Foreign Olympic Winter Games participants celebrate Chinese New Year

When Ecuadoran skier Sarah Escobar saw the new year scrolls and the Chinese knots in the rest room of the National Alpine Skiing Center in Beijing's suburban Yanqing on Tuesday, she thought the organizers would celebrate her birthday with her.

But when the 20-year-old found out that besides her birthday, the special day is the Chinese New Year, she said "Happy New Year" to the Chinese volunteers and was gifted with a Chinese knot from the venue manager.

Since January 31, 2022, the Chinese New Year's Eve, many foreign Olympians and journalists began to celebrate the Chinese traditional festival with local volunteers and organizers. Escobar is among the newly-promoted Chinese New Year celebrators.

When Fabiana Fonseca from Brazil heard about that a spring festival gala was scheduled at 8 pm of Chinese New Year Eve, she decided to try to follow the custom.

"This is really similar to something that we have in Brazil, like a soap opera or something like that, so we could see some similarities," said Fonseca.

"And I actually tried to write something in a square, like a red square paper. They told me that the Chinese character means good luck in the upcoming year. I'd like to bring the paper to Brazil and put it in my wall," Fonseca added.

In the Beijing 2022 Licensed Product Official Store of the Main Media Center, Ryan Jordan, an American broadcaster, was busy buying the mascots of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games and the Paralympic Winter Games, Bing Dwen Dwen and Shuey Rhon Rhon, for his nieces at home.

To celebrate the Chinese New Year, Jordan had a nice dinner and some drinks on Monday. In the MMC, the volunteers helped the journalists and broadcasters to write the Chinese New Year scrolls.

"I like they are incorporating the Chinese New Year into everything," said Jordan.

What's more, Jordan told Xinhua that he enjoyed the festive atmosphere all around the MMC and expected to see and learn all about the most important festival in China.

In a hotel of Yanqing, for celebrating the year of the tiger, the chef supplied the dumplings which look like tiger skin to his customers, the journalists of the upcoming Olympic Games, on the New Year's Eve.

Unfortunately, although Russian reporter Alexander Balitskiy wanted to celebrate the important festival, he is too busy with work to have Chinese traditional festival foods.

"I have to send five stories to our headquarters each day. You know, I always work until the midnight, because of the time difference," Balitskiy said.

For the four-time-Olympian Britteny Cox, a gift in the backpack from the organizers impressed her a lot.

"It was a drawing of a young Chinese child and it was a female skier standing on the mountain holding a ski, and that was really special," the moguls ladies event winner at the 2017 World Championship said.

"I think for me, one of my values and passions as an athlete is to inspire young people, and so the painting is interesting that was really heart warming, so I put the picture up on my wall so that I have that to look at all week.

"And, yes, it's very exciting (to be here during) Chinese New Year, and I want to extend a happy new year to all Chinese people," Cox added.