LaoWai-The Olympic Story
In February 2001 , when the International Olympic Comittee arrived in Beijing for its inspection tour whole Beijing was doing its utmost to give them a good impression. Universities, schools, factories, private and non private organisations they all tried their best to show their motivation for the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing. And so we did. In this time my friend Pawel Matulewicz and I Guido Rosler (guleyan) have been students at the Language and Culture University in Beijing but we were also working for the German brewery Diebels as the general importer and representative for China. And we thought it would be meaningful if we would express our support for Beijing through our special designed "Olympic Support Mobil" , a traditional Chinese three-wheeled vehicle with a beer mug on its top. Like this we rode through the streets of Beijing. „Diebels supports Beijing for its bid.“was our slogan and was written in big red letters on the outer surface of the vehicle. And together with Robert Gonella, the founder and präsident of the International Friendship Football Club with more than 1000 foreign members , we presented a good team for our first and one week lasting activity.
But during this week we just felt that this kind of full of ideas campaign was funny and unusual but it was only a commercial marketing campaign. It was not the ideal way to make the difference. We by ourselves were not satisfied because we wanted to do something more meaningful, we wanted to do something to make other people believe us , believe that foreigners in Beijing who have first hand experience in this city have an objective point of view and can make the proof of the capability of Beijing to host the 2008 Olympic Games. Like this we decided not to do any other commercial campaign.
On Saturday the 29th of February Robert Gonella had organized like ervery year a big football tournament , a Mini World Cup, where more than 250
foreigners and members of his football club participated. 48 Teams, 24 female teams and 24 male teams divided in countries ran and fighted for the trophy. During the match we decided very spontanius to send a honest and warmhearted sign to the Chinese. In the presence of the Chinese television, we wanted to give the foreign participans of the tournament an opportunity to express their position about Beijing 2008 by signing up our olympic flag. This was a very spontanius plan and we by ourselves were quite amazed as we saw how many people signed up the olympic flag and sometimes even wrote some nice words under their signature .
All in one it was a nice gesture. But this gesture has made us obvious that there is really a great willingness of the foreigners who live in Beijing to tell the world that the Beijing they know from first hand experience is ready for 2008. And as we the foreigners who live, work or study in Beijing have the objective point of view are capable to tell this the people abroad who can not realize these tremendous changes that happend in Beijing over the last years. But on the other side, the Chinese people around us and even the journalists have been really astonished when they saw this great acceptance of our little signing up occasion. Personally I remembered a Chinese journalist who arrived more for personel reasons, many times she had tried to explain to me, that she would not have expected that foreigners do so much care about China.
This made us quite thoughtful and we understood that if we could focus the support of foreigners about Beijings concern, the Olympic Games 2008, it would be to the benefit of all of us, foreigners and Chinese. And like this a new idea was born. Even in the evening of this Saturday 2001 we decided an extension of this little gesture of signing up an Olympic flag. During our dinner with Paul, Robert, some friends and me we decided another 10,000 and 2008 signatures from over 100 countries and for their character of evidence we also requested to add a gender, profession, email-adress and nationality. Like this anybody who would doubt about their authentic could prove their existence.
And this would be necessary because we decided from the very beginning, that we would bring all these signatures to Moscow, to present them to the IOC.
The first 2008 signatures were extremly hard. First of all we still did not really know if the people would accept our project. And the other problem was the time limit. To collect 12000 signatures, including the nationality, profession, gender, and email adress is one thing but to collect them in two and a half month is an other thing. Don`t think, that you only have to put somewhere your book and people will arrive to sign it up. No, you have to go to the people, you have to ask them and maybe they will tell you some reasons why they don`t want to sign up, then you even have to discuss with them to convince them or not. I still remember , as I was sitting at the very beginning of the signing up campaign with my friend Oliver in Samis , a coffee in the Language and Culture University, and were asking the students for their signature to put in the first lines of the red book. It was so time consuming and hard, that Oliver observed, going on so slowly the red book will even not be finished before the Olympic Games of 2008. Never the less we didnt give up, because we knew that this activity could be a very important sign for Beijing and to the people.
