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| A woman has her picture taken in front of a Beijing 2022 installation near the closed loop "bubble" surrounding venues of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, Jan 18, 2022. (Photo by= Reuters/Thomas Peter) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] BEIJING: Women in China have shown more interest than men in searching online for Winter Olympics-related information, a report by search engine company Baidu showed on Wednesday (Feb 2), Reuters reported.
Curling, short-track speed skating, and figure skating were the top three most-searched Winter Olympic events among Chinese Internet users, followed by ice hockey, ski jumping, and snowboarding, Baidu said. Freestyle skier Eileen Gu was the most-searched athlete, Baidu said. The San Francisco native and medal favorite, whose mother is from Beijing, is Team China's best-known winter athlete. Of those searching Olympics-related topics in the last 30 days, 56.8 percent were women, according to Baidu, which did not share its raw data. "This breaks the stereotype that men pay more attention to sports events," Baidu said.
Baidu is China's most widely used search engine. Google has been blocked in China since 2010. The report also showed that Internet users in balmy southern China did more Winter Olympic searching than those in the north. China declared its intention in 2015 to get 300 million people involved in winter sports and to build hundreds of snow and ice facilities. Curling will be the first event of the 2022 Beijing Games, beginning on Wednesday evening, two days before the opening ceremony.
