Events and Ceremonial Volunteers

Ever since their first appearance at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, it has become commonplace to have ceremonial hostesses or Miss Etiquettes serve at events. Businesses and government departments have quickly adopted the practice of recruiting young women in feminine uniforms to appear at award presentations and official gatherings. The arrangement is now a major way to publicize and promote many big events or conventions. For instance, the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress now deploy ceremonial hostesses to promote their annual meetings, prompting news headlines such as “Posture Training for the Miss Etiquette at the Two Meetings: Keep a Piece of Paper in Between Your Knees” (liyi xiaojie beizhan lianghui, shuangtui jia baizhi budiu dishang) (People.cn 2015).Footnote ¹ The use of ceremonial hostesses has also spilled over to academic events. It is now common to see a team of female college students serve at academic conference openings or seminars. One of the most ironic situations I encountered was when I was greeted by a group of female volunteers serving as ceremonial hostesses at a university seminar at which I was talking about the gender politics of the ceremonial hostess!

It is quite natural to subsume the phenomenon of ceremonial volunteers under an explanatory framework that sees the national deployment of feminine beauty and bodily labor as resonating with the dominant gender ideology and consumer culture, one that commodifies and sexualizes women's bodies, youth, and beauty. Women's bodies have become a large part of the beauty industry, consumerist culture, and male hegemony in today's China (M. Yang Reference Yang and Yang1999). Consuming women through sex to satisfy men's so-called natural sexual desires has become part of the larger market discourse of male entrepreneurial ability and economic success (Zheng Reference Zheng2009). The marketplace has also become a site to display gender and class inequalities through the saleswomen's bodily and cosmetic practices directly linked to the class standing of malls and the consumption of luxury brands (Hanser Reference Hanser2008). Meanwhile the state plays a role in shifting gender ideology from the Maoist position, which focuses on a woman's labor, to one that focuses on a woman's body, cosmetics, and consumption (J. Yang Reference Yang2011). Susan Brownell (Reference Brownell1998), for instance, argues that the global and fashionable Chinese models on the international stage are symbolic of a Chinese state that is more patriarchal, cosmopolitan, and open-minded. In engaging these analyses, this essay shows how the figure of ceremonial volunteers complicates the gender politics described above. The ceremonial hostess is as much about showcasing a new type of woman citizen subject who is militarized and dedicated as it is about the hostess as a target of consumption. Despite the dominant understanding that the Chinese state is no longer meddling with the image of women, the state is now involving itself by juxtaposing diverse traditions of gender practices and discourses to appeal to different participants and audiences.

At the same time, my analysis engages with the recent finding of volunteering as a new form of urban governance in China, which shapes individuals into modern, responsible, and self-enterprising citizen subjects (Fleischer Reference Fleischer2011; Hoffman Reference Hoffman2013). Gladys Chong (Reference Chong2011) has argued that the Chinese state took the opportunity of the Beijing Olympic Volunteer Program to popularize the ideals of a grand China and internalize certain emotions and behaviors among its citizens. My analysis shows that volunteering is a new governing strategy the Chinese state uses to exert productive control on its citizens. But I found that volunteer governance is not simply a type of Foucauldian “technology of power,” which uses productive, not repressive, means to shape citizens’ bodies and behaviors. Instead, ceremonial volunteering training places a heavy emphasis on bodily discipline and strict physical lessons. It is not as decentralized and soft as often imagined. Ceremonial volunteers are required to embody, perform, and negotiate the competing discourses of China as a grand historical nation and as a modern and upwardly mobile society with socialist characteristics. The gendering of contemporary state governance puts together “diverse gendered discourses” to appeal to young women (Balogun Reference Balogun2012). In the following sections, I discuss the process of selecting ceremonial volunteers, the details of etiquette training classes, and ceremonial volunteers’ participation in the national military parade using both the media representations of these processes and in-depth interviews eliciting the volunteers’ individual experiences.

I interviewed college women who have only served at mega national or international event settings as “volunteers.” These female volunteers are recruited directly from colleges through the school's “communist youth league,” which is a major Communist Party–sponsored social organization that specializes in youth work and political mobilization. The league arranges leaves for selected volunteers so that they can skip classes to enroll in training and serve at the games. A working committee, managed directly by the games organizing committee, arranges instructors of dance, music, art, and language to provide a forty-day training for the volunteers. Ceremonial volunteers do not receive any payment, only some meal subsidies. Every ceremonial volunteer is awarded an honor certificate after the event.

