BEIJING, June 9 -- China has never been short of medal winners, racking up a massive haul at the 2008 Olympic Games. But many of those medal winners are already fading from people's memories - we can't remember which event they won, or even which discipline they belong to.
Enter Li Na.
With her victory at the French Open tennis tournament, Li became the first Grand Slam singles champion from an Asian nation. Photos of the Chinese champion posing with her trophy near the Eiffel Tower impressed readers in the West, where for the first time in years news about a Chinese was splashed across the headlines of major newspapers.
Back in her homeland of 1.3 billion, the Roland Garros final was broadcast live on state television, with a record 116 million viewers, not far behind the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.
On the Chinese Internet, home to more than 470 million users, the number of Li's followers on Sina Weibo, the nation's Twitter-like social networking site, jumped to 2.2 million and is still on the rise.
Major portals were flooded with messages of congratulations. Some wrote that "the victory belongs to Li Na as well as to the nation" while others confessed "I was so excited I burst into tears."