No one has ever taught an English football fan how to behave at a match. It seems like a very good idea. China is doing just that for the Olympics next year.

More than 200 Beijing Olympics cheer-squad volunteers are being taught at a time how to cheer and respond — in several cases for sports of which they have not close association.

These cheering training courses have been organized by Beijing Federation of Trade Unions. The courses are aimed at helping Beijingers better understand the different sports featured at the 2008 Games, and also instruct them how to be an enthusiastic and well-mannered audience.

Chen Huiping, one of the organizers of the group, says cheer squad training began in early June and aimed to prepare Beijingers for China’s biggest-ever sporting event.

He said, ‘People shouting out bad language when watching sport games is definitely not the public image we want to present to the world in the coming 2008. So, when we found that Japan and South Korea had promoted good manners among their people before the Olympic Games held in their countries, we wanted to do the same in China too.’

Cheering from Beijing Workers’ is a program driven by the federation, whose branches in different districts in Beijing have taken an active part.

Almost every week over the past five months, a training course on knowledge of the Olympic Games and good manners has been held across the city and more than 80,000 workers have taken part so far.
Source: China Daily

The people of Beijing have been asked to rid themselves of bad habits and clean up their language as part of improving the city’s environment ahead of next year’s Olympic Games.

Beijing Olympic chief Liu Q, seen here, in addressing the ‘ceremony of mobilization and pledging of the people from all circles for Olympic one-year countdown’, stressed it was up to individuals to ensure the city was ready to host the Games.

Liu, president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG), said, ‘Every citizen should behave in a civilized manner, cast away ugly habits, clean up their language, clean the environment and clean the air.

‘We should push the environmental campaign and effectively solve the problem of spitting and littering. Every citizen should voluntarily keep the city clean, acting by themselves from now on to clean and beautify our home.’

Spitting, littering and the unwillingness of many Chinese to stand in line have been identified as potential blights on the city’s image. (Difficult to be too severe about the unwillingness to stand in line. The French have this down to a fine art. And, for littering, London is considerably worse than Beijing. Perhaps Paris would be a good example to follow. That is a very clean city.)

Liu Qi said security was vital to hosting a good Games and measures would be taken to avoid protests or confrontations with the city authorities. He said, ‘We must guarantee a safe and stable Beijing society . . . and construct an impregnable fortress to ensure safety and stability.’

Which means that protesters and political rallies will definitely not be welcome.

His rallying call was, ‘At the one year countdown I, representing BOCOG and the city government and Municipal Party, am calling on all Beijing citizens, young and old, city or village dwellers, no matter what their job or where they come from, to take action at once.’
Source: China Daily

The illustration is in Beijing’s Environmental Sanitation Bureau. There 100 public toilet cleaners — mostly migrant workers — are given a briefing.

Zhuang Zeping urged the toilet cleaners to match their shoes and socks, keep their tools clean and speak softly and politely to strangers. He said. ‘As long as you have come to Beijing, you are a Beijinger. You represent the image of China to the rest of the world.’

(The temptation to head this article: ‘Ich bin ein Beijinger’ almost copying Kennedy’s June, 1963 declaration is well-nigh irresistible. It shall be resisted.)

In recent months, officials from the Communist Party have launched campaigns aimed at stamping out practices that, while common in China, might be seen as unseemly by outsiders: spitting, cutting in line, swearing and littering.

The Olympics is the big chance. ‘We want to prove we are making progress,’ said Sha Lianxiang, a professor of social psychology at Renmin University in Beijing. ‘On the one hand, we are developing and making progress now, while on the other, we still have lots of problems. How to step out of these problems? We need to consider how people look at us. It’s a mirror for us. In a globalized world, we want to be as good as others. We care about other people’s reaction.’

In the West, a person’s behavior would not necessarily be seen as a reflection of a whole nation. But for many Chinese, it’s different.

‘The honor and shame of an individual is related with that of the nation,’ Sha said. ‘This goes back to the time of Confucius, when Chinese were taught to protect the honor of the nation. Society is a complicated network, and we play our roles as members of a collective unit, so this is natural for us.’

Zheng Mojie, deputy director general of the Spiritual Civilization office, is very keen on good behaviour. Zheng’s office has handed out more than four million etiquette books. ‘Don’t honk all the time and don’t honk violently.’ ‘On the phone, greet listeners and tell them who you are with a soft tone and a smile. Don’t pick up too slowly, waiting until the phone rings more than three times. Let the caller hang up first.’

Not everyone thinks it will work. ‘It’s mainly for the Westerners, this campaign,’ said Liu Xiaobo, a freelance writer and political commentator. ‘Good manners are cultivated through daily life by the people themselves, not by this kind of large-scale movement. I think government wants to leave a good impression to the world. It’s about the face of the government.’

Even the Spiritual Civilization Office admits these things take time.

‘Developing the habit of standing in line takes years,’ Zheng Mojie said. ‘The Olympics is just an opportunity to teach this, but this is not just for the Olympics. We are trying to get the public to be more civilized in the long run. Actually for the Olympics, you don’t have to worry. Because Beijingers care so much about face, they will not embarrass the authorities — they will behave very well.’
Source: Washington Post