Peking University, February 2, 2022: A total of 200,000 volunteers from across China, including the island of Taiwan, will work during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, and 758 volunteer service stations have been set up and well-prepared for the Games, said a Beijing official on Wednesday.
Volunteers of the Beijing 2022 are working at media center which started to operate 24 hours a day on Monday. Photo: Zhang Changyue/GT
Volunteer service stations are an important embodiment of Beijing becoming the world's first city to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics, said Li Junhui, executive director of the Beijing Winter Olympic volunteer headquarters and secretary of the Beijing Youth League, at Wednesday’s press conference.
The stations were arranged around the five main areas of the Games and three surrounding areas of the ice and snow sports venues, cultural tourism venues, and the Olympics supporting service venues, he said.
Volunteers also provide service for foreign personnel entering Beijing, making connections among Olympics centers and among sports venues, and along the torch relay route.
There are 9 stations for ice and snow sports venues, 16 around the Olympic centers, 37 for bus and subway service, 39 for disability assistance organizations, 149 for urban service, 507 for key communities and villages, and one for the 2022 Beijing Media Center, Li added.
The volunteers of the Beijing Winter Olympics come from across China, including some from the island of Taiwan. Chen Wun-cheng, a teacher from the Sports Teaching and Research Department of Peking University who comes from Changhua county of the island of Taiwan, is one of them.
He formed a Winter Olympics volunteer team of Taiwan youth and started the volunteer service on January 25, 2022.
He hopes that he can transmit the wonderful Beijing Winter Olympics to people in the island through his first-hand experience as a volunteer and hopes that there will be more young people in Taiwan like him, to understand the real, three-dimensional, comprehensive mainland through such cross-Straits exchanges, he said at the press conference.
After the Games, some volunteer stations will be properly reserved according to urban functional planning and the needs of citizens, leaving them witnesses of Beijing hosting “Dual Olympics City,” said Li Junhui at the Wednesday press conference.
Beijing started early and developed its volunteer services in China quickly.
The city has nearly 4.5 million real-name registered volunteers and 81,000 registered volunteer groups. It launched more than 524,000 volunteer service projects and recorded more than 570 million hours of volunteer service.
A Winter Olympics volunteer, surnamed Qin, told the Global Times that he was very proud and excited to be able to serve the Olympics after passing the strict examination, which received more than one million volunteer applications across the country.
Qin is responsible for providing service for foreign arrivals. The 22-year-old college student said volunteers have played a “significant role” in preparing for the Games. “Although the work of each of us seems trivial, it can ensure the Games run smoothly when all of our work are combined together,” he said.
