Sui Wenjing/Han Cong Photo:Li Hao/GT

The world's best figure skaters on Sunday presented a spectacular show to bid farewell to a successful Winter Olympics, marked by splendor and safety at Capital Indoor Stadium, inspiring more Chinese people to touch the beauty of the sport on the ice.

As one of the most popular arts in winter events, at the end of each competition in figure skating, the organizers will invite medalists and other popular stars to give encore performances as a reward for the audience. Performance skating is different from official competitions. There are no rules and no results, and the skaters can put aside competition nerves and enjoy the performance themselves.

In the history of performance skating, there have been famous scenes like Wang Shiyue/Liu Xinyu from China performing as a spray of plum blossoms, Jin Boyang from China playing Sailor Moon, Yuzuru Hanyu from Japan dancing with women's singles players and so on.

Chinese pairs skating duos Sui Wenjing/Han Cong and Peng Cheng/Jin Yang, ice dancing duo Wang Shiyue/Liu Xinyu, men's singles player Jin Boyang, as well as public mania Yuzuru Hanyu, and Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova of the Russian Olympic Committee, all participated in the exhibition. 

Many Chinese viewers were glued to their television sets early in the morning to watch their performances. The performance of Chinese pair Wang Shiyue/Liu Xinyu with the song "I Love you, China" made viewers' eyes brim over with warm excited tears.

Sui Wenjing/Han Cong, China's figure skating pair gold medal winner at the Beijing 2022 Games' Pairs Free Skating event on Saturday, showed the strength of champions again.

Yuzuru Hanyu was perfectly in tune with the music on the ice. He didn't choose to take on more difficult moves, but still thrilled many fans. At the end of the performance, Hanyu kissed the ice he loves, a touching sign of his love for the sport. It is worth noting that during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, any competition involving Yuzuru Hanyu was trending on Sina Weibo, showing how much Chinese audiences love him.

Silver medalist figure skater Alexandra Trusova performed as Wonder Woman. She made history when she performed five quadruple jumps in ladies' singles figure skating on Thursday. 

Russian figure skaters have gone viral on Chinese social media, with Olympic gold medalist Anna Shcherbakova and silver medalist Alexandra Trusova boasting 1.86 million and 1.47 million followers respectively on Douyin.

At the end of the exhibition match, highlights of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games showed up on the ice as athletes from all over the world came together to perform as a team, forming the Olympic rings. 

Bing Dwen Dwen, the popular mascot of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, showed up at the grand finale. It was embraced by athletes and fell down again as expected. After the show, many players were reluctant to leave and continued to play on the ice.

Many Chinese netizens commented on the post about the two skaters, saying that the Russian skaters coming to the Beijing Winter Olympics are both strong and attractive, and they are very happy to see them achieve such a good result in China.

A fan of Hanyu, surnamed Cai, told the Global Times on Sunday that she has been a fan of Hanyu for four years after watching his competition in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. 

"Because of him, I got to know figure skating and was deeply moved by his spirit," Cai said.

With the fever involving the Winter Olympics and athletes, the development of Winter sports is no longer limited to China's northern cities. As of 2021, there were 13 indoor ice rinks in Shanghai, eight in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province and six in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, according to China News Weekly.

In April 2021, the Chinese Figure Skating Association released data showing that the number of applicants for the first phase of the 2021-22 first national figure skating online grading test reached 3,187, the highest number of applicants for a single phase since the association launched the online grading test in June 2020. 

It shows that more and more young generation are practicing and improving their figure skating skills as a long-term learning goal, rather than a temporary interest. The Beijing 2022 made the goal of bringing Winter sports to shine on campuses into reality, observers noted.