Several recent interviews of People's Daily Online have paid much attention to the legacies of Beijing Olympics when the event is still one year away.

Self-confidence: when you try your best

"I hope after the Olympics Chinese people would walk away from the experience with a very positive feeling about themselves, saying 'we did our best, we have a lot of self pride from that even if there was something not so great, instead of being left waiting for the affirmation of the world,'" said Mitch Robinson, an American who has been teaching at Tsinghua University, in his video interview about the competition in the Olympics on August 7.

Beijing has won praises for its progress on preparing for the event. Jacques Rogge, President of International Olympic Committee, has repeated his satisfaction with Beijing's performance. But criticism will always be there in any case. And the next to receive the relay baton will always want to do a better job. Self-confident means the feeling of success, either personal or national, from inside yourself.

Yang Yuan, a Chinese math major student at Peking University who also joined the discussion, agreed with him on the issue of the balance between "showing one's best" and "doing one's best". He believes the perseverance and determination that China has shown in bidding and preparing for the Olympics are the most treasured value for the prospect of future success.

Yang argued that it was a kind of "short-term" achievement to "show your best and be the best", if it can be achieved, while the efforts and the positive impact of "doing the best" last for a much longer time and can be made in any situation.

Voluntarism

In another discussion on July 30 about Olympic volunteers, the project of the transformation of the legacy of Olympics voluntarism has been briefed by Mr. Yan Cheng, who is responsible for Olympic volunteers among college students. It is expected that the wide participation into the Olympics as volunteers will promote the idea of voluntarism in the whole community. The project will have support from the UN-Beijing cooperative program on volunteers.

Yang Yuan who was also in that discussion hoped that the personal experience of being a volunteer would help develop one's perseverance, determination and commitment to teamwork.

People legacy

Dr. Alex Carre, Professor of Olympic Sports of the University of British Columbia, Canada and former Vice-president of Canadian Olympic Organizing Committee, suggested in his video interview on Humanistic Olympics with Peoples' Daily Online that the most important legacy of the Beijing Olympics be "people legacy". He believed that a positive, harmonious legacy for people would create a "ripple effect", like throwing a pebble in a pond, which would have good impact on the whole world.

By People's Daily Online