Donnie PEI's “Olympic Calling” and the People's Grassroots Movement in the Origin, Evolution, and Impact of “Olympic Education” in China, 1992–2022

At the precise moment that the world's supreme Olympic authority, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), places its “Olympic Host Contract” before the host city's signing dignitaries assembled for the storied occasion, a commitment is made by the city's Olympic Games organizers (OCOG) to embrace and project what are referred to as Olympic Education initiatives. What exactly does that mean?If “education” means imparting knowledge or learning, then “Olympic Education” would rationally be just that, learning about “matters Olympic.” One gets a first clue on the nature of Olympic Education, expressed in what is referred to as “Olympism,” when reading the stock message enunciated in the IOC's Olympic Charter: “Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.”1 Though often belittled by anti-Olympic activists in their attacks on the Olympic Movement being a political, commercial, or amoral form of exploitation by the franchised over the disenfranchised of the world, that core IOC Olympic Charter philosophic statement has surrounded a history of some 125 years duration into which billions of dollars have been invested since the modern Olympic Games first evolved in the creative mind of their founder, the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin.Coubertin, to whom history has credited for bringing the idea of a modern Olympic Movement to fruition, as he indeed did at the Paris Sorbonne Conference in late June 1894, was chiefly motivated by how such a movement might be valuable to the youth of the world who faced a future laden with cultural bigotry, hateful fears, competitive economic circumstances, and problematic political hegemonies, each often resulting in disastrous armed mortal conflicts. As a youth who witnessed at close perspective the unfortunate consequences for his country's suffering following the Franco-Prussian War in the early 1870s, and further, as an impressionable young man “making his way in life” during the late nineteenth century peace movement, Coubertin envisioned his Olympic enterprise, first and foremost, as a vessel filled to its brim with positive human life values, the practice of which would lead its participants to contribute to a better world in which to exist; not a perfect world, he had no illusions, but one made better by striving for peace, engaging in brotherhood, understanding of others, tolerance and respect for differences, and fair play in life and sport. The magnet or attraction for bringing youth together to learn and experience such values was the prospect of athletic competition set against the lens of basic cultural considerations of harmony, irrespective of ideological, religious, political, economic or social intrusions.What the IOC seeks in its host city contract obligations, then, are efforts organized at placing the teaching of Olympic values before a receptive audience. What better audience in both size and character exists anywhere in the world than that found in the schoolrooms and play spaces of Chinese primary education! Donnie PEI recognized this fact early on and set out on a mission to bring the Olympic message to China's youth. He started his campaign in Beijing. Never, in any other historical Olympic moment, has an Olympic host city contract regarding Olympic Education been approached and implemented to the heights achieved by China for its Olympic Games, celebrated first in 2008 and, most recently, in 2022. And what better entry impetus than that emanating from the people themselves, a grassroots movement, rather than a formal government-imposed action. The instigator of the grassroots movement toward sustained widespread Olympic Education in China was undoubtedly Donnie PEI. Before PEI's 2001 initiative, nothing of the sort existed.PEI's pathway to Olympic Education in China does not begin in the People's Republic, but rather in Canada at Western University in the Province of Ontario. Western University is an old and distinguished institution, its origin dating to 1878, almost a century and a half ago.2 It is presently one of the major teaching and research-intensive universities in North America, if not in the world. In late 1991, it was to Western's Faculty of Graduate Studies that a young thirty-one-year-old graduate of the Beijing Normal College applied to pursue a master's degree in kinesiology. That Chinese student, PEI Dongguang, a ten-year veteran schoolteacher of physical education at both the secondary school and college levels in China, was ultimately accepted by Western in 1992.3 Less than a year later, Beijing submitted its first bid to host an Olympic Games—in that particular case, the IOC eventually awarded the 2000 Games to Sydney, Australia.Among academics in China, in terms of both longevity and prominence, PEI Dongguang, known throughout China and the greater Olympic world as simply Donnie PEI, has registered a career-spanning sustainment of fascination and involvement with the Olympics and its fundamental credo (Olympism) expressed in what has become known as a set of Olympic values. It is in the substantive investment of Pierre de Coubertin's set of Olympic values that places the Olympic Movement apart from all other sports organizations and their associated mega sports events. In fact, and despite at times blistering critiques by critical, primarily Westen academics intent on devaluing the modern Olympic Movement and its missions, the value considerations noted above are the backbone of the generally positive image that surrounds the Olympic phenomenon today, a character quality that is embraced in modern times by multitudes of young aspiring athletes the world over and, not surprisingly, by a host of international commercial purveyors of goods and services.4Dongguang “Donnie” PEI was born in Beijing on April 7, 1960, hardly more than a decade following the establishment of the post–World War II People's Republic of China under the leadership of Chairman Mao and his sustained experience with the ideology of communism. Dongguang was the third of five children born to his parents, his father Guan and his mother Qi (née Ying Qi). At the time of his birth, PEI's father was an administrative official at one of China's most prestigious institutions of higher learning, Beijing's Tsinghua University. Along with literally millions of Chinese citizens during the challenging years of Mao's Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), PEI family members were separated and dispatched to perform “people's duties” in both urban and rural contexts. Father PEI, though remaining in Beijing employed by his university, was removed from his important administrative position and assigned to the institution's facility service staff as a “sanitation worker” (plumber). Mother PEI was sent to Sichuan Province where she toiled in a factory. Young Dongguang's two older siblings were consigned to farm labors, his brother in northeastern China's remote Heilongjiang Province, his