Data used in this essay comes from online and newspaper reports between 2009 and 2012 about ceremonial volunteers in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 People's Republic of China Sixtieth Anniversary, and the 2011 Guangzhou Asian Games. In 2009, I visited the etiquette lesson of a professional modeling class in the Tianjin Polytechnic University, China, and interviewed two ceremonial volunteers responsible for holding the placards of participating countries at the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony. In 2010, I interviewed an additional two students from the China Women's University in Beijing who had participated in the parade for the sixtieth founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China. In 2012 and 2013, I interviewed thirteen ceremonial volunteers from a university in Guangzhou, China, who served at the Guangzhou Asian Games of 2010. I have also interviewed three main coaches involved in giving the training.

The Selection of Ceremonial Volunteers

To qualify as a ceremonial volunteer, one must go through a rigorous selection process. According to media reports, as many as 5,000 high-school and college students came to the interview site in Beijing, but only 337 got in. The basic requirements were being slender and having a “nice” face, age between eighteen and twenty-four, height between 1.65 and 1.78 meters, and being only from either Beijing and Shanghai. Right before the mega events, there were rumors that the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee had a stringent aesthetic standard that dictated a specified ratio between nasal width and face length, and between mouth width and eye length. Later, a government press conference explained, “Selected women are about 168 to 170 millimeters tall, and have a friendly and amicable character, upright and balanced body figure, elegant manners, good political awareness, a spirit of giving and team work, and the will to discipline and take everyone's interests into account. The last requirement was basic English speaking and listening ability” (China.com.cn 2008). Officials explained that the body and personality specifications were meant to make sure that the selected volunteers possess “youthful, energetic, healthy and aspiring qualities.” In turn, these qualities would “demonstrate the good images and ambience of Chinese people's civility, etiquette, friendliness, unity and hospitality” (China.com.cn 2008). The reality was that tall and beautiful women did not automatically get in. According to my interviews, most women got in through recommendations by their college communist youth leagues, which means their political records and performance were reviewed to be sure that neither these women nor their family members had participated in any protest movements considered subversive to the government. The recruitment procedures for both the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 and the Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010 were similar.

Those selected underwent rigorous, forty-day, closed-door training, including essential body movement protocols and strenuous etiquette sessions. The training camp was held in July and August when these young women had summer holidays and in a venue large enough to accommodate the entire group. Trainees followed a strict schedule: They woke up at six in the morning and had nine consecutive class sessions every day. These sessions covered various topics, from English oral conversation to music education to physical exercises, including smiling, posture training, walking, and standing. Some of the training sessions equipped the trainees for on-stage jobs, such as holding national placards for athlete representatives, holding medals or flowers at the award presentations, and leading VIPs into the venues. Other sessions were more about conveying a proper, cosmopolitan, and friendly image of China. Most of the sessions were widely reported and mass broadcasted on television and the Internet as a series of promotional previews of the Games.

Etiquette Exercises and Military Lessons

First, the smiling lesson. An “amiable and natural” smile is the foremost important feature of a ceremonial volunteer. The volunteer's main role is to make sure that guests always see smiling faces around. But such a smile can only come from assiduous practice. Not only must the gentle smile come across as natural, it has to live up to certain standards, specifically the quantification of exposing four to six teeth. This smiling standard, according to etiquette coaches, is to make sure that the volunteers’ mouths lift upward but never open too wide. The requirement for the number of exposed teeth is to ensure the overall aesthetics of smiling. To attain this most desirable smile, the young women are taught to bite on a chopstick for hours while practicing smiling. They also giggle to themselves in front of the mirror, then to one another, face to face, correcting each other in terms of the number of teeth exposed (Lan Reference Lan2008). A ceremonial volunteer who served in the 2008 Beijing Olympics told me that her perfect smile was hard earned at the cost of flowing saliva and trembling facial muscles for hours during and after training sessions. Another volunteer who served at the Guangzhou Asian Games three years later, however, said that the smile training required for them was less harsh and that the required number of exposed teeth was not as strict as in the Beijing Olympics. But both batches of trainees said they could now turn on a “natural and lasting smile” spontaneously without having to feel happy.

