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"Let's Olympic," FAW-VOLKSWAGEN Olympic Park in Shanghai

First there were the “Watercube” and the “Bird’s Nest”; but have you ever heard of a “Bird’s Cube”?

A huge tent, borrowing the shape of the National Aquatics Centre and the design of the National Stadium (the 2008 Olympic Stadium in Beijing), was erected on the pitch at the Hongkou Soccer Stadium in Shanghai on November 30 to December 4, 2007, to bring the Beijing 2008 Olympic experience to fans in this East China metropolis.

The eight experiences available at the FAW-VOLKSWAGEN Olympic Park gave the public a chance to learn more about the Olympic Games. With “Let’s Olympic” as its slogan, the Olympic Park presented 28 Olympic sports, and gave every visitor a chance to try them.

The symbols and instructions of different sports were posted outside each exhibit or “experiencing house,” including archery, shooting, basketball, cycling and handball.

Shanghai is a co-host city (football preliminaries) of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, but it is also the hometown of many well-known athletes, such as Liu Xiang, the gold medal winner of men’s 110-metre hurdles at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and Yao Ming, a new star in the NBA in the United States.

In the swimming experiencing exhibit, a piece of unusual exercise equipment drew people’s attention, because it allowed them to lie on their stomachs and swim as if in mid-air.

“Introduced into China in 2001, this modern equipment has been used for swimmer training. This is the first time it has been seen in public here,” a staff member of the organizer said.

Many visitors were eager to have a try, and they did. Initially invented for swimming athletes’ training, there is great chance that one day this interesting training equipment will be found in gyms and made available to the public.

Games with which people were not so familiar, such as rowing, archery, shooting and hockey, attracted many to experience them for the first time. If participants got a pass in the games, they could get a stamp on their ticket and exchange it for Olympic souvenirs on leaving the exhibition. 

Apart from the experiencing games, there were also exhibitions introducing the history of Olympic Games, who is who in the Olympic movement and some tips about how to be a courteous fan when watching matches.

During the five-day Olympic Park even, about 20,000 people participated each day.

Sponsored by FAW-VOLKSWAGEN, the Olympic Park had already been staged in Changchun. According to the organizer, it will soon tour to Beijing and Chengdu.