For several weeks Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his decade-old winter overcoat have established new 'click' records on many Web portals.

The story was first reported by an Internet user nicknamed Lao Qi, who discovered that Premier Wen appeared in two pictures taken more than a decade apart wearing the same drab, olive green winter overcoat.

"Ten years ago, I accompanied Wen Jiabao on his visit to a vegetable market in east China's Shandong Province and photographed him," Lao Qi wrote on the Net.

At the end of January this year, Lao Qi saw a picture in the Dazhong Daily showing Wen visiting villagers and recognized that the premier was wearing the same coat as lt was in his photo taken ten years ago.

He put both pictures on his website and to his surprise it received a huge surge of visits. At Sina.com alone more than 10,000 netizens left comments. An Internet search shows the photographs are now linked to more than 132,000 people at websites, including China's major Web portals Xinhuanet.com and Sohu.com.

Yao Dawei, a Xinhua photojournalist, took this year's photo of Wen in his rather old coat.

Yao called an assistant to the Premier to ask if Wen was indeed wearing a decade-old overcoat. The answer by the assistant is quite definite. That is "yes".

"I feel uneasy that tens of thousand of people would be concerned about the Premier's overcoat, but it reflects an authentic public attitude," the photographer wrote in his blog.

"An individual's experience has ascended to the public focus," Internet surfer Xiao Yu said, adding: "Ordinary Chinese have started to independently comment on their leaders, echoing people's growing civil awareness," Xiao Yu said.

Many of the comments suggest that Premier Wen should continue to wear the old jacket as it represents his amiable style and closeness to the people.

Wen has spent the past four spring festivals with farmers in the countryside, traveling from North China's Liaoning, central China's Henan, to Northwest Shaanxi and east Shandong provinces.

Last year, Wen visited the families of miners who were killed in coal pits at Shaanxi's Tongchuan city, where tears filled his eyes.

Source: Xinhua