Fill two empty four-liter milk jugs with water, put some red or blue coloring in them and leave them outside in the Canadian winter. In just one night, they will quickly freeze and become the most important equipment for children's curling games.

 The game began. Several children crouched on the ice. One of them, the thrower, bent over, holding his breath as he adjusted the angle of the milk jug “stone”. With his hard push, the “stone” immediately flew out and slid in a straight line towards the bullseye of the “base camp”. As it got closer to the target, the thrower leapt up from the ice and the children cheered.

Nine-year-old Zhao Yiming was among the cheering crowd, having just immigrated to Canada from China with her parents in 2005, a year before this “game”, which left the very first impression of ice and snow sports on her.

At that time, she did not expect that she would be standing in the ice and snow sports arena at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as an on-site MC more than a decade later.

Zhao Yiming is doing training on event announcing in August, 2021

Zhao Yiming, a Chinese Canadian, is in the second year of her postgraduate program in Broadcasting and Anchoring School, Communication University of China (CUC). Chosen as an on-site, MC for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, she is mainly responsible for reporting the aerial skills and moguls of the players in Section C of Genting Snow Park.

Encountering Ice and Snow Sports

Alberta, a province of Canada, is covered with ice and snow for six-month long throughout a year.

Many memories generated there are related with winter. As Zhao recalled, they arrived in Canada in October when the Christmas was just around the corner. However, her parents could not afford a present for her because they both were university students at that time. Luckily, there was an organization committed to helping new immigrants prepare gifts for children from low-income families and parents could pick some in the factory situated in the southeastern Canada.

In a time when GPS and mobile phones were not that common, Zhao’s parents set off simply with a star-marked map. Without a private car, they braved the heavy snow and took a bus, bumping along the way for a couple of hours to the factory to bring back Barbie dolls and toy bears for their daughter.

The hardships of living in a foreign country can be imagined. Zhao Yiming and her parents rented a small flat of less than 50 square meters for six years, which barely consisted of two bedrooms, a living room and a cramped bathroom. To land better jobs, Zhao’s parents decided to get Canadian diplomas. While studying in universities, they did part-time jobs in the laboratory. To save time and money, they bought a large and cheap bag of frozen shrimps and a pack of mixed peas, corn kernels and carrots from the supermarket to feed their child.

 For a long time, the only English words Zhao could utter were “Yes” and “No.” But that didn't stop her from playing ice and snow sports with her friends, which helped her temporarily forget the difficulties of living abroad. The vast ice land in Alberta was a free playground for them.

 What they often played was a game called “real-person curling”. One sat on a round-shaped sleigh, acting as the “curling stone”，and the other pushed the “stone” like a “thrower”. Sometimes, the “stone” staggered and ran into another “stone”; sometimes, the “stone” slid down the high hillside, the wind roared past his or her ears with snow particles. They also played ice hockey. But unlike those competitive boys, Zhao preferred to sweep gently and skated leisurely.

When in university, they played snowball fights in winter. At first, this activity was only among friends, but it later became an inclusive one in which anybody could join and take their shots. Flying snowballs made a white mist in the air, making a “thudding” sound when hitting on people. Zhao remembered, once when she was squatting on the ground and kneading snowballs, a guy squeezed the snow into her collar when passing by. She grabbed the snow and rushed after him immediately, hitting him back.

Looking back on the past moments, she still could feel the coldness and joy  rushing at her.

Returning to China and Studying Broadcasting

It was by chance that Zhao came back to China to study broadcasting. In Canada, Zhao completed her undergraduate studies in statistics and environmental science because it was easy to find a job. Those days were struggling time for her. “I always scraped through the math tests. The passing score was 50, and I made 54. Worse still, letters later replaced figures in the math courses. From worse to the worst, the computer programming not long dominated the class contents.”

