Always in a good mood: Volunteers freestyle in the Genting Snow Park Zhangjiakou
Foto: imago images/SNA/Ramil Sitdikov
It’s about time to say “Servus” quietly at the end. Or better: “Zàijiàn!” as the people of Beijing put it. By the time the final medal is awarded, the athletes are already halfway to Beijing Daxing International Airport. By then at the latest, the winter games will gradually move into the media background – and everyday life free of winter sports will return to the capital.
These days I have to think above all of the countless volunteers who made the big event possible with their dedication and commitment. Young helpers like the student Sila, who euphorically told me over coffee at the end of last year how much she was looking forward to taking part in the Winter Games. Like most, the 23-year-old hoped above all to experience some international flair in these isolated times. If you can’t travel the world, you can at least get to know the world in Beijing.
After all, university students in the Chinese capital are particularly badly affected by the pandemic: In order not to endanger the open lecture halls, young people are only allowed to leave their campus with special permission – for example by proving that they want to visit a doctor or are interested in present an internship. So while the majority of the population in Beijing has long been going about their daily lives again, students continue to have massive restrictions on their freedom of movement.
Given that, a few weeks of the Olympic Games could have been a welcome change. But the highly contagious omicron variant completely thwarted the organizers’ ambitious plans: foreign spectators were not admitted and the regulations within the Olympic bubble have become much stricter than many had imagined. Meeting like-minded people from all over the world for a beer after work or watching the competitions together at the public viewing became an impossibility
But it was doubly unfair for the volunteers: After the work is done, while the Olympic participants have long since returned home, the young Chinese still have to complete a quarantine of several weeks in a central isolation facility. Only then can they go back to their usual everyday life.
Is it all worth it? I haven’t had the chance to meet Sila in person yet. But as soon as she is “free” again, I will tell her something that unfortunately gets far too little attention in public discourse: that only volunteers like her made the games possible in the first place.
