The TV series features former badminton world champion Gong Ruina as a professional badminton player alongside other actors and sports stars promoting the spirit of the Games.

Former badmintion world champion Gong Ruina was in the TV series.[sohu.com]

Beijing mayor Wang Qishan stressed city residents should display good manners and have basic sports knowledge during the Games. The TV series takes up this theme too.

The 20-episode series will depict 20 different Olympic sports, and the five leading actors share the names of the five colorful 2008 Olympic mascots "Friendlies".

Each of the mascots has a rhyming two-syllable name; for example, Beibei is the fish, Jingjing is the panda, and so on. When these names are put together, they form a Chinese sentence "Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni", meaning "Welcome to Beijing".

The closely linked episodes aim to boost national sporting fervor ahead of the 2008 Beijing Games, for a survey conducted in Beijing and six other co-host cities including Qingdao, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang, and Qinhuangdao showed Chinese, especially young people, have limited understanding of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Outlook Weekly, news magazine supervised by Xinhua News Agency, also investigated the issue and found over 70 percent of interviewees in Beijing had no idea about the Olympic slogan and concepts.

When asked about the focus of the Games, most Shanghai citizens wondered whether top men's hurdler Liu Xiang from Shanghai could take the title again. They didn't know that Shanghai is one of the Games co-host cities. .

The situation is better in Tianjin and Qingdao, where most of the locals are proud to be part of the Games.

Mr. Wang, a taxi driver from Tianjin told the reporter, "I am learning English now. I will try my best to provide the best service for the Games."

In Qingdao, surveyed students knew a lot about the mascots, slogan and concepts, and expressed almost unanimous willingness to serve at the Games.

Nearly all the students randomly sampled at the China People's University, Tianjin University, Tianjin Normal University, Communication University of China, and Nankai University had a clear basic knowledge of the Olympics. They knew about things like the slogan, concepts, and mascots.

China People's University Professor Jin Yuanpu says failing to answer questions correctly doesn't necessarily mean people aren't interested in the 2008 Beijing Games.

"A Gallup opinion poll commissioned by the Chinese government in November 2001 showed 94.9 per cent of the public in favor of the Games. The International Olympic Committee's own surveys found even higher support," he says.

An unnamed journalist who reported on the Athens Games said local people have little enthusiasm for the Olympics.

"A taxi driver even don't know where the Games media center was," he noted.

Jin says it's not necessary to require all Chinese to accurately answer all the questions, as they aren't preparing for a formal Olympic knowledge contest.

"If people have basic understanding of the Games, show their support towards them and are willing to provide voluntary services, that's good enough."

When asked about the low rate of accurate Olympic knowledge, Jin said, "Chinese have great enthusiasm for the Olympic Games and the survey just shows people have different ways of understanding. It doesn't infer that they are indifferent to the Games."

"For example, the interviewees know about the anthropomorphous Olympic stamp but have only a vague idea that the stamp is actually the Olympic emblem," Jin explained.