In the just-concluded short track speed skating mixed team relay event, the Chinese team won the championship strongly and won the first gold medal for the Chinese sports delegation at the Winter Olympics! The protagonist of today's article starts with the bouquet of flowers in the hands of champions. Flowers and herbs are unintentional, and the flower picker has a heart. Looking at the Bouquet of the Beijing Winter Olympics Awards, you will find that not only the flower pickers have a heart, but also the flower weavers have a heart. Different from the traditional bouquet of flowers in previous Olympic Games, this Winter Olympics for the first time adopts handmade velvet flowers, and innovatively integrates the Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage - Haipai Velvet Thread Weaving Technique, becoming an international model for the integration of the Olympic spirit and contemporary intangible cultural heritage. And this bouquet of Olympic flowers that will never wither will place the fragrance of China's intangible cultural heritage in the 2022 Winter Olympic Stadium, which will also go through four seasons and will always be in the memory of each athlete's Winter Olympics.
The author | Liu Shunxin (Cultural Industry Review Author Group, Researcher of Sanchuanhui Cultural Tourism and Sports Research Institute)
Editor-in-chief | Deng Dajia (Assistant Researcher, Sanchuanhui Cultural Tourism and Sports Research Institute)
Edit the | time
The source | Cultural Industry Review
Knotting is one of the oldest handicrafts of mankind.
A century ago, the wool knotting technique was introduced from Europe to China's coastal cities, and the wise Chinese craftsmen integrated the traditional oriental knot rope technique into the velvet knotting technique, and the stitching, pattern and use of the velvet knotting were greatly enriched.
In 2009, the "Haipai Velvet Thread Weaving Technique" was included in the list of Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage.
In the Beijing Winter Olympics, which has just kicked off, this traditional Shanghai intangible cultural heritage has transformed into an Olympic flower that will never fade, as an Olympic award bouquet, it has stepped onto the field and gone overseas to meet audiences from all over the world.
In terms of the vast traditional Chinese culture, everything is the medium. This time, it is to use flowers as a medium to tell the moving story of Chinese culture to the world and tell the connotation of the Olympic spirit of the times.
Over 10,000 flowers, which took nearly 50,000 hours - a flower that never withers
"It's my 'dream come true moment.'" In the view of Li Meimei, the inheritor of the Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage "Haipai Velvet Thread Weaving Technique", the Beijing Winter Olympics have fulfilled her "international dream". Two years ago, she expressed her hope that the velvet flower would go international, but at that time, she never dreamed that this wish could be realized on such a major occasion as the Beijing Winter Olympics.
△ "Haipai velvet thread weaving skills" inheritor Li Meimei (source: public number "Shanghai Huangpu")
There are seven types of flowers in the bouquet of the Beijing Winter Olympic Awards, including roses that symbolize friendship, moon seasons that symbolize tenacity, bell orchids that symbolize happiness, hydrangeas that symbolize unity, laurel that symbolize victory, osmanthus that symbolizes harvest and olives that symbolize peace. The Beijing Winter Paralympic Awards Bouquet has more cosmos based here, symbolizing strength.
△ In 2008, athletes held a bouquet of Beijing Olympic awards "red and red"
It is understood that the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games awards shared 1251 bouquets, a total of 16731 flowers, all of which are purely handmade, requiring a lot of manpower and time, such as weaving a rose petal takes 20 minutes, a rose is composed of 10 petals, plus leaves, flower stems, only a rose needs a knotted master to spend at least 5 hours.
In addition, the flowers are of different materials, resulting in different techniques, taking up to 35 hours to complete a beautiful bouquet, and nearly 50,000 hours to make all the bouquets.
△ Source: public account "Xinmin Sports" In addition to the exquisite appearance and the transmission of the Olympic spirit, behind each bouquet of flowers, there are also many moving stories.
In order to complete this task and let more people participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics, the organized societies of Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces and cities were mobilized 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 addition, some handicraft workshops in the Shanghai area are also involved in the production of bouquets.
The Yangpu District Craftsman Mother Workshop is one of them.
△Source: public account "Xinmin Sports"
From the production scene in the picture, it can be seen that the team is mostly "mother-level figures", some with reading glasses, some with white sideburns, but they are all working hard for the birth of the Winter Olympic Flower. From only 2 flowers a day to an average of 100 flowers per day, the production process is gradually formed through step by step exploration. How to complete it faster and more skillfully? How to bandage the flowers to be more upright and tough? The aunts have explored the experience and single-handedly helped the Winter Olympics and the inheritance of Shanghai's intangible cultural heritage.
△ Source: public account "Xinmin Sports
"The Long-Standing "Intangible Cultural Heritage Technique of Haipai Velvet Thread"
As an intangible cultural heritage element with a very oriental charm in this Winter Olympics, what kind of craft is "Haipai Velvet Thread Knitting"? Let's take a look.
