On January 27th, 2022, just one week before the Beijing Winter Olympics Games kicked off, a promotional video called “the Burning Ice” (燃冰) has been released by Lenovo, one of Chinese largest technology and electronics brands, which is also becoming increasingly popular due to being the technical sponsor and partner of the Chinese national short track speed skating team. This campaign has heated up the Beijing Winter Olympics and attracted over 16.7 million views on Weibo, being the top video in the sports category.
The video begins with a skater gliding through various scenes of divergent cultural lifestyles of Chinese people, featuring different locations and portraying scenes of traditional Chinese cultures. For example, the skater sleds through urban landscapes with high-rise buildings, the cloth-dyeing workshop which is also the filming location of Fearless (霍元甲, a classic Hong Kong action movie played by Jet Li), Beijing Hutong (胡同, old alleys and narrow streets typically found in Beijing), as well as theatres with Peking Opera (京剧).
The video also emphasizes both modern and ancient Chinese cultural representatives. For instance, the blue-and-white porcelain (青花瓷, one of Chinese most well-known vitrified pottery with blue-and-white patterns) and tea art (茶道), have unveiled the ancient civilization of China, whilst the short-track speed skaters, who depict as “China’s speed”, travel through the ancient history of China, also cross path with the world of technology as skating towards a “smart” future.
Throughout the video, Lenovo explores a brand-new and advanced world constructed by intelligent technologies, highlighted in the lyrics “Silver flames beneath your feet, ignite the distant millions of miles, if AI shows, you will see a beautiful new world” (脚下银色火焰，点燃遥远千万里，如果AI展示，你会看见美丽新世界).
The campaign also connected traditional Chinese activities with AI technologies, such as showcasing modern people who immerse in Chinese painting with the use of technologies and competing with AI robots of Chinese Kongfu.
With the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics being brought to the forefront, Lenovo took this opportunity by expressing the national pride of these Chinese national short-track speed skating athletes, such as Wu Dajing and Ren Ziwei (武大靖 and 任子威, both are Chinese short-track speed skaters and gold medallists), who have been highly praised and strongly supported by netizens. Each athlete is boldly introduced when skating across the ice rink in the video with their skates being lit up.
In addition, Lenovo has utilized the celebrity effect by its spokesperson, Wang Yibo (王一博, a Chinese actor and singer with over 39 million fan bases on the Weibo platform) to promote its influences. As a result, Wang’s reposts of this video has also collected over a million likes and thousands of supportive comments for the Chinese athletes.
