Denver’s Chinese-Americans are eagerly awaiting this year’s Summer Olympics in China. An estimated 16,000 Chinese live in Colorado, many from Taiwan or mainland China. The Games of the XXIX Olympiad will be held August 8-24 in Beijing and two other Chinese cities. Despite calls for boycotts and Free Tibet protests, Denver-area students, educators and news people express pride and curiosity about the world’s best-known and oldest international sporting event.

“We are so excited,” says Mei Chen of Denver’s nonprofit Great Wall Chinese Academy. “Some families are trying to get tickets to Beijing to attend the event, and some students say it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We made donations to the hosting committee in Beijing, and some of our students and parents will be volunteers at the Olympics in Beijing.”

As China grows and expands economically, career opportunities for those with language and cultural fluency will be in demand, explains Chen, a first-generation immigrant from China.

Tsung-Tai Lu, president of the 60-member Chinese Student Association at the University of Colorado in Denver, will be watching the Olympics. His student group helps Chinese students and scholars, who come to study and work at the university, get settled in Denver and learn more about the Denver community and American culture.

Originally from Taiwan, Lu is a big baseball fan.

“Taiwan has one of the best baseball teams in Asia and they will be at the Olympics,” he says. “I’ll watch every baseball game in the Olympics and support our national team.”

Christina Guo, publisher of the metro-area magazine Asian Avenue, plans a special cover issue dedicated to the Olympics for Asian Pacific American Heritage month in May.

“Our readers are comprised of the entire Asian community as well as many non-Asians, not only Chinese. The Olympics have been in South Korea and Japan before, so this isn’t the first time Asia has hosted the Olympics. But we are still very happy it is happening in Asia. And it puts the world’s focus on that part of the world,” Guo comments.

Her parents moved from China to Taiwan in 1949, and she and her husband were raised in Taiwan before immigrating to Denver in 1987.

Mainland China represents more than 1 billion people and a 5,000-year history of great technical innovations and inventions such as the compass, gunpowder, paper, printing, and astronomy discovered centuries before Europe. The one-time “Sleeping Giant of Asia” has awakened in the 21st century and taken center stage with expanding global trade, technology and military and economic power.

As an educator at the Chinese school in Denver, Chen sees many benefits to this summer’s Olympics.

“China gets a chance to show the whole world what she has achieved, and all the progress made,” Chen says. “China is eager to tell the world how she is changing for the better and has reduced poverty, created a highly educated generation, and developed global influence.”

Editor’s note: The 8th Annual Colorado Dragon Boat Festival at Sloan's Lake, celebrating Asian culture, is July 26-27. Having grown into one of Denver’s largest cultural celebrations over the past seven years, the festival’s first executive director, Alisa Zimmerman, will oversee this year’s event. For more information, see www.cdbf.org.