Hello everyone and welcome to America under the Microscope advanced episode. Hi, Lulu.

Hi, James. We're gonna continue to talk about winter sports.

Yay! I wanna start off to this episode by talking about some stereotypes we have about people who do these winter sports, specifically skiing and snowboarding.

Okay.

Now the first one comes up, I wanna go the first one, because this term comes up in a lot of movies or TV shows you might watch, where the characters go off to the mountains to go skiing or snowboarding. And it's a term called snow bunny.

A snow bunny. Last episode you said, that's... bunny slope is for beginners.

Snow bunny has nothing to do with beginners. We use the term bunny to describe attractive females.

Like the bunny girls.

Like playboy bunny. So a snow bunny would be an attractive woman who skis and snowboards, and usually wearing very designer or name-brand equipment.

Are we talking about the kind of people who are not really there for the sports, but just to take selfies and post on their instgram?

It can be that. But it's mostly just emphasizing the attractive female part. They can be the ones that actually are taking part in the event. But it also could be just there, ‘Hey, I'm skiing~ Selfie!’

But does that not mean that they're not good at skiing? They can't be experts. Right? They're mostly just beginners.

If we describe it, a woman as a snow bunny would most likely be that they're not advanced skiers, no. It's not necessarily a positive stereotype.

No. I've heard beach bunnies. Is that the same sort of thing?

Beach bunnies, yeah.

That does sound very sexist by the way.

It is, because we don't really have them...there's no male equivalent and we wouldn't say like snow bro or anything like that.

That sounds strange.

Then we also have stereotypes about snowboarders.

Snowborders are seen as daredevils?

Kind of yeah, we call them extreme sport junkie.

So they get off...

They get off on the adrenaline of like doing these things and there's no board. That's why if you watch a lot of videos online of snowboarders, it's always like the people doing the jumps in the spinning and all the other...

Kind of really showy techniques.

You get the stereotype if you watch films and TV, like they like the party, they like to get drunk.

It's kind of like jocks, aren’t they? Like the extreme jocks.

I wouldn't call them extreme jocks. They're also more likely the ones to also kinda just dye their hair, bleach blonde.

They wanna stand out.

Yeah.

So it's like craving attention, at least that's the stereotype. So for those of you who actually do snowboard, that's not necessarily about you.

No, no, again, these are stereotypes. These are not, I know lots of snowborders and they don't fit this stereotype at all.

The only time I snowboarded was on computer, computer game.

And then you get to skiing. What comes to mind most is like middle class parents with their children.

Usually not, they... was it.. the expert to the diamond slope, perhaps not. It's just like the beginner slope and then the whole family...

You're doing it together. Your family, your kids are there. Your wife, your husband are there. You're all doing, having a good time. And this stereotype you get because this is what the resort advertise. What you see in the advertisement commercials or posters are the extreme snowborder and the family skiing.

I suppose they make more money from the family because there are more people there.

And they probably make more money from the snowboarders because they're the ones who are gonna go back repeated visits during the winter.

Ok.

But again, there are extreme skiers and there are family snowborders. So that's really the stereotypes don't really match what is reality. But this is what you'd see in movies and television a lot.

What about families? Do they make it like a regular thing or is it more like once a year?

For a lot of families, if they do this, it's going to definitely be like a once a year treat. Cause...

So quite expensive.

It is an expensive thing. And unless you live really close, it's going to be like a weekend holiday. I'm gonna drive there. You can stay the night, you're gonna ski during the day. In the evening, you'll have meal and...

It all adds up really. So now let's talk about the dangers. Because they some of the winter sports, they look really dangerous. So what are the dangers?

Well, for, let's talk about the mountain sports. The first danger is avalanches.

Avalanches. This is when the snow on a mountain, they kind of like fall down, isn't it?

Pretty much, and they do happen. Now in general, they do have avalanche warnings, because avalanche has happened most likely is when it snowed, then it warmed up a little bit, and then it froze again. So you have a weak layer in the snow, and then it'll heat up small and just will come down the mountain.

Based on my years of watching movies and TV, doesn't avalanche happen when someone made a like for example, clapped really loudly? It doesn't really have like that.

You have something like that, but it can happen by skiing on it. So the way and the movement can add enough pressure to cause it to go down.

Is that life threatening?

