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[stuff-diary]

Welcome To My Side

Movies watched in 2024

Welcome To My Side (2024, China)

Director: Song Hao Lin

Writers: Miao Qian & Song Hao Lin

Mini-review:

Welcome To My Side is exactly what I needed after watching several heavy movies in a row: a purely fun romcom. The initial premise is silly but also surprisingly hilarious, and the gimmick never overstays its welcome, cause it's used just the right amount of times. The dramatic twist during the third act might feel a bit sudden, but there's enough foreshadowing for it to work. It certainly helps that both Yu Shi and Wang Yinglu deliver two fantastic performances, with outstanding chemistry to boot. I'm not saying this is the best romcom I've ever watched, but it came to me at the perfect time.

[archinewspaper]

Nanjing Galaxy Kindergarten / Lacime Architects © Qianxi Zhang Architects: Lacime Architects Location: North Hongshan Rd, Xuanwu District, Nanjing, China Category: Kindergarten Architectural Team: Xing Xiong, Qionghua Lin, Jianlin Zhu Landscape Design: Shanghai LACIME Architectral Design Co., Ltd. Landscape Team: Yi Zhang, Jing Wang, Jianbang Hou, Xuelong Huang, Donghao Wang, Pengcheng Li, Bifeng Zheng, Jiabin Yuan,… — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2MNRBj4

[newstfionline]

For China, Olympic dreams and ‘snow business’ in winter sports boom

Michael Holtz, Cristian Science Monitor, January 3, 2018

HARBIN, CHINA--On a recent morning in this city in northeastern China, about 20 children take turns sliding heavy granite stones across a sheet of ice toward a red, white, and blue bull’s-eye. Their parents look on in eager anticipation, snapping photographs from behind a plexiglass barrier.

After each child has a final turn, an instructor calls them over for a group photo on the ice before they depart. For many, it was their first attempt at curling, but Zheng Jiabin, the co-founder of the Trans Curling Club, is hopeful that it won’t be their last.

“Curling is low risk and easy to learn,” he says. “It only takes 15 minutes for us to teach a person how to play. If they play three times, they’ll be addicted.”

Curling may be one of the more obscure winter sports--it is the only one that requires brooms--but its popularity speaks to China’s broader embrace of activities involving ice and snow. While much of the world is preparing for the Winter Olympics that start Feb. 9 in South Korea, China is already looking ahead to its turn.

Last November, the Chinese government announced plans to get 300 million people involved in winter sports by the time Beijing and the nearby city of Zhangjiakou host the games in 2022. Hundreds of new ice rinks and ski resorts are being built to accommodate millions of first-time skiers, hockey players, and yes, even curlers.

“There’s no doubt that because of the Winter Olympics, we are going to promote winter sports in China to a new level,” says Tan Jianxiang, a professor of sports sociology at South China Normal University in Guangzhou. And as the living standard of millions of Chinese continues to improve, Dr. Tan adds, “our love for winter sports will last well beyond the Olympics.”

China’s winter tourism industry is on track to more than double in size by 2022, according to a new report by the China Tourism Academy. The report estimates that the number of winter tourists will increase from 170 million to 340 million over the next four years, and that the industry’s revenues will rise from 270 billion yuan ($41 billion) to 670 billion yuan ($102 billion).

Such an expansion would help China’s transition from an economy that depends on credit-fueled investment and government spending in heavy industries to one anchored by consumer spending. The country’s gross domestic product grew 6.7 percent in 2016, a 26-year low, before accelerating to 6.9 percent in the three months to Sept. 30.

China’s growth is expected to slow further, which means a greater reliance on service industries like tourism, including winter sports, to pick up the slack.

Last December, the National Development and Reform Commission, the government agency that helps oversee economic planning, announced plans to invest 2 trillion yuan in tourism by 2020 by attracting more private investment into the industry. The commission’s goal is for tourism to contribute more than 10 percent of annual economic growth by then.

A large chunk of that growth is expected to come from China’s newfound interest in winter sports, especially among those in the country’s growing middle class. The consulting firm McKinsey estimates that China had 116 million middle-class and affluent households last year, up from 2 million in 2000. Eager for new ways to spend their disposable income, many have adopted winter pastimes such as ice skating and skiing.

To meet the rising demand for winter sports--and prepare for the Olympics--China announced in November 2016 that it planned to build 300 new ski resorts and 500 new ice rinks by 2022. In Beijing alone, the municipal sports bureau plans to build 66 new indoor rinks. The city now has about 30.

In Harbin, a city famous for its annual ice sculpture festival, Mr. Zheng estimates that close to 10,000 people have participated in lessons and other activities at the Trans Curling Club since it opened in late June. The club is located in a massive shopping center that includes an indoor ice rink and, as its centerpiece, the world’s largest indoor ski resort. The resort has six ski runs and covers more than 64,000 square feet.

Few, if any, winter sports have received as much attention in China as skiing, which is popular among the newly rich and young urbanites. Developers have been pouring money into resorts across the country, and the government has announced that it wants 1,500 miles of new ski trails built before the 2022 Games.