Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
It is always a biennial moment of suspense, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) meets in a corner of the world to decide which of the competing cities (and by extension countries) will get to host the Summer or Winter Olympic Games seven years down the road.
This year, the IOC convened at Kuala Lumpur, the capital of my home country, Malaysia, to take stock of the various bids for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. The gargantuan efforts required to be put into the hosting process eventually caused various previously ambitious bidders to beat a retreat.
At the end of the day, it was down to China (Beijing) and Kazakhstan (Almaty), two countries erstwhile very cordial to each other, which worked hard to present their respective hosting merits to the voting members of the IOC.
When the news came out in the early Friday evening local time that China won the hosting right for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, many inside the conference hall, as well as many more sitting tight around televisions or holding dear to smartphones, went ecstatic.
This marks the first time that a city has been entrusted to host both the Summer and Winter Games, with Beijing having played a resoundingly successful host to the Summer Olympic Games in 2008.
Indeed, being given yet another opportunity to host the Olympic Games is not only the pride of the millions of Beijing residents or over 1.3 billion Chinese citizens. As with the case of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, the glory is equally, if not more, shared by tens of millions of overseas Chinese, as well as Asians as a whole.
In previous years, it would be fair to say that the Olympic Games as a whole, and in particular the Winter Games, rarely saw any non-Western host, with only the Japanese city of Nagano back in the 1990s, and the South Korean city of PyeongChang in the upcoming 2018 being two notable exceptions. The 2022 Winter Olympic Games will usher in another platform for China to showcase its fantastic achievements as the world's second-largest economy.
To a large degree, the award of the hosting rights for the 2022 Winter Games to China also signified the worldwide recognition of the mighty leap in sports made by China.
Since the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, China has consistently garnered the most number of medals, displacing other countries and regions which were previously considered sports giants by huge margin.
Nevertheless, although most parts of China experienced the four seasons in a year, it might not be unfair to say that winter sports are yet to match their summer cousins in the collective psyche and practice of the Chinese populace.
The hosting of the 2022 Winter Games, and especially the conceivably enormous preparatory works leading up to them, will hopefully see the enhanced adoption of winter sports as popular hobbies by regular Chinese citizens, giving rise to many associated career and entrepreneurial highlights in winter sports as well.
It is equally no secret that even among the wider international audience, the Winter Olympic Games has yet to command the same degree of attention as its summer cousin.
Therefore, with China being famous for its steely disciplined efforts in organizing large international sporting events, together with the aforementioned renewed enthusiasm for winter sports among Chinese citizens, the Winter Olympic Games will become as enviable as the Summer Olympic Games.
China's decision to locate some parts of the 2022 Winter Games at Zhangjiakou, a city close to Beijing, is a wise one, akin to killing many birds with one stone.
On the one hand, Beijing possesses the capability and experience to fundamentally guarantee the success of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. On the other hand, parts of the Games being "outsourced" to Zhangjiakou will ease the anticipated heightened stress on Beijing, such as traffic congestion and shortages of accommodation, which often affect the otherwise euphoric mood of the eager audience.
Overseas Chinese in general, and Asians in particular, are also waiting in the wings to be part of the organizing efforts for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. We are happy to help in the many Olympic roadshows and torch rallies around the region in the coming years.
During the actual Games, with our diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, we could be very helpful volunteers in assisting all sides to communicate and coordinate better.
We do this gladly, with one aim in mind: To make the Olympic dream and the Chinese dream ultimately a common Asian dream.
