“I will watch everything on TV!”, in Beijing the inhabitants organize themselves in the face of strict sanitary conditions

At the end of the afternoon in this park in the Xicheng district, amateurs try their hand at Peking opera. The Olympic atmosphere seems far away: nothing to do with the popular celebration that the city had experienced during the 2008 Summer Games.

This time, the Beijingers know that they will not be able to attend the tests in the face of the threat of a resumption of the Covid-19 epidemic in China. The disappointment is there, but for this father, sports lover, you have to deal with it. “Yes, there are regrets. So what to do? After all, there is an epidemic, it is dangerous and it is spreading. And with a population as large as in China, this epidemic is not easy to control, especially in Beijing. We must use strong measures. We have no other solution. I will watch the races on TV. I like watching figure skating in particular. Alpine skiing is also particularly exciting.“, he explains.

Nobody seems to want to openly criticize the draconian sanitary measures around the Olympics: “I have no worries“, says a passerby.

“The fact that the country manages to host the Winter Olympics under the epidemic shows that the government is capable of delivering.”

A resident of Beijing

at franceinfo

Many Chinese are not necessarily winter sports enthusiasts, but national pride will push them to follow the games like Buyun, in his fifties: “Because we cannot go there, I will use all the means at our disposal to watch the events live on TV, but also on my mobile when I am on public transport, especially in the Beijing metro. .

The inhabitants have reason to feel left out of the Games: it is impossible to approach the Olympic sites, the surroundings of which are controlled by the police. But there is no question of showing the image of a country that is not interested in the Olympics, a lot of work has been done on the education of young people, like Chengbei, 10 years old. “The school talks about the Games every day. A forum has been created to present knowledge about the Olympics. And then the District Education Committee of Dongcheng organized a winter camp. I will watch the proofs from the beginning. Until the end, I will watch everything!”

Chinese Central Television is expecting big audiences. CCTV has also created a sixth special Olympic Games channel.