The global recruitment drive for 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics volunteers began on December 5 and many people were quick to respond. Beijing Winter Olympic Committee planned to recruit 27,000 volunteers. Here is a closer look at some of the firsts such as the first university student volunteer, the first disabled volunteer, and the first society worker volunteer.

The first successfully-registered volunteer Yuan Shu was an undergraduate from the foreign language department at Tsinghua University. With an advantage in age and knowledge of the Games, university students can play an important role.

"This will be the first time for me to be a volunteer at the Olympics," said Yuan. "My first advantage is that I have rich experience in doing volunteering work."

"Another advantage is that I am a student in the foreign language department and my major is English. I chose external contacts as my first choice, as this is what I often did in my previous volunteer jobs. This work is what I love to do and could be linked to my major, and I would also love to work in some stadiums."

Li Nan was the first disabled person to successfully register as a volunteer. She was also a volunteer for the 2008 Beijing Summer Paralympics, and had a lifetime honor award for Beijing Community Volunteer Work.

"I think it took me about five to six minutes to register, and the official working staff told me that I was the first to register successfully," said Li. "I remember I chose two intentions while doing my registration. One is culture promoting, while the other is service at competition venues."

Wang Lei was the first society worker volunteer to register successfully and he was a senior engineer from SINOCHEM Group. Wang had a lot of experience as a volunteer at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, and the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

"Optimistically speaking, I had a 60 percent chance of registering successfully, while pessimistically I only had a 10 percent chance. Why do I say so? Because it seemed there were over 400,000 people who registered on December 9. People all say that the number of applicants to be a volunteer for Beijing 2022 will make history. Volunteer work is a hobby for me, and I hope it will be my hobby all the time.”