Sex and sport at the Olympics. It’s an irresistible mix — and one which Chinese condom makers don’t want to miss. Chinese company Elasun has come up with a series of Olympic condom advertisements which have gone viral online.      

 Organisers of the Beijing Games are providing 100,000 condoms for athletes at the Olympics as we reported on Tuesday.                    

But it’s certain that these condoms featuring the five cute colourful mascots called the Fuwa or the Friendlies won’t be among the official condoms handed out with an information pack about HIV awareness.

(Photos courtesy of web sites danwei.org and trendhunter.com)

One of the more entertaining things about these Olympics for me has been seeing Chinese people of all ages and backgrounds find their own ways of expressing enthusiasm for the Games.

Some have bordered on the bizarre.

One man stuck a couple of hundred mini flagpoles in his head to show his support. Another guy I saw walked down the sidewalk in front of the Bird’s Nest, in a red dress and high heels, with a crown crafted out of palm leaves on his head and a big Chinese flag draped over each shoulder (wish I’d had a camera with me!).

Then there’s the young man who was out in front of the Water Cube with the Olympic rings shaved into his hair, calling out “Go China!” from his rickshaw.

Compared with these guys, Hu Wenyuan’s enthusiasm is decidedly tame. But having a chance to chat with him was a wholly refreshing experience.

The 67-year-old retiree happily showed off his pride and joy, a decked-out motorised tricycle that he has converted into a sort of roving Olympics advertisement, covered in stickers of the Fuwa (the official mascots of the Games), official slogans like “One World, One Dream”, and a fair share of Cadillac emblems for good measure.

He told me, glowing, how his grandson enjoys being picked up from school in the mean machine, techno blaring on the speakers he’s installed on it; how it’s helped him meet many people, folks like me who were just curious; how he swaps ideas on new designs with other enthusiasts; how he plans to upgrade to an aluminium frame from the heavier steel.

I didn’t know quite what to think when I first saw him and his trike, the way it regurgitates the Games-related PR that the city government has been blanketing many neighbourhoods with. After all, I know thousands of Beijingers have been inconvenienced, at the very least, by the Games.

But then Hu read one of the slogans on his trike out to me. “I participate, I contribute, I’m happy,” he said with a smile, adding that the pleasure he gets out of tinkering with his Olympics-mobile will probably help him live a few more years.

PHOTO (top): Wei Shengchu, 58, a supporter of traditional Chinese medicine, inserts an acupuncture needle with a miniature Thai national flag attached to it into his head during a photo opportunity in Guangzhou, Guangdong province July 24, 2008. REUTERS/Joe Tan

By Mike Fiala

The biggest international sporting event Beijing and China hosted prior to the Olympics was the 1990 Asian Games. China dominated the medal count, winning almost twice as many as their nearest rival.

And Pan Pan, the game’s Panda mascot, was everywhere. One of the official sponsors distributed Pan Pan decals to the media showing the official mascot in various XI Asiad sporting poses such as boxing, archery, wrestling, etc. With a little imagination, and a pair of scissors, people would remove Pan Pan’s head and apply the mascot’s sporting themes to their credential photo.

I took it one step further and placed Pan Pan’s head right over my mugshot. I was fully expecting someone to ask me to remove it but to my surprise, officials found it rather amusing and I passed through security checkpoints without problem. In all fairness though, security did recognize me. Even Xinhua news agency asked me to pose for a picture and I was dubbed the “Panda Reporter” in the press. I’ll be on the lookout for some Olympic Fuwa mascot stickers this August but something tells me that we won’t be allowed to do the same.