DUSHANBE, 02.02.2022 (NIAT Khovar) – The upcoming Lunar New Year, China’s biggest festival for family reunion, will meet the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, as the opening ceremony of the Games will fall on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year. After hosting the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is set to become the first city ever to host both the summer and winter editions of the Games. On this occasion, China Matters released the “Together in Beijing” short videos series.

In one of these videos Chen Lu, China’s first world champion figure skater, calls it unbelievable to see the Winter Olympics be held in Beijing, because it was quite a different landscape when China did not even have a single indoor ice rink during her childhood.

When Beijing was awarded the host city of the Winter Olympics in 2015, the country vowed to get 300 million Chinese involved in winter sports. In the same year, ice hockey coach Michael Kusy came to Beijing and started a club to train Chinese children, in the hope that the Winter Olympics can help the game grow in China.

As a professor at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Liu Li’s program is mainly targeted at using technology to improve the athletes’ suits and thus improve their performance. “For speed events, one hundredth of a second can make a difference in who wins the medal,” said Liu Li.

Traditionally, China’s Spring Festival holiday is a time for family reunion at the beginning of the Lunar New Year. But in the times of a pandemic, some may choose to stay put at where they live and work, including foreigners.

For Winter Olympics volunteer Nika, it will be her first-time spendingSpring Festival in Beijing although the Ukrainian girl came to China when she was just 13 years old. As Nika said, it will be a whole new experience for her to spend the holiday in Beijing and work as a volunteer for the Games at the same time.

Mark Levine, who teaches at the Minzu University of China, now spends most of his time in Beijing since the outbreak of the pandemic. Levine was recently awarded the title of International Olympics Communication Ambassador, but watching the Games will not be the only item on his agenda for the upcoming holiday, as watching the Spring Festival Gala and writing books have become his preferred way of spending the traditional festival.

In this video, China Matters interviewed the above five people from different walks of life to share their expectations for both the upcoming Spring Festival and the Winter Games as well.

Photo by Xinhua