Olympic legacy will be accessibility for all

The 2022 Winter Games help host city create more opportunities for its disabled residents in work and play, Xing Wen reports in Zhangjiakou, Hebei.

An array of stuffed chipmunks, snowflake-shaped handmade soaps, embroidered ornaments and other cultural and creative products populate the shelves of Chen Suqin's workshop.

Next to the shelves are some physically impaired men and women who are occupied in packing the stuffed toys into boxes.

Chen, the workshop's founder, is a 58-year-old local woman with visual handicap.

She used to run a studio which produced and sold handmade shoe pads, embroidered slippers and straw-braided coasters in Chongli district of Zhangjiakou, Hebei province.

Since 2015, when Beijing won its bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, Zhangjiakou, as a co-host city, has attracted a growing number of tourists, who flock to its ski resorts and historical sites.

"The tourists who came to my studio told me that they wanted to buy handicrafts with local cultural characteristics," she recalls. "That inspired me to gather a group of people with disabilities and establish a workshop where they could make cultural and creative products based on the uniqueness of Chongli."

In April 2018, Chongli district released its mascot named Chong Chong, which is inspired by the chipmunk-a vibrant, nimble member of the squirrel family.

Supported by Chongli district's disabled persons' federation, Chen's workshop won the chance to produce plush toys of the new mascot. More than 40 local people with disabilities make up the workforce, and sew the outer fabrics, fill the toys with cotton and other stuffing materials, and then package them.

"As some of the Winter Games venues clustered in Chongli, the district drew global attention. The sales of the chipmunk mascot have been rapidly rising in recent weeks," says Chen.

Chen's workshop is located in the Warm Home for the Disabled in Chongli district, which serves as a center that provides handicraft training sessions, rehabilitation programs and entertainment activities to local people with physical challenges.

So far, 32 demonstration activity centers under the name of Warm Home for the Disabled have been opened across Zhangjiakou for the well-being of the area's physically and mentally challenged people.

Huo Zhenling, 52, a retired Paralympian, started work in such an activity center in Zhangjiakou's Qiaoxi district in a bid to inspire disabled people's participation in sports in 2020.

She often gathers physically challenged residents of nearby communities to experience curling matches, and sometimes organizes games of darts for those with hearing impairment.

"I'm glad to see that many of the participants get to enjoy the attraction of sports," Huo says, adding that the group has more than 60 regular attendees.

Huo herself contracted poliomyelitis at a young age, which resulted in the loss of movement in her lower limbs. She is a former Paralympic weightlifter, and was a bronze medal winner at the Athens Games in 2004. She later turned her attention to curling and, in 2017, entered the Hebei provincial wheelchair curling team.

She says she's confident about the future development of wheelchair curling in China.

"I want to use my personal experience as a Paralympian for more than two decades to help people with physical challenges embrace their best selves and enjoy a happier life," she adds.

In recent years, Zhangjiakou has grasped the opportunity of co-hosting the 2022 Paralympics to push forward its development of a barrier-free environment, improve its volunteer services for disabled citizens and encourage disabled people to participate in winter sports, according to the municipal federation of disabled persons.

Zhangjiakou has undertaken the construction of barrier-free facilities to improve access at hotels, hospitals, schools, banks, supermarkets and other public places. Twenty supervision teams, with more than half of the total 155 team members being physically challenged, have been organized to inspect if these barrier-free facilities are accessible enough.

The city has also increased the frequency of selecting athletes with physical challenges for winter sports and increased the subsidies for these athletes and their coaches.

Cheng Wenjing, a Zhangjiakou native, is a physically challenged athlete who specializes in Alpine skiing. Her left arm was damaged in an accident when she was young, yet she still remains passionate about sports.

She was selected to be a professional Alpine skier in 2016 and became the torchbearer who lit up the snowflake-shaped cauldron in the Zhangjiakou competition zone on March 4.

"Alpine skiing has changed me a lot, turning me from an ordinary person to someone who had the glorious moment of being a torchbearer at the Paralympics," she says.