By Zhao Hongmei
Cover, issue no. 379 August 4 2008
Translated by Ren Yujie
Original article: [Chinese]

Fancy adding unique memorabilia to your Olympic collection? How about a tailor-made bed once slept by the 2.26-meter-tall Yao Ming, or some hurdles that Liu Xiang has jumped over while racing for an Olympic gold medal?

Yao, the basketball giant and Liu, gold medalist for the Athens 110-meter hurdle event, are perhaps the most recognizable sportsmen in China today, and as such, their olympic articles will be put on auction.

"Come and bid for it on our website, where the highest bidder takes home the prize," said China Beijing Equity Exchange (CBEX) president Xiong Yan, whose company would be one of the auctioning platforms for used Olympic assets.

Apart from sports celebrity items, other articles on CBEX's auction list would include: 108 custom-made chairs for the Beijing Olympic's opening and closing ceremonies; Bird's Nest series sofa sets; desks and chairs used by International Olympic Committee president Jacque Rogge during his working days at the Beijing Olympic Village; and other used furniture, electrical appliances, and sports equipment tied to the Games.

According to preliminary estimates of the Organizing Committee for the Beijing Olympic Games (BOCOG), there are some 20 million pieces of Olympic articles worth over 10 billion yuan to be disposed off. Part of these articles will be auctioned in stages from early August. 

The auction idea could be traced back to a brain-storming session between CBEX's business development director Ma Li and a team from the state-owned assets service center.

CBEX proposed a one-stop disposal service and drew up an auction plan upon classifying various assets under different categories, such as general items, special articles and memorabilia.

Yao Ming's bed in the Olympic village, Liu Xiang's hurdle and diver Guo Jingjing's springboard - all classified as "Olympic memorabilia" - would be opened for auction online in the near future.

However, such articles are merely a small part, as the other Olympic assets were to be disposed of cover 33 categories. For instance, used furniture and electrical appliances from the Olympic Village alone would run into some 200,000 articles. When the Games ended, these items would be listed online for interested bidders to check on their specifications.

On Aug 5, the first batch of "Olympic assets" was released for auction, but mainly old furniture, electrical appliances and vehicles from the days when Beijing bid for the Olympic hosting rights back in 1999. 

Xiong of CBEX estimated that the entire disposal process would take at least a year after the closing of the Games to complete.

Articles under the Olympic memorabilia category were expected to be the highlights of future auction, but one Yao Ming fan expressed his doubts: "Even if I wanted to bid for Yao Ming's bed from the Olympic Village, how could I verify if Yao had truly slept on it?"