The second activity that IMUSE organized in 2008 was the “China in My Eyes” Essay and Photography Competition, a nationwide creative work competition open from January to mid-April of 2008 to all postsecondary school students in North America. The purpose of the competition was to encourage students to critically evaluate their views of modern China by expressing them through either writing or photography. For the 2008 competition, over 400 students from over 70 schools entered, and five grand prize winners and twenty runners-up were chosen for their superior thoughtfulness, creativity, and artistic merit in a multiple-round selection process. The five grand-prize winners—three from the essay competition and two from the photo competition—were given the option to attend for free our two-week 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Fellowship Program during the first two weeks of August in Beijing or receive a new Lenovo laptop of their choice with a value of up to $2000. Our twenty runners-up (ten from each competition) were each given an official set of five Beijing Olympic collectible coins (circulation: 60,000). All prize winners were awarded personalized certificates of achievement, and their entries were published on our website.