Of course sometimes in the very beginning we had our doubts, especially when we started and went out to the city, to markets and shopping malls to ask foreigners to put their names in an empty book. We really don`t want to know what the people thought about us, these foreign students, but at the latest when we have introduced the people to the chosen name of our activity "Lao Wai" , and have shown them our logo, there were some foreigners who really got angry and didn´t want to have anything to do with us.
We thought it was just too much for them. To take part in an activity they never had heard of, maybe they could have participated, but if they have a good will of doing something for China to be called "Laowai" that was too much for them, because in their ears Laowai didn´t really mean a respective adress. But we were not upset, we understood that there are still many missunderstandings witch can be solved later. Anyway there have been also very
pleasent moments. I still remember when we just collected our ninetieth signature we met someone from Spain, his name was Jose, an English teacher, he gave us even his telefon number and asked to call him whenever we would need his help. Later he arrived many times even with his wife , and they really enjoyed their time with us.
After one week when we had collected about the first 100 signatures and also a lot of experience, we knew that we would need a lot of help and like this my friend Paul Our Chinese friend Wang Na and I started to motivate many of our friends to help us. With one aim in front of us, collect first of all 2008 signatures and then introduce them to the public. From this moment erveryday after school Paul, our chinese friend Wang Na and I stood in front of the cafeteria and asked the foreign students about their signatures.
But we also gave around the folders to the gym and to some kiosk and many other places near our University.
After we had collected our first 2008 signatures we had to realize the presentation to the public. After Paul and I had organized our meeting point at the Olympic Taiji symbol in the Wangfujing street we arrived there in the morning of May the 5 th in 2001 .
But when Paul and I arrived there we got really nervous because originally this big Olympic Symbol with a huge iron pedestal stood a week before at this place we had chosen for presentation of our red book. But then the people told us that officials moved the symbol about 500 metres away. So we called our friends and waited for them there until all had arrived.
After we all had met we presented now very proudly but also a little bit under tension our red book that showed our first 2008 signatures under the huge Chinese Olympic Taiji logo. As this presentation was not only meant for the passing people but exactly for all people of the public, we already informed one week before some newspapers. Fortunately there was one journalist at the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper who immediately spotted the potential of our signing up campaign. He has already asked us three days before for an interview in the Language and Culture University. So that one day before our first official presentation at Wangfujing there was already a short announcement on the first page of the Beijing Youth Daily showing us with our red book and the olympic flag, announcing our first presentation at Wangfujing.
I do still remember what kind of a stress this unplaned interview had caused Paul and me: As we only had one red book which would have been extremely unhandy to take with us to all the places, and which also would not have been easily devided. For this we had designed from the beginning a form with the following headline “I will do my part” and a spreadsheet. Everyone for themselves could take these sheet in a folder and try independently for themselves to find foreigners and fill these forms up. But than all these sheet had to be stuck on carton like extreme tear-resistant paper and than these had still to be sticked together. Generally this was Pauls and my night work, but the problem was until this first interview we had almost no time to be prepared.
Now we were standing with our first 2008 signatures in front of the shopping mall Oriental Plaza and this huge Chinese Olympic taiji sign, and thanks there wasn´t a long time until the journalists who had trouble to find us in the end spotted us. Unfortunately it was not written in the newspaper that the huge Olympic logo had been moved from his original place.
I don´t know what would have happened if nobody had given any notice of us, or wouldn´t have found us. I think we definitely would have stopped with 2008 signatures and would have stored them in a box with the title “Memories of China 2001” that would be forgotten and got dusty on the attic. But it fortunately developed in a different way. After a report about our signing up activity was shown in the evening in the sport news of CCTV 5 on TV and many reports were given in the newspapers, our campaign has suddenly come in the spotlight of all the people. From now on the public came into touch with our campaign and from now on we should get back a great support of the public. But from now on we also had a problem that ment 10.000 signatures within two month . And these signatures could not be skimmed like water with a bucket from a lake . No, most of the time it seemed like to find a needle in a haystack…what means , very difficult to find.
As the publicity has taken notice of our activity, people wanted get to know the further development of our campaign. That meant, that we continued to meet over the weekend at well chosen location with our friends to ask foreigners for their support and offer our development to the public .
