2022 Winter Olympics | Journalists Celebrating Chinese New Year in the Main Media Center

On January 31st, the Chinese New Year’s Eve, journalists attending the 2022 Winter Olympics gathered at the Main Media Center to experience the traditional customs of the festival by writing Spring Festival couplets, folding paper, and cutting paper to make decorative patterns.

”I was very excited and very humbled to be able to get involved. I’ve never experienced a Chinese New Year like this. Very special, indeed. I think (it is a) once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So I’m very grateful to be here. And I wish everybody a very happy, healthy new year,” said Whitt Braid from Getty Images.

[Narrative] As the Year of the Tiger is approaching, the center offered journalists handmade red envelopes patterned after tigers. These journalists were also welcomed to fold papers into tiger-shaped red envelopes with the help of volunteers and to know more about the Chinese zodiac.

Li Chenyao is a volunteer at the Main Media Center for the Beijing Winter Olympic Games. “They are interested in this process because the paper-made tiger is cute, and it’s quite fitting to make one in the Year of the Tiger. To make a red envelope on one’s own is very meaningful. It could be a nice keepsake. You may also give it to your friends or the beloved as a new year’s gift,” said Li.

[Narrative] Festooned with red lanterns and paper cuttings – typical Chinese New Year decorations – an interview room in the center was filled with joy. With paper-cutting and other performances alike, journalists had a more immersed experience of the traditions of Chinese New Year.

Sun Ji, a volunteer at the center, was performing paper-cutting art. “They are very curious about what the final piece looks like because in paper cutting, the pattern is hard to be identified when the work is unfinished. I’m working on a dragon and phoenix pattern. The dragon is here in the middle and the phoenix lies beneath. They are auspicious symbols in our culture. I chose this pattern because I wanted to extend best wishes to them on New Year’s Eve,” Sun said.

[Narrative] The Opening Ceremony for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games will take place on February 4th, which coincides with Lichun (the start of spring), the first solar term in the traditional Chinese calendar.

Rewritten by Xu Pengpeng & Chen Liang, Fudan University.