Very. If you're stuck in it, you're going with the snow. There's no way to get out. You just have to ride it out and hopefully you make it through. The other more common problem though is collisions.

So you colliding into other skiers.

That happens fairly regularly. But you also can collide into trees. Trees are a bad one because while the slope itself is usually cleared, the sides are not. So if you lose control or you're not very good, it's easy to slide off, not paying attention and run into a tree. This is the cause of many bruises, broken bones, and occasionally death.

With all these danger, do they not have, for example, when you go swimming or go to the beach, you have a lifeguard. Do they not have the equivalent of lifeguard?

There are rescues, but it's not as easy because you might be halfway up the slope. So what would happen is usually someone would have to contact the office down at the bottom or at the top. They'll usually use a snowmobile to get down to you, put you on a sled and get you off the...

It will take time.

It will take time.

Do they have emergency facilities on site usually?

Basic first day they'll call in life flight, a helicopter to take you to the nearest hospital.

Talking about all these danger and collisions reminds me that Beijing is going to host 2022 winter olympics.

It is!

And some of these winter sports in winter olympics, they look...

Awesome!

Really look awesome, but they also look a bit strange to me, for example, I don't really know what they're called neither in English nor in Chinese. The ones where you basically get just someone sitting on a or lying on a board, they're lying down. And then they just like...

The sledding events.

They're called sledding event.

Basically ice rockets.

They look really fast and that...

They are extremely fast.

They look very dangerous.

They go a hundred plus kilometers per hour in some of the turns. There's three of those. There's bobsled with the team is sitting in a sled going down. There's luge where you're lying on top of the sled, feet first.

That's the one I'm talking about, luge. I've seen some accidents with that, fatal accident.

And then there's skeletons, or you go down head first.

And that is actually called skeleton?

Called skeleton.

Interesting.

Honestly, I think they're really fun to watch. They're really interesting to watch because it's so fast. But the other incredibly dangerous. And there's a movie called Cool Runnings, and they have a joke about it. When you do bobsledding, your bones don't break, they shatter.

And you just said, it's really fun to watch, but you wouldn't want to participate in any of these...

No, god, no.

That's not really for just ordinary people.

You cannot just, hey, I'm gonna go bobsledding today. No.

You will never return if you say that.

Incredibly difficult, incredibly dangerous.

Because they look like it's just you're lying on a board. It almost looks like there's no skill required. But I'm sure it's like they're controlling.

Well you have to. Because if you don't control on those turns, you can shoot off the actual track and land or who knows where you'd land. You can also turn too much and flip over. And if you're doing those, you'll be landing on your head.

So traditionally for winter olympics, the strong countries, I would say they're all like very high up in the North, like North American.

The strong countries would be like Northern European countries, Norway, Finland, Sweden.

Not Canadian?

Canada, US, all these countries usually are fairly good at these sports.

I can't really imagine tropical countries winning these races.

Jamaica has a bobsled team.

Jamaica. Where would they go to train? They're probably still go to places like Canada.

Most definitely have to go to Canada or the US to train. But jamaica has a bobsled team.

I remember actually, talking about these winter sports. Actually, there's something related to that, curling.

Yes, that is one that almost anybody can try because it's just...

Has no danger in it.

You can fall, but you're gonna fall and get back up was like, Ouch. You're sliding this, the stones are pretty hefty, but you are sliding them on ice to try to hit a target. It's like a game we call shuffle boards.

Like shuffleboard on ice.

It is what the game is.

I still remember one of the classes that I had before that was they were all professional athletes. One of them was the captain of a curling team of the Chinese curling team. It was really fun hearing her stories. Since you're saying that these games are fun, are you gonna actually go to the 2022 winter olympics to actually watch some of these?

Oh yeah! If I'm in the city, absolutely. There are a lot of events I’d wanna go watch. I'd go to watch the bobsleding. I would watch hockey. I would watch a lot of the events because I find a lot of the winter sport events to be more fun to watch than the summer sports.

Okay. You really kind of got me interested in winter sports. Maybe I should go online find more of those videos.

So on that note, I think we're gonna wrap up. We've said a lot about winter sports and a lot of these words are very specific. So if you're interested, do your research and also subscribe to our public account on Wechat 【璐璐的英文小酒馆】and then you'll see the full script.

Leave us a comment in the comment section about some of the 2022 winter games that you would like to watch. We'll see you next time.

Bye everyone.

Bye.