Olympics primes job market for foreigners

As the clock ticks down to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, more and more foreigners specializing in winter sports are finding employment in China.

Keith Dorin is one of them. The Canadian is an ice maker for the sport of curling, a job that requires highly technical and specialized skills.

In order to maintain the curling sheet for the 2017-18 Chinese National Curling Championship in Xining, Qinghai province, Dorin needed to level the sheet with equipment before and after each game.

He had to skip his Christmas holiday but is devoted to his task.

Dorin came to China for the first time last year, and secured a job helping to make ice for events. He is also working to train local ice makers, and believes their future has great prospects, especially with the popularity of winter sports surging in China.

Hans Wuthrich, another Canadian ice maker working in China, believes that curling is a sport for the masses, rather than only for the privileged. The sport has huge potential to grow in China, he said.

“You see, more than 1.2 million people regularly play curling among the over 30 million people in Canada. How could this be a privileged sport?”

It costs only C$160 ($130) a year on average for each amateur player in Wuthrich’s hometown of Winnipeg.

“I can see a huge potential for promoting curling in China, and I think it will be an affordable and popular sport here soon. And also, more foreigners specialized in curling or other winter sports will find jobs here in the future.”