福建师大外国语学院2001级1班   陈建宇

It is well-known that China is a nation of modesty. In fact, we do not deny that and often behave ourselves on the world stage. And this time, the characteristics of modesty has been shown well again at the Athens Olympic Games.

Before the opening ceremony of the Games, the world believed firmly that U.S.A. and Russia would still play the leading roles and no one foresaw that China would be a dark horse, who would perch atop the medal tally for a long time. Even Yuan Weimin, head of Chinese Olympic delegation, admitted that it was quite difficult to win more gold medals at the Athens Olympic Games than we did at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, and what could be expected was to strive for as many gold medals as we could while it was really hard to win more than 20 gold medals, when asked the prospects about China’s performance in Athens. In contrast, Russian seemed to be more confident when they alleged to win enough gold medals to lead in the medal tally, overwhelming U.S.A. and China. At that moment, I’d rather believe that it was a strategy in order to relieve the pressure on the athletes and to cool down the swelling expectation of our people. It has been proved to be a wise choice and policy to say like that. We gained more happiness after our athletes wrote another myth in Greece.

During the Games, Chinese modesty was exhibited more. The celebration of our athletes is modest. We can see it from the smile of Du Li, from the grin of Guo Jingjing, from the smirk of Zhu Qinan, and others. If there is some audacious action, I believe it is the jumping up to the reward podium, performed by Liu Xiang, the champion of the men’s 110m hurdles. He, whose success halted the medal drought of Chinese man athletes on the track in the Olympic history, had no reason not to be excited when the whole world were cheering for his perfect performance. And what I appreciate most was the modest strategy exhibited by Luo Xuejuan, who diverted the attention of the public to the opponents by only ranking seventh in semifinal but triumphed in the women’s 100m breaststroke final by surprise and won a precious gold for China. All in all, our lively athletes are so modest that they have earned not only the medals, but also the respect and friendship of rivals, of spectators, and of the world.

After the Games, we do not feel self-satisfied; instead, we keep quite sane. We say we are lucky enough this time, and that luck cannot be with someone all the time so we need more practice, hard and scientific, and try to win more gold medals in the future.

That is our national characteristics--modesty. In my opinion, modesty is a gold medal we can and should keep forever at the Olympic Games, and even on the world stage.