BEIJING — An overflow crowd of some 500 young Chinese packing an auditorium in Beijing's prestigious Peking University clapped and cheered loudly as if they had just come face to face with the world's biggest movie star.
Dozens of others who arrived minutes late for the talk last week had to contend with waiting in the corridors outside in the hope they would eventually be let in through the locked doors.
But it was no film celebrity that the mostly undergraduate crowd culled from various "anime" clubs in the Chinese capital's major universities had turned up to hear, but renowned animator Yoshiyuki Tomino, who in 1979 created the hit animation series "Mobile Suit Gundam."