scene of human dreams has been portrayed, which reveals the real possibility of establishing some common values within different civilizations.

Samuel P. Huntington, a U.S. political scientist, has said that all civilized people should seek and expand their common grounds with other civilizations in value, convention and custom.

Humanity must learn how to co-exist in a complex, multi-polar world where there are different civilizations.

The Olympic movement, which advocates peace, equality and fairness, has been turning this possibility into a reality within limited scope.

In the age of globalization, links between residents of the global village have become ever more complicated and closer.

For all their different races, nationalities and cultural backgrounds, people of the world share common aspirations for peace and development.

Under the slogan of "One World, One Dream," the Beijing Olympic Games have provided a successful experience of the dreams for the whole world and it embodies an important endeavor by China to pursue its own development and promote a harmonious world.

Despite the short duration of one Olympic Games, passions have been inspired and the dream continues.

The Olympic ship, inspired by Oriental wisdom, is sailing forward to the future.

(Xinhua News Agency August 24, 2008)