Second, the standing lesson. Standing posture matters a great deal in order for ceremonial volunteers to look upright and spirited, therefore effectively conveying the officially expected qualities of being “healthy and aspiring” (China.com.cn 2008). Media reports have covered how the trainee has to stand with her chin slightly in, a book placed on her head, and a sheet of thin paper held between her knees to attain the most ideal standing posture. Neither the book nor the sheet of paper is supposed to fall, and this is to be achieved while standing in high heels (Lan Reference Lan2008). The purpose of using a sheet of paper for standing training is to make sure trainees keep their knees as close together as possible. Ceremonial volunteers told me that in the actual training one sees lots of papers falling and people not maintaining balance all the time. Young women born with very thin legs or legs bending outwards find it particularly hard to hold the paper in between their knees. The practice lasts for about one hour and may take place indoors or outdoors. Those who served at the Beijing Olympics said there were no bathroom or water breaks during the two hours of standing training. They also mentioned scenes of fellow classmates fainting after standing for too long due to poor blood circulation. However, fainting itself, they said, is not the most dreaded part; the worst is that the coach would secretly record the number of fainting episodes, which could serve as justification for that trainee's ultimate ousting from the program.

Third, the ballet body shaping (balei xingti) lesson. This is a form of posture and movement training using elements of ballet dance. In this class, trainees put on tight bodysuits and practice walking tip-toed, jumping, and stretching. The purpose of this training, according to my interviews with coaches, is to enable trainees to improve their muscle tone, sense of musical rhythm, aesthetic movement, coordination, and flexibility. All the young women I interviewed liked this session the most because it was much more fun than other posture exercises. Getting to learn a bit of ballet, which is expensive if taken at a private school, is also a bonus.

Fourthly, weight carrying. This is the most practical part of the entire training course, as ceremonial volunteers have to endure long hours of standing while holding heavy placards and trays of medals and flowers in award presentations. Each day, trainees hold metal trays, each loaded with six 500-milliliter bottles of water, for an hour. They have to do so while keeping their bodies steady. Meanwhile, constant attention has to be given to their walking pace. In the actual ceremonies, volunteers must ensure that the trays do not hit the award presenters. The specifications for how to move while carrying the trays are determined down to the centimeter. A trainee must make sure there is a fist's distance between her arm and her waist, while the thumb must not stick out beyond the tray when the tray is being carried. My interviewees complained about this part of the training because it was very tough and their arm muscles quivered badly after a day of training.

Last, military training. Toward the final phase of training, all ceremonial volunteers are sent to a military barrack in the suburbs to undergo a week (for the Guangzhou Asian Games) or two weeks (for the Beijing Olympics) of intensive training. At these trainings, trainees wake up at five every morning, make their beds according to a specific standard, and start the day with jogging. The major training elements of the day are military-style standing (zhan junzi) and marching (ti zhengbu). Military marching involves raising arms and kicking legs at right angles in a synchronized manner. When asked why military training is necessary, both the coaches and trainees believed it is to ensure obedience and improve team building. Many of them also talked of marching as improving the team's overall morale.

Candidates have to practice all of the bodily movement protocols repeatedly during the forty days of training camp until they are performing them naturally, skillfully, and gracefully. If they are successful, they will be officially accepted as ceremonial volunteers. In general, all the exercises described are meant to help trainees attain a spirited, upright, and elegant composure. Some do not make it through all the sessions and eventually drop out. In the Beijing Olympics, some received the heart-breaking news that they were disqualified one day before the games’ opening ceremony and could only serve at the much less watched Paralympics held afterwards. In the Guangzhou Asian Games, all the selected trainees made it to serving at the games’ opening.

