A Future Together

A mural dating back more than 10,000 years was discovered in Altay City, north-western China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. It depicted a scene of hunting and skiing by ancient people, the earliest record of human ice and snow activities ever found.

Thousands of years of development of ice and snow activities originating from hunting in ancient times laid an important foundation for modern ice and snow sports and the modern Winter Olympic Games.

“Mont Blanc appears — still, snowy, and serene” is how renowned English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792- 1822) described Mont Blanc in Chamonix Valley.

With the efforts of Pierre de Coubertin, the father of modern Olympic Games, the first Winter Olympic Games kicked off in the small town of Chamonix, France, on January 25, 1924. Over a century, the Winter Olympics developed into a comprehensive winter sports event of the largest scale in the world, growing from the initial 258 athletes from 16 countries and regions to 2,922 athletes from 92 countries and regions in the last Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea.

China’s winter sports, especially the ice and snow tradition in the northern region, have a long history. On Taiye Lake outside the Xihuamen, the west gate of the Forbidden City, the royal bingxi event, a traditional ice sports competition, was held throughout the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Since the 1950s, skiing and skating games have been widely held in northern China. In 1980, China took part in its first Winter Olympics and in 2015, won the bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Soon, the 2022 Winter Olympic Games will take place from February 4 to 20 in three competition zones of Beijing, Yanqing, and Zhangjiakou.

The Beijing Winter Olympics will be a green event. All the venues for the Games have met green building standards. A Beijing-Zhangjiakou cross regional green power trading mechanism has been established. For the first time in Olympic history, all venues will use clean and green power, and carbon dioxide will be used as a refrigerant in ice-making in all the ice-sports venues, which will greatly reduce damage to the ozone layer.

The Beijing Winter Olympics will be a shared event. A legacy plan has been issued to integrate preparation work among sports, society, economics, culture, environment, as well as urban and regional development. A program to promote winter sports among the public has been introduced to inspire 300 million people in China to participate in ice and snow sports.

The Beijing Winter Olympics will be an open event. The Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee carries out close cooperation with the International Olympic Committee, the International Paralympic Committee, and other international organizations. It aims to enhance the international community’s understanding of preparation work for the Beijing Winter Olympics and promote people to-people exchange in fields of sports, education, and culture.

The Beijing Winter Olympics will be a frugal event. The reuse of venues is the greatest frugality for Olympic resources. The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will reuse existing venues and legacy from the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games as much as possible. Post-games utilization plans have been made for all newly built venues in order to achieve long-time use. While meeting the service standards of the Winter Olympic Games, the Beijing Winter Olympic Games have also strictly managed the budget to control the cost of the Games.

The outbreak of World War II in 1939 forced the next two Olympic Games to be canceled. In 1948, the Winter Olympics resumed in St. Moritz, Switzerland, after a 12-year suspension. The sports spirit cooled the embers of war and helped heal wounds. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging in many parts of the world, but it cannot stop enthusiasm for the Winter Olympics or sporting pursuits with the Olympic spirit.

“Together for a Shared Future” is the official motto for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, which is also the attitude, philosophy, and action plan of humanity against current difficulties. The Beijing Winter Olympics will surely serve as a beam of light penetrating the dark clouds of the pandemic to highlight human resilience, the strength of will, and the vitality of life.