They are looking forward to the Winter Games in their city, the residents of Beijing who come to look for ice cream in Chaoyang Park are all saying. But due to the corona measures, Olympic and non-Olympic Beijing are separate worlds.
Of course they are excited about the Winter Games. And of course they will watch all the matches on TV. That, in a nutshell, is the answer of visitors to Beijing’s Chaoyang Park when asked about the Games starting Friday. It’s the weekend and it’s time to queue around the skating pond of Chaoyang Park to skate or rent an ice bike, or to whiz down the ice slide. For many Beijingers, this is the favorite spot for an afternoon of ice cream fun.
‘We have fantastic athletes, we are going to win a lot of medals’, say three boys, aged 12 to 14, who have just come from the skating pond. They pass stalls selling bingtanghulu, candied fruit on a stick, a popular Chinese winter snack. But when they are asked to name a few athletes who have a chance to win gold, there is silence. It turns out they don’t know any Chinese winter sports enthusiasts.
‘Very different from 2008’
It is typical of the atmosphere in Beijing: when you ask residents about the Winter Games, they respond enthusiastically, but in practice they don’t seem to be really involved. The Games may take place in their own city, but due to the strict covid restrictions they seem very far away at the same time. Residents are not allowed to attend competitions (unless they are designated as public from above), and athletes are not allowed to enter the city. Olympic and non-Olympic Beijing are two separate worlds.
‘It’s very different from 2008’, says Xie Qi (29), who lives near Chaoyang Park and comes ice skating with a friend. ‘Then it was the first time we organized Olympic Games and people felt a very strong enthusiasm. I was still at school and we talked about it all the time in class. You also heard a lot of stories about athletes in the media. You have that much less now.’
The people of Beijing are not negative about the Games. They are not concerned about additional infections due to the arrival of foreign athletes. The Chinese government has the virus under control, it sounds. Of course, openly criticizing a prestige project is not easy in a country like China, but the enthusiasm seems sincere. ‘We Chinese are very open to such events,’ says Xie Qi. ‘We welcome everyone, we want to be good hosts.’
Unknown athletes
At the same time, the Beijingers’ interest in the Winter Games is limited: winter sports are not popular in China and there are no big idols. This is also apparent when, as an experiment, we ask a few people in the park to take part in a quiz. We show five photos of China’s most popular athletes at the Summer Games in Tokyo and five of China’s most famous athletes at the Winter Games. The responses are telling.
In the photos of the summer athletes—table tennis players Ma Long and Liu Shiwen, diver Quan Hongchan, archer Yang Qian and swimmer Zhang Yufei—most people can easily name four or five names and spontaneously start talking about sports achievements or gossip. Liu Shiwen won silver in Pyeongchang and has an exciting love life, it sounds. Quan Hongchan was only 14 when she won Olympic gold.
The winter sports enthusiasts – short track speed skaters Wu Dajing and Zhou Yang, speed skater Gao Tingyu, freestyle skier Gu Eileen and figure skater Jin Boyang – are mostly silent. Only Gu Eileen is known to everyone: an American top skier who took Chinese nationality in 2019 and regularly makes the covers of Chinese fashion magazines. A few also recognize Wu Dajing, who won gold in Pyeongchang, and one man who is a fanatic ice hockey player recognizes all five: the exception that proves the rule.
“Maybe it’s a matter of habit,” says Yong Cong (25), who comes from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, but has moved to Beijing for work. “Everyone is used to watching the Summer Games, but we don’t have that habit yet for the Winter Games.”
‘The threshold is higher for winter sports’
‘We also know little about winter sports,’ he says. ‘Table tennis or badminton, everyone in China knows that. And there is no geographical limitation: you can also play these sports in the south of China. The threshold is much higher for winter sports such as ice skating, ice hockey or skiing. There are indoor ice rinks in my hometown, but the tickets are expensive.’
What also does not help is that little publicity is made for the Winter Games in Beijing’s streets. Flags of Beijing 2022 hang around the skating pond of Chaoyang Park and there are signs explaining the Olympic winter sports. In the center of Beijing is a tent of sponsor Samsung. Furthermore, the city is especially decorated for Chinese New Year. That is remarkable for a government that specializes in propaganda and which decorated all of Beijing in the Olympic Games in 2008.
Perhaps the Chinese government doesn’t want to remind its people too much about what to miss. Most Beijingers may not know much about winter sports, they would have liked to attend a competition. But in mid-January it was decided that the public would be appointed from above. “It’s a shame,” says Cheng Lina (40). ‘In 2008 I saw a basketball game at the Summer Games, which was very exciting. If I’d had the chance, I would definitely have gone again.’
She plans to watch the games on TV at home. “If you show me those photos again after the Games, I’m sure I’ll recognize them all.”