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Olympic Bid Fever Catches on
As Beijing made further efforts to win its bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games, many foreigners living in China added their support to the millions of Chinese voices.
Moved by Beijingers' enthusiastic study of English to support the bid, Richard Curnutt, a teacher at the Beijing Xinqiao Foreign Language School, volunteered to be a lecturer for a language training class in his Tuanjiehu neighbourhood.
"I love Beijing, it's my second home," said Curnutt, a US native who has lived in Beijing for five years.
Local residents are eager to improve their English. Many taxi drivers spend an hour a day studying English in the hope that they will be driving foreign guests to Olympic venues in 2008.
New signs in English have been installed on streets and in bus stations. Some foreigners have lent a hand in helping avoid spelling mistakes in the signs.
Mwendanga Musengo, a visiting student from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, volunteered to help correct spelling mistakes on posters in buses.
Studying traditional Chinese music at the China Central Conservatory of Music, Musengo is a regular passenger on Beijing's buses.
"Beijingers are very kind," Musengo said. "I never had any trouble taking buses here, because the conductors have taken good care of me and told me when I have reached my destination."
Witness to the great progress the city has achieved in waste water treatment, James Gao, chief Beijing representative of French water company Suea Lyonnaise Des Eaux, said Beijing is capable of hosting any big international event.
"Beijing has a first-class water treatment system which guarantees high-quality drinking water," Gao said. "The city's Miyun Reservoir development project can be listed as one of the world's best environmental protection projects."
Bertrand Theaud, a French lawyer who has worked in Beijing for seven years said that he has been very impressed by Beijing's progress over the past few years.
"Beijing has grown to assume its role as an international metropolis, as dynamic as New York, as charming as Paris, as sprawling as London, as modern as Tokyo and as ancient as Athens." Theaud said.
"What will be surprising to foreign visitors is Beijingers' spirit of meeting a challenge, their energy and will," Theaud said. "As Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, said a long time ago, 'Those who endure will win.'"
(www.chinadaily.com.cn)
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