Olympic champion Xing Huina ran badly Friday but still won the women's 5,000m final as China wrapped up the East Asian Games athletics competition with five out of eight golds on the final action day.
Of the 45 gold medals at stake over four days of the athletics competition, China claimed 26, Japan took 16 and South Korea three.
Chinese Taipei, Macau, DPR Korea and Hong Kong were left to scramble for the scraps, and picked up three silver medals (all won by Chinese Taipei) and 12 bronze among them.
Xing, the biggest star after compatriot Liu Xiang in the athletics competition, ran alongside Japan's Hiromi Ominami for almost the entire race, but launched a blistering sprint to win in a slow time of 16 minutes 04.56 seconds. It was more than half a minute slower than her winning time at the Chinese National Games last month.
Ominami came second in 16:10.77 and South Korea' Bae Hae Jin was third in 16:35.35.
Xing, who was stripped of the women's 1,500m gold medal for elbowing at last month's Chinese National Games, blamed the weather for her poor result and said she had always been in control of the race.
"I felt I was always in control of the race. I slowed down a little bit but when I noticed my competitor was getting closer I sped up," she said.
"The weather was very hot and that caused some problems, but I was confident I would win."
Defending champion Feng Yun of China had an easy win in the women's 100m hurdles, clocking 13.09 seconds to smash her own Games record. Teammate Su Yiping took the silver in 13.44, just 0. 01 second ahead of third-placed Japanese Kumiko Ikeda.
"I hadn't expect to break the record," said an elated Feng afterwards.
The 29-year-old Cantonese owed her success to her coach Sun Haiping, who is also the mentor of Olympic champion Liu Xiang.
"I must say 'Thank you' to him, because I couldn't have achieved it without his help," said Feng.
Chinese strongman Zhang Qi put in a stable performance in the men's shot put as each of his six throws was good enough to earn him the gold medal.
The 21-year-old finally clinched the title with a throw of 20. 06 meters. He also broke the Games record of 19.50 set by fellow countryman Ma Yongfeng in Shanghai in 1993.
Another Chinese Jia Peng grabbed the silver with 18.84, and South Korea's Shon Hyun had the bronze with 18.06.
China's Wang Hailan scored 5,932 points to win the women's heptathlon gold, followed by Japanese duo Yuki Nakata on 5,719 and Chinami Yasuda on 5,292.
Hurdles specialist Huang Xiaoxiao anchored China to victory in the women's 4x400m relay final in 3:33.59. Japan was second in 3: 36.64, and Macau third in 4:05.61.
The men's 4x400m relay gold went to Japan, which clocked 3:07. 70. Chinese Taipei took the silver in 3:09.06, and South Korea snatched the bronze in 3:12.10.
South Korea's Kim Deok Hyeon set a new East Asian Games record in the men's triple jump, recording a best effort of 16.79 meters to eclipse the previous mark of 16.71 set by China's Lao Jianfeng at Busan in 1997.
Japan's Yuki Nakamura completed a 10,000 and 5,000-meter double by winning the shorter of the two distances from compatriot Tomohiro Seto.