GUIYANG: Thursday's downpours here did nothing to dampen enthusiasm for the Olympic torch relay.

A girl cheers as the Beijing Olympic torch relay passes Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, June 12, 2008. [Xinhua]

More than 10,000 people from 50 ethnic groups dressed in raincoats and stood under umbrellas at People's Square in the heart of the city to watch the opening ceremony. They waved the flags of China and the Olympics and shouted: "Gear up China! Gear up Olympics! Gear up Wenchuan!"

But they all went quiet when it was announced there was to be a minute's silence for the victims of the quake. The only sound was the noise of the rain.

The first leg of the relay was run by Ouyang Ziyuan, a cosmochemist with the Institute of Geochemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guiyang and chief scientist with the Chang'e lunar exploration program.

"It is a special experience to carry the flame. I am soaked through to the skin, but very excited," Ouyang, the first of yesterday's 208 torchbearers, said.

The Guiyang relay stretched 16.9 km and passed through many of the city's old quarters before arriving at the newly developed Jinyang district. The city is a communication hub and one of the main manufacturing bases in Southwest China.

Guiyang is located within forests on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, and wooded areas account for more than 40 percent of its 8,034 sq km area.

Its population of 3.5 million comprises 50 ethnic groups, including the Miao, Dong and Bouyei.

Today, the torch relay will be held in Kaili, which boasts more than a dozen Miao villages, and tomorrow in Zunyi, where the Red Army held its landmark Zunyi Conference in 1935 during the Long March.