Reinvention of Traditional Etiquettes

Volunteers I interviewed said that their job is to demonstrate China as a “nation of etiquette” (liyi zhibang). By this phrase, they refer to a popular idiom of describing imperial China as a civilized nation in which people adhere to elaborate sets of Confucian ritual obligations, moral rules, and cultured behaviors. Interestingly, if one looks up the word liyi in a Chinese dictionary, its classical meaning has little to do with popular understandings of etiquette. The terms li and yi, instead, refer to systems of law and philosophy in ancient China, which govern social morality, hierarchy, proper behaviors, and social justice (see Baidu.com 2015). Philosophy scholars understand li as a site of propriety, ethical values, rules, and constraints that govern social order and cosmic process (Feng Reference Feng1985, 337–39). Cultural historian Angela Zito (Reference Zito, Zito and Barlow1995, 106) defines li as “finely differentiated practices that created a network of relationships within which situated subjectivities came into being.” Respecting one's subjective position and confirming the hierarchical relations of ruler, subject, father, mother, son, and daughter, for instance, were embodied practices of li. Similarly, Tani Barlow (Reference Barlow, Zito and Barlow1995, 260) refuses to see li as mere bodily qualities or practices, but rather as behavioral “protocols” that constitute naturalized, normative, and gendered relational subjects. Observing li is not just about practicing proper behaviors but also about acting in ways that maintain hierarchical relations such as that between mothers and sons. The staging of ceremonial volunteers to demonstrate the Confucian discourse of li is therefore a rather superficial process of translating and reinventing Chinese Confucian tradition. By calling a ceremonial volunteer “Miss Liyi,” the state links women's outlook and bodily practices to a past filled with civility and rituals. However, ceremonial volunteers do not actually recreate the subject positions of virtuous women or pious daughters-in-law that the late imperial discourse of li intended to prescribe within the kin structure.

Quite ironically, the modern reenactment of etiquette practices communicates rather distinct gender and class ideologies. The college background of all selected volunteers means that only young, educated, and unmarried women are selected because they are believed to be more flexible, more civilized, and more sexually proper. Their uniform of qipao—a modern invention of traditional dress for Chinese women (Chew Reference Chew2007)—as well as high heels and long hair prescribe that they move in a restrained and graceful manner. The training sessions in which they stand while keeping a piece of paper in between their legs is quite explicitly linked to proper feminine deportment and disciplined sexuality. The same goes for sitting training, which requires hostesses to close and bend their legs to the side to avoid potentially exposing their underwear.

While the majority of women liked the ballet body-shaping lesson and thought it was fun, the female coach I interviewed in Guangzhou said that it was intended to “fix the problem of tall girls giving others an impression of domination.” I did not get the chance to further inquire how ballet dancing could make women look less dominating. But the coach's words resonate with the ultimate mission of the etiquette lessons—to ensure that women walk, stand, and move to express a respectable femininity and proper sexuality associated with high-class standing and noble status. But even such a mission can be contested, as volunteers were also required to greet guests by bending their upper bodies while crossing their hands on the stomach, a posture some criticized as associated with the demeanor of household servants in premodern Chinese feudal families (Qin Reference Qin2008). Most interestingly, the training, which is based on ballet dancing, a Western art form, is articulated as helping trainees to attain the so-called “Oriental beauty” (dongfangmei), understood as a form of beauty related to mystery, charisma, and pride (see Baidu.com 2017).

In the end, the performance of ceremonial volunteers conveys conflicting meanings, not just etiquette-related and ceremonial. The ceremonial hostess is simultaneously classy and deferent, modern and Oriental. She highlights concepts of class distinctiveness, instead of equality among classes. Her performance conveys the image of a nation populated no longer by the working-class masses inspired by egalitarianism but by a group of manicured women ready to show off their class respectability. She perhaps reflects the moral and cultural character of the Chinese nation today—a rapidly modernizing country eager to reinvent traditional values and gender ideology to legitimize a national cultural identity (Yan and Santos Reference Yan and Santos2009). She also reveals the incongruence expressed in everyday life in Chinese society between the state narrative of upholding a proletariat dictatorship and the reality of a total embrace of wealth and status.

The female volunteers could not care less about such contradictions. Many value the training process as a way to equip themselves with etiquette knowledge and manners considered necessary in many high-ranking jobs or classy social occasions.

