2011 SU Update: Young Reporters trying to “Make a Difference”

City view of the Shenzhen Metropolis (C. Pierre/FISU)

SHENZHEN – Nicaraguan Alejandro Bendaña, a participant of the FISU-AIPS Young Reporters’ Program, writes about the problems a young journalist encounters at a big international multi-sport event that is spread out in a Metropolitan city where not only transportation, but also language can be a challenge and how he cunningly copes with them.

 “Start Here, Make a Difference” is the main slogan of the Universiade 2011 here in Shenzhen, which I interpret as an inspirational way of pursuing your dreams and highlighting yourself when competing.

In the FISU-AIPS Young Reporters’ Program, we have a similar attitude, which as Alan Abrahamson stated in his recent article, it’s inspired by our passion for sports. I share this opinion partially, because quoting the great Salvador Allende, “Being young and not having revolutionary principles is contradictory even biologically”.

It is our passion that has kept this group of journalists fighting against logic which would only permit us to cover one sport per day. Transportation was vital for to fulfill our different objectives.

As soon as we got here we had the bus, which should be the official way to move around Shenzhen, but the constant stops at the Futian Transportation Centre kept everyone suffocated and just annoyed by the fact it is a place where we’ve lost so many hours waiting for buses to arrive. “I hate that depressing place”, mentioned one of them.

Trying the “metro” was the “Latinos” next shot. Three young Latin American reporters tried to make their way through the subway, but their constant struggle with Chinese maps, pitying the poor volunteers that tried to lead us all the way until we met our destination, and the fact that it took two hours to reach the Athletes’ Village and two hours back to the hotel made this alternative quite erasable.

As any other “Godfather”, it was our Italian colleague who discovered a fast but difficult method to “get away with it” in this newly modern city. We stood up as poor foreign journalists who desperately needed to reach our destination until we managed to peer-pressure the poor volunteer to get us a free cab. It was tiring due to their lack of English vocabulary, but it was definitely worth it.

This “process” led us to the discovery that this important event has also been monitored by the different Taxi companies in the city, which signed an agreement of permitting the Media get “Free-taxi” by signing a form. The mission is now identifying which companies are really available in this, and which don’t.

All these different methods of transportation have taken us to one single objective that we’ve accomplished tremendously.

Acting as swimmers, playing as a “dumb-foreigner”, or even just running from the volunteers to reach “press-prohibited” spots, we’ve been able to be in the center of the action having access to a great number of exclusives which would only be permitted who those who are part of each delegation.

I admit that some of us felt flattered because we got to sit right next to the Universiade swimming pool because apparently, we were seen as swimmers.

These constant “confusions” made us capable of actually participating in more than one event, which is actually still a dream for me, but we were just too good to let our strategy continue making the poor volunteers think we were actually sportsmen.

It is our constant struggle to reach new borders and find another “impossible mission” what leads us as young journalist to a great success here in China. Not only we have passion for sports, but we have this ache of adventure. We are inChina. We have traveled half across the world. We are young journalists trying to make this trip a true adventure that leads us through the rest of our lives. So this is a “yes” FISU, this is a yes AIPS, this is a “yes” Shenzhen, this is a “yes” world. We will “start here”, and we are really confident that we will “make a difference”.

(Source: Alex Bendaña, AIPS Young Journalist/Nicaragua)