Feature: Tianjin, China's pioneer Olympic city

TIANJIN, July 20 (Xinhua) -- In just a few days, Paris will be the world's focus, as it prepares to host the Summer Olympic Games for a third time.

In China, Beijing is the city most frequently connected with the Olympics, as the capital became the world's first city to host both Summer and Winter Olympics, doing so in 2008 and 2022 respectively.

Located 120 kilometers from the capital, the port city of Tianjin was one of the earliest to contact with western culture and lifestyle, making it a gateway to learn and carry forward Olympic ideals.

Tianjin was forced to open its ports for foreign trade under western powers in the 19th century, when sports like football, cricket, tennis, golf, basketball, polo and ice hockey began to enter China.

At the Tianjin sports museum, a chart clearly shows the timeline of the introduction of modern western sports into Tianjin. China's oldest existing indoor basketball stadium is still in Tianjin, which will be repurposed into China's basketball museum.

"The introduction of western sports, although accompanied by a humiliating past, indeed promoted the development of modern sports in China from a historical perspective," said Liu Jianbin, director of the museum.

The first modern Olympic Games took place in Athens in 1896. Three years later, Tianjin held its first school sports meeting, which was the first intercollegiate sports meeting in China and was considered the country's earliest imitation of the Olympic Games.

Zhang Boling, a Chinese educator and then president of Nankai University, proposed that "our country should immediately establish a team for the Olympics" in 1907.

In 1908, Tianjin Youth magazine issued three questions to society, to China, and to the Chinese nation - When will Chinese people be able to send athletes to the Olympic Games? When will Chinese athletes be able to win an Olympic gold medal? When will China be able to host the Olympic Games?

Liu Changchun was the first athlete to represent China at the Olympics in 1932, Xu Haifeng won China's first Olympic gold in 1984, and Beijing hosted the Olympic Games in 2008.

Zhang and Wang Zhengting established China's national sports organization in 1924. Wang is known as the first Chinese member of the International Olympic Committee and the "Father of Chinese Olympics."

China will send 405 athletes to the upcoming Paris Olympics, among whom there are 14 from Tianjin, including women's volleyball stars Li Yingying and Wang Yuanyuan, trampoline Olympic champion Zhu Xueying, and weightlifting world champion Liu Huanhua.

In the new era, Tianjin will develop its sports culture, industry and public fitness project, with the aim building a world-class international sports city with unique charm, according to local authorities.