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DUT Alumnus Made the Chinese Giant Beast "Come Alive" at CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala

Date:Apr 25, 2023


Alumnus Profile

Xiao Di, founder of Dalian BeTop Culture Technology Co., Ltd, is a high-tech cultural tourism creative expert and mechanical installation artist. In 1999, he got his bachelor's degree in Internal Combustion Engine in Dalian University of Technology. In 2010, he got the master degree in Fine Art. In 2005, Dalian BeTop Culture Technology Co., Ltd was founded and ten years after, the company went public, becoming the first domestic cultural technology company to land on the New Third Board. Xiao Di is the member of the National Youth Federation and has been honored with the National Leading Talents in Science and Technology Entrepreneurship and High-level Talents and Innovative Talents in National Awards.

In the 2021 CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala, the golden giant cattle of more than 3 meters high, slowly paced in the "wheat field". The lifelike demeanor of the golden calf surprised the audience. The creator of this amazing work is our alumnus, Xiao Di.

The Mystery of the Universe

When Xiao Di was a sophomore, he was elected as the head of the Art department of the Student Union because of his great talent in drawing. "Whether to pursue an art career or not",Xiao Di often asked himself. The opportunity he met at DUT——the International Mobius Multimedia Grand Prix —— gave him the answer.

"Thanks for the platform DUT provided at that time." Xiao Di and his team produced "The Mystery of the Universe", a multimedia work, to prepare for the Provincial Selection Competition. To his surprise, the work went step by step from the provincial competition to the national competition and all the way to the final in Paris.

"The award for Mystery of the Universe had a very big impact on me", Xiao Di emphasized, "The impact was so big that it convinced me that I could have the strength to take design as my career."

In 1999, as a special talent, he taught the Multimedia in DUT. Four years later, he took an on-the-job master's degree in Sculpture in Fine Arts and continued to move forward to his dream.


Dome Cinema

In 2005, Xiao Di left DUT and founded Dalian BeTop Culture Technology Co. Today, BeTop has developed into a domestic first-class creative integration solution provider with over 300 staff in Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo.

In 2010, he came into contact with the new project "cultural tourism industry". Cultural tourism refers to the process of perceiving, understanding and experiencing the specific content of human culture through tourism. Creativity as the core is the most important cultural tourism industry, by which tourists can experience the differences and characteristics among different cultures.

Creativity has also been the specialty of Xiao Di’s group, which attracted Haichang Group. The group's Haichang Ocean Park Holdings Ltd. is a well-known theme park with its theme park all over the country. The theme park that it was planning to build in Yantai wants Xiao Di to help them create some character. Xiao Di recommended to Haichang the very popular 360° dome theater abroad. The dome theater was a very good choice, but the cost was high for Haichang Group to accept.

Haichang wanted Xiao Di to use less money and time to build the dome theater in the theme park. Xiao Di said it was as if they were taking the entrance exam again. This time, they were very surprisingly successful.

From this time onwards, BeTop has been unstoppable into the large theme park cultural tourism project development industry, and now has successively completed the construction of nearly 100 dome screen theaters.


"Chinese Giant Horse"

An 8.4-meter-tall, 47-ton beast, the "Chinese Giant Horse", attracted many attendees outside the venue of the Summer Davos Forum in Dalian on July 1, 2019. This large high-tech parade performance machine horse, drawing on the Tang-tri color glazed ceramics horse shape, reflects the elements of steampunk, but also has the Chinese style flavor.

"It's amazing! It has the traditional Chinese beauty, and at the same time it reminds me of the Trojan horse. It is wonderful." A foreign guest said.

The giant horse soon became a hitting attraction for conference participants, with dignitaries, business elites, experts and scholars all became the ordinary tourists, holding up their cell phones to take photos.

This magical giant horse is BeTop culture company's masterpiece - Chinese giant horse. It was built by BeTop and Kaifeng Qingming River Park jointly. It was the first domestic research and development of large-scale high-tech machine horse.

"Three years ago, we have had the concept of creating our own IP, the Chinese giant horse is just the first one of the divine beast series inClassic of Mountains and Seas. This is not only an amusement project, but a work of art." With the experience of the Chinese giant horse, Xiao Di and his team went on to create several giant beasts such as the brave, the mammoth and the giant elephant, which also included the golden giant bull that was showed on the 2021 CCTV Spring Festival Gala.

Xiao Di had the dream to create a Chinese mysterious factory. It was the paradise of his dream. There were mysterious and unpredictable Chinese beasts, stunning traditional Chinese acrobatics, and ancient Chinese magical inventions. It would be a factory to tell Chinese history, a stage to record Chinese classical legends, and moreover, a new form of expression of Chinese culture.

In 2020, BeTop cooperated with alumnus enterprise Ice Mountain Group and Dalian University of Technology Venture Park to first developed and operated a park project - Bear Cave Street landed in Dalian.

Bear Cave Street was Xiao Di‘s another steps closer to his dream park. This artist with abundant engineering knowledge still looks at his career plainly now: "I just want to do something fun."