On the evening of February 6, 2022, the Chinese short track speed skating team that won the short track speed skating mixed team 2000 meters relay championship took the stage to receive the award. From left to right, fan kexin, Ren Ziwei, Qu Chunyu, Wu Dajing, and Zhang Yuting were in order. Beijing News reporter Tao Ran photographed
February 6, 8:08 PM.
The Chinese short track speed skating team stood on the top podium, and they won the first gold medal of the Winter Olympics for the Chinese delegation.
Fan Kexin, Ren Ziwei, Qu Chunyu, Wu Dajing, Zhang Yuting, five people held hands to greet the audience. They all wore gold concentric medals and held a bundle of "Flowers of the Winter Olympics that never fade" woven with velvet thread.
On the podium, after the five team members took the bouquet, they all looked at the front and back sides of the bouquet repeatedly. In the post-match interview, Fan Kexin said, "I like it very much, it has a very Chinese element, and I also read the introduction specifically, it is said that it takes 35 hours to make a bouquet of flowers to be woven, so we will always keep it." ”
At the same time, in Tianjin, more than 130 kilometers away from Beijing, the news in various groups of Li Li's mobile phone continued, "Everyone is taking photos of themselves, and recording a small video of that moment is very exciting, it is not easy, maybe this life will catch up with this time." ”
Velvet flower, different from the traditional sense of the plane hook flower, but the use of various colors of wool exquisitely crocheted, the flower layers are clear, the texture is fluffy, the three-dimensional sense is strong, it looks like a flower, can achieve the effect of fake and real. Because it is handmade, it can be said that each petal and each leaf is unique and full of the temperature of the palm of the hand.
As one of the "Chinese romance" elements of the Winter Olympics, the never-withering Winter Olympic bouquet is quickly out of the circle. Netizens asked for illustrated tutorials on bouquet weaving on various social platforms. The online teaching and training class of the Winter Olympic Bouquet in Tianjin Tidal Center attracted 2,000 people to study in groups and 200,000 people to browse the illustrations in just a few days.
1251 bunches, 16731 branches, it takes 20 minutes to knot a rose petal, a rose is composed of ten petals, plus three leaves and flower stems, only one rose, it takes at least 5 hours for a knottizer, a complete bouquet takes up to 35 hours, and it takes nearly 50,000 hours to make all the bouquets. Behind the 50,000 hours is the efforts of thousands of "weavers" across the country.
Velvet flowers were selected as bouquets for the Winter Olympics
Velvet thread is an imported product.
According to the data, at the beginning of the 19th century, French missionaries set up study halls in Xujiahe, Caohejing and other places in Shanghai, teaching local women to weave lace with velvet thread, decorate it on the webbing of curtains and tablecloths, and then transport it to the Western European market.
At the end of the 19th century, a British businessman opened a fleece company in Shanghai, producing a velvet thread called "Bee Brand", which was sold with an instruction manual for velvet knitting and a rod needle knitting tool. The material and craftsmanship of velvet weaving spread to Shanghai and spread among ordinary citizens.
Chinese craftsmen combined the traditional knot rope techniques of the East with the techniques of Western knotting, enriching the stitching, patterns, carriers and applications of velvet knotting, and these knotting techniques converged and developed in Shanghai, gradually forming the Haipai velvet weaving technique.
In 2009, the "Haipai Velvet Thread Weaving Technique" was included in the list of Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The 71-year-old Li Meimei is the inheritor of the Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage "Haipai Velvet Thread Knitting Technique" and one of the leaders of the Bouquet Knitting Project of the Winter Olympic Awards.
Li Mei in assembling a bouquet. Courtesy of respondents
Last June, Li Meili heard about the Winter Olympic bouquet for the first time. "I did a couple of tricks. The results were sent to the Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, and the people of the organizing committee felt that this flower was very creative. ”
The design process lasted for several months, and Li Meili could not remember how many times she had changed the design draft. "Later, I thought that there was definitely no hope, but in fact, the leaders of the Winter Olympic Organizing Committee have been reviewing, and the final effect is better than I thought." In October 2021, the Bouquet of the Winter Olympic Awards was finalized.
