Narrator: "Haipai velvet thread knitting skills" Shanghai municipal inheritor Li Meimei
I never dreamed that because of a craft, I was connected to the Olympic Games.
After more than half a year, the 10,000 "Olympic flowers" we have woven appeared on the big stage of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games. We made 1251 bouquets for the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, accumulating 16731 flower materials, all hand-knitted.
There are seven kinds of flowers in the Winter Olympic Bouquet, each of which has a special meaning, such as a rose symbolizing friendship, a moon symbolizing tenacity, an olive symbolizing peace, and a Paralympic bouquet with an additional cosmos symbolizing strength. The color of the bouquet is also exquisite, all of which are based on the color of the Emblem of the Winter Olympic Games, which appears in the ice and snow, making people feel particularly warm.
A rose consists of 10 petals, plus 3 leaves and a flower stem, and it takes 5 hours to knot a rose alone. It takes at least 35 hours to complete a bouquet of awards, and it takes 50,000 hours for all the bouquets to be knotted. Although the process is very hard, I think of the moment when athletes from all over the world reach the podium, and the bouquet of awards in our hands comes from our hands, and there is indescribable excitement in our hearts.
Knotting is an ancient craft. More than 100 years ago, the velvet thread craft was introduced from the West and integrated with the traditional Chinese folk knot art to form the Haipai velvet thread weaving technique.
I've been weaving haipai velvet thread for 20 years now. In 2015, "Haipai Velvet Thread Weaving Technique" became a representative project of Shanghai Municipal Intangible Cultural Heritage, and I became a non-hereditary inheritor. It is often said that "love leads a line", once it is related to the velvet thread, it cannot be stopped. Every flower is our praise for a better life.
Source: Guangming Network
Chief Planner: Yang Gu
Producer: Zhang Ning, Liao Hui
Coordinator: Li Fangzhou Li Yimeng
Recitation: White Ice
Animation: Li Yimeng
Visual design: Kong Peng
Interview: Yan Weiqi, all-media reporter of Guangming Daily, correspondent of Guangming Daily, Zhang Jingyao
Producer: Guangming News Center
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Yongqun
Editors: Sun Xiaoting, Chang Ying, Zhu Xiaofan