Ceremonial Volunteers in National Military Parades

The 2009 national military parade illustrates how the notion of etiquette is intermingled with communist party-state discourse and practices of the militarized body. As in previous national parades, the inspection of servicemen and military weapons emphasized the demonstration of military strength and the ideological outlook of the national army toward the international community. In Tiananmen Square in Beijing that day, Chinese soldiers saluted state leaders and demonstrated their adherence to military discipline by synching their movements. Their height, hair style, and the degree at which their head, neck, and eyes rotated fell into a neat pattern, without the slightest variance. Similar excellence was demonstrated at the parade by the militia women, who were selected from among qualified college-level women in Beijing. In uniform skirts and long boots, they showed the same exuberance as their male counterparts with a neat pace and consistent rhythm.

What was perhaps most eye-catching were the two captains of the marching team, Zhang Xiaofei and Zhao Na. These two women first served as ceremonial volunteers at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. After the games, they were specially selected to lead the militia women's team as captains in the grand military parade in 2009. Both women, standing at 1.78 meters and sweet-faced, were fresh Beijing university graduates who had majored in advertisement modeling and image design. News reports characterized their participation as leading “the female soldiers to go through Tiananmen Square ‘beautifully.’” (Global Times 2015). I did not get the chance to interview the two volunteers and was only able to review the extensive journalistic reports on them. Interestingly, related reports were largely the same and were probably scripted by the government-sponsored Xinhua news agency. They unanimously focused on the tough training process the two ceremonial volunteers went through, as the following excerpt shows:

News representations such as the above show that the ceremonial volunteer is not so much evaluated on the basis of her admirable smile or elegant postures, as she might be in the Olympic Games. In the military parade, she is evaluated on the basis of her level of perseverance in pushing through tough physical training and her ability to endure pain. Phrases like “sandbags,” “holding legs up,” or “kicking” present an image of the female body that is strong, even militant. The expression “I must consider myself a male soldier” reveals the identity and body after which the women volunteers modeled themselves. The male coach was so impressed with their toughness that he shed tears. Confirmation of the sought ideal came from the state party leaders after “the two ceremonial volunteers gracefully led the women militia team through the Tiananmen Rostrum,” and “honorably received inspection from the party state leaders and fellow citizens of the whole nation” (He Reference He2010).

Transforming the elegant ceremonial hostess into a militia team member is a smart state effort, strategically displayed in the national military parade. An official YouTube video version of the women's militia parade from 2009 continues to attract views today and has accumulated over 27,000 views over the years (see Xue Reference Xue2009). The hostesses-turned-militia-captains invited numerous media reports and public discussions on what the militia teams were responsible for and where they came from. Newspapers ran stories on how female university students and white-collar career women seized this parade opportunity to join the female militia. It was a marketing campaign filled with enthusiasm, fantasy, and marvels, all of which—via continuous reappearances in and rebroadcasts by the news, television, and Internet media—made the military parade and related state propaganda much more interesting to follow. Once attracted by scenes of young and beautiful women kicking sandbags, the audience began to appreciate the perseverance and adherence to strict discipline required for all military personnel. After witnessing the physical pain the girls have to go though, perhaps they also shared the pride these girls are said to possess. In the end, it is not only the images of women militia captains that stay in the minds of the audience, but also their militarized bodies and their will to serve the nation.

The emphasis on a strong and militarized body as emblematic of a patriotic mind and nationalist commitment is not a unique phenomenon. But placing such emphasis on women as the embodiment of these ideals is a unique part of Chinese modern history. The figure of the “iron maiden” was a state-engineered role model during the Maoist period of the 1960s to 1970s to encourage women to become physically strong and motivated to join the labor force in order to quicken the pace of national industrialization. In China, the quest for independent nationhood and modernity has been intertwined with the “woman question.”Footnote ² Although the status of women has been interpreted in anti-colonial struggles as a vital signifier of national progress and social modernization, the ways that status has been implemented are quite different in China and other Asian countries, such as India. Starting in the early 1920s, Chinese nationalist intellectuals considered many customary practices, such as arranged marriages, chastity, and bound feet, as signs of male dominance and cultural backwardness. They “identified women's oppression as symptomatic of a Confucian culture built on patriarchy” and hence considered encouraging women to participate as citizens in the public sphere a major means to uproot a Confucian feudalist culture (Seth Reference Seth2013, 284).

