The Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympic Games are in full swing, and at every time they win the championship, athletes wear medals and bouquets of flowers to salute the national flag and thank the audience. Bouquets of fresh, exquisite flowers, together with their smiling faces, become testimonies of life's glorious moments.
These bouquets are not flowers, but are hand-woven from velvet thread and are known as the "Flowers of Glory that Never Fade". The weavers are about 150 disabled people from 10 districts of Beijing, including Dongcheng and Xicheng.
Two and a half months, about 6.3 million stitches, nearly 20,000 hours... Disabled friends overcame physical inconvenience, successfully woven 500 bunches of "Flowers of Glory" with tenacity and "embroidery work", and proposed to add a blue cosmos that symbolizes strength to the "Flower of Glory", which was successfully adopted.
An unexpected call
"Hello, can you undertake the production of fleece handmade products here?" In August 2021, Hope Home for Spinal Cord Injured People in Beijing received a call from the Beijing Disabled Persons' Federation. Hope Home is a self-organized, mutual assistance, flexible employment of disabled people self-organized, considering that the injured friends have a certain weaving foundation, the person in charge Tang Zhanxin immediately responded.
"At first, we didn't know what these handmade products were going to do, but we just thought it was a good thing for everyone. Therefore, for the city's disabled friends recruitment, as long as they are willing to learn and willing to suffer, they can try. Tang Zhanxin recalled. As soon as the recruitment was launched, 150 disabled friends responded.
No one expected that this batch of handmade products was the bouquet of awards for the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympic Games announced four months later - "Flowers of Glory".
Adhering to the concept of frugality in running the Olympic Games, the "Flower of Glory" does not use fresh cut flowers, but adopts the intangible cultural heritage technique "Haipai Velvet Thread Weaving Technique" hand-woven, organized by Shanghai Hengyuanxiang, a skill protection unit. At first, after getting the weaving requirements and guidance videos provided by Heng Yuanxiang, in the face of complicated stitching, everyone was a little confused.
The "first person to eat crabs" is named Liu Xiaoyun, 58 years old. At the age of 22, she suffered injuries to her lower limbs and waist due to accidents, but she continued to improve herself and learned to weave, and repeatedly won the first place in the national and Beijing disabled people's knitting projects. Today, she is a technical consultant at House of Hope, picking the lead for the "Flower of Glory".
Control videos, needle by needle, make samples, send to Shanghai... After many revisions and improvements, in September 2021, Liu Xiaoyun gave birth to the first "Flower of Glory" in his hands.
To ensure that every disabled friend weaves a bouquet that meets the standards, almost every one of the 150 participants was taught face-to-face and hand-in-hand by Liu Xiaoyun. From November 3, 2021 to January 14, 2022, during the two-and-a-half-month bouquet weaving process, Liu Xiaoyun's footsteps traveled through 10 districts where 150 disabled friends were located, and as far as Dazhuangke Township in Yanqing District, which is more than 100 kilometers away from the city.
Every time the participants learned a kind of flower piece and crocheted it on the spot, Liu Xiaoyun would label it as "qualified" after appraisal, "After returning home, everyone will continue to weave according to 'qualified' and try to ensure consistency." Liu Xiaoyun recalled that at that time, everything was task-oriented, and fast food restaurants, parks or random open spaces became classrooms.
An initiative was made to add a blue cosmos
Due to confidentiality requirements, at first, the disabled friends did not know what the bouquet would be used for, until the sample was knitted, and it was not known to a small extent that it was the winter Paralympic bouquet.
In addition to the excitement, a "brainstorming" was inadvertently set off. "The Winter Paralympics are a sporting event for people with disabilities, shouldn't the bouquet reflect the spirit of self-improvement?" "How about cosmos?" As long as there is soil, it can grow, and the flower language is strong! Everyone said a word to me, and a bold idea burst out: add a cosmos to the "flower of glory" that symbolizes strength!
The idea is out, and then the color is set. It is recommended to choose from the four constituent colors of the Winter Paralympic emblem, red, blue, yellow and green. Red, yellow, green three colors, the bouquet has, but there is no blue, so the blue cosmos came into being.
The plan was handed over to the organizer Hengyuanxiang and the desks of the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee and was successfully adopted. Among the award elements announced on January 1, 2022, the Bouquet of awards for the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games is generally the same. Among them, the Winter Olympic Awards bouquet includes roses, moon seasons, bell orchids, hydrangeas, laurel and olives, which symbolize friendship, tenacity, happiness, unity, victory and peace, respectively, while the Winter Paralympic Awards Bouquet adds an additional blue cosmos to its foundation, symbolizing strength.
"What an honor and a great encouragement to us!" "This is the glory of the athletes, but also our glory!" On January 1, the House of Hope was in full swing.
