Animated short starring classic Chinese cartoon characters promotes 150-day countdown to Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games

An animated short promoting the 150-day countdown to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games has brought back many Chinese netizens' childhood memories as it stars a number of classic Chinese cartoon characters including the Monkey King, Nezha, the Calabash Brothers and the Snow Child.

The committee's official Sina Weibo account released the one-minute-and-30- second-long video on Tuesday. It starts with the Monkey King, the legendary mythical figure from China's well-known literatary work Journey to the West and a star of a multitude of animated and live action films, as he introduces many classic cartoon characters, who appear in the video as athletes are ready to take part in the upcoming Games.

Nezha, the popular Chinese mythological character from the classic work Investiture of the Gods, is seen participating in the Pair Skating event with Ao Bing, the son of the Dragon King.

Erlang Shen, a Chinese god with a third truth-seeing eye in the middle of his forehead, is seen competing with the Monkey King in many winter sports.

Calabash Brothers, the seven characters from the Chinese cartoon series released in 1986-87, form an ice hockey team and are ready to join in the competition.

"This time, the Chinese animated league will contribute to the promotion of China's winter sports… We aim to get about 300 million Chinese to participate in the Beijing's 2022 Winter Olympic Games," the Monkey King says in the video.

The classic cartoons that appear in the video are from the films produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, the oldest art film production studio in China, in the 1990s. The video quickly began trending on Sina Weibo as it leaned hard on the nostalgia of many Chinese, both young and old.

"This is amazing! The Shanghai Animation Film Studio is China's Pixar Animation Studios," one Chinese netizen wrote on Sina Weibo.

"This is a big alliance in the Chinese animation industry! All my childhood memories came rushing back! This is the path that Chinese cartoons should follow," another netizen wrote.