A proud parent

Many Olympic athletes, too, have expressed their love for the mascot.

Recently, over 1 million people were registered at the official Olympic flagship shop on Tmall, an online shopping platform in China, according to Wenhui Daily.

Cao, who's currently the dean of the School of Visual Arts Design at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, was born on xiaoxue, which is "light snow" in the 24 solar terms, widely used among ancient Chinese to measure seasons, and featured prominently in a video shown at the beginning of Friday's opening ceremony.

Cao's mother named him Xue, after snow. Cao says it was destiny that his design was selected as the official mascot of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Cao was born in Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu province, where it often snows, he says. When he was a child, he used to make small snow carts with bamboo pieces and benches lashed together, along with other children in the neighborhood, as well as building snowmen and having snowball fights.

In a previous interview, Cao claimed that, when it snows in Nanjing, which looks familiar and ordinary, the city becomes different overnight.

"This kind of visual impact has a great effect on those who are engaged in design. I store what I see in my brain, and I often call on those memories whenever I need inspiration," Cao said. "One has to be good at seeing and discovering things in life with the eyes, because with a full mind, what you see might trigger something special."

Cao revealed that the mascot design project was completed by a talented team of 14 designers, half of them were postgraduate students, and the other half were teachers from the school.

The team traveled to Beijing more than 20 times during a 10-month period and revised the design over 1,000 times before the Bing Dwen Dwen that the world has taken to its collective hearts was born.

For Cao and his team, the process of creating the mascot was more like an academic assignment than a contribution to the country. Cao said he found that young people from Guangzhou, who barely see snow, actually have a superb imagination.