"Together to the future", this is the theme of the Beijing Winter Olympics, but also a shouting cry for all mankind to put aside prejudices and reach a consensus and rush to a longer-term destiny together.
Author: Wang Yanhe
Source: Zhigu Trends (ID: zgtrend)
The best compliments often come from your opponents.
As we all know, Western countries always wear colored glasses for China.
The Beijing Winter Olympics showed the world a china that has changed dramatically, more confidently and atmospherically than it was in 2008. The Western media can pick a bone in an egg or write "I don't believe" on their faces, but they can no longer turn their heads and pretend to turn a blind eye.
The Washington Post posted that the ratings of the Winter Olympics on NBC Television in the United States were terrible.
As for why, they had to tell the truth: the audience all ran to video platforms such as TikTok and Youtube, and never had to go through the "two-way peddlers" of the American media.
On these platforms, hundreds of millions of global audiences interact passionately every day, eat melons, and output opinions. And the personal records of foreign athletes and media journalists in China can often detonate millions of broadcasts.
In the comment area, "Is this really China?" and "It's hard to believe that we have fallen so far behind China.".
As early as February 10, the Olympic broadcasting company announced that the Beijing Winter Olympics was the highest-rated Winter Olympics in history.
Therefore, how many people say that they do not look, but their bodies are very honest, everyone will have a number in mind.
The world is witnessing this ancient and young oriental country once again taking center stage.
Foreign athletes boarded the Fuxing train and drove into the mountains of Zhangjiakou at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour.
What they saw was the speed of the high-speed railway, the snowfields, the slanting sun and the Yanshan Mountains in the distance, and the endless wind farm.
After arriving in Chongli, the train can drive directly into the competition area, which is the first time in the Winter Olympic Games, and after leaving the station, walk 500 meters to the Winter Olympic Village.
Standing at this moment, it is difficult to imagine that Chongli more than ten years ago was just an ordinary small county town in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province.
There are no foreign tourists, no ski slopes, no highways, and no different from the thousands of small towns in China that are still lifted out of poverty. Although it is less than 200 kilometers from downtown Beijing, the prosperity of the capital has nothing to do with it.
Local residents laughed at themselves, saying that in the small town, "a road is full of pits, a policeman is staring at both ends, a lamp on the cross street, and a fifteen-watt light bulb illuminates the whole city."
The change started 7 years ago.
In 2015, Beijing and Zhangjiakou successfully won the bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics, and a huge force began to overflow from the capital.
Beijing has become a "city of the two Olympic Games", and no city has ever been able to host the Olympic Games in such a short period of time.
Behind the glory is the planning scheme of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration.
This can not only help the Winter Olympics to significantly reduce the expenditure on infrastructure construction and venue facilities, but also drive the urban development, industrial iteration and employment development around Beijing to a new level.
In the past few years, a large amount of funds have poured into Zhangjiakou, and the amount of projects set up in a few years has reached hundreds of billions. The local house price was 6,000 yuan per square meter before the Olympic bid, reaching a high price of more than 20,000 in 2017 and 2018.
The Yanchong and Zhangcheng Expressways have been opened successively, and the Beijing-Zhangjiang High-Speed Railway will be opened at the end of 2019. Before that, Chongli to Beijing took more than 3 hours by car, and now it takes only 50 minutes to take the Fuxing high-speed railway, which is considered to have entered the "one-hour economic circle" of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei.
American skier Sean White has revealed:
He had been impressed by China's high-speed rail network before, and had been looking forward to the Beijing-Zhang railway being repaired quickly, and this time he finally experienced it at the Winter Olympics.
He wasn't the only one who felt the same way.
Hosting the Olympic Games has changed from stimulating the economy to a deep pit, Tokyo, Rio and other cities have lost money in running the Olympic Games, and the Winter Olympics have also lost money for many consecutive years, but China has done a good job of boosting the city and industrial economy and breaking the spell.
Officials of the International Olympic Committee lamented that every competition area of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Zhangjiakou and Yanqing, are like an accelerator, effectively driving regional development.
Now Chongli is the largest high-end snow gathering area in China.
In just a few years, more than 40 five-star hotels have been built, and last year's snow season received more than 2.35 million tourists, and the local area changed from industry and agriculture to service industry, serving the "snow rice bowl" and becoming the city of the Winter Olympics in the spotlight.
The improvement of transportation infrastructure has attracted consumers in first-tier cities, blown up the new wind of high-end service industries, and brought digital technologies such as mobile payment, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and smart cities into small cities.
