China's Harbin to stage high-tech, culture-rich opening ceremony of Asian Winter Games

China's "ice city" Harbin is preparing to stun international audience with a technologically innovative and culturally rich opening ceremony of the upcoming 9th Asian Winter Games.

The annual continental sports event is slated to open on February 7 with a spectacular show at the Harbin International Conference, Exhibition and Sports Center.

The opening ceremony, centering around the official slogan of the Games, "Dream of Winter, Love among Asia," will highlight the concept of connecting Asian countries through ice and snow, creating new growth opportunities for winter economy, and promoting cultural exchanges between Asian countries.

With rehearsals for the opening and closing ceremonies underway, Sha Xiaolan, the chief director, told China Media Group (CMG) that the overall progress has been very smooth.

"Since we entered the venue in November, we have completed the building of the audio, light and electric equipment for the entire stage. After more than a month of work, our producing team and performers started on-site preparation. Generally, the rehearsals have gone smoothly, with modifications made for some parts. In the next step, we will hold more rehearsals to further polish the show, with the focus on further improving the interaction between multimedia images, performers and lightings," said Sha.

Sha and his creative team were responsible for the opening and closing ceremonies of major international sporting events, including the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, and the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023.

The experienced producers promised audience an audio-visual feast featuring the use of technologies and the innovative presentation of Harbin's cultural heritages and customs.

"Technologies enable us to organize a 'streamlined, safe and splendid' event. Without lifts or wires, we make the indoor venue a multidimensional space through AR [augmented reality], multimedia and other technological means, aiming to allow the audience to feel the beauty of ice and snow, the beauty of arts closely," said Wu Yan, chief producer of the ceremonies.

"We want to turn the venue into a super meeting room, presenting unlimited creativity in a limited space. In fact, the whole show, as I understand, is to transfer the extreme cold of Harbin's ice and snow into the extreme beauty, the extreme excitement of sports, and finally into the extreme enthusiasm of Asia. With the combination of technology and art, we package the local cultural characteristics of Harbin, such as the intangible cultural heritages and folk customs, in an international and fashion style, to present a large-scale show integrating performance, culture and tourism," said Leng Song, chief copywriter of the ceremonies.

A total of 1,275 athletes from 34 countries and regions, including Cambodia and Saudi Arabia for their Asian Winter Games debut, have registered for Harbin 2025. It is likely to have the most participants ever in the history of the event.

Harbin, the capital city of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, has a long-standing heritage in ice and snow sports due to its natural snowy conditions during the winter.

The city is going to host the Asian Winter Games for a second time. The first time was in 1996.

China's Harbin to stage high-tech, culture-rich opening ceremony of Asian Winter Games

Nobel laureate James Heckman has hailed the “dynamism” of the Chinese society, reflecting on his extensive experience conducting research on the country and being granted the Chinese Government Friendship Award.

Hackman, an American economist and winner of the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared his insights on China's development based on years of research in an exclusive interview with China Media Group (CMG) in Beijing, which was released on Friday.

As a founding figure in microeconometrics, Heckman was jointly awarded his Nobel Prize with Daniel McFadden for their groundbreaking contributions to the development of microeconometric theory and methods, particularly their outstanding work on the principles and methods for analyzing selective sampling.

Over the years, Heckman has dedicated himself to researching and addressing global socioeconomic issues, with a particular focus on human capital, early childhood development, and social mobility. The "Heckman Curve," named after him, demonstrated the positive impact of early childhood development on individual and societal progress, as well as national human capital accumulation, and has been widely cited by policymakers around the world.

In the past decade or so, China has become a major focus of Heckman's research. In 2014, China launched a rural home-based early childhood education program, and Heckman has served as an advisor, providing academic guidance and recommendations for the program's design and research.

On Sept. 30, 2019, Heckman received the Chinese Government Friendship Award, the highest honor granted by the Chinese government to foreign experts. Ever a humble academic, Heckman said he never expected to receive such a prestigious award.

"I certainly didn't know that I was gonna get it. I'm not even sure I deserve it. I'm sure there are people who have given more to China than me. But I am working a lot in China. I find it a very interesting place. But it's the dynamism," he said.

Speaking on his thoughts during the most formative years of his research in China, the economist drew a vivid parallel between the vitality of the Chinese society during its reform-era and the oil-driven prosperity of his father's childhood in the U.S. state of Oklahoma.

"That was oil boom country in the 1920s and 30s when my father was young. And he told me a lot about the boom towns that were there. So I felt that kind of dynamism also at work in China, who was was opening up the markets. There was a lot of entrepreneurship. People were going in and trying new ideas. There was an expansion of the country's production and exchange with the world," the Nobel laureate said.

That vibrancy has extended to the current Chinese society and academia, he added.

"You could feel the optimism and everybody's body in their faces, and then the projects they were describing. So I like that very much. There was a sense that there was vitality, which I saw a real sense of vitality and engagement, and engagement with Chinese scholars and engagement with Chinese coming into the world in a very general way," he said.

Nobel laureate hails dynamism of Chinese society