The award bouquet no longer uses traditional cut flowers, but instead uses hand-woven velvet flowers. This not only contains the concept of frugality and sustainability in running the Olympic Games, but also means good, and is known as the "Olympic flower that never fades".
In the final draft, Li Mei used 6 kinds of flower and plant images. The rose symbolizes friendship, the moon season symbolizes tenacity, the bell orchid symbolizes happiness, the hydrangea symbolizes unity, the laurel symbolizes victory, and the olive symbolizes peace. The Beijing Winter Paralympic Games awards bouquet added cosmos symbols of strength on this basis. The selection of these flower images is also exquisite, such as the moon season, which is the protagonist of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games award 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 the Two Olympics", and the choice of olives means to pay tribute to the Olympic tradition.
The flower material is shaped and bundled into a bouquet of flowers with a height of 34 cm and a chest diameter of 24 cm, which is just right in volume, striving to be exquisite and expressive. The bow ribbon on the bouquet handle is printed with the words "BEIJING2022", and the bouquet is fresh and natural as a whole, which is in line with the main color of the Beijing Winter Olympics, highlighting the distinctive characteristics of ice and snow sports. "In the final process of each flower, I use fine copper wire to fix the shape, so that the overall three-dimensional sense of the bouquet will be stronger."
The bouquet is tied with blue and white ribbons, which are shaped like the Chinese character "winter" and resemble a skier, full of Winter Olympic characteristics.
Li Meimei said that the market crochet generally uses thick lines, thick line crochet speed, the final presentation effect is slightly rough, she finally chose the thin line, "slow work can be fine work, although it takes more time and effort to use thin lines, but the bouquet of hooks is more delicate and more realistic." ”
This is the twentieth year that Li Mei has been involved in the velvet knotting industry. In the past 20 years, Li Meimei has successively woven the city flowers of 24 provinces and cities in the mainland, the national flower of China, the 24 solar terms and cartoon dolls with the theme of the zodiac signs, which have been displayed on different occasions. Among them, "Home, Spring, Autumn", which is composed of velvet flowers, was once given to the old man of Ba Jin. The corsage, designed with the theme of Egypt's national flower "water lily" and Laos' national flower "plumeria", is given to foreign friends. In 2002, Li Meimei also organized more than 100 laid-off female workers to use 10,000 velvet flowers to form the word "National Day" and a huge flower basket on both sides, which won the Guinness World Record.
A complete bouquet of Winter Olympic awards, to weave 197 large and small petals, branches and leaves, converted to a skilled worker to make about 35 hours, the Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympic Games awards share 1251 bouquets, a total of 16731 flowers.
After the finalization in October last year, only 4 months before the opening of the Winter Olympics, the time is tight, the task is heavy, the project team contacted the craftsmen who will be knotted all over the country, and 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.
The bouquet of awards has a fixed size and shape, and the velvet thread knotting needle method is also relatively special, under the influence of the epidemic, Li Meimei adopted the form of online video recording, and sent the weaving method and requirements of each flower material to the weavers across the country in the form of electronic versions.
"Dreams are full of leaves"
In October last year, the first batch of velvet threads was sent to Guan Chao, the Tianjin Tidal Relief Center. Founded on March 7, 2019, Tianjin Tidal Relief Center is a charitable organization that provides handicraft skills such as weaving and life assistance services for the people in need. Entrusted by the Tianjin Women's Federation, the Tidal Center conducts handicraft training for the needy women of the "Tianjin Family Handicraft Workshop", with more than 200 online courses and more than 10,000 training trips, helping women in need to earn income at home.
Guan Chao received the first task is the weaving of hydrangeas, compared to other weaving teams, her team has a mature weaving group, more than 200 people of the "weaver girl", some from Sichuan, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Henan, Shandong, Hunan and other places, the real Tianjin local "weaver girl" there are more than 70 people, they gather in the tide center, out of the principle of confidentiality, they do not know what they are knitting these flowers for. "The people we use are all trained over the years, and through manual skills education, plus learning and order acceptance, we can participate in the production."