The story begins with the famous "Shanghai culture".
The term "Haipai" first appeared in the 1920s as a product of the combination of East and West. Cao Juren, a famous journalist in the Republic of China, once described the Jingpai as a classical boudoir, while the Haipai was a romantic fashionable girl.
The so-called "Shanghai school culture" is a unique cultural landscape formed after the fusion and collision of modern Jiangnan culture and Western advanced civilization, from the initial theater, film and television, literature and other fields to the fields of social folklore, dressing and other folk life, with the characteristics of elegant and popular appreciation. Eclecticism, novelty, pioneering and innovative, forming the unique characteristics of Shanghai culture.
△ Another embodiment of Haipai culture - Haipai qipao
The Haipai velvet knotting is the velvet weaving craft formed under the qin of the Haipai culture.
This technique was first introduced to the mainland with Western capitalism. In the 19th century, French missionaries set up study halls in Xujiahe, Caohejing and other places in Shanghai, teaching local women to weave webbing lace for curtains and tablecloths, which were then transported to the Western European market and formed an industrial chain. This was the first attempt by Western handicrafts and industrial art on the mainland.
By the end of the 19th century, there was a large number of dumping of Western culture and materials, and some British businessmen opened a Bode Woolen Thread Company in Shanghai to produce a fleece thread called "Bee Brand", in order to expand sales, the sale was accompanied by an instruction manual for velvet knotting and a bamboo stick needle knitting tool. In this way, the materials and craftsmanship of velvet weaving spread to Shanghai and among ordinary citizens.
Chinese women have had a tradition of being good at "female red" since ancient times. During the Ming Dynasty, Shanghai was famous for Gu embroidery in the Jiangnan region, combining painting and embroidery, although Gu embroidery gradually disappeared at the end of the Qing Dynasty, but its meticulous technique of conveying the gods has always influenced the progress and development of Shanghai's native female red skills.
△ Shanghai Gu embroidery
△ Su embroidery master Yao Jianping instructed the wives of the six leaders in embroidery
In the Republic of China period, velvet knotting was popular in Shanghai, and like traditional Chinese female red, it has a delicate and ingenious cultural connotation. These traditional female reds put down the embroidery needle, picked up the stick needle and the velvet thread, and changed only the form of handicraft, and the core of the craftsmanship remained unchanged.
It can be said that Haipai velvet thread weaving is the product of the combination of the spirit of traditional Chinese female red and Western craftsmanship and technology, and also enables the spirit of craftsmanship to inherit in the new era.
From the 1940s to the 1970s, velvet weaving became the most popular handicraft art for Chinese women, almost to the point where almost everyone could hold a needle and weave everyone. From the clothes shawl to the glove wallet, all of them compose a brilliant page in the history of hand-weaving through a pair of skillful hands.
It was not until the 1980s, when the degree of mechanization increased steadily, and the scenery of velvet weaving that swept the women's world was no longer there, and it gradually faded from people's vision. Nevertheless, in recent years, the strength of the protective velvet knitting technique has not diminished.
In 2007, Shanghai Cross Flower Picking and Crochet Knitting were listed as the first batch of intangible cultural heritage protection lists in Shanghai. In addition, for folk crafts, exhibition halls, digital media protection, etc. have been adopted as bridges, and at the same time, more inheritors of weaving and embroidery crafts have been cultivated by using the teaching experience of "passing on the help belt".
△ Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage - Luojing Cross Picking Flowers
There is no doubt that the Beijing Winter Olympics will become a new stage for the promotion and dissemination of Haipai velvet weaving skills.
In the two major origins of the "Hai school", one is the import of Western culture, and the other is the continuation of Jiangnan culture, which has both the collision and fusion of Western and Eastern cultures, as well as the integration and development of inheritance and innovation, from the initial "imported" skills, to the shanghai school of culture injection and local improvement, and now from the Winter Olympics, out of China, to the world, once again confirming the truth of "the more national, the more the world", is the feeling of the craftsman's spirit, but also a kind of national sentiment and cultural self-confidence.
Two "firsts" olympic + international models of intangible cultural heritage
Returning to the Winter Olympics bouquet itself, the integration of contemporary intangible cultural heritage and the Olympic spirit is an innovative application of Olympic award elements, and also an international model created by China's cultural creation, achieving two "firsts".
