Beijing residents are preparing for the 2008 Olympics by learning to smile like a Westerner.
Olympic organizers have adopted "smile" as the motto for volunteers to portray China as hospitable, the China Daily reports.
Classes on how to flash a smile are already being held for Olympic volunteers, most of them local university students.
"At first, I thought you might find it difficult to smile after you became tired," one volunteer said. "But I later realized if you don't treat smiling as a work assignment, but as something normal. You may find it very easy to smile all the time."
Because the Chinese are generally a very serious lot, they aren't accustomed to grinning at strangers.
In fact, Chinese literature depicts people who wear a smile or smile for no reason as silly or harboring an ulterior motive.
