For 16-year-old Li Miaomiao, sore feet from wearing high heels for hours at a time and an achy jaw from constant smiling are worth the chance of hanging a medal around an athlete’s neck at the Beijing Olympics.

The willow-thin high school student is one of 34 Chinese girls “training” to be an Olympic medal presenter at the Beijing Foreign Affairs School (BFAS), one of several state-run colleges charged with producing camera-friendly girls for awards ceremonies.

When not balancing books on her head to improve posture during medal presentation rehearsal sessions, Li and her classmates study English, cultural training and look at pictures of past medal presenters and their uniforms.

Most important for Li, though, is the smile. “I practice at home, and smile to the mirror for an hour everyday,” Li said, beaming radiantly in a red waistcoat and high heels on the sidelines of a class.

“I want to present my smile to the world, and let them know that the Chinese smile is the warmest.”

Beijing has earmarked about $40 billion to put on its best face for the Games, with Olympic venues accounting for only a small percentage.

Along with big-ticket items like subways and roads, Beijing has spent billions more on a beautification campaign that has seen whole neighbourhoods razed and thousands of residents displaced.

“Building the software for the Olympics is much harder than building the hardware,” said BFAS director Li Zhiqi. “Personal qualities and mentality are firmly ingrained and therefore hard to change.”

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