Beijing, as the first city of the Two Olympics, announced that the bouquet of awards at the Beijing Winter Olympics will change the traditional cut flowers and adopt the velvet flower bouquet - Velvet Flower , which is crocheted with the intangible cultural heritage - Haipai velvet thread weaving technique. The bouquet is provided by Hengyuanxiang Group, the official sponsor of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, and also the inheritor of the "Haipai Velvet Thread Weaving Technique". Because of its characteristics of never withering, low-carbon environmental protection, etc., the velvet flower bouquet has become a vivid portrayal of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games adhering to the concept of "green, sharing, openness and integrity".
"As a double Olympic enterprise, Hengyuanxiang has joined hands with the Olympics for five times, and in the process, Hengyuanxiang has mainly provided ceremonial clothing for Chinese sports delegations and other teams in the past. In addition to providing clothing and home textiles from the Winter Olympic Village, Hengyuanxiang also created a unique gift - using Hengyuanxiang's intangible cultural heritage skills to weave and make award bouquets. Flowers have always been with heroes, we find that the winners on the podium, wearing medals on their chests, holding bouquets, paying tribute to the national flag and thanking the audience, is their most brilliant moment, but unfortunately the bouquet is not like a medal, it is inconvenient to preserve, can we make this bouquet of glory never wither, become an eternal memorial? We think of Hengyuanxiang's intangible heritage - haipai velvet thread weaving technique. Chinese often say 'love leads the way', we hope that this velvet thread that carries truth, goodness and beauty can make the people of the five continents who have become alienated by the impact of the new crown epidemic more united, and weave a constant future for the world with infinite threads." Chen Zhongwei, chairman and general manager of Hengyuanxiang Group, explained the original intention of making velvet flower bouquets.
Knotting is one of the oldest handicrafts of mankind, and there are various knotting techniques in all aspects of people's lives in ancient and modern China and abroad, all over the world. More than 100 years ago, the woolen thread knitting technology mainly from Europe into China's coastal cities, Chinese craftsmen combined the oriental traditional knot rope technique with the velvet knotting technique, greatly enriched the velvet knotting stitching, pattern, carrier and application occasions, the formation of haipai velvet knotting technology, velvet floriculture is one of them.
The Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee said: "The Beijing Winter Olympics is a global sports event, and our use of the Haipai velvet weaving technique that integrates Chinese and Western techniques to present the award bouquet represents our warm welcome and congratulations to athletes from five continents, and also represents our expectations and wishes for a better future for mankind." In addition, on the one hand, the velvet bouquet is not like the fresh-cut bouquet that needs to be transported from the southern planting base, which greatly reduces the cost of transportation and management, on the other hand, it is also convenient for athletes to carry back to China and keep it for a long time, which is both carbon-reducing and carbon-reducing, frugal and full of humane arrangements. ”
The awarding of symbolic plants on the podium is a long tradition of the Olympic Movement. According to records, the highest prize of the original Olympic Games was the olive branch laurel, symbolizing victory and bringing unlimited glory to the athletes. Later, it evolved into a bouquet of flowers in hand, etc. Although the bouquets of the previous awards have different flower materials, they have all reflected the Olympic spirit and the cultural characteristics of the host country and the host city. There are seven types of flowers in the bouquet of flowers awarded at the Beijing Winter Olympics, including: roses symbolizing friendship, symbolizing the tenacious moon season, bell orchids symbolizing happiness, hydrangeas symbolizing unity, laurel symbolizing victory, osmanthus flowers symbolizing harvest, and olives symbolizing peace. The Beijing Winter Paralympic Games awards bouquet has one more kind on this basis - cosmos, symbolizing freedom and eternal happiness. The selection of these flowers is very exquisite, such as the moon season, it is the protagonist of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games award bouquet, the moon season originated in China, prevailing in the world, is one of the top ten famous flowers in China, is also the city flower of Beijing, the choice of the moon season is echoed with the Beijing Olympic Bouquet, showing the cultural heritage of the "City of The Two Olympics", and the choice of olives means to pay tribute to the Olympic tradition.
The flower material is shaped and bundled into a bouquet of flowers with a height of 34 cm and a chest diameter of 24 cm, which is just right in volume, striving to be exquisite and expressive. The bow ribbon of the bouquet handle is printed with the words "BEIJING2022", and the bouquet is fresh and natural as a whole, which is in line with the main color of the Beijing Winter Olympics, highlighting the distinctive characteristics of ice and snow sports.
The Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games awards will share 1251 bouquets, with a total of 16731 flowers. Each flower has leaves and flowers, and is made by hand. Behind the uniqueness is a lot of manpower and time. For example, it takes 20 minutes to knot a rose petal, a rose consists of ten petals, plus 3 leaves and a flower stem, and only one rose requires a knottist to spend at least 5 hours. And this bouquet of flowers has different materials, resulting in different techniques, so it takes up to 35 hours to complete this exquisite bouquet, and it will take nearly 50,000 hours to make all the bouquets.
In order to complete this glorious and arduous task, and in order to create conditions for more people to participate in the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Hengyuanxiang Group, with the support of the All-China Women's Federation and other organizations, mobilized the knotting associations of Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces and cities to participate together, of which the bouquet of the Beijing Winter Paralympic Games was mainly completed by the China Welfare Foundation for the Disabled.
In order to ensure the final unity of the bouquet and to improve the efficiency of production, each knotting community is only responsible for the production of 1-2 kinds of flower materials, which are summarized to hengyuanxiang group in Shanghai for final assembly.
"Haipai velvet thread knitting skills" Shanghai municipal inheritor, Hengyuan Xiang velvet thread knitting engineer Li Meimei is one of the leaders of this bouquet knitting project, she said: This plan to reduce the whole into zero is very scientific, but more laborious than her own production, first of all, she has to design the knitting drawings of flower materials for the weaving societies everywhere; secondly, teach and unify everyone's craftsmanship and techniques, because affected by the epidemic, she can not go to the local on-site training, can only be carried out through the form of recording video and online teaching; third, through the telephone, Videos and other methods to solve various problems encountered in various places in real time; finally, after the flower materials responsible for each place are summarized in Shanghai, she checks the quality one by one, and then bundles them into bouquets according to the samples to ensure that although they are handmade products, they are kept exactly the same as possible. Li Meimei also said: Although the velvet bouquet is not as delicate as the flowers, in order to avoid the bouquets colliding with each other and squeezing caused deformation in transportation, Hengyuanxiang repeatedly discussed the transportation plan with the courier company to ensure that the bouquet appeared on the podium in the best posture.
The Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee said that a special area will be opened in the Winter Olympic Village to display the velvet bouquet, velvet weaving technique and the story behind them in the form of physical objects and videos, so that guests from all over the world can watch and understand at close range.
After 3 months of design, discussion, revision of the design draft, to 5 months of training, weaving and packaging, the bouquet of velvet flowers through the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter is about to bloom in the ice and snow, and the beautiful emotions will be frozen into eternal memories.