First, this is the first time in the "History of the Evolution of olympic awards bouquets" that non-cut flowers are used as bouquets, and they are hand-knitted with haipai velvet thread. Throughout the long history of the evolution of the Olympic awards bouquet, the Athens Olympic Games are dominated by olive oil and gerbera, the Sydney Olympic Games are dominated by puroti and kangaroo flowers, the Atlanta Olympic Games are dominated by sunflowers, orange-red and white, the Barcelona Olympic Games have chosen lover's grass and carnations, and the Seoul Olympic Games have used Tang Changpu and scattered tail sunflowers...
△ 2012 London Olympic Games awards bouquet
△ At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, athletes held award bouquets
Even the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which pursue innovation, did not break the tradition of cut flowers, and adopted 9 "Chinese red" moon seasons and 6 fire dragon balls, jade hairpin leaves, book ribbon grass, etc. as the flowers and leaves, which mean "long and long", "six six big shun" and "red and red".
And this "initiative" can be described as abandoning the bouquet of flowers need to be transferred from the southern planting base, the drawbacks of high transportation management costs, but also convenient for athletes to carry back to china, long-term preservation, more in line with the concept of low-carbon environmental protection, frugality and Olympics, full of human temperature and care.
More importantly, it is highly consistent with the Olympic spirit. The Olympic spirit not only exists in the competitive level of "higher, faster and stronger", the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics with "green, sharing, openness and integrity" as the olympic concept, but also the embodiment of the new development concept in the preparation of the Beijing Winter Olympics. To run the Olympic Games green, we must adhere to ecological priority, resource conservation, and environmental friendliness, and lay the background for a beautiful China for the Winter Olympic Games.
This also highlights the fact that the Olympic Games have gradually changed from the previous large-scale operation, heavy investment, and even reduced to the "image project" in the mouth of the public to today's ecological priority, the green Winter Olympics, which is the embodiment of social progress, the renewal of social concepts, and the improvement of social tolerance. More practical to tell us, simplicity does not mean simple, ingenuity and cultural injection, is a higher level of wisdom and sincerity.
Second, for the first time, intangible cultural heritage skills were integrated. From south to north, across China and the West, intangible cultural heritage has always been the bright pearl of the mainland's excellent traditional culture, dotted in the four directions of the motherland, connecting the Yangyang Chinese civilization. The cultural injection of the Haipai velvet line intangible cultural heritage technology into the Winter Olympics is not only full of sincerity for this sports event, but also of great significance to the inheritance of contemporary intangible cultural heritage, creating an international model for the integration of non-genetic inheritance and sports events.
Today, we take the Haipai velvet thread technique as the incision, and tomorrow, kunqu opera and Peking opera, seal carving and calligraphy, shadow puppetry and Tibetan opera, acupuncture and tai chi and other brilliant intangible cultural heritage will become an important source of chinese stories.
In terms of the dissemination of China's excellent traditional culture, everything is a medium. From the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games fourteen years ago, the grandeur of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", the wisdom and evolution of the four major inventions, the ideological tradition of "harmony is precious", to the "Flower of RongYao" of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese cultural flavor of the theme of "Ruixue Xiangyun", "Hongyun Landscape" and "Tang Hua Feixue" in the award dress...
What has changed is only the carrier and form of flow, and what has not changed is that we have always been determined to move forward on the road of telling the Chinese story to the world, so that the voice of traditional Chinese culture can be thoroughly told and the fragrance spreads throughout the world.
This time, we use flowers as the medium, the Winter Olympics as the medium, and the intangible cultural heritage as the medium, next time, what will be the carrier for the innovative dissemination of Chinese culture? Still worth looking forward to.
It is worth mentioning that the design and launch of The Flower of Velvet also provides a good start for the subsequent development of sports culture and creativity. Becoming an athlete's bouquet of awards is only the starting point of the Olympic flower, how to expand the Olympic IP of the flower of the flare in the future? How to create a whole industry chain from intangible cultural heritage experience to design, production and marketing? Can the flowers that originally belonged only to the athletes of the Winter Olympics "fly into the homes of ordinary people", further popularize the public and become a hit that embraces the whole people? How to promote the inheritance and dissemination of intangible cultural heritage skills? It's worth thinking about next.
epilogue
The flowers of the velvet will never wither, and the Olympic spirit will be eternal. The much-anticipated Winter Olympics has arrived, and we may wish to pay attention to the gold medal and athletes at the same time, but also pay attention to the bouquet of flowers that will never wither. It is the Olympic concept of green, shared, open and clean, the shining brilliance of intangible cultural heritage, the continuous temperature of the craftsman spirit, and the timeless Chinese romance.
bibliography:
Zhang Jingqiong,Wang Nan. Analysis on the Connotation of Shanghai School Culture Contained in Modern Velvet Knitting Fashion[J]. Silk, 2020, 57(04): 83-88.
Dong Shuimiao. The source of Haipai weaving[J]. Shanghai Caifeng,2007,(11):62.]
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