sister in the Yanqing mountain area near Beijing. For most of Chairman Mao's imposed Cultural Revolution, Dongguang and his two younger twin brothers lived with their father and grandmother on the campus of Tsinghua University.5 In late 1976, the family reunited in Beijing, father PEI being restored to his former university administrative position.6Young PEI Dongguang was a good student. He prepared dedicatedly for the national college entrance examinations, passing them on his first attempt. He was also a good athlete, a normal prerequisite for envisioning a career as a teacher of physical education. He matriculated at the Beijing Normal College in 1978, where he studied physical education, graduating in 1982. He subsequently secured a position as a physical education teacher at the Kangzhuang Secondary School located in the same Yanqing mountain area where his sister toiled during the Cultural Revolution. He spent five years at the Kangzhuang School.In 1987, he became a physical education teacher at the Beijing Agricultural College in Beijing. It was following a five-year tenure at the Agricultural College that he commenced a quest to study abroad for a master's degree in physical education, a discipline that was rapidly abandoning the term “physical education” in favor of a more science-oriented title, “kinesiology” (literally, the study of movement).7Donnie PEI arrived on the Western University campus in the early autumn of 1992. In his graduate studies and thesis supervisor's wildest imagination, he never would have predicted how this young man's life would eventually impact a greater number of human beings, arguably, than the collective impact of his some fifty other graduate students at Western over the past half century. Immersing himself in his new environment, PEI completed six required graduate courses and then launched into the research that ended with the successful defense of his master's thesis in early December 1994, followed by his official Western University graduation in June 1995.8 PEI's tenure at Western coincided exactly with the early energetic growth of the world's first Centre for Olympic Studies, established at Western in March 1989, a center that rapidly became nationally and globally recognized.9 It was this rich academic Olympic environment, coupled with the fact that PEI's country had just mounted a bid to host the Olympic Games scheduled for 2000, that motivated and inspired him to adopt the study of the Olympics as his own mission. This he did; he became fixated on “matters Olympic.” And one fundamental point became cemented in his mind: PEI believed that Coubertin's original vision for an Olympic Movement, superior to any other consideration, expressed a credo aimed at contributing to a better world in which to live in good health and harmony. This was indeed a noble prescription for a world that, even then, in the late nineteenth century, was rapidly shrinking toward globalization, the distinct evidence of which surrounds our daily lives in these times.When PEI arrived at the Capital Institute of Physical Education in Beijing in the late summer of 1996, most Chinese citizens had little understanding of the modern Olympic Movement, except insofar as the fact that the Olympic Games were a mega-event in which gold, silver, and bronze medals were pursued at the world's highest levels of sports performance and competition. Beyond medals and competition, there was little known about the historic or philosophic nature of the Olympic phenomenon, neither in the daily conversations of the vast majority of Chinese citizens nor taught in the nation's public schools—no history of the Olympics, no philosophy of “Olympism,” nothing about Olympic values embraced by human beings living together in disturbingly challenging times on a planet with alarmingly shrinking boundaries of separation and seclusion. Realizing this, PEI began his Olympic Education journey. In 1999, he was chosen to attend Olympic-related seminars created at the International Olympic Academy in modern Olympia, Greece, organized and operated by the Hellenic National Olympic Committee. There, he furthered his already substantial knowledge of the sociocultural aspects of the Olympic Movement. After Beijing's bid for the 2000 Games failed in the close 1993 contest with Sydney, resolve was reestablished to bid once to host the Olympic this time for the 2008 In Beijing the 2008 The Olympics as a national mission to the of China's public mind. It was at this point that PEI became the in the at the time for an Olympic Education mission at the grassroots for the Chinese PEI, the moment, applied for and was from the IOC's Olympic to to and the IOC's Olympic Studies to research on Olympic sociocultural and to the Capital PEI that he a public an to begin his Olympic mission. 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In early set out to the Olympic Education in Beijing some six years following the close of the 2008 for completed and in and study each of the original Olympic Education with of who have studied the sustainment or of the Games their from the and have generally the of the Olympic Education in at each school at the of the 2008 Games had and to its the Olympic Education sustainment in Beijing 2008 was a life” with the in of the Olympic Games, in Beijing and its mountain a contract with the a to the of Olympism Olympic In point of fact, the was on to the Beijing of Education, resulting in and then, Donnie PEI at Capital University was on his way to his of an Olympic Studies with administrative a research and an Olympic Education He was also to in In the to the Olympic Games, the of Education its 2008 Olympic Education PEI and his Capital University to the had in the to the 2008 PEI the with and school parents, and students the city of Beijing. once he was a attraction in the this time being as China's father of Olympic and School also their physical and academic in Olympic Education, from in the Games of 2008 to the nation's on the of the Games of 2022. the established in with its first of an Olympic of Olympic Games and sports PEI and his Capital University established a Education Academy for and secondary with the primary intent of on the China following the 2008 Games, indeed a faced by all Olympic Education the world, that of such from public education once the Games the of Olympic Education the same area of faced by other problematic of the Capital University Olympic Education an of Olympic Games at Beijing's in what be an PEI, Capital and Chinese education and to Capital University on the Olympic Games in Province of Beijing, a more than investment in a new to be Capital University of Physical Education and International Olympic Though he to at PEI was and accepted a to the to an of a journey. in life does one have an impact on as has Donnie PEI. more than any other he be the Father of Olympic Education in all Olympic Education in the world in to Beijing It to have been the such in that has the of sustainment in a that sustainment the in this research its

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