Cheering crowds and changing minds at Beijing Paralympics
Posted: Thursday, September 11, 2008 9:20 AM
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Beijing, China
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
BEIJING – Two weeks after the end of the Summer Olympics, the residents of Beijing have yet to wake up to their much-anticipated sports hangover.
In fact, if the vast crowds an NBC News crew and I witnessed on the Olympic Green this week are any indication, they are still lapping up the sports on offer at the 2008 Paralympic Games.
The Beijing Paralympics, which began last weekend, feature 4,000 of the world’s toughest top athletes with disabilities from 148 countries competing in 20 sports – as varied as wheelchair rugby, sitting volleyball and blind soccer – until Sept. 17.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Paralympians say they're getting a warm welcome in Beijing. |
But as crowd-pleasing as some of these sports can be, we were still taken aback by the long lines of ticket-holders thronging the main southern entrance to the Olympic Green.
After all, China has not been known for its tolerance of disabled people. In a country with 83 million disabled (about the size of Germany’s population), it’s rare to see any of them in public.
Traditional attitudes perceive people with disabilities as cursed, making them social outcasts; an old Chinese phrase termed them "useless cripple" (can fei). In May, an official guide for Olympic volunteers was recalled after it was discovered it contained descriptions of disabled people as "stubborn and controlling."
Until recently, public access and facilities for the disabled in major cities have been practically nonexistent, and state support for the disabled in the form of health care or jobs has been very limited.
Slowly shifting perceptions
But some of those old attitudes have begun to change – at least on a state level. In April this year, the National People’s Congress enacted a law designed to bolster the rights of disabled people, specifically stating, "Persons with disabilities shall enjoy equal rights with other citizens in political, economic, cultural and social respects and in family life as well."
It’s been harder to gauge, however, the turnaround of popular perceptions. Some shifts can be attributed to the visibility of the son of former Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping. The 64-year-old Deng Pufang was paralyzed after falling out of a window during the Cultural Revolution. He’s now the head of the China Disabled Persons Federation, which was instrumental in securing initial official recognition of disabled rights back in 1983.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Thousands of people crowded near one of the entrances to the Olympic Green this week. |
However, just this week reports emerged that only two of 88 children orphaned by the May earthquake in Sichuan have been adopted. The China Daily, which initially reported there was only one adoption, quoted sources within the Sichuan provincial department of civil affairs as saying that "one reason for the slow response is that many of the orphans are handicapped."
So, staring at the long lines of ticket-holders at stadium entrances, we wondered: Were there more tickets available to the general public? Was someone giving out free tickets?
It was widely noted that some sporting events during last month’s Olympics appeared to be playing out in empty-looking stadiums. High prices were sometimes blamed, but corporate sponsors who held onto tickets that then went unused were also at fault.
At the Paralympics, same-day tickets can be bought for as low as thirty yuan (roughly $4). And a volunteer I spoke to showed me two tickets that were being given out freely: a pass to the Olympic Green, home to most of the sporting events, and a pass to a specific venue, the Indoor National Stadium.
When we raised the issue about greater attendance to Sun Weide, spokesman for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG also runs the Beijing Paralympics), he denied there were more people present.
Cheering crowds ‘blew us away’
Yet whether people have been drawn in by cheaper or free tickets seems less significant than what the attendance rate might achieve in the long run. Witnessing the ability, talent, and determination of these athletes can only have a positive impact here – not just on people with lingering prejudices.
At the main tennis stadium one afternoon, we came across a group of young Chinese children – some in wheelchairs, others visually impaired, but all with some disability – learning to hit a tennis ball with Paralympians from Nigeria.
"They’ve never seen people like themselves do these things," said Wendy Lee, a pediatric therapist accompanying the kids. Lee coordinated with a local Chinese orphanage specializing in special needs to bring 23 disabled children to a handful of Paralympic events. "They need to see other people like them to realize they can have a fulfilling life."
The other obvious beneficiary: the athletes themselves.
Members of the U.S. wheelchair rugby team said they have been bowled over by the reception – and this is before they have even played a single game in China.
"The people here have been friendly and warm and really curious," said Nick Springer, a 23-year old defensive specialist for the U.S. team. Springer was one of several players who went on jaunts through the city, drawing curious onlookers asking for photographs.
But nothing could prepare the American players for the crowd reaction at sporting events. The mass of people at the China-U.S. wheelchair basketball game Wednesday night "blew us away," said Coach James Gumbert.
"When the Chinese scored that final basket," he said. "It was like they'd won the Superbowl. Everybody was on their feet shouting."
This kind of response – for disabled athletes – is "like nothing we've ever seen," continued Gumbert. According to him, their most popular games back home attract just a couple of hundred spectators. The matches against Canada shown in the 2005 documentary, "Murderball," suggested there's a huge cult following, but Gumbert said the filmmakers shot "creatively" to give the illusion of large crowds of spectators when in fact there were only 500 or so people.
Here in Beijing, they’re likely to play before several thousand when they face off the China team on Friday. And it’s a safe bet the atmosphere will be electric.
Festive scene
Around the Olympic stadiums, the mood has been noticeably more festive – more so than any time any of us remembered from the Olympic Games. What had been a vast empty-looking Olympic Green is now overflowing with families wandering from one venue to another. People stopping to gawk at large-screen displays of a women’s wheelchair basketball match and debate the finer points of ball bearings and wheels, as well as fans waving China or Paralympic flags at every camera that turned on them.
At times, we could hear the spiritedness echoing from inside the Bird’s Nest, where track and field competitions were under way Wednesday. Every chair looked filled inside the 90,000-seat stadium, where people roared with generous approval at virtually every athlete – not just the Chinese.
Sometimes, their enthusiasm eclipsed newfound sensitivities to the disabled. When American blind sprinter Josiah Jamison won the 100-meter dash by a hair, people jumped up and down to cheer him on. And they leapt continuously out of their seats whenever an athlete completed a javelin throw – so often that the back row of disabled fans seated in wheelchairs grumbled about being unable to see.
Click here for more NBC News Sports coverage of the Beijing Paralympics
