Student reporters at the MPC in PyeongChang

By Zhang Hongyi

Editorial note:
Zhang Hongyi, a senior high school student from Beijing, has just spent a memorable winter holiday in South Korea. As one of the amateur reporters of the Beijing High School Students News Agency, she went to PyeongChang, South Korea, last month to get a closer look at the just-concluded Winter Olympic Games. What follows is a first-hand account of her remarkable experience.

BEIJING, March 14 (Xinhua) -- PyeongChang 2018 has just concluded and the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games have officially entered into Beijing Time. Throughout this festival of ice and snow, I was there to take part as a student reporter for the Beijing Student Press Association.

My experience in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics began with the men's Alpine skiing slalom competition in Gangwon. In the morning, my partners and I set out for the race with a considerable degree of excitement. During the competition, what impressed us was not only the performance of the skiers but also the audience's enthusiasm and the Olympic atmosphere that permeated everything.

The South Korean cheerleaders who were sitting behind us gave enthusiastic applause to every player in the race. We also saw the passionate DPR Korean cheerleaders wearing red and blue hats and uniforms. With warm smiles they were waving their flags and giving their best wishes to the players.

During the opening ceremony, players from South Korea and DPR Korea marched onto the stage as a joint team under one flag, their cheerleaders, standing side by side, cheered on all players in the stadium. The Olympic Games provided a template for international cooperation on a friendly basis, both between the DPRK and ROK, and among the other countries of the world.

China House

Another impressive part of our experience was the tour of the Main Press Center, or MPC tour. The building contained the world's top sports media personnel, technical facilities, and everyone shared the common goal of delivering the latest Olympic news to the world. In our visit to the MPC, we found many well-known names such as Xinhua News Agency, the Associated Press, Reuters, AFP and others.

In the MPC press hall, we interviewed Yang Yang, a former short-track speed skater who received China's breakthrough Winter Olympic gold medal and who serves as the current chairman of the Athletes Committee of the Beijing 2022 Organizing Committee. Yang recounted her stories about the Winter Olympics with us and told us about the hardships she endured when she began skating 20 years ago.

With China's rapid rise over the last several decades, Winter sports are starting to develop alongside the country's economy. This development has been hastened by the fact that China will host the next edition of the Winter Olympics and plans to participate in all of the events. Although challenges remain, we are proud of our country as it tries to make a mark and play its part in the development of winter sports worldwide.

Yang Yang and Zhang Hongyi

As we watched Wu Dajing in the quarterfinal of the men's 500m short track speed skating on "China House" TV live, our pride reached its peak! Later on the return trip, when hearing Wu had won the first gold for the Chinese delegation, we were carried away with joy. There are surely great things to come for China's winter sporting efforts.

During the trip to PyeongChang, we met a lot of athletes such as Pang Qing and Tong Jian, the former Chinese figure skaters who participated in four Olympic Games and finished as the runners-up in Vancouver 2010. When visiting the Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul in the next day, we met athletes from Argentina. One participant in the women's slalom was surprised that we were Chinese high school student reporters. She noted that our English was quite fluent and told us to keep pursuing sports journalism.

All in all, my experience taught me that to take part in winter sports in any capacity--be it as an athlete or reporter--is a difficult but rewarding task.

Thanks to our experience at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, many of us in the group are more determined to become career sports reporters, with some even saying that they want to study journalism in university.

At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, I will be a senior in college. It is my plan to either work as a volunteer or student reporter, and I hope that my work there can be even more rewarding and memorable than my time in PyeongChang.