The Olympic flame shines a different light on two Chinese women

The other is Wang Qianyuan, a newly arrived student from China at Duke University in North Carolina who turned up in the middle of a videotaped shouting match during a pro-Tibet campus rally on the day the torch passed through San Francisco. She is now viewed as a traitor.

The tales of the two women, who have become well known beyond their imagination, illustrate the sweep of cyberspace and the deep emotions here over issues of national pride.

"Chinese people all over the country salute you and thank you Jin Jing! Those who want to split our country will never succeed," reads one Internet chat-room message.

"This traitor hurt the feelings of the entire Chinese nation. She deserves the death penalty!" another chatter wrote, referring to Wang.

In Wang's case, the flaring tempers facilitated by the ease of communication among an Internet-savvy generation have elicited a sort of mob mentality. Even the Communist Party is now trying to curb the outrage for fear it could spiral out of control. But Beijing should not be surprised by what is happening, some observers say.

"This just shows that Chinese people have lived too long in a world with unbalanced information," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociologist at People's University in Beijing. "After listening too long to only one side of the story, we have developed zero tolerance for a difference of opinion.

"In this mind-set, you are either on our side or you deserve to be stepped on forever."

For Wang, 20, it has proved a rude awakening. When she moved to North Carolina for her freshman year, she thought she had escaped limits on speech and actions.

"I never expected something like this would happen to me in the States," Wang said in a phone interview. "If they can shut me up, it will be just like another Cultural Revolution. People who try to speak up will be labeled as traitors. It's just a vicious cycle."

So what did the slender, ponytailed woman do to create so many enemies that within hours videos and pictures were posted on the Internet with the word "traitor" across her forehead, along with her telephone and personal identification numbers and directions to her home in China?

According to Wang, she merely sought to encourage dialogue between hundreds of flag-waving Chinese students and a couple of dozen pro-Tibet demonstrators carrying pictures of the Dalai Lama who were shouting at each other.

To critics who believe that Tibet should remain part of China and that the Dalai Lama is bent on splitting off the Himalayan region, Wang was betraying her motherland just by standing on the side of the students holding the Tibetan flag. It didn't help that she also wrote "Save Tibet" on the back of a fellow student. Wang said she did so on condition that the student would talk to the other side.

"I think the Chinese and Tibetan sides were both very emotional," said Wang, who hopes to study psychology and economics. "The Olympics can come and go. Those problems and issues will remain. I just hope people can start to think from a different perspective."

Scott Savitt, a visiting scholar at Duke who had spent many years working in China, said, "I watched her do this and the Chinese part of me is saying this is bad; she should stop.

"Then I thought: She's in America. This is the education process. She's doing what she's supposed to do."

On the other side of the world, Wang's parents are paying the price for their daughter's freedom in America.

Since their personal information was exposed on the Internet, they have gone into hiding. An Internet photo shows what appears to be a bucket of feces on the doorstep of their home in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao.

Angry netizens even accused Wang of working with the CIA to sell out her country in exchange for a permanent residency card. A strongly worded apology letter, said to be from Wang's father, a Communist Party member, appeared on Chinese websites begging forgiveness. "Wang Qianyuan will always be our daughter," it read. "She wants to tell everybody in this clear-cut political issue she is wrong. . . . Please give her a chance to make amends."