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Olympians have emerged as a trendsetting force in China
When 21-year-old Yang Qian wins the women's 10m air rifle competition, the first gold medal at the Olympic Summer Games Tokyo 2020, all eyes were on her
By Yuan Yuan  ·  2021-08-17  ·   Source: NO.33 AUGUST 19, 2021
Yang Qian competes in the Women's 10m Air Rifle Final at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, on July 24 (XINHUA)

When 21-year-old Yang Qian won the women's 10m air rifle competition, the first gold medal at the Olympic Summer Games Tokyo 2020, all eyes were on her. During the live-broadcast, close-ups of the event gave audiences detailed views of not only her performance, but also the accessories she donned, which included a yellow duck-shaped hairpin, an elastic hair band with a carrot-shaped bobble, and light pink nail polish dotted with small pearls.

"My 10-year-old daughter loved the hairpin right away," Wu Shuting, a Beijing resident, told Beijing Review. "I scouted online shopping platforms and in the beginning found only a small number of sellers. But after half a day, many more sellers appeared selling both the hairpin and hair tie. Many sellers combined the two as a set and the price for one set was less than 4 yuan ($0.6), including delivery."

Making it possible 

In just a few hours, these hair accessories that audiences saw on TV soon appeared on computer, phone and tablet screens as people started shopping for them online. The sudden shopping spree triggered by Yang's victory sent a large number of people who work in hair accessory production in Yiwu onto a hectic overdrive. The city in Zhejiang Province is home to the world's largest consumer products wholesale market.

While watching the competition on TV, Yu Wenyong, a businessman in Yiwu, recognized the yellow duck hairpin as a product designed in Yiwu in 2018. He launched the pin that year in his online shop and has kept it in stock, selling an average of around 30 pins per day.

Sensing that demand for the hairpin and hair tie would increase following Yang's win, Yu immediately updated the online description of the pin with a picture of Yang wearing it during the competition, making it the stand-out product on his shop's homepage along with the hair tie. He also assembled a team to mass produce these two products within hours.

"We have close connections with dozens of local factories. Even though there are only 20 employees in my company, when we have urgent orders, we can quickly assemble as many as 300 workers who can begin production pretty fast," Yu said, comparing Yiwu's factories and business people to real-life transformers because of their flexibility. 

Yu is just one of the business people in Yiwu who managed to catch this wave. Data from Taobao, a leading online shopping platform in China, show that just one hour after Yang won the gold medal, at least 2,000 businesses, employing an estimated total of 150,000 hair accessory production workers, began working at full steam to meet the skyrocketing demand. The sales surged—every second there were six hairpins leaving Yiwu.

The second gold medal that Yang won in the 10m air rifle mixed team on July 27 added even more fuel to the entrepreneurial fire. Yu's shop sold over 200,000 sets in the 10 days following the final. "My sister is now a shooting athlete on the provincial shooting team," one purchaser commented under the online product description. "Yang has said the yellow duck hairpin is her lucky charm. I hope it can bring my sister the same luck."

Wu said many of her daughter's schoolmates bought the same hairpin online. "Maybe on the first day of the new semester, we'll see many girls wearing these pins to school."

My era, my style 

While cheering on the athletes, audiences of the Olympics were keen on identifying trends to catch on, from the athletes' clothing and accessories to their expressions.

A thermos cup was an item that frequently appeared with Chinese athletes and their coaches this year. They caught audiences' attention on July 24, the first day of competition, when Hou Zhihui, winner of the women's 49kg weightlifting competition, was filmed while drinking from hers at intervals.

Guan Chenchen, a 16-year-old who won gold with her impeccable performance on the balance beam, said after winning that what she wanted most, as a gift, was a thermos cup. This triggered a widespread interest in the cups across China.

During the final of the women's table tennis singles, audiences noticed not only the thermos carried by the champion, Chen Meng, but also a necklace she wore during the games. The pendant on the necklace had a unique design, featuring a pair of crossed table tennis bats. Chen revealed that it was a customized gift from her father. The necklace soon had its own hashtag online.

Not only products, but also phrases drew much attention. Phrases such as "My era has finally arrived," uttered by Chen to an interviewer from China Central Television after her win, and "He will not defeat me," as said by Ma Long, winner of the men's table tennis singles competition, have not only gone trending online, but have also been printed on phone cases and canvas bags in many online shops.

Team China uniforms, with elements inspired by traditional Chinese culture, have also become a hit. T-shirts with auspicious dragon patterns worn by China's table tennis team came in vogue, along with the uniform worn by trampoline gold medalist, Zhu Xueying. Zhu's uniform, with the neckline of a traditional Chinese qipao and a phoenix design, attracted more than 200 million views on Weibo.

What has been altered by the Olympics is more than just an appetite for new products. "These Olympic Games greatly changed my standards of beauty," said Liu Feifei, a white-collar worker in Beijing, adding that she has seen the beauty in body strength. "Many women are now obsessed with being slim and I used to be one of them. But the vitality displayed by the female athletes really impressed me. The glow on their faces and sparkle in their eyes are beautiful to look at, and these have nothing to do with their figure or weight."

Gong Lijiao, who won China's first ever Olympic gold medal in shot put, expressed her own ideas on body image. "All of the shot put athletes are overweight but I have never heard any of them complain about it," Gong said. "The passion for the sport outweighs everything else."

(Print Edition Title: Gold Medal Glamor)    

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

Comments to yuanyuan@bjreview.com 

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