[Angie Wong /Retired Roller Skating Athlete]

Angie Wong : 

My name is Angie. I was a Roller skating athlete for many years. I started it when I was seven and stopped when I was eighteen. You can also think of us as founders of the Roller skating sport. After retiring from the sport, I continued to engage in activities related to Roller skating. Recently I’ve been engaging a lot of foreign athletes coming to China for marathon events.

Did you sleep well?

[Mini Wong/Roller Skating Athlete]

Mini Wong：I did, but they couldn’t fall asleep.

Angie: Really?

Mini: I am Mini. I am a Hong Kong Roller speed skating athlete. After seeing my sister skating when I was three and a half years old, I wanted to learn it too. When I was younger, I did both figure skating and speed skating, but I began to focus on the training for speed skating when I turned fifteen. It’s simply because I really like this sport. That’s why I persist. I don’t feel that it’s exhausting because it’s something that I like. I’m going to find my own way. It is difficult but everything you do is difficult. Isn’t studying difficult? It is. Isn’t finding a job difficult? It is...It just depends how much you want to do it.

Pablo Felipe (Roller Skating Athlete): The mentality in Columbia, for example, is always you prepare for win. Yeah, and you win, and win, and win. So, you train, and train, and train, and train, and train hard. The Asian athletes is more relaxing

A male:Starting half past six, athletes are taking their place at the starting line.

Angie: The development of Roller skating is actually very mature in mainland China. When these overseas friends come and visit us, they are very surprised to find that there are so many people playing this sport. A lot of schools in the mainland have started to offer skating training. Some of them even have their own school teams, then there are city teams. An international friend told us that he visited a school last week where he saw 6000 athletes and 6000 kids wearing rollerblades!

This kind of international event is hosted by local government and we help with the execution. It shows that they have big trust in us.  

(This is) number 30.  

So, from the athletes’ daily needs to their travels. Any issues that they run into will be reported to us and we will help sort it out. When we first started, maybe only four athletes trusted me. And at the last race we had before the Covid,, there were 72 athletes coming from all over the world. Some of them were even coming all the way from Africa.

Pedestrian: How do you say it? Zoula! Zoula! (Let’s go! Let’s go!)

Mini：She (my older sister) prefers to be the one doing work behind the scenes instead of asking you to do this or do that at your face

Pablo Felipe：It’s my first time here (in China). The people is so warm. Mini and Angie told us about everything

Mini:So this is actually a very old house in China and you can see from these old paintings.

Mini: They’re so happy! Look at his face！Like this! And this! And this!

A male: Come dine, over here please, Old Shanghai.

Mini:When it comes to culture and food, a lot of Europeans are more reluctant about eating Asian food.

Pablo Felipe:Before I come here, I thought the food is too bad. What you see on TV, it does not look like that. But when I arrived, I really think, yeah, the food is good.

Angie: Many friends (from overseas) still think that China is still a farming society, not knowing that it has already developed into such a prosperous and affluent place. This is what we need to pass on creating more opportunities for them to travel outside of their own country or creating more opportunities for them to have more exchanges with each other. The reason I keep bringing more and more people here is because when they return to their home country, they can tell others this is actually what China is like. It is different from what you’ve imagined.

Pablo Felipe: When I come back to Columbia, I can show my parents, my sisters, my family and my friends that the best place in China is Shanghai.