Accordingly, when the Chinese communist state under Mao Zedong came into power in 1949, it attempted to achieve national progress and cultural modernity by encouraging the use of female labor in economic production (Gilmartin Reference Gilmartin1995; Gilmartin et al. Reference Gilmartin, Hershatter, Rofel and White1994; Rofel Reference Rofel1999). The communist party-state invented the new subject position of “funu” after 1949 to promote the image of a woman citizen who is politically active and who places national collective interests above the interests of the family (Barlow Reference Barlow, Zito and Barlow1995). Healthy and strong, the communist funu entered into employment that had previously been considered men's work and opposed the “ritual etiquette of the feudal society” that subjected women to suffering (276). The iron maiden was therefore a communist mobilization campaign to promote women's employment, especially in heavy industries such as coal mining, transportation, fishing, and lumber production (Jin Reference Jin2006, 618). With slogans such as “women hold up half of the sky” and “times have changed—now men and women are the same,” women workers in the quasi-military production farms started to engage in physically demanding jobs. The campaign eventually set off a popular social movement at the everyday production level that challenged traditional gendered divisions of labor and promoted a lifestyle of militarized principles and discipline (622). Although it was flawed in that it made male attributes the yardstick of competence, the campaign also rejected many traditional gender stereotypes. Further, it fought against Confucian traditions, including the discourse of li, which prescribes that a proper woman's position is only within the boundaries of family. The campaign was revolutionary in that it promoted an anti-Confucian, tough, militarized, and empowering womanhood.

My informants might not share the zealously patriotic sentiment reported by Zhao Na and Zhang Xiaofei, and they were much more ambivalent when expressing patriotism. Nevertheless, they derived quite a lot of positive feelings from the militarized training. Feeling refreshed and stronger from the physical exercise, many of them did not consider the strict training excessive. Two of the trainees who joined the day-and-night training for the military parade in 2009 thought that the standing exercise was helpful in giving them better composure. To my surprise, many also rated the military training section positively, saying it brought forth a better team spirit. One informant, Sarah, said, “It is necessary to have the [military] training because we were too relaxed (sanman). The military standing, the slogan shouting, the marching, and the tidying exercises can help us to be more alert and serious.” Another informant added, “I know that some companies also use military training in staff training to ensure the staff's obedience. I personally do not think it is necessary but I think it can help us to be more focused.”

The staging of ceremonial hostesses juxtaposes the opposing traditions of gender discourses and practices. It grooms the elegant and deferent woman by reinterpreting the Confucian tradition of li while reasserting the militarized and empowered woman of the Maoist mobilization campaign at the same time. It promotes a sexually conservative image of women while also recalling a history of state mobilization that stresses women's liberation from the family domestic sphere. Most importantly, it appeals to college women who like both the classy feeling of putting on nicely tailored qipao on the grand stage of major events and the excitement of going through group military training. Both experiences are not ordinary encounters but extraordinary processes that only a select group can experience.

The juxtaposition of manner and military training defies the simplistic understanding of volunteer training as merely a form of Foucauldian technology of power that uses soft or productive techniques to control citizens’ bodies. Military training is highly demanding, physical, and disciplinary. It can also be imposing and repressive. By putting ceremonial hostesses in the national military parade, the state has found an effective articulation of the traditional discourse of etiquette with the state practice of converting civilian bodies to military and nation-serving principles. Increasingly, etiquette training is understood in terms of not only grooming nice manners but also discipline and dedication. Zhang Xiaofei and Zhao Na's effectiveness as leaders in the militia women's parade lies not in their elegant manners, but in the way their military training has proven their perseverance, obedience, and ability to attain “the demeanor of a socialist person, which is making oneself as a vehicle of the collective interests, “a model of an exemplary citizen who stands in complete subordination in front of the leadership” (Roubal Reference Roubal2003, 7). Indeed, the discourse of etiquette in today's China is increasingly articulated with bodily discipline and an expression of the collective.

Lastly, the more I asked about the bodily disciplines required of ceremonial volunteers, the more I found that they are part and parcel of a much more general disciplinary form required of young Chinese citizens in many other sports, events, or everyday activities. One of these activities is the military training camp compulsory for college freshmen at many universities (see figure 2).Footnote ³ Another is mass calisthenics, which is a daily sport exercise many Chinese students practice in schools.

Figure 2. Ceremonial volunteers pose for a group photo at the end of the military training camp before the Guangzhou Asian Games. Photo courtesy of Miss Wang.

