奥运“美女训练营”探秘
One young woman fails to hold an elegant crouch as students learn posture at the school training the Olympic hostesses.[Agencies]

China has begun training the first of 1,250 teenage girls as hostesses for next year's Olympics, at what is billed as a charm school-but is more like a boot camp for beauties.

For girls hoping to be selected to take part in the award ceremonies, that means enduring a grueling schedule of etiquette and movement classes as they are groomed, just outside Beijing, to appear alongside medal-winning athletes.

More than 560,000 people have applied to be volunteers at the Games - the largest number in Olympic history. But none of the 100,000 who will eventually be chosen will be more high-profile than the young women who will act as hostesses for the medal ceremonies.

Almost four billion people around the world tuned in to watch the Athens Olympics in 2004, and the opportunity to represent China in front of such a global audience means that competition is fierce.

Making the grade requires a discipline unusual in teenagers. Like the other girls at the Beijing Changping Vocational School, 17-year-old Wang Hong gets up at 5am every day.

She spends hours standing in stilettos, while balancing a book on her head and with a pair of chopsticks clamped between her teeth to improve her smile.

"Once I had to stand and smile for two hours," Miss Wang said. "I have to wear three bandages on my feet after walking in the high heels."

There is no time for boyfriends. When not working on their postures or smiles, the girls at the residential school, which normally specializes in training airline flight attendants, are taking dance classes, lessons in etiquette and studying Olympic history.

For Miss Wang, all the effort and pain will be worthwhile if she can help hand out medals to China's most famous athletes, such as Liu Xiang, the reigning Olympic and World 110 metre hurdles champion, or escort visiting VIPs.

Some of the girls, though, have already been ruled out for not meeting the Beijing Olympic Committee's stringent criteria. These include fair and unblemished skin.