Why China doesn’t care about gold medals anymore
With the excitement of the Olympic Games still fresh in our minds, we’re now gearing up for another ten days of exhilarating sport and extraordinary displays of athletic prowess with the Paralympics. In China the biggest story of Rio 2016 wasn’t Usain Bolt’s superhuman triple treble medal win or even Ryan Lochte’s bro-tastic adventures in search of a bathroom; for the Chinese, the highlight of the Games was arguably the glorious and long-awaited return to form of the country’s women’s volleyball team, and the redemption of a Chinese Olympic legend. The rollercoaster life of the team’s coach, Lang Ping, who went from hero to traitor and back to hero again, is just one of several personal stories that came to define China’s 2016 Olympics.
Lang came of age just as China emerged from the isolation of the Cultural Revolution and rejoined the world of international sport. Competing at a time when sporting success on the global stage, and winning gold Olympic medals in particular, were hugely important to Chinese pride and self-worth, Lang became a national hero and a sporting icon as part of a women’s volleyball team that won five consecutive world cups and championships between 1981 and 1986, including gold at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. With the guarantee of a stable and prestigious career as high-level sporting officials ahead of them, the team faced an easy, if predictable, future in China. Lang, however, refused to take the path laid out for her and took what was for many an utterly baffling decision: she left China for the US in order to learn English, gain accreditation as a professional volleyball coach and broaden her horizons.
The change in her life could not have been starker. As a student, Lang faced serious financial hardships and struggled to earn the money she needed to continue her studies. Demonstrating a tenacity and determination that have characterized her life and career, however, she persisted. After qualifying in the US, Lang returned to China to coach the Chinese women’s volleyball team and succeeded in leading them to silver in Atlanta in 1996. A couple of years later Lang moved to Italy to coach professionally. This bold decision sparked a considerable amount of criticism back in China, where she was accused of abandoning her country and being interested only in money. Lang ignored her detractors. As a result of her remarkable success as a coach in Italy, she was offered the post of coach to the US women’s volleyball team. If there had been controversy over her move to Europe, it was nothing compared to the incensed reaction back in China when she started coaching the US team; when she successfully guided the US to victory over the Chinese national team in the semi-final of the 2008 Olympics (in Beijing no less), the fury of her Chinese critics knew no limits and the erstwhile national hero was branded a 汉奸 (hanjian) — a traitor to the Chinese people.
Last month’s gold medal success with the Chinese national team has brought Lang full circle, to almost the same levels of adulation she gained when she first won gold back in 84. Now some her harshest former critics are among those singing her praises on Weibo and Wechat. What is particularly remarkable about Lang’s story is that, through all the highs and lows, her almost rebellious independence and clear-thinking determination have continually pushed her to lead her life in her own way. This is not a common trait among people of her generation. In some ways she was ahead of her time, as her attitude towards life is far more representative of China’s younger generations, who have much greater levels of autonomy than their parents.
Lang’s refusal to make sport political also resonates much more strongly with the China of today than the China she first competed for. What was striking during an Olympics where China greatly underperformed, coming third in the medals table with just 26 golds (it won 51 golds in 2008), was not the focus on China’s disappointing medal haul but the joy of watching its charismatic athletes compete. Rather than being all about politics and the necessity of winning to ensure global prestige, this was a humanized Olympics that celebrated sport and competition.
One of the most exciting stories to play out in Rio was the famous rivalry between China’s Lin Dan and Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei, widely regarded as two of the greatest badminton players of all time. The pair have played each other 37 times since the year 2000, with Lin winning 25 of those encounters. Lin, who is a tobacco control ambassador for the foundation in China, beat Lee in the finals of both the Beijing Games in 2008 and London in 2012. When they met at the semi-finals, the match between them was made all the more significant by the fact that both are expected to have retired by 2020 when the next Games are held in Tokyo and that this was therefore Lee’s last chance to win an Olympic gold medal. Ultimately, Lee prevailed and went on to the final, where he was defeated by Chen Long, another Chinese player. But what made this match special was the relationship between the players, who are not only rivals but also good friends. Lee even went to Lin’s wedding in 2012. The interest in personalized stories like this, which have increased audience numbers, demonstrates a shift away from a “gold medals are the be all and end all” attitude, to a more relaxed athlete-centered focus