About 6.3 million stitches, nearly 20,000 hours, the eyes became a ruler
How long does it take to weave a few clumps of thread into a bouquet of flowers? The answer is 35 hours.
First crochet the petals, flower buds, leaves, and then use the metal skeleton to form a single flower branch, and finally assemble it into a bunch of velvet flowers... Between a stitch and a thread, it is a real "embroidery kung fu".
"Haipai velvet weaving technique" pays attention to the fine stitching method, involving long needles, short needles, dog tooth needles, medium and long needles, long needles, standing needles, lock needles and other more than ten kinds of stitches, and the stitching method of each flower is completely different, "Each flower is equivalent to more than ten kinds of stitches freely arranged and combined, endless changes." Weaver Guo Yuanyuan said.
Take the most difficult bay leaf, a whole bunch of flowers are covered with 24 pieces, with the thinnest thread, the largest number of weaving circles, the most complex stitching transformation, and it takes more than 20 minutes to weave a piece by skilled hands.
The finest is not only the stitching method. To weave a piece of laurel leaf closest to the real, the distance between each needle is accurate to the millimeter. "The lower part of the leaf is tighter, and the more it reaches the upper part, the looser it is, so that the leaves are stretched and natural." Guo Yuanyuan said that therefore, the needle on the petiole is closely fitted to the needle, and there is basically no gap in the natural state; and at the tip of the leaf, there should be a sense of breathing between the needle and the needle, and the ruler in the natural state is measured, with an interval of about 2 mm. "At the beginning, we measured while making up, and when we got to the back of the eye, it became a 'ruler', and the distance was more or less, and we could see it."
Like the bay leaf, every flower and every leaf is poured into the efforts of the weaver. For two and a half months, the disabled friends were basically morning bells and twilight drums, and they sat for more than ten hours at a time. Due to physical inconvenience, they overcame unimaginable difficulties for able-bodied people: some people put on a mat to avoid diapers in order to reduce movement and save time; some people simply lay on the bed to prevent pressure sores from sitting for a long time; some people were difficult to operate the fine movements of weaving due to injury, and they did their best to undertake the work of winding and arranging bouquets... Many people have cocoons on their hands, wrapped in tape, neck soreness, waist pain, but do not care. For two and a half months, no one quit halfway through.
According to rough statistics, 150 people with disabilities woven into 500 bunches of "flowers of glory", costing a total of about 6.3 million stitches and taking nearly 20,000 hours.
The bouquet "saws" between the necks for quality inspection
Every bouquet of Olympic flowers must undergo strict "Olympic quality inspection". The quality inspectors, not others, but the disabled friends themselves.
The standard of quality inspection is not only to meet the weaving standards of each flower piece, the flowers are beautiful, the bouquet is beautiful, and the most important thing is safety. "The skeleton of the whole bouquet is metal, the small pieces are wrapped with 0.4 mm thick copper wire, and the branches and stems are 2 mm thick wire." Liu Xiaoyun said. At the Paralympic Games, athletes have different physical conditions, not everyone can hold a bouquet when receiving the prize, and athletes who have lost their hands will use their heads and shoulders to hold the bouquet. "This requires that the velvet thread must be wrapped in all the metal, and there cannot be a millimeter of metal sticking out to injure the athlete."
Therefore, in weaving, everyone will use velvet thread to tightly wrap the end of each piece of metal to ensure that no metal is visible to the naked eye. After weaving each flower, it will be sandwiched between its head and shoulders and neck, "pulling" back and forth, and personally feeling whether there is metal sticking out.
It is this empathy and craftsmanship that makes each "Flower of Glory" beautiful, safe and unparalleled.
On January 14, 2022, when the 500 bunches of "Flowers of Glory" were all completed, packaged and transferred, the partners of Hope House shed tears of excitement, "Once, we were knocked down by fate and once depressed, but now, we are self-reliant, self-reliant, for the same Olympic mission, made our best efforts, realized their own value, no matter how bitter, no matter how tired it is! ”
"I was particularly happy when I saw the athletes standing on the podium with the 'Flower of Glory', just as I stood there myself." Tang Zhanxin said, "The reason why the bouquet of awards allows us to do it is not because we are disabled, but because we can do it well." Compared with ordinary people, people with disabilities are physically limited and cannot disperse more energy to social activities, and the biggest advantage is that they can sit still and at the same time integrate their perception of life into the flowers, so that the flowers have vitality. ”
Blooming flowers, vigorous vitality, and flowers of glory are not only the medals of Paralympic athletes, but also the medals of 150 disabled friends in Beijing. Their spirit of self-improvement will become eternal like the flower of glory that will never fade.
Courtesy of Guo Yuanyuan