Guan Chao is the initiator of the Tidal Center project and the non-hereditary inheritor of the "Jinpai Hand-Crochet Technique". After receiving the samples, velvet threads and text explanations of the hydrangea flowers, she crocheted them according to the steps of the text explanations, completed the high restoration of the first hydrangea flowers from scratch, and disassembled each step on the basis of the original. "The first time I met Teacher Li Mei, she asked me if I could hook the moon season, let me take a diagram out, I directly hooked it out, she said the moon season you take it, and then the leaves of the laurel are dark, it is more difficult to hook you also take the hook." 」
In the end, the Tide Center undertook the weaving of 1,600 hydrangeas, 800 seasonal flowers, and more than 26,000 bay leaves.
Hydrangea crocheted in the center of the tide and the season of the moon. Courtesy of respondents
Wash your hands, a pair of crochet needles, a ball of velvet thread, a pair of scissors, a clean basket, with the warm winter sun, and begin to crochet. Fingers fly up and down, velvet wraps around fingertips, and velvet begins to take shape.
Li Li, a stay-at-home mom, joined the Tide Center as a volunteer last October and was also a trainer and acceptor of the weaving.
She continued to disassemble the illustrations of Teacher Li Mei into a picture version and then with text, and sent them to the Weaver Girl group, almost all the training and learning were online, and sometimes she would send long voices. In the process of training, she realized that the "weaver girls" in the group had hearing impaired people, and later changed to text communication. "In the process of training, I found that the learning ability of disabled friends is very strong, there is almost no difficulty, the error of our acceptance standard is about 0.5 centimeters, after all, it is handmade, it is not very realistic to be exactly the same, but this is also the temperature of handicrafts."
In early October, Li Li sent out fleece threads for the "Weavers" to try on hooks, and in late October, she received some finished products. Most of the "weaver girls" are mature in their skills, only a few have a bias in understanding, and the strength of each person's crochet is different, resulting in a different tightness of the bouquet.
The distribution of materials and the recycling of finished products are carried out simultaneously, the initial need to rework more, after two or three modifications, the quality is visible to the naked eye is getting better and better, "not to send down the deadline and then recycle, but to make a batch and let them send it over." Throughout the winter, Li Li was busy sending and receiving couriers, and on the platform of the courier company, her order volume exceeded 96% of the people. Although there are wire fixing strips inside the bouquet, the soft part of the fleece line occasionally deforms the shape after receiving it. "If the shape is not good, it will be shaped, and this is inevitable."
At the same time, she also sent the finished products that passed the acceptance to Shanghai, and the teacher Li Meimei accepted them again. "The goods sent over, there is a lot of satisfaction, so there is an addition."
In the process of crocheting, people still don't know where these seasons, hydrangeas and bay leaves are used, and some people even speculate that "is it to make a Christmas tree?" After inspecting 26,000 bay leaves, Li Li found that "all the leaves floating in front of her eyes in her dreams" were all leaves.
The efforts of thousands of "Weaver Girls"
The bright and enthusiastic 2,400 red roses are from the Skilled Mother Workshop in Shanghai's Yangpu District, where the average age is over 60 years old. Grandma Mou Guoying, 81, wants to "contribute even a small amount of strength." ”
The 840 bell orchids are from the hands of more than 50 mothers in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province.
1,600 hydrangeas, 800 seasonal flowers, and more than 26,000 bay leaves from the Tianjin Tide Center.
300 olive branches, 300 gerberas, from the "Second Sister Handicraft Workshop" in Hongdong County, Linfen City.
The 500 Winter Paralympic Awards Bouquet was handed by more than 150 disabled people at the Hope Home for Spinal Cord Injury in Beijing.
In addition to these figures, there are many nameless "weavers" behind them that have not been counted.
Weavers crochet in the center of the tide. Courtesy of respondents
At the end of October, Wang Miao from Zhoukou, Henan, led more than 20 sisters from the village to take over the task of 5,000 hydrangea flowers and 1,300 bay leaves.
Wang Miao was diagnosed with osteosary insufficiency 14 days after his birth, commonly known as "brittle bone disease", that is, "porcelain doll", even if it is a very slight collision, it may cause fractures.
