Recently, the award elements of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games were officially released. Among them, the award bouquet "Olympic Flower That Never Withers" is from the hands of Li Meimei, the inheritor of the Shanghai Municipal Intangible Cultural Heritage "Haipai Velvet Thread Knitting Technique" and the Hengyuan Xiang Velvet Thread Knitting Master.
When she heard the news, the 70-year-old Li Meimei said excitedly, "This is my 'dream time'! In an interview two years ago, I said that I wanted to make our velvet flowers go international, and at that time I never dreamed that this wish could be realized on such a major occasion. ”
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 bouquet of velvet thread is not like the bouquet of flowers that needs to be transferred 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 preserve it for a long time, which is both carbon reduction and carbon reduction, frugal and full of humane arrangements. ”
According to reports, 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 Olympics, The Huangpu-based Hengyuanxiang Group, with the support of the All-China Women's Federation and other organizations, mobilized the joint associations of seven provinces and cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces and cities to participate together, and Li Meimei was mainly responsible for the design, training, quality control and final assembly of the award bouquet. In terms of the design and production of the award bouquet, Li Meimei is ingenious: "Most of the people on the market now use to crochet thick lines, which are fast, but the final effect is relatively rough, and slow work can produce fine work, so I finally chose thin lines." Although it takes more time and effort to use a thin line, the hooked bouquet is more delicate and more realistic, and I think it is still worth it."
Because of the impact of the epidemic, Li Meimei could not go to the local knitting institutions for on-site training, and could only do so through video recording and online teaching. After accumulation, a total of 16,731 flowers from all over the world will be summarized to Hengyuanxiang Company in Shanghai, and each of the more than 10,000 flowers will have to be repeatedly inspected and verified by Li Mei, and her requirements for flowers are extremely strict: "At the beginning, because everyone just started to try, the flowers that were summarized had more or less problems, so I took these flowers home to be dismantled and re-crocheted." However, after such a long period of running-in and practice, now everyone can make very qualified flower materials, and I am very grateful to the hand-knitting artists all over the country."
After the flower material is summarized and tested for quality, Li Mei also has to carry out the final assembly, which is also a big project. The sum of the flowers varies in length, and the Winter Olympic bouquet has a very strict size standard, in order to improve comfort and ornamentation, Li Mei also has its own small tricks: "At the beginning, I used pliers to prune this flower branch, but it was very time-consuming and labor-intensive, and then I applied for a cutting machine from the company, which greatly improved my work efficiency." I did not waste the cut flowers, originally our whole bouquet is actually thin, I will prune the flower branches and then fill in, so that the athletes hold the bouquet feel better, but also greatly save the material."
From quality inspection, pruning of flowers and branches to final assembly, Since receiving the task, Li Mei has not had a day off. "More than 10,000 flowers, each of which has to pass through my hand, what I can guarantee now is that every flower is flawless, and the shape of the athlete's hand is exactly the same."
When she participated in the Bouquet project of the Winter Olympic Awards, Li Meimei has entered the "year of ancient rarity", which is her twenty years involved in the velvet knitting industry. For more than 20 years, Li Meimei has continuously studied and studied with a needle and a thread, deeply considered the way of design, changed the shape and structure of flowers, and constantly made more artistic and exquisite works. "When I first started making velvet flowers, I started almost from scratch. At that time, I thought, either don't do it, or do it to the best. Now that I am older, there will always be a day when I will leave this post, which may also be the last project I will do, and I can bring Hengyuanxiang's velvet flowers to such a top-level field as the Olympics, I feel that I have no regrets in this life," Li Mei said with a smile.
Reporter / Fan Yuhao
Edited by / Huang Qianwen
Image / Courtesy of the interviewee
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