China News Service, Shanghai, September 26th. Title: The 48th World Skills Competition concluded with frequent highlights of popular events.
China News Service reporters Wang Ji and Li Jiajia
The final bell and cheers intertwined at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai). The 48th World Skills Competition (hereinafter referred to as the "World Skills Competition") ended on the evening of the 26th after a four-day "fierce battle" in skills. In the past few days, more than 1,300 players from all over the world have competed in this "peak showdown". The competition venue for many popular events is filled with spectators, and the scene of "masters competing against each other" is dizzying.
A showdown between Chinese and Western gardening takes place at the moon cave gate
"Hand-rubbing" stone walls, rockeries... the gardening project is recognized as one of the "physical responsibilities" of the World Championships, and is also the "most beautiful venue" in the minds of many viewers. This year's World Championships takes Chinese gardens as the official theme. The showdown between Chinese and Western gardening at the Moon Cave Gate gives the oriental artistic conception of "mountains and forests close at hand" an interpretation across mountains and seas.
In an interview with a reporter from China News Service on the 26th, Li Shuangquan, site manager of the Horticulture Project of the World Championships, revealed that in February this year, the competition manager, accompanied by Chinese representatives, visited Yu Garden, Shen Garden and other landscapes with Chinese characteristics. He believed that Chinese-style gardens were obviously different from the garden styles of previous World Championships, and finally decided on the design plan for this year’s competition.
At the competition site, competition modules such as flower windows, floor paving, rockeries, and plant landscapes were formed one by one by the hands of contestants from all over the world, and the pattern designs in the details were unique. Li Shuangquan believes that the gardening project places extremely high demands on the players' comprehensive planning ability, detail control and endurance. It is not only related to the beautification of the city, but also carries the practical significance of ecological restoration and improving the happiness of human settlements.
Preserved eggs and rice wine enter the Western cooking circuit
In the cooking (Western food) competition, traditional Chinese fermented foods that rarely appear in Western kitchens—preserved eggs and sweet fermented rice wine—were included in the list of “mysterious ingredients.”
According to the tradition of the World Championships, each host country will use local representative ingredients as challenge materials to test the chef's ability to break out of the inherent cooking framework and carry out creative reconstruction. For example, the previous World Championships in France used cheese and nuts, and the World Championships in Kazan, Russia, used candies and horse meat. If you choose a "mysterious ingredient", the ingredient must account for more than 50% of the dish and become the protagonist of the dish.
Surprisingly, not only Asian contestants were willing to try it at the competition, but a large number of European contestants also took the initiative to use preserved eggs in their dishes. Sean Owens, skills competition manager of the World Championships Cooking Project, said that preserved eggs and sweet rice wine are outstanding representatives of the wisdom of "fermentation" in traditional Chinese food culture. "We hope that contestants from all over the world can use these two ingredients to present the mellow flavor and heritage from China in Western cooking."
Autonomous mobile robot competition is more "extreme"
From factory inspections to fruit picking, from hotel food delivery to medical delivery, autonomous mobile robots are increasingly entering people's lives. As one of the most technologically advanced events in this World Championship, the competition difficulty of the autonomous mobile robot project has been upgraded again. In the maze, every turn and grab of the robot touches people's hearts.
Zhang Anfu, coach of the Chinese team in the autonomous mobile robot project of the 47th and 48th World Championships, told a reporter from China News Service that the competition will be renamed from "mobile robot" to "autonomous mobile robot" from 2024, which will greatly increase the requirements for intelligence. There will no longer be a fixed route, and players will not be able to know the complete competition questions in advance before the competition, which will test comprehensive ability and on-the-spot adaptability.
Zhang Anfu pointed out that the competition tasks of the autonomous mobile robot project are all derived from real industrial and daily life application scenarios. Even if the players leave the competition venue, the World Championship training experience can help them integrate into related industries faster and engage in research and development, design, debugging and other work. "The competition also keeps up with the forefront of the industry, including lidar, depth cameras and other sensing equipment in the assessment, meeting the real needs of the intelligent manufacturing industry, and conducting engineering drills in advance for the implementation of embodied intelligence-related technologies."
