Foreign media in Beijing paid their first trip to China's 2008 Paralympic training base in the southern part of the city on Wednesday.

Wheelchair fencers are training at the Beijing Disable Person's Vocational and Sports Training Center in southern part of Beijing. [China Daily/The Olympian]

For most of them, it was their first face-to-face encounter with Chinese athletes with a disability.

"I am very impressed," Olga Tanasiychuk, the Beijing bureau chief of the National News Agency of Ukraine, told China Daily.

"It is my first time to meet Chinese Paralympic athletes. Their training facilities are very good. The Beijing government did a very good job to prepare for the Paralympics."

The Beijing Disabled Person's Vocational and Sports Training Center for People with Disabilities was completed in September. It is a multi-functional and comprehensive service institution for people with a disability and includes a gym, athletic field, tennis court, training building, dormitory and dining hall.

It will provide disabled people in Beijing with occupational skills and sports training as well as a cultural exchange center. At present, as the best training center for Paralympic athletes in China, it serves as the base for some of China's national teams.

"The center is great and the staff there are well-trained, but I hope more Chinese disabled persons can enjoy such good facilities," a Japanese TV journalist said.

According to the recent Second China National Sample Survey on Disability, China has 82.96 million people with disabilities, some 6.34 percent of the population. Since the establishment of China's Sports Association for Disabled Persons in 1983, some 2 million people with a disability have taken part in sports activities. So far, China has held seven National Games for disabled people and four National Special Olympic Games for intellectually challenged members of the population.

During the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, which runs from September 6-17, some 4,000 disabled athletes from 150 countries and regions will visit the capital.

Host China, who led the medal tally at the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games, will send the largest squad to the Games next year and participate in all of the 20 sports for the first time.

Li Kaige, 17, a member of the Chinese table tennis team for the 2008 Paralympics, is now training at the center. She picked up the sport only two years ago.

Bound to her wheelchair, she trains for six to seven hours every day.

"It is painful sitting on the wheelchair for such a long time but I have got used to it.

"My dream is to get a gold medal at the Beijing Paralympics," the newly crowned national champion said.