Etiquette Performance and Sports

The thirteen young women I interviewed said that the most memorable moment for them serving in the games was maintaining the prescribed standing postures on stage and putting on the standard smile while holding the trays on which many metal medals were placed (as many as a dozen of them in the case of group presentations) for as long as an hour. In a tight qipao and high heels, it was a moment of high pressure for them. All took very seriously the idea that the condition of the team is equated with the nation's image. They were anxious that someone might deviate from the ideal posture or fall out of line. They believed that if the line were to fall apart, it would hurt the nation's reputation. Every single ceremonial volunteer I spoke with repeated, “I cannot make the nation lose face” (wo buneng gei guojia diulian). They also linked their unified movements to upholding a sense of national virtue and pride. Much like national athletes, ceremonial volunteers truly embody the status, shame, and reputation of the nation.

Indeed, from the training to being “on stage,” ceremonial volunteers are not supposed to create a self that stands out as unique. Their training is not provided for candidates to appear in a beauty pageant, but to demonstrate a set of professionally prescribed movements collectively. Their aim is never to compete to be the most beautiful, or to draw attention to one's best presentation. As a team in ceremonial service, however, volunteers perform much more than just an attentive presence. In particular, they turn the daily bodily practice of everyday life—smiling, walking, and standing—into a performance. They make their smiles amiable, their standing spirited, and their walk graceful. In the broader context of sport games, ceremonial service is in many ways part and parcel of the display of the national body, in which the individual bodies of young athletes and citizens are linked with the national character and building of the nation (Tomlinson and Young Reference Tomlinson, Young, Tomlinson and Young2006).

Sport events celebrating the body and physical culture have long been driven by political and ideological motives, in both Western and non-Western societies (Tomlinson and Young Reference Tomlinson, Young, Tomlinson and Young2006, 1). Gymnastics, for instance, was a well-known representation of the Aryan racial spirit in the form of mass rallies to express military discipline and the popular endorsement of the dictatorship in Nazi Germany. Gymnastics in Eastern Europe were a major means with which the new socialist nations linked body-training sports and young people to the nineteenth-century revolutionary movements of democracy, equality, and national renewal. Symbolizing unity, collectivity, and equality, sports of the masses such as gymnastics and mass calisthenics have always played a major role in the building of the new socialist culture in the Soviet Union. Petr Roubal (Reference Roubal2003, 14), who studied gymnastics and the mass of display of bodies under communism as an ideal symbolic system, said, “the strong, beautiful and young bodies of the gymnastic displays under communism were testimony to the strength, beauty and youth of communist society in its entirety.”

The sport of body training has an equally important role in the history of the People's Republic of China. During the Maoist period, shows of mass calisthenics were accompanied by slogans such as “uphold the revolutionary torch,” “the People's Commune is great,” and “expressing people's passion for and aspirations on behalf of the nation” (Chen, Lu, and Li Reference Chen, Lu and Li1990, 631). Gymnastics were a popular exercise promoted in many state-owned enterprises and in the People's Commune to express the positive feeling of community and social solidarity, class struggle, and the power of the proletariat (Roubal Reference Roubal2003, 4). The “broadcast gymnastics” (guangbo ticao) were an ingenious Maoist invention that deployed broadcasted music to mobilize the masses into collective exercise, with “the aim of training people's physical health for the national economy, development and defense” (610). Lu (Reference Lu2011) calls the broadcast gymnastics a “national collective ritual” because they were the most effective means of enabling an immediate—albeit ephemeral—feeling of equality among citizens across differences of sex, status, and class in a public space. In today's China, when young students move and dance in mass calisthenics expressing themes of great aspiration, their coordinated movements demonstrate “an example par excellence of the synchronization of the rhythms of the social body” (Brownell Reference Brownell1995, 146).

In this historical context of sport events, ceremonial volunteers’ bodily performance is not just a form of service, but part of a bigger training and performance to strengthen the nationalist spirits of collectivity and uniformity. Through a series of mass-mediated recruitments, trainings, and displays of ceremonial volunteers’ performances, the state includes the younger generation in the making of the ideal national social body, while effectively synchronizing their bodies with the collective one. Etiquette classes and volunteering programs are a more effective and appealing way to actualize the national body ideal.