Thursday, June 5, 2008

China has an official cheer

China has created an official cheer for the Olympics so that their fans can cheer on the Chinese athletes properly. Now I have been to many a sporting event and many college teams and professional teams have cheers that are pretty standard for their team. Many times these cheers are simple shouting the name of the school or team across the stadium while the cheerleaders lead, yes, I know this sounds stupid and in many ways it is, but it is also a way of cheering and is simplistic enough to learn. But this Chinese cheer has really complex movements and such. Ok, so they are not that complex, but still why does a whole nation need an official cheer? The Chinese government is even sending cheerleaders out to teach the people how to do this new cheer and people into the schools to teach the children this cheer. This is just pure government gone overboard and a bit scary too that people's freedom of expression (cheering) has to be regulated. I know there are so many other things about the Olympics this summer I could be focusing on, human rights abuses in China, issues over the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the fact that the Chinese are going to be restricting visas and even if you have tickets to the Olympics does not guarantee you a entrance to the country and that any protests must be government approved, but the fact that they have created an official national cheer just seemed over the top to me.

1 comment:

Little Merry Sunshine said...

Maybe the Chinese government believes that the new cheer will give everyone something fun to focus on and take away their heartbreak from losing their only kids in the recent earthquake.