China Daily
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Let there be light

Editor’s note:

Based on the complete implementation of the five criteria for selecting a BOCOG Olympic torchbearer, Lenovo Group along with China Daily has launched the “Lenovo-sponsored Olympic torchbearer nominee selection among foreigners living in China” program to seek out people who embody the Olympic spirit of constant exploration and striving for excellence and who have made contributions to the building of a harmonious society.

Starting on September 7 and concluding at the end of October this year, this campaign will select eight foreign torchbearers, providing foreigners living in China with an opportunity to participate in the Beijing 2008 Olympic.

In order to attract more public attention to the selection campaign and better spread the spirit of the Olympic movement, The Olympian is highlighting some of the candidates’ stories during the selection process.

Dominic Penaloza
Nationality: Canadian
Birthday: 1970/02/12

I am the founder and CEO of WorldFriends.tv, a website with over 1.3 million members from 200 different countries. I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada and I am ethnically Chinese-Filipino. I have lived in Shanghai, Toronto, Hong Kong, Manila, Sydney, Jakarta, Nanning and Xiamen.

If I am given the honor of being an Olympic torchbearer, every step I run will be with the passionate Olympic spirit, representing both foreigners and Chinese in China who are internationally-minded and want to “be global”. Each step will represent striving for a harmonious society, and for international friendship.

I love China. I first arrived in China at the age of 23 in 1993 and lived in Nanning and Xiamen. I did not speak and Chinese when I arrived and I found that learning Mandarin is like snowboarding. It’s very easy to get started, but difficult to master and easy to have an accident. My most embarrassing moment in China was when I was making a public speech at an inauguration ceremony and I said that the company’s warehouse was full of chun huo (idiots), when I was supposed to say cun huo,(inventory). Everybody in the crowd laughed-except me.

My Mandarin rapidly improved and I began making my own flashcards to help me remember my vocabulary. Language exchange became a lot of fun; never in my life had I felt like a rock star until I went to Chinese people so eager to learn English and “be global” especially at the English Corner in Nanning University where every Thursday night we would gather to shyly practice English conversation in the dark. In early 2000, the hunger to learn English that I witnessed in China inspired me to start my own business called HungryForWords.com, enabling Chinese and Japanese speakers to get their own personalized flashcards via email, providing language education free of charge.

Seven years later, I am living in Shanghai and still running the same company, which has launched my new website to promote international friendship. Every day, thousand of members are “meeting their neighbors in the global village”, for example, Japanese exchanging travel notes with Koreans, or Spaniards doing language exchange with Chinese.