Source: Beijing Foreign Language Broadcasting
Dai Weiran Global 30 points
In the 2008 Beijing Olympic Village, when sports representatives, athletes and staff from all over the world took a group photo in the Olympic Village, beautiful landscape works often appeared behind them, which had a unified theme - World Natural Heritage. These majestic and magnificent pictures are from mr. Zhou Jiansheng, a world-renowned Chinese photographer. Zhou Jiansheng has been photographing World Heritage sites for more than 20 years since 1994, and his footprints have traveled to more than 100 countries and regions, and he is known as the "lone traveler" who pursues World Heritage sites.
Mr. Zhou Jiansheng, a famous photographer
Thirteen years later, at the opening of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, where are the hundreds of photographs that adorned the Olympic Village now? Where is Mr. Zhou Jiansheng's lens aimed at today? On the eve of the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Mr. Zhou Jiansheng told us about the Olympic love affair of three generations of the family.
Zhou Jiansheng's father is a famous drama performance artist known to the older generation Chinese- Mr. Zhou Chu. Mr. Zhou Chu has been a sports master since he was a child, and Zhou Jiansheng still remembers his father's dashing skating posture on the ice rink in Shichahai, which amazed the surrounding audience.
Mr. Zhou Chu
I had a heart attack when I was a child, and my family didn't let me learn to skate with my father, but I was active and learned it. My father was particularly fond of skating and swimming, and he won many awards when he was a church middle school in Tianjin. He wanted to see the Olympics before he died, but he didn't wait for the 2008 Olympics. His favorite sport during his lifetime was ice skating. We skated to Beihai Park, Shichahai, as soon as my father went, the whole audience stopped and watched him, he could run out of a circle, slide horizontally, slide backwards, very handsome.
Nearly 20 years after my father's death, Beijing was preparing for the 2008 Olympics with a fervent yearning for the 2008 Olympics. Now, the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics is imminent, if Mr. Zhou Chulao, who loves ice and snow, can know that Beijing has become a "city of double Olympics", I don't know how emotional it will be. Zhou Jiansheng went to Japan in the 1990s to study, focusing on World Heritage photography, although he has held many solo exhibitions, but in his heart, it has become the theme exhibit of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Village is the most precious exhibition footprint. Zhou Jiansheng said:
I still remember that I went to the Olympic Organizing Committee to talk about it, and people said that it was good, the album was very good, and decided to requisition it. There were only two months left, and I started doing it in Japan right away. More than a month later, the work was shipped over. Among them, there are 20 large, 2 meters 3 long, more than 1 meter high, very heavy, very difficult to get, the customs scanner can not enter at all, but then opened the package to sweep it, because it is pasted with the Olympic logo.
2008 Olympic Village Decoration Works
Zhou Jiansheng showed reporters a number of photos of his work in the Olympic Village at that time, and several family treasures told the story of each photo shooting.
The two main halls, the office areas of foreign athletes, etc. must be arranged, and the rooms where the Olympic Games are held every morning are hung with my works, all of which I myself have installed and hung there one by one. In the hall on the first floor, the most important place to enter the door is the corner tower of the Forbidden City in Beijing, as well as the Terracotta Warriors, the Athenian Temple, and the group photo of the leader of the Mexican regiment... When I took this picture of the Mexican Uxmal World Heritage Site, it was quite interesting, when I went in, it was more than 8 o'clock in the morning, and at five or six o'clock in the afternoon, I started to bombard people, but I was not willing, I wanted to take a picture of the dawn, so I hid in it and lay down all night, and climbed up at 3:00 a.m. the next morning and took a picture.
Great Wall Photography by Zhou Jiansheng
Stepping on the iron shoes is nowhere to be found, it takes no effort at all, and many of Zhou Jiansheng's classic works have the experience of accidentally obtaining in the arduous search. Among the series of exhibits in the Olympic Village, Zhou Jiansheng most valued a work in the corner tower of the Forbidden City in Beijing. At that time, after a winter snow in Beijing, he flew straight to the Ming Tombs, but did not take a satisfactory picture, came to the corner tower of the Forbidden City at three o'clock in the morning, and captured a special moment like a Chinese ink painting, which was later presented to the Chinese Embassy in Japan.
Forbidden City Corner Tower Zhou Jiansheng photography
After the 2008 Olympics, the more than 100 works left the Olympic Village. For 13 years, this batch of works has been safely stored in the warehouse, but Zhou Jiansheng always has an unfinished plot in his heart, and he wants to find a long-term home for these works. And the mother, Ms. Lin Moyu, a performance artist who died in 2020, is also very supportive of her son's idea. During the epidemic at the end of 2021, he returned to his hometown of Beijing in order to find a new home for the Olympic Village display products from 13 years ago.
Zhou Chu and Lin Moyu and his wife
I've kept these works for 13 years. All my mother's things were donated to the Film Museum, and the Golden Rooster Awards and Hundred Flowers Awards were donated. The Olympic-based things have been collected a lot, and in the middle I have spent a lot of trouble to contact museums and exhibition institutions, hoping to be able to be completely collected, and this time I finally have a more reliable trust. After the epidemic, I hope to have an exhibition. These works in 13 boxes, what is in each box, how many sheets, what size, what materials are made of what I have a record, the first Bo staff one by one carefully looked at, on the spot to determine that the works are enough to collect the level. Although 13 years have passed, the works are wrapped in plastic foam, protected by metal plates, and will not deform. Among them, 20 large-scale works were framed in Japan with German imported plates and shipped to Beijing, and it also cost a lot at that time.
Beijing "Golden Ingot Bridge" Zhou Jiansheng photography
On the occasion of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Zhou Jiansheng returned to his hometown of Beijing and fulfilled his wish to find a new home for his works of that year, and he also hoped to see the Beijing Winter Olympics for his father. Coincidentally, at the Tokyo Olympic Games held just over half a year ago, his daughter Zhou Yanzi, a third-year college student, braved the severe epidemic in Japan and served as a language volunteer for the Tokyo Olympic Games, a family of three generations who injected their emotions and actions into the Olympics in different ways.
The family of the famous photographer Mr. Zhou Jiansheng
His father's failure to wait until the 2008 Olympics was a pity for him. My daughter also likes sports, when she was a Volunteer for the Tokyo Olympics, in fact, the epidemic in Japan was very severe, and many people around her quit volunteering, but she said that the things she had promised could not be changed. She saw the Olympic complex in our family for generations, and believed that this volunteer experience had a reference for her entire life.
2021 World Heritage Site Yancheng Yellow Sea Migratory Bird Habitat