After the Winter Olympics, the ice and snow industry in China's spring has only just begun, and these cities can optimistically see the direction of the future.
Many people do not understand that at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, Zhang Yimou used a "micro-fire" as the main torch.
Is the main torch of 2008 beautiful? It was beautiful.
But under the roaring flame, 5,000 cubic meters of natural gas are consumed every hour, and a gas station is even built in the bird's nest to supply gas for the torch.
14 years later, a small fire that illuminates the world is China's bright and low-carbon Winter Olympics attitude.
China has put forward a double carbon target of carbon peaking by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, and in the faltering process of global carbon neutrality, the Winter Olympics is the best stage to show China's green concept and fulfill its commitments.
For the first time in history, the Beijing Winter Olympics will achieve the goal of 100% green electricity.
In order to achieve this first time is not easy, the state specially built the Zhangbei ± 500kv flexible DC power grid project.
The core of this project is to use "wind from Zhangbei to light up the lights in Beijing" - to transport the abundant wind and photovoltaics in Zhangbei to Beijing, and to build a stable, flexible and controllable network.
It is conceivable that with the development of new energy, the construction of power grid projects based on clean energy is also a major trend in the future. The Zhangbei flexible DC power grid is an experiment, or sample, that is the first time that a flexible power grid on a large regional scale has been constructed.
After the Winter Olympics, this power grid system can still transmit more than 20 billion kWh of green electricity to Beijing and other places every year, greatly increasing the proportion of clean energy used in Beijing and northern Hebei.
In order to save money and avoid waste of resources, the Beijing Winter Olympics mainly used the venues and facilities of the 2008 Olympic Games, and upgraded them on this basis.
The Water Cube is a swimming pool in the spring, summer and autumn, and then becomes an ice cube in the winter, where curling competitions are held; the Wukesong Sports Center becomes an ice hockey hall.
The four ice sports venues use the most environmentally friendly "carbon dioxide transcritical direct cold ice making" technology, which can achieve carbon emissions approaching zero, and can control the ice surface temperature difference within 0.5 °C.
All the newly built venues of the Winter Olympics have also obtained the Samsung Green Building Design Logo, which is the highest green building standard in China.
Ski jumping platform is the transformation of the old site of the factory in Shougang to reduce the waste of buildings.
From heavy industry to the low-carbon Winter Olympics, this is a story about industrial upgrading and urban regeneration, representing China's path choices. Bach, president of the International Olympic Organizing Committee, called this an amazing example of urban planning and cities.
However, under the BBC's "hades filter", it was hyped up as a nuclear power plant by foreign media.
This is a bit excessive, after all, the real big jump scene can be seen on various video platforms, which has attracted netizens in the comment area to respond to "fake news".
China's goal is to achieve full carbon neutrality for the Winter Olympics, and the concept of carbon reduction is embodied everywhere.
More than a thousand hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were also launched in the winter Olympics, and 85% of the vehicles used for the transportation service used energy conservation and clean energy.
Afforestation, water protection, and creation of forest leaf carbon sinks in the Beijing-Hebei region; enterprises such as PetroChina, State Grid, and the Three Gorges Group have carbon offsets through actions and donations; catering utensils for the Winter Olympics use degradable materials, and the warm materials for staff uniforms come from recycled waste plastics; through digital technologies such as small programs, let the public record the carbon trajectory of daily life and guide the public to live a low-carbon life.
The Winter Olympics have left a lot of precious low-carbon heritage and are a major training exercise in the carbon neutrality methodology of the whole process of large-scale events. In silence, China's clean energy technology has run ahead.
The Olympic Games are both a sports arena and a show of science and technology.
Athletic competition has never been more than just a contest of sports.
Another major theme of the Beijing Winter Olympics is technology. After the successful bid for the Olympic Games, the Ministry of Science and Technology launched the "Science and Technology Winter Olympics" plan, implementing scientific and technological breakthroughs in four aspects: zero-row energy supply, green travel, 5G sharing, and smart viewing.
This is a global window to observe China's level of science and technology, the degree of new infrastructure, and an opportunity for China to promote 5G, AI, digital yuan, cloud computing and other technologies.
At the opening ceremony, behind the ice waves and snow waves, dreamlike visual design, behind the boe, China Aerospace Science and Technology, Intel, Huawei and other companies and universities.
The largest screen, which consists of 42,000 screens and covers an area of more than 10,000 square meters, reached an astonishing level of 16k for the first time.
It looks very much like the Olympic rings of ice, and the surface is also an ultra-high-definition LED display, made by Beijing's Leyard.
