Rooting (maybe) for Chinese Olympic success

The Chinese are proud to be hosting this year’s Summer Olympics in Beijing, and they certainly want the home team to perform well. But perhaps not too well.

There was an interesting cultural note in a recent Washington Post article about Chinese rooting interests in these Olympics. It seems that while the Chinese are proud of their nation’s growing might on the world stage, some of them think it’s a bit too soon – and too showy – for their athletes to emerge with the most medals this year. It’s typical for the Chinese to be self deprecating, and this reminded me of a Chinese-born woman who used to work with my wife. She was horrified at the thought of filling out a performance review for herself at work because it would be unseemly to be too self congratulatory.

Apparently, that attitude even extends to the Olympics. Here is the telling anecdote from Francesco Sisci in his Post story:

The Olympic Games aren’t just a show for me; they’re a family affair, and one that’s turning out quite differently from what I’d expected. I’m Italian, but I’ve lived in China for about 20 years. My wife is Chinese — and very patriotic — and my two daughters grew up here…So you can imagine my state of mind before these games. I thought we all had to be very patriotic — that is, pro-China.

But when my mother announced before the games that she hoped that China would win the most medals, my wife, Luoyan, looked at me as if my mother had said something inappropriate. “Well,” she replied, “I hope that China comes in second and America will be first.”

She’s not alone. There’s a sizable undercurrent of hope here that the United States will top the medal rankings…The subtle reluctance to win may also be related to China’s being host of the games; by coming in first, China would look like a showoff. It could also be part of an idea that sport stands for economic and political might, and China knows that it certainly can’t challenge American supremacy, at least not yet.

“It’s not our moment. It would be too ambitious and too unreal to be the first in the Olympics now,” said a friend of mine at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the country’s premier think tank. “Many people, even among the leaders, think like this.”

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