Beijing school grooms girls to award Olympic medals

For 16-year-old Li Miaomiao, sore feet from wearing high heels for hours at a time and an achy jaw from constant smiling are worth the chance of hanging a medal around an athlete’s neck come the Beijing Olympics.

The willow-thin high school student is one of 34 Chinese girls “training” to be an Olympic medal presenter at the Beijing Foreign Affairs School (BFAS), one of several state-run colleges charged with producing camera-friendly girls for awards ceremonies.

When not balancing books on her head to improve posture during medal presentation rehearsal sessions, Li and her class-mates study English, cultural training and look at pictures of past medal presenters and their uniforms.

Most important for Li, though, is the smile.

“I practice at home, and smile to the mirror for an hour every day,” Li said, beaming radiantly in a red waistcoat and high heels on the sidelines of a class.

“I want to present my smile to the world, and let them know that the Chinese smile is the warmest.”

Beijing has earmarked about $40 billion to put on its best face for the Games, with Olympic venues accounting for only a small percentage. Along with big-ticket items like subways and roads, Beijing has spent billions more on a beautification campaign that has seen whole neighbourhoods razed and thousands of residents displaced.

Not unlike the more than 800,000 Chinese who have applied for only 100,000 Olympic volunteer positions on offer, the competition to become one of the coveted 380-odd medal presenters is cut-throat.

The 34 hopefuls at BFAS are up against specialist dance schools, universities and possibly winners of regional contests across the country, Li said. Applicants are also up against biological constraints.

“Girls must be at least 1.63 metres tall ... There are no real weight restrictions but they mustn’t be too heavy,” Li said, citing selection criteria from the Cultural Activities Department of Beijing’s Organising Committee for the Games.

While Zhao Dongming, the department’s director, said the guidelines were so applicants could “fit into the uniforms being provided”, rights groups have cried discrimination.

Further exacting standards are demanded from BFAS’s students, some of whom attended an intensive summer training camp in Beijing’s northern outskirts, sleeping in dormitories and rising early to take classes in etiquette and deportment.

Apart from common-sense communication tips, such as looking directly at someone while talking to them, students are also informed the perfect smile consists of “only showing the eight top teeth,” according to 17-year-old student Li Bogeng, who wants to make cocktails for IOC officials.

For Li Miaomiao, who stands at 1.73 metres and unblinkingly rattles off her vital statistics when asked, the perfect smile comes naturally — after having practised for hours in the mirror.

Being 16, Li is technically ineligible from becoming an Olympic presenter, where guidelines call for 18-25 year-old university students. But she rates herself a contender, anyway.

“I’m very confident. I think I have an 80 percent chance,” she said, flashing a winning smile. Reuters