Our Olympic Dream Lives On – Interview with Chiufai

I can actually remember a lot about the London 2012 Olympics. On July 6th, 2005, the International Olympic Committee announced that London had won the right to hold the Olympic Games. I was on my way to work that day, passing Trafalgar Square. The square was crowded with people, looking at a huge screen in the centre. As soon as the news was announced, there were loud cheers from the sea of people on the square. Sadly, the next day, July the 7th, London was bombed by terrorists. This turned everything upside down, Londoners were depressed. One of my colleagues was caught up in the explosion and killed. To date I’ve been haunted by my memories of these events. I feel so emotional whenever I recall them.

I live in Newham, London is my home and I wanted to introduce Newham to the world. In 2011, one year before the Olympics, I had already been involved in volunteering at the Excel Centre, where every Sunday afternoon I’d go there with other volunteers to register those who applied to become Olympic volunteers; over the period of 14 months I was there, I must have met 100 to 200 thousand people coming to apply for to be Olympic volunteers. Every three months Lord Coe would come down to the Excel Centre to see us and hold a small gathering. There we were introduced to many of the previous British medal winners. I made my Olympic volunteer application there and luckily I was accepted.

As an Olympic volunteer I was first sent to take up duties at the North Greenwich Arena, and later to Stratford as direction guide outside the underground station, giving visitors information about Newham. I remember one day, there was a woman of Chinese appearance approaching me, “Hello,” she said, “can you speak Cantonese?” I said “Yes I can. How may I help you?”She then said “Oh. Brilliant! You see, the food in the Olympic village is not that great. Where can I find a Chinese restaurant nearby?” I said, “Yes you can find one over there. You walk across the street, there’s one called the Wah Kill (Chinese Overseas).”  I later realised she was a coach for the Hong Kong swimming team. She thanked me for that and gave me a badge and said, “Don’t forget to come to see me when you next come to Hong Kong!”

There were three red telephone boxes outside Stratford station, where all sorts of information for the Olympic events was displayed. For two weeks I manned the telephone boxes,  wearing a T-shirt with the word “Information” on it. Since I belonged to Newham Ramblers, my duty included taking visitors to walk through the channel to either North Greenwich Arena or Victoria Park. On the day when the opening ceremony was staged, I was actually walking a group of visitors from Mile End. Somewhere along way when the opening ceremony started, we stopped to watch it in a local pub. There were five of us in the group, one American, one German, two eastern Europeans and myself. But as an Olympic volunteer, I had been inside the stadium to see the final rehearsal of the opening ceremony, where we were told not leak what we saw before the official show.

Talking about the Olympic legacy, from a personal point of view, it got me involved in even more volunteering roles in the months and years to come. Before I became an Olympic volunteer, I had already been a volunteer for three organisations. I was with Newham Volunteers, the Ramblers Association (Newham Ramblers), the Newham Chinese Association and  Oxfam. The Greater London Council put all Olympic volunteers into a group called Team London for a project called London Ambassadors and to date I’ve continued volunteering with them. Whenever there is a big event in London, I’d be involved in them in some small way. I’ve been involved in the International Rugby Tournament in 2015, the International Track and Field Tournament and International Paralympic World Championships in 2017 and Para Swimming World Championships in 2019. I also volunteer for the London Marathon, the Bike Ride and the Big Swim in Newham every year.

Furthermore, since 2012, I’ve been volunteering for a rugby club called Saracens, in addition to the Shakespeare Theatre, the Charles Dickens Museum and Kew Gardens, where my role is to entertain the visiting school children. I’ve been involved also in the Kenwood House and the Banqueting House in Central London. But the Banqueting House is now closed because of Covid 19, so I am now with Tower of London. I’m also with a night-walk held annually in the Olympic Park by Cancer UK to raise funds for the charity. My volunteering role with Newham continues. The Newham volunteer group is now called Active Newham, which involves people of different ethnic backgrounds in sport-related activities.

When the Olympics & Paralympics finished, Newham Council held a big party in Stratford Town Hall to celebrate its success as a host borough. A photograph taken at the party was later published in the Newham magazine. I was in the photo, together with the then Newham Mayor. With me in the photo was also a black woman, an Indian man and a white man from eastern Europe. The photo was printed in the Newham magazine with the words “Thank you to Heroes of the London 2012”. My neighbour was so surprised that when he saw it he called to congratulate me the next morning.

So all these are my memories about the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games. On a personal level, there’s really quite a bit of legacy from the Games. Of course, of the constructions we now see today, some of them had been planned anyway, with or without the coming of the Olympics but then the Olympics had pushed things forward and made it even bigger.