In his blog for the Seattle Times Daniel Beekman raises the extremely valid point that in all of the hype about the Olympic Games this summer, the Paralympic Games have been almost completely overlooked. It’s difficult to remember any news stories relating to them; have any paralympians withdrawn for health reasons or joined in Team Darfur? Did Steven Spielberg’s original contract include ceremonies for the Paralympics?
Hands up, this dereliction is true of the Beijing Olympics Blog too, until now.
Beekman interestingly points out that:
“People with disabilities in China often struggle to overcome prejudice and discrimination. In Chinese, as in English, the language of disability is revealing. The most common word for ‘disability’ in Mandarin is canji, meaning deficient or deformed.”
The Beijing Paralympics will be the largest ever, and their importance to the disabled population of the host country may never have been greater.
[...] Han Hong & Yu Quan have opted to feature paralympic stories – as has been discussed here before disability is not a particularly open topic in China. A cynic may suggest this is for commercial reasons, but Bob would never be so [...]
[...] this is not the end of the events in Beijing, or the Beijing Olympics Blog – the 2008 Paralympics will kick off in a matter of days (unfortunately Bob’s 30 day visa does not allow for this to [...]