This Winter Olympics also pioneered the use of 8K, VR, and free-view technology, which can watch the game at 360 degrees without dead angles.
And this technique has also made a great contribution in the previous competition.
In the men's short track speed skating competition on February 7, the whole network thanked the "cheetah" and "flying cat" for catching the foul of the Korean player.
The ultra-high-speed 4K orbital camera system "Cheetah" is a shooting tool used in racing, moving at speeds of up to 90 kilometers per hour, while top speed skaters are in 70 kilometers.
The "Flying Cat", which consists of 40 4k cameras + 3 8kVR cameras, can carry out ultra-clear shooting with full coverage and no blind spots.
10 sets of "bullet time" playback system, using 360-degree ring shooting technology, can 3D digital reconstruction, playback, restore the freeze-frame scene in the game.
For the audience, it is as if they are immersed in the viewing experience of breaking through time and space and with a high degree of freedom; for the players, fouls are hidden and the fairness of the game is guaranteed; for the referee, the basis for punishment and scoring is more sufficient.
The most exclaimed "amazing" by foreign media, and the crazy screen brushing screen on TikTok is the sci-fi smart restaurant.
There are no chefs, no waiters, no bartenders in this restaurant, and all food and drinks are made by 120 catering robots.
After the diners sit down in the restaurant and scan the code to order, the robot in the back kitchen begins to make, the drink can be completed in 90 seconds, and the food preparation process takes only 4-6 minutes.
Once baked, the food is accurately delivered in front of you through a track and cantilever mounted on the ceiling.
Similarly, there are robot bartenders, baristas, pastry chefs, and ice cream robots. The only thing that limits you is your imagination.
Throughout the Winter Olympics, robots are everywhere. In a variety of scenarios such as delivery, patrol, medical emergency, disinfection and sterilization, guided translation, cleaning, etc., it provides efficient intelligent services.
In fact, in the two years after the epidemic, robots have appeared in large numbers of Chinese people's life scenes, driving the rapid progress of China's AI robot and service robot industry.
In the comments section, a top-notch message was, "The United States now looks like a developing country."
If you ask which country will be most capable of popularizing intelligent robots in the next decade, you know.
On the field, athletes make thrilling jumps and break through the limits. Personal efforts are important, but the equipment and clothing used are also the crystallization of science and technology.
The Golden Dragon gown of the Chinese Short Track Speed Skating Team can improve the resistance reduction performance by 10% and the anti-cutting strength is 15 times that of steel wire. This is the result of more than 2,000 design manuscripts, more than 110 samples, and 800 hours of wind tunnel testing by the technical team.
Athletes use visual capture algorithms, deep learning and AI technology in their usual training to polish out the best state and the highest level of each athlete little by little.
It's a low-key, non-ostentatious, but all-encompassing tech extravaganza. The "hidden champions" of science and technology who appeared at the Winter Olympics have developed, designed and manufactured from all over the world, and most of them have mature and complete domestic supply chains.
It is no wonder that the eyes of the world are so focused, which is the result of China's scientific and technological progress in the past 14 years, and also points out the way forward for the next development.
Up to now, the Chinese delegation has won 8 gold, 4 silver and 2 bronze at the Winter Olympics, creating the best results in history.
On the field, China has also given birth to Gu Ailing, Wu Dajing, Su Yiming and other world-facing and household-known ice and snow sports stars.
"Little Bolt" Su Yiming ushered in the 18-year-old coming-of-age ceremony today, and Gu Ailing is only 18 years old. Although the growth trajectory is not the same, the two have known each other for a long time, and now they have become famous and met at the peak.
Athletes may be the most grounded stars, they are young and hot-blooded, and with the most intuitive struggle, competition, dreams, from life high.
From them, we can see the best appearance of the new generation of Chinese youth.
Those foreign athletes who have crossed the ocean and come to China are also the proud sons of their country.
They played and communicated with Chinese athletes, and they were also touched to see the diversity and progress in the very different Chinese and Western contexts.
They used various methods such as photography, interviews, TikTok, etc., to show the real China they saw and heard, and gathered hundreds of millions of viewers to like it, which is worth a thousand words.
This kind of future has hope and young people have dreams, which is common to the whole world.
● References:
International people praised the Beijing-Zhang high-speed railway. People's Daily News
Serve the "snow rice bowl", the Winter Olympics changed Zhangjiakou. Southern Weekend
Beijing Winter Olympics: A Testing Ground for Carbon Neutrality. A thousand pieces of green
The Winter Olympics knock on the door. Caixin