Celebrities from China's mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan performed at a charity concert in Beijing yesterday to raise money for victims of the tsunami that hammered much of South and Southern Asia.
Hong Kong heartthrob Nicholas Tse sang the well-known theme "Chinese People" to a nearly full house of about 6,000 people who waved glow sticks, clapped and sang along at Beijing's Worker's Stadium.
Popular Hong Kong actress-singer Cecilia Cheung also sang at the four-hour event. Others slated to appear were Taiwanese singer A-Mei and Feng Xiaogang, a mainland film director.
Both celebrities and the audience dropped money into donation boxes on the stage and around the stadium.
China's public has responded with unprecedented generosity to the December 26 earthquake and tsunamis, which the United Nations has estimated could leave 150,000 or more dead.
By yesterday, the Chinese Red Cross Society had received 45 million yuan (US$5.4 million) in donations and pledges - the most ever collected for a non-domestic disaster - said spokesman Wang Xiaohua.
The China Charity Federation, another organization authorized to receive public donation, has received 30.09 million yuan of donation, and part of it has been sent to the disaster-hit areas.
The concert is part of an outpouring of support from China's glitterati.
Well-known Chinese film director Zhang Yimou personally donated 300,000 yuan to tsunami victims, making him China's biggest celebrity donor, according to the major Chinese Website Sina.com.
"Zhang Yimou has been watching the news anxiously and with an aching heart as the death toll increased over and over," Zhang Weiping, who invests in Zhang Yimou's films, said.
Zhang directed last year's martial arts epic "House of Flying Daggers."
Two more charity performances will be held in the capital in the upcoming week.
The artists will give free performances and make their own donation to charity organizations.
Meanwhile, students and officials from 17 Chinese universities and local education authorities have donated about 1.2 million yuan for victims in tsunami-hit countries, said the Ministry of Education yesterday.
Students from universities in Beijing, Shanghai and several eastern China provinces have taken part in offering help for people in the disaster-hit countries, the ministry said.
The donations are still going on on campus.
Also yesterday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman strongly condemned the illegal act of defrauding money under the name of "tsunami donations," saying it is subjected to the censure of everybody.
"It is a very serious issue. A very small fraction of lawbreakers attempt to reap illegal gains in such a great international relief campaign, and they will be condemned by the whole society," Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a regular press conference.
Kong expressed hope the public would increase their awareness and make donations through legal channels.
After the tsunami disaster ravaged some Asian nations, false online donations came into emergence to swindle the public of money in a few European and American countries and China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The spokesman also said China will send more medics to work in the tsunami-hit countries according to their needs in the future.
What these countries now face are problems concerning public health, DNA identification and prevention of major epidemics rather than emergency medical services for the people who have been seriously injured, he said.
Of the 164 Chinese medical professionals chosen for services in the tsunami-stricken countries, 41 are working in related countries and the rest 123 are waiting for departure orders, he said.