The award bouquets at the Beijing Winter Olympics will change the traditional cut flowers and adopt a bunch of velvet flowers crocheted with the intangible cultural heritage - Haipai velvet 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".
Hengyuanxiang has joined hands with the Olympics five times, and in the process, Hengyuanxiang has mainly provided ceremonial costumes for Chinese sports delegations and other teams. 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 accompanied by heroes, and when the winners climb on the podium, wear medals on their chests, hold bouquets of flowers, salute the national flag, and thank the audience, it is their most glorious moment. But unfortunately, the bouquet is not easy to preserve, can we make this flower of glory never wither and become a lasting memorial? We think of the haipai velvet thread knitting technique. Chinese often say 'love leads the line', we hope that this velvet thread that carries truth, goodness and beauty can weave a lasting future for the whole world."
——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, ancient and modern China and foreign, all over the world have a variety of knotting skills, Chinese craftsmen will be the oriental traditional knot rope technique and velvet knotting technology combined, greatly enriched the velvet knotting stitching, patterns, carriers and application occasions, the formation of the haipai velvet knotting technology, velvet floriculture is one of them.
The Beijing Winter Olympics is a global sports event, and the use of Haipai velvet weaving techniques that integrates Chinese and Western techniques to present the bouquet of awards represents a warm welcome and congratulations to athletes from five continents, and also represents our expectations and wishes for a better future for mankind.
The relevant person in charge of the Winter Olympic Organizing Committee said: "On the one hand, the velvet bouquet is not like the fresh-cut bouquet 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 keep it for a long time, which is both carbon reduction and carbon reduction, 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 awards 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 Double Olympics".
The flowers are shaped and bundled to a height of 34 cm
Bouquet of flowers with a chest diameter of 24 cm
Just right in volume
Strive for refinement without losing expressiveness
Bow ribbon on the bouquet handle
The words "BEIJING2022" are printed
The bouquet is overall fresh and natural
It is in line with the main color of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games
Highlights the distinctive character of 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 in the flower materials are different, the techniques are not the same, to complete this exquisite bouquet, it takes up to 35 hours, the production of all the bouquets will take close to 50,000 hours.
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.
Li Meimei, the shanghai municipal inheritor of "Haipai velvet knotting technique" and Hengyuan Xiang velvet thread knitting engineer, is one of the leaders of this bouquet knitting project, and she said: This plan to divide into pieces is very scientific, but it is more laborious than making it herself. First of all, she has to design the knitting drawings of the flowers for the weaving societies everywhere; secondly, she teaches and unifies everyone's craftsmanship and techniques, because due to the impact of the epidemic, she cannot go to various places for on-site training, and can only be carried out through recording videos and online lectures; third, through telephone, video and other ways to solve various problems encountered in various places in real time; finally, after the flowers responsible for each place are summarized in Shanghai, she wants to check the quality one by one, and then tie them into a bouquet according to the sample to ensure that although it is a handmade product, it is as much as possible to keep it exactly the same. 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.
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It is understood that a special area will be opened in the Winter Olympic Village to display the velvet bouquet, velvet weaving techniques and the stories 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, 5 months of training, knotting 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.