Precisley the presentation at Wangfujing was similar to all presentations that follow during the next two months. The only difference was, that the location changed. We tried mainly to go to the sightseeing spots of Beijing, like the White Pagode , the Great Wall , the Forbidden City, but also some modern places like the Silk Market, the International
Airport, the Barstreet and shopping malls. We were even standing at the entrance of the international church of Beijing to get into touch with foreigners.
Whenever we met during the weekend for collecting signatures we presented to the public our red book that was becoming thicker and thicker each time. And on a weekend like this we were able to add an other couple of hundred signatures.
This way of getting signatures was very effective, It never felt like work, no, we had a lot of fun and enjoyed our time together and to have an opportunity to get in contact with so many people coming from around the world was amazing .
Particulary at the end of our campaign it has always been more difficult to find more people who have still not signed but were willing to sign.
Today 12 years later there are more than 200000 foreigners are living in Beijing, almost uncountable are all these tourist that daily come to Beijing. In view of these numbers of people in the present time our difficulties in the past maybe can not be understood. But Beijing 12 years ago and in the presence is not the same. Non the less we reached our aim of 12.008 signatures at the end of June.
But we were confronted with the question, where do we want to present our result for the last time to the public. We had the following idea, that this signing up campaign first of all should be devoted to Beijing`s Olympic Bid 2008, but it should also show the people, that LaoWai should be understood like a bridge between the cultures, or more precisely a bridge between the ordinary people of China and the ordinary people or the rest of the world. Thus it had to be a bridge for our last location, but not a special ordinary bridge. But a bridge that is should be long enough to open up the 120 metre long book. Such a long and significant bridge you will only find in Beijing in the Summerpalace, the 17 acre bridge.
But I found that this was extremely difficult and complicated to reach the permission for this important location. Never so far a private person has ever obtained a permission to organize in the Summerpalace an event and much less a foreigner. It seemed that the entire enthusiasm and the fresh wind of the New China was kept away by the Walls of the Summerpalace. I was not only confronted with the tough bureucracy, but to enter the Summerpalace I had to pass the guardians of the Chinese history and tradition.
From the 5000 year old history of China we still can admire uncountable cultural treasures . But there are only very few spots that have such an outstanding and unique symbolic like the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven or the 17 Acre Bridge in the Summerpalace. Probably it was very naive of me to believe that we could just jump into the palace, do the presentation and disappear quickly again like we were used to it before. Uncountable hours did I wait in the outer offices of the administration of the Summerpalace. Time was running out, it definitely had to happen this weekend otherwise we would not have been able to bring our campaign to a glorious end. In the end they told me that they would call me whether they would give me the permission or not.
And exactly , I still see very clearly place and time in front of my eyes.,”….you receive the permission” . Now finally it could keep going. I could inform my friends that their efforts would definitely find a glorious end. The subsequent planning was very quick , and thus we appeared on a sunny Saturday of June at the gates of the Summerpalace. And we presented on the 17 Acre Bridge of the Summerpalace our 12008 signatures. After the 3 months of efforts we were extremely happy, that we kept our word and like this could finish our campaign.
Nevertheless, something was still missing. At our first presentation at Wangfujing we promised the people that we will take the signatures and would take them onto the streets of Moscow and present them to the IOC.
At this moment I was definitely not sure how I would manage it in Moscow all on my own. But then I thought that I would handle it somehow and with my capability of the Russian language I would have great chance to do so. Thus I packed this big, red and very heavy book and some banner and flags and then I flew back to Germany, and from there to Moscow.
When I arrived in Moscow, indeed I was able to mobilize the Chinese Community and several Russian students and organized a demonstration in the streets of Moscow, and later a spontaneous press conference.
When a day later Beijing received the Olympics of 2008, I was extremely happy and proud, to be with my friends a part of a great achievement.
When the University started in late summer I returned to Beijing. Then my friends and I handed over the red book to the Chinese Olympic Committee. After a worldwide circulating exposition concerning the application of Beijing`s Bid to the Olympic Games 2008 was the red book handed over to the Olympic Museum of China. Like this the Campaign “LaoWai supports Beijing for the Olympic Bid” was finished, and we all had a memory of a great time. But there was also the will of developing a new campaign : LaoWai - The Bridge between Cultures.
