The Olympic flag began its China tour yesterday as it arrived in Yanqing District, northwest Beijing, after the flag handover from the just-concluded Pyeongchang Games in South Korea.

“The Winter Olympic Games now enters Beijing time as the Pyeongchang Games ended on Feb. 25,” said Han Zirong, secretary general of the Beijing 2022 Organizing Committee, at the launch ceremony. “China will beef up its construction of venues and other facilities to present an environmentally-friendly, sharing, opening and clean Olympics.”

Han urged Chinese young people to know more about the Olympics and spread its spirit.

75 kilometers northwest of central Beijing, Yanqing, one of the three sites for the 2022 Games, will hold the Games in four years. It will host Alpine skiing as well as the luge and bobsleigh, plus the Olympic Village and a media center.

Over 400 local students and 100 sports fans as well as three national athletes who returned from the Pyeongchang Games gathered to welcome the Olympic flag in Yanqing.

Jia Zongyang, the silver medal winner of freestyle skiing, said he wished 2022 could come sooner so that he could compete again this time in his home country.

On the same day, a Winter Olympics-themed exhibition kicked off in Yanqing to showcase the charm of the Winter Olympics and the ice-and-snow culture in Beijing. An exhibition of this kind will be held annually till 2022.

Beijing, which hosted the Summer Games in 2008, will become the first city in the world to have hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympics. All of the venues for the Beijing Winter Olympics will be completed by the end of 2019 and will be ready for test events in 2020.