Beijing authority published English songs for The Beijing Winter Olympics

As the Beijing Olympics Game is around the corner, the English-language promotional song “Join Us in Winter” has been released on the official Weibo account of Xinhua News Agency. However, the song has not been well received in English-language circles on the Internet and has received many negative comments.

The English-language promotional song “Join Us in Winter,” sung by zeng Shunxi, the music group Tianfu Incident, and Lu Binqi, a reporter for China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, was posted online on Jan. 24 on xinhua’s Weibo account.

On Weibo, the music video has received more than 32,000 retweets, 14,000 likes and thousands of comments since it was posted by the Xinhua News Agency account. The comments were mostly positive and similar, ranging from “looking forward to the Winter Olympics” to praising the singer.

Yu Bo, a Musician from China who lives in California’s Bay Area, said the song has elements of pop music and rap: “This method of using music that is more acceptable to young people to promote the song is actually something that The Chinese authorities have used frequently in recent years.”

A music video for “Join Us in Winter” was also posted on the YouTube account of Xinhua News Agency and the Twitter account of the English-language Global Times, a Chinese newspaper. But on YouTube and Twitter, the music video received a cool reception, with less than 2,000 views at the time of going to press and a number of sarcastic comments.

Regarding this phenomenon, Afterwave expressed his opinion that the song would not be well received in English circles: “It’s interesting that even though the song is in English, it is played far more inside the wall than outside the wall. This kind of big publicity stuff is also very much for people inside China. In fact, people in normal countries know very well what the CPC and the Chinese government have done.”

In the song, the singer sings in English: “Come, join us in winter, we are waiting. Win or lose, we’ll cheer for you.” Christina Scott, deputy director general and minister at the British Embassy in Beijing, commented on Twitter: “‘ Come and join us’ but they don’t allow direct commercial flights, they have to stay at home for three weeks after arrival, and Olympic tickets are not on sale. My advice to UK winter sports fans is: stay on your sofa.” The tweet, which lampooned Chinese authorities’ policies in the name of epidemic prevention in the run-up to the Winter Olympics, was retweeted by the Official Twitter account of the British Embassy in Beijing