What’s cooking? From Chinese fast food to a ticket to Beijing

Having inspired the international fashion world’s name for bikini, the Marshall Islands will now join the international...

Having inspired the international fashion world’s name for bikini, the Marshall Islands will now join the international sporting world, competing for the first time in the Olympics. The Pacific nation’s entire team of five athletes could fit around the dinner table, which seems somehow apropos, considering that its best athlete is a chef.

Anju Jason, a tae kwon do athlete who has spent most of his life in Hawaii, cooks for Panda Express, one of the largest chains serving Chinese fast food in the United States. He finds some culinary feng shui in the alignment of his job and the Games in Beijing. “It’s pretty ironic,” Jason, 20, said.

The Marshall Islands, a scattering of islands and atolls located about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, will field one of the smallest of the 205 teams competing in Beijing. The islands have gained visibility primarily as the site of post-World War II nuclear testing, not competitive running, jumping and swimming. The country’s Olympic athletes, like its consumer goods and foodstuffs, are mostly imported.

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The nation’s running tracks are made of grass and only about four or five gyms house indoor basketball courts, according to Terry Sasser, the secretary general of the Marshall Islands National Olympic Committee, whose website contains no listings for national records and whose telephone number is disconnected. “The main thing with the Olympics is to show people that we exist,” Jason said. “No one knows about us.”

Olympic recognition came in 2006, allowing the Marshall Islands to begin receiving financing and training scholarships supplied by the International Olympic Committee.

An agreement was recently signed with New Zealand television to bring the Beijing Games to the Marshall Islands. People are expected to gather to watch on large screens. Organised sports remain a nascent enterprise. Not until last year were the first Marshallese National Games held.

Jason, the tae kwon do athlete, is the only one of the five Marshallese Olympians who qualified for the Beijing Games. The other competitors, with family ties to the country, received wild-card entries in track and field and swimming.

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Born in the Marshall Islands, Jason left for Hawaii when he was six, shepherded by an older sister, encouraged by a father who thought that Oahu would provide a chance at a better education and a better life for his children. Jason came to love watching Power Rangers on television, and when a flier arrived in the mail, advertising a tae kwon do academy, the kicking and punching seemed attractive to a nine-year-old. Eventually, he won local and state tournaments, but competing for the United States at the Olympics remained beyond Jason’s reach, because he never became a citizen.

Then, last November, returning from a tournament in Oklahoma, Jason got a call from his instructor. The Marshall Islands were planning to compete at Beijing. “Is this a joke?” Jason asked.

“It’s a life-changing thing,” Jason said. “Before, I didn’t really have anything to look forward to, nothing to inspire me to actually do good. This changed me.”

After the Olympics, he says he plans to visit the Marshall Islands for the first time since 2005. Schoolchildren there have been writing to him: Do you have a girlfriend? Can you come and have breakfast with me? “I didn’t realise how big it was,” Jason said. “It made me want to practice more, to do my best for them.”