Volunteers from Taiwan help promote Beijing 2022

Lin Chia-hsuan, a member of a Winter Olympics volunteer team of 10 young people from Taiwan, encourages a child to practice desktop curling during a promotional activity for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Saturday. (HOU YU/CHINA NEWS SERVICE)

This Spring Festival holiday, a Winter Olympics volunteer team of 10 young people from Taiwan provided services to people in Beijing, promoting the Winter Olympics and sharing a taste of the island's charm.

The team－seven students studying at universities in Beijing and three young people working in the city－was organized by the Youth Federation of Haidian District in the capital.

Their leader, 32-year-old Chen Wen-cheng from Changhua in Taiwan, is a teacher at the department of physical education at Peking University.

"I'm truly proud of our country for hosting this grand Winter Olympics," Chen said. "I hope the volunteer service station will serve as a display window for Olympic culture and a way for people from the mainland and Taiwan to communicate."

Beijing has established 758 stations to offer services such as information and cultural promotion for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, which is in addition to the services provided in the Games' closed-loop system.

The Taiwan volunteers were based at the east gate of the Black Bamboo Park, which is near the Capital Indoor Stadium, the venue for short track speed skating and figure skating during the Games.

From Wednesday to Sunday, they organized activities to promote the Games among local residents, including a short quiz about Winter Olympic facts.

Visitors were able to learn the dance of the Beijing Winter Olympics song, Together for a Shared Future, and could also take pictures with the official mascot Bing Dwen Dwen.

Local resident Xu Lan brought her 1-year-old son to have their photo taken with the mascot. "It's memorable. I can show the photo to him when he grows up."

To share a taste of Taiwan culture, the volunteers taught visitors how to express good wishes for the Games in the Minnan dialect, which is spoken in southern Fujian province and Taiwan, and filmed videos of them saying it together.

Tsai Yi-ling, who taught visitors the dialect, is from Kaohsiung, Taiwan. She came to Beijing in March as a one-year exchange graduate student of information management at Peking University. She will return to the island next month to continue her studies.

"It's meaningful. Being able to participate in this event as a volunteer before I return to Taiwan left me with a great memory," she said.

Another volunteer, Hsiao Chiayao, from Taoyuan, Taiwan, has been working in Beijing for four years at a sports rehabilitation company since he graduated from a college in Taiwan, majoring in sports management.

"We designed all the activities by ourselves and we hope more people will learn about the Games and also Taiwan," he said.

"I felt excited when I watched the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics on TV on the island," said Hsiao. "After 14 years, I am working in Beijing, and the city has become a dual Olympic city. I really feel happy for it."

After going through the process of volunteer selection and training, Hsiao said that he found the job to be quite demanding. "Everyone has their own duties and contributes to the Games in different positions."

With the promotion of sports on the mainland, he said there are many opportunities in the fitness and rehabilitation industry for young people from Taiwan.

Another member, Lin Chia-hsuan, a graduate student at the College of Dance of Minzu University of China, said she learned the dance of the Olympic song as soon as it came out and taught it to visitors.

"Music and dancing make it easier for people to get into the Olympic atmosphere. Small children can easily join us," she said.