discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
Thousands and thousands of fans packed into a Nanjing stadium,
each holding a cup of ice that somehow survived the summer heat without turning to water.
Well, that humble cube is the star of a bigger story,
an appliance boom that's now popping up in unexpected spots worldwide.
Today we're looking at why Chinese ice machines are suddenly everywhere
and what happens when manufacturers try to scale up without melting under pressure.
Pun intended.
We are live from our studios here in Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yuxian and Yuxian.
First up, picture a stadium in Nanjing,
packed with tens of thousands of football fans smack dab in the middle of summer.
Somewhere behind the scenes, a factory ran through the night to make sure every single
one of those fans could hold a cup of ice by kickoff, frozen.
Clean and still solid to the core despite a journey through heat that would melt an ordinary ice cube in just minutes.
That single cup of ice is now part of a much larger story.