Wang Miao learned weaving skills with her mother since she was a child, and after years of exploration, her weaving works have won many awards in large-scale handmade exhibitions in China, and she has successfully applied for the intangible cultural heritage project in Luyi County, Zhoukou City, and established her own "Weaving Dream Studio". At present, wang miao studio has hundreds of online and offline trainees, most of whom are left-behind women in rural areas.
Crocheted hydrangeas need to be prepared with white and green fine velvet thread, long flower stems, green wire, golden wire, rice beads and crochet needles, a full and fluffy hydrangea flower contains 20 small flowers, a skilled hand can hook a small flower in 5 minutes. The time it takes to wrap the branches, install the flower hearts, and assemble the flowers is another 100 minutes. The production time of a finished hydrangea flower alone takes 200 minutes.
These fresh bouquets of flowers accompany Wang Miao throughout the winter.
"Dream Come True"
In Shanghai, the work of recycling final assembly is carried out simultaneously.
In the end, a total of 16,731 flowers from all over the world were collected in Shanghai. Each flower material must be repeatedly inspected and verified by Li Mei, and her requirements for flower materials are extremely strict, "Initially because everyone just started to try, the flower materials that were summarized had more or less problems, so I took these flower materials home to take them apart and re-crochet them." However, after such a long period of running-in and practice, now everyone can make very qualified flower materials, and I am very grateful to the hand-knitting artists all over the country. "After the project started, LiMei's mobile phone remained open 24 hours a day, and sometimes I received a call at eleven or twelve o'clock at night to answer questions.
After completing the inspection, Li Meimei will undergo the final assembly. The sum of the flower materials is different in length, and the Winter Olympic bouquet has a very strict size standard, "I am a perfectionist person, basically every flower has to go through my hands, carefully check each flower, because the bouquet length is different, and the Beijing Winter Olympics require a length of 34 cm, I will use a vise to correct." "Later, Li Meimei switched to a cutting machine, and the efficiency of correcting the size was greatly improved." I did not waste the cut branches, originally our whole bouquet is actually thin to hold, I will prune the flower branches and then fill in, so that the athletes hold the bouquet feel better, but also greatly save material. ”
On the evening of December 31, 2021, the New Year bell rang, the award elements of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games were officially released, and the Winter Olympic Awards Bouquet showed its face to the world. Li Meimei said that this is her "dream moment". "I'm older now, there's always going to be a day when I leave this role, and it could be the last project I'll do, and I'm very excited and proud to be able to participate in such an international event in my lifetime."
Beijing Winter Olympics awards bouquet. Courtesy of respondents
For those involved in weaving, December 31 is a special New Year's Eve. Scattered all over the country, some of them do not know each other, but they share glory in this moment. For the first time, many people see the final appearance of a complete bouquet, "the secrecy work is so well done that I don't know anything beforehand." Some people regret not weaving more, some people regret not taking more photos, excitement, pride and satisfaction are the theme words of the screen brush in the circle of friends of the "Weaver Girl" that night. There is a "weaver girl" in the group said, "My husband usually can't look at my hook wool, this time I have to catch the opportunity I must not turn over, hook wool can also be on the table." ”
Li Li felt that she was particularly lucky, just joined the Tide Center, and participated in the world-renowned Winter Olympics. "I originally felt that the Winter Olympics were very far away from me, but I didn't expect to contribute a force, especially in the era of machine manufacturing where hand weaving was underestimated, I always felt that hand weaving was not advanced, and this time I finally felt that what I made was not useless." Maybe this time will catch up with this time. ”
Guan Chao launched the weaving illustration and online course of the Winter Olympics award bouquet on the online platform, and many people left a message that "missed such an opportunity", "Everyone may think that weaving itself is a hobby, but through this matter, give knitting enthusiasts a booster, let everyone know that this thing we do is not to pass the time, not to be elegant, but also to get a good income." ”
On 15 January, all the bouquets arrived at the major competition venues.
Beginning February 6, the winners took to the podium, wearing medals on their chests and holding bouquets of flowers in their hands, greeting audiences around the world.
Beijing News reporter Zhu Qinghua Editor Hu Jie Proofreader Zhao Lin