Monday, July 21, 2008

Wow, it's Embarassing: The Official Chinese Olympic Cheer



As a Chinese person observing the buildup to the Olympics, one of the most embarrassing (and almost annoying) aspects of the prep is watching the official Olympic cheer being constantly promoted by the respective authorities and the people adopting it.

Turn on just about any of the CCTV channels, news or pre-Olympic programing and you will find constant reminder of this chant. "Go Olympics, Go China!" Too bad it looks horrible.

As Danwei first described it...

The cheer is a joint product of the Party Office of Spiritual Civilization Development and Guidance (GODPP), the Ministry of Education, BOCOG, and CCTV. Here's an illustrated guide, which will appear on television and promotional posters in the near future:

Step 1: Clap two times (while chanting 奥运, "Olympics")
Step 2: Hands in fists with thumbs up, arms extended upward (while chanting, 加油, "Let's go!")
Step 3: Clap two time (while chanting 中国, "China")
Step 4: Hands in fists, arms extended outward and upward (while chanting 加油, "Let's go!")

One of the more annoying Chinese-things is that we dont know how to cheer as a people. Without "加油, 'Let's go'" we have nothing else to say! Why is this? Can't we get our 1 billion people plus to say somehting else. We could possibly even learn a thing or 2 from our lil cousins, the Japanese and the Koreans.

Incredible. I promise I will not be doing this cheer when I'm in the Olympic stadium watching a Track & Field event on August 19th. So Embarassing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Check out the Two Chinese Characters version of the Official Olympic Cheer on YouTube--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7uJ_ExULDw