Motherly love is certainly among the most unforgettable highlights of the Beijing Olympic Games, as a reader of Xinhua has said in his letter received on Saturday.

"I remembered my mom at the Beijing Games," wrote Zhang Tianxing, an employee of the Beijing-based Agricultural Development Bank of China and native of the central Henan Province.

"On the seventh day of the Beijing Olympics, Chinese shooter Du Li won gold. She called her mother in her home province of Shandong and choked 'Mom, I've got a gold for you'. I cried with her. Du's tears showed how much she loved her mom -- and it reminded me of my mom, who is dead.

"Mom is a peasant and never learned to read or write. When I was growing up in the 1960s, our family rarely had enough food or clothing. My mom cooked and toiled in the fields during the day and spun cotton and wove cloth at night.

"When I was a fifth-grader at primary school, I ran the 50-meter race at a sports games on campus. My homemade sandals were worn-out and had holes on the soles. Shortly after I started the race, I felt acute pains as gravel and stone punctured my feet. At the end of it my shoes were stained with blood.

"Mom was heartbroken when I went home that day. She rinsed my feet with warm water and carefully pulled out the grains of gravel and sand in my wound with a needle wrapped with cotton. All the while she sighed, 'It's all my fault. I should have made you a pair of new shoes', until she burst into tears. I kept telling her 'It was okay' and 'I'll be all right in a couple of days'. I was not among the fastest runners in that race but still got a pen and a notebook as a reward for my persistence. Mom was delighted and kept saying 'My son deserves it. He even bled in exchange'.

"The next year my mom suffered acute stomachache. My elder brother took her to the village clinic, where the doctor prescribed some pills that cost about 4 yuan. Mom told my brother it was not necessary to buy the pills and 'just some ginger soup would do'.

"On their way home, mom insisted that they drop by a store where she bought me a pair of sneakers for 3.6 yuan. She told my brother I could have been the fastest runner at school had I had better shoes. For several years to come, my schoolmates envied me for those sneakers.

"I can never forget how mom carried heavy loads of fodder for the cattle, tottering on her feet that had been bound small since girlhood as was the custom for all women of her generation; I can never forget how she sewed our clothes at night in the dim light of an oil lamp; I can never forget how she struggled with her stomachache and how much she loved her children... I understand Du Li's tears because I know motherly love is there to support every athlete. I understand why American superfish Michael Phelps wanted desperately to give his mom a hug the moment he got out of the pool.

"I love Du Li. I love Phelps. I love them for their affection to their moms."

Source: Xinhua