Editor' s note: The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will kick off on February 4, 2022, making Beijing the world’s first dual Olympic city. As the second Olympics held amid the COVID-19 pandemic, how is China preparing for the international event? What are people from different countries looking forward to in the Games? GDToday & Newsgd.com will present you “Internet Celebrities on Beijing 2022” in the coming days.
“Family, friends and fans. They are the reason why I live in China.” Having shot the documentary series: The Reason I Live Here since 2015 on probing people' s reasons for immigration between China and Japan, Takeuchi gave his own “the reason I live here” in an interview with GDToday & Newsgd.com.
Takeuchi in Beijing Winter Olympic Athletes' Village. (Photo provided to Newsgd.com)
“In the first three or four years in China, I lived here because I wanted to make documentaries here. But having lived here for eight or nine years, China is already my home now.”
Ryo Takeuchi is a Nanjing-based Japanese documentary director with one of his Youtube channels--Hezhimeng (the name of his workshop) attracting 339k subscribers. Takeuchi has won over millions of fans from both China and Japan with his documentaries such as The Reason I Live Here, Nanjing's Anti-epidemic Scene, Two-Sided the Olympics: TOKYO 2020 DIARY and others.
My team in Japan amazed by VR technology in Athletes' Village
Takeuchi filmed a video about Beijing Winter Olympic Athletes’ Village to record the management and facilities inside. This video went viral in Yahoo! JAPAN after being launched on January 22.
Takeuchi in Beijing Winter Olympic Athletes' Village. (Photo provided to Newsgd.com)
“The video we made about the Beijing Winter Olympic Village is on the top of Yahoo homepage!” Takeuchi shared excitedly on his Twitter.
In this video, Takeuchi tried accessibility services in the Village by presuming himself a person with disabled legs and he was impressed by the accessibility facilities there.
“While my colleagues in Japan showed strong interest in VR (Virtual Reality) technology, which allows athletes to experience snow skating, space station, China’s Jiaolong submarine and China’s historical spots without leaving the Village. In my original version of this video, the scene of VR only took up three or four seconds, but they extended it to 50 seconds. This is surprising, because I feel that VR is a normal thing. In China, you can experience VR even in malls, but for them, it’s still quite novel,” Takeuchi said.
Takeuchi filmed the documentary Two-sided the Olympics at the scene of Tokyo Summer Olympic Games. Through these two experiences on making videos about Winter Olympics, he thus gained a more intuitive impression on the epidemic prevention and control measures adopted by China and Japan.
“Most pandemic prevention measures in these two countries are similar, like the closed-loop management for athletes, media personnel, volunteers and other staff. But Beijing’s management is more detailed and considerate. For example, the cashier desk of each shop in Beijing Olympic Village is surrounded by glass to avoid direct contact between cashiers and costumers,” he explained.
As for competitions in this Winter Games, Takeuchi said he is longing for the figure skating of Yuzuru Hanyu, a Japanese two-time Olympic champion (2014, 2018) who enjoys high popularity in China. “I want to see if he will take the crown for three times,” Takeuchi told GDToday & Newsgd.com.
China balances between the speed and quality of development
Speaking fluent Mandarin, Takeuchi is able to gain insight into the topics that he is interested in. On April 4th of 2021, Takeuchi and his team visited Daliangshan Village in Sichuan province to film the documentary Beyond the Mountain. In 2010, he also made a documentary in this place when he worked for NHK. But this time, they talked to villagers and recorded stories about free houses, banking services at home, women living on Yi embroidery and educational assistance.
In Takeuchi’s eyes, poverty alleviation is one of the most notable changes that has happened in China during these years. “China has changed a lot since 2008. The opening ceremony in Beijing Summer Olympic Games was a mirror of China’s booming economy during the years around 2008, when rapid economic development was at the top priority. But now, China is striving to find the balance between the speed and quality of development with more attention on narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor, environmental protection and other acts on reaching sustainable development.”
“I hope to see more green and low-carbon elements in the opening ceremony of Beijing Winter Olympic Games,” Takeuchi revealed as the Games near.
Reporter: Rofel, Lydia Liu
Editors: Steven, Jasmine, Jerry
