Never before has a country pulled together for the Olympics with such single-mindedness as is currently happening in China, where an unprecedented display of creativity and enthusiasm is setting the stage for the world's biggest party.

Lord of the Rings

Click to see more ...

Moments before China lost its bid to host the 2000 Olympics almost 15 years ago, Meng Jie was struck by a thunderbolt from the god of good, great or just plain weird ideas.

 "I suddenly visualized the perfect design for a bicycle incorporating the five interlocked Olympic rings," he told China Daily last week on the Beijing leg of his China tour.

The bicycle's wheels represent the lower-echelon rings, with another ring around the seat and two more on either side.

Meng, who has since perfected his pet project, said it symbolizes the basic pillars upholding the 2008 Games.

"My bicycle is a good enbodiment of the three concepts of the Beijing Games," he said."First, encouraging people to ride bikes is environmentally friendly; second, the design shows innovation; third, the hand-and-foot pedal propeller is high-tech."

People are surprised when he races past them in a confusion of colors, he said, especially in rural China, where foreigners can stop traffic just by walking down the street.

Meng, 42, used to work as a mechanic at a local forestry bureau in Mudanjiang, in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, but has since moved on and taken his hobby of amateur bike design to the next level.

Meng Jie holds up his 'Olympic Rings' bicycle to pose for a picture in front of Beijing's National Stadium, or Bird's Nest  [Li Hui]

His current model has roots in an earlier design he built in 1992 then took a patent out on: a bike propelled by both hand and foot pedals.

Now he has jumped on the Olympic bandwagon with what he affectionately refers to as his Frankenstein's monster in honor of his crude early attempts to forge the complex frame using iron and steel.

"I didn't have the tools to make the rings perfectly round, and the raw materials were too heavy," he said.

"When Beijing finally won the bid to host the 2008 Olympics in 2001, I quit my job to join a professional sports equipment-making company in Shenzhen, hoping that the company would help perfect my bike design," said Meng, who works at Shenzhen Good Family Co Ltd, a sports facility manufacturer in Guangdong Province.