What she liked is dubbing. She could dub either like a late-night radio host, a news broadcaster, or an advertisement voice-over. In Zhao's senior year, her mother happened upon a dubber recruitment from her Chinese friend’s studio in Canada. She asked Zhao casually, “since you like dubbing, why not give it a shot?” The family of three then drove to the studio. After the audition, the interviewer told Zhao’s parents, “Your child has a gift in dubbing.”

Hence, after graduating from University of Toronto, she made up her mind to study broadcasting in China. After a series of seemingly endless applying, reviewing, testing and interviewing, as well as the “14+7”-day quarantine in a hotel in Guangzhou, Zhao finally accomplished her goal by sitting in the No. 48 teaching building of the Communication University of China as a graduate student in the Master and Doctor of Arts in Broadcasting class of 2020.

Zhao hadn’t been back to China for five years before she was enrolled in CUC. She was astonished by numerous “new things” in China. “Things developed so fast. There are so many things I haven’t heard of!” She didn’t know how to order delivery on the phone, how to pay by cellphone, and she could not make out the Chinese cultural references. She seems to go back to when she just moved to Canada, facing a completely new environment and a quickly-updating vocabulary system, which she had to learn step by step.

Yet Zhao adapted to it quickly. During her leisure time, she played Honor of Kings, a popular MOBA game for the iOS and Android mobile platforms in mainland China, took photos under the red walls of the Palace Museum and used the internet catchphrases such as “Juejuezi(one to express exclamation) and “Wuyuzi”(a cute way to mean speechless), just like other Chinese university students. And then she learned that Chinese announcers and MCs were wanted for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Zhao is skiing at the Beijing Nanshan Ski Resort in January 2022.

Dream comes true

The MC of the Winter Olympics is responsible for interacting with the audience when the camera turns to them or during the break, doing some fillers like sharing relevant information about the sports with the watchers behind the screen, making some interviews and prize games with the on-site spectators, or introducing the next part smoothly and naturally.

Beijing, the first city ever to host Summer and Winter Olympics and Paralympics, brought pleasant surprises and chances to Zhao. She signed up for the MC post. By virtue of her excellent Chinese and English bilingual broadcasting, she successfully passed the online screening stage and was selected for the second stage of interview, which consisted of stadium announcing and event commentary.

Even in the waiting zone, she kept practicing professional terms which are hard to pronounce like “Backside 540”and “Forward flip 540” again and again. Before getting onto the stage, she took a deep breath. Nevertheless, faced with judges and the crowd, she was so nervous and made a slip of tongue. When she made a glimpse of the judges, she felt a stern look cast at her, and she said to herself, “Now I’m done.”

She received no news after this audition. “Maybe I do fail this time.” She was a bit frustrated, but over a second cheered herself up by thinking that it was at least a meaningful experience, There’s no regret since I’ve tried my best.”

Unexpectedly, five months later, she got a message on her mobile phone, “The last round of selection will be held at Room 721 of the department building this Sunday. Applicants who have taken the previous interviews please be prepared.” A week after the final evaluation, Zhao was invited into a WeChat Group. By that time, it gradually came to her, “Seems it finally comes true.”

After a half-year-long selection from October 2020 to May 2021, Zhao finally became one of the MCs of 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Meanwhile, she is the only foreign student among all the announcers and MCs from the Broadcasting and Anchoring School, CUC.

Since January 29, 2022, all the announcers and MCs including Zhao were under the closed-loop management, preparing heart and soul for the events during their “Winter Olympics Period.”

Zhao works at the Genting Snow Park in Chongli District of Zhangjiakou, where freestyle skiing and snowboarding are held. She is now fully prepared either as an MC to warm up the atmosphere or as a “substitute” for the Chinese announcer “at any time”.

For her, participating in the Winter Olympics is like a piece of snowflake integrating into the boundless winter world. “It is an unparalleled honor for me to broadcast this grand event in Chinese to every corner of the world.”

Author: Xu Qian

Proofreader: Wang Chenyan, Ma Jianli, Liu Ying

Editor：Zheng Shuyu

Advisor:Zhang Xu