Morning Post Comment 丨 Shirtless Heart

The Winter Olympics are coming. In addition to the scene where the athletes of the Winter Olympics can be expected to compete for gold and silver, this winter Olympics held for the first time in Beijing will be a shocking performance of winter sports in front of the 1.4 billion people of the Chinese nation.

First of all, we must admit that most of us in China do not really know much about the Winter Olympics, for the simple reason that most of us have never played winter sports.

Compared with the summer Olympics "running jump throwing" of the project characteristics that human beings are born to participate in, participating in winter sports activities requires extremely high venue conditions, both God to give the venue - there is ice and snow, but also God to give face - can not be crazy ice, angry snow. More critically, human beings must also have proper self-protection - clothing, equipment, skills, and courage.

For human civilization, "cold and hot" and "ice and fire" are actually the difference between "despair" and "trouble".

In the tropics, everything is strong, the food supply is sufficient, and the "trouble" is that it cannot be stored.

In the bitter cold land, for a long time of the year, people can only be accompanied by ice and snow, with wild beasts, and there are no conditions for labor. Once upon a time, we humans went out in the snow and ice, and there was only one driving force: hunting. In layman's terms, it is to go out to find food, and on the road, you must try to avoid becoming "eating".

Norway, a country with a population of just over 5 million, can be proud to rank first in the gold medal list and medal list in the history of the Winter Olympics so far, which is not only the tempering of the natural environment in Scandinavia, but also the incubation and inheritance of the Vikings' survival genes under natural conditions.

Winter can go out to "exercise", rather than going out to "forage", which actually means that human beings have "eaten enough" and "warmed up" in front of nature, and they are also bold and not afraid of death.

Man, when you have eaten enough, you must be looking for some spiritual fun.

Of course, just "having fun and not being afraid of death" is not enough to provoke and challenge nature, let alone please the hearts of the brave.

As a result, people make standardized sports on the top of the mountains, between the snow and ice.

Alpine skiing, biathlon, luge, cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hockey, luge, Nordic biathlon, short track speed skating, bobsledding, ski jumping, snowboarding, speed skating...

In 1924, when the first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, a French ski resort, there were only 9 sub-events and 16 sub-events, and now it is 15 sub-events and 109 sub-events. There are Not only Nordic biathlon, ski jumping, figure skating, which are the "founding fathers" of nearly a hundred years ago, as well as curling and snowboarding, which only entered the Winter Olympics in 1998.

Looking closely at these 15 sub-items, I am really amazed and grateful to those human pioneers who are committed to winter sports, they actually created such meticulous rules, which is not only a set of "sports scoring guidelines", but also a set of "feasible operating norms" for human beings in the face of nature's awesome ice and snow, and even more admired that in the recorded history of the Winter Olympics in the past hundred years, there will be so many brilliant stars, there are so many heroes worth remembering, they are not on the flat ground, on the floor, but between the alpine canyons to practice "faster, higher and stronger." "They let themselves fly out, they slide themselves out, and the point is, they're not sure they can fly back again, or brake down.

You can say that the high jump, long jump, and 100-meter trapeze at the Summer Olympics are challenging the gravitational pull of the earth, and the Winter Olympics is not the case, but in addition to the gravitational force, they also have to give themselves to Providence.

A sport does not produce rules, and certainly cannot be a real sport. A sport does not produce heroes, then its rules are fine and good, and it cannot become a sport that everyone loves.

The rules are the flesh of the sport, and the hero is the soul of the sport.

Our Chinese nation also particularly respects rules and heroes. So, yes, must, this timely Winter Olympics will certainly bring us a special and unusual sense of this country, our nation.

However, from "not afraid of ice and snow" to "falling in love with ice and snow", this may take time.

"Spring ploughing, summer planting, autumn harvest and winter hiding" is the rhythm and characteristics of the four seasons of labor in Chinese civilization summarized by our ancestors. If the "winter treasure" in Xunzi's sentence more than 2,000 years ago was changed to "winter hunting" or "winter luck", then the enlightenment and sowing of our winter sports civilization would have been many, many years ahead.

We love big rivers, and we are not afraid of snowy mountains and glaciers. For example, generations of tireless and life-sacrificing climbing Everest, even if it is only the leapfrog and conquest of a small elite group, is not a declaration of the whole nation. For example, the former Silk Road did not spread civilization across the bitter cold, ice and snow mountains and rivers.

All the events of the Winter Olympics emphasize the perfect combination of people and equipment, most of the sports, athletes are dressed tightly, and some sports can not even appreciate the eyes of athletes because of the shielding of the goggles. However, as long as you appreciate the events themselves, you can naturally realize that those who participate in the Winter Olympics and love the Winter Olympics, no matter how much they wear and how thick they wear, their "shirtless hearts" are still clearly visible.

Civilize its thoughts, barbarize its physique. There is probably no better way to embody human fighting spirit and courage in the face of nature than the Winter Olympics.

We have spoken for thousands of years about the heart of the naked child, and now it is time to appreciate and awaken the "shirtless heart" of the whole nation.