Glittering Tianjin and Liaoning both scored straight-set victories over their rivals in the first round of the women's volleyball tournament at the 10th Chinese National Games in Jintan yesterday.

Defending champion Chinese Army, however, beat Zhejiang, which finished third in the 2005 Chinese first division league, in a marathon five-set thriller.

Chinese Army captured the first-set 25-23, but produced severalunforced spiking and serving errors to go down in the following two sets 19-25 and 21-25.

The army spikers came back strongly to win the fourth set 25-13.In the do-or-die tie-breaker, they exhibited mighty fierce attacksand won the decider 15-10 and the match.

Tianjin, three-time successive champion of the Chinese first division league, took control of the match from the start to the end against Shanghai, which was made up of young girls with an average age of less than 21.

Boasting three national team players and sound performance on both attacking and blocking, Tianjin handed out a volleyball lesson to Shanghai by beating the latter 25-18, 25-18, 25-19.

"I am not satisfied with the result as my team could have played better," said Zhang Liming, head coach of Shanghai.

"But we had to pay price for the growth of the young girls," said Zhang.

Although the host-side fans went out their utmost to encourage their heroines, Jiangsu went down tamely to powerful Liaoning 0-3.

With four national team players, Liaoning left no time for Jiangsu to get accustomed to their devastating spikes and ended the match in less than one hour.

Yunnan opened their campaign against aggressive Hebei and beat the latter in three sets 25-17, 25-19, 25-23.

Earlier, Shandong and Henan pulled off the same 3-1 victories over Fujian and Sichuan respectively.

A total of 12 teams have been drawn into Group A and Group B and the matches of the two groups began on Wednesday in the citiesof Zhenjiang and Jintan in eastern Jiangsu province respectively. Top four-placed teams in each group will qualify for the quarter-finals.