Nika, a Ukrainian volunteer from Communication University of China (CUC) who speaks five languages, is often seen working at the IOC news service desk on the 2nd basement of the Main Media Center for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. With her good command of Ukrainian, Russian, Chinese, English and French, she has been helping journalists from various countries since she entered the Winter Olympic closed loop.
Among the 536 volunteers in the main media center, Nika is ordinary yet special. Like all the other volunteers, she is from a university in Beijing and is full of passion for volunteer work; unlike the others, she is the only Winter Olympics volunteer with a foreign nationality, and she is proud of that.
“I take it as an honor to become a volunteer for Beijing Winter Olympic Games because I am proud of China”, Nika says. She has been in China for 8 years and has witnessed her personal growth together with the growth of China from hosting the Summer Olympics to hosting the Winter Games.
The 21-year-old girl has been to more than 40 countries and regions. In 2009, Nika and her family visited Chengdu, China and were fascinated by the local customs and lifestyle. In 2013 they decided to move to Chengdu and stay in China for good, although at the time Nika spoke non-Chinese at all.
Nika gives herself a Chinese name Li Xia. “Xia means ‘far-away’, so the whole name means I come from Ukraine, a far-away place.”She says, “I also hope the China stories I tell or record will spread to far-away places.”
Before she came to the land, China was merely a nation with “five thousand years’civilization” for her, as for many other foreigners. But after all these years living in China, she has found that this nation is not only with ancient culture, but also well modernized in the contemporary time.
In the past eight years, being a student first in Southwest University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu andthen in Communication University of China in Beijing, Nika has submerged herself in Chinese culture. She loves Sichuan food and Cantonese food. She likes wearing Hanfu, a traditional Chinese costume and playing mahjong. Now she speaks fluent Mandarin and,Sichuan dialect, and even proficient in using popular Chinese Internet buzz words.
In 2020, learning that the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics were recruiting volunteers in Beijing, Nika, with more than 10 years of volunteering experience, did not hesitate to apply, and finally got recruited after rounds of selection and training. On January 18, before entering the closed loop, Nika posted a message on her Weibo, a Chinese social media, “Soon be joining the Winter Olympics as a volunteer, excited and nervous.”
“Now the whole world is looking at China, wondering how China would manage to host both summer and winter games.” says Nika, “and I am right here right now, being part of this global sports event during the pandemic. This is my greatest privilege”. She would “tell more people from other nations with her personal experience what actually happens in Beijing and how China willmanage this great sports event.”
In fact, in her eight years in China, Nika has been actively acting as a “cultural bridge” between China and other nations. In the early years, she had created some buzz with a number of artistic photos in different styles, including a set of photos in traditional Chinese costume Hanfu that went viral. Now with 130,000 followers on Weibo, she became an influencer. In recent years, she has traveled around China to tell real stories from a foreigner's perspective. During the Winter Olympics, she plans to vlog stories in the closed loop.
January 31st is Chinese New Year's Eve. Nika says she will follow the Chinese custom on New Year’s Eve and try some Chinese dumplings in the main media center restaurant. She is to participate in the offline Chinese New Year party at the volunteer site as a host, and spend a special Chinese New Year in the closed loop of the Winter Olympics with her fellow volunteers.
Editor:Zheng Shuyu
Advisor:Zhang Xu
