PEKING -- Millions of Chinese heard about the Beatles for the first time today in a news program showing memorial meetings in honor of John Lennon.

Viewers around China's estimated five million television sets tuned in to the Central Television Station's evening news were treated to several minutes of film on mass gatherings in Liverpool, home town of the Beatles, and at New York's Central Park to commemorate Lennon.


Segments of Lennon's songs, including 'Imagine,' 'Give Peace A Chance' and the old Beatle hit, 'Strawberry Fields Forever,' were played on the program.

The commentator introducing the Beatles to the Chinese viewers -- most of whom have never heard of the pop group -- said Lennon put poetry to song and expressedthe discontent of young people of his generation.

The film report, the longest of the evening's foreign news clips, showed Lennon as a member of the Beatles in the 1960s. It then showed sobbing fans observing silence in Central Park following the murder of Lennon outside his New York home.

China was virtually closed to the outside world at the time the Beatles reached the peak of their popularity. China's young people of the 1960s were more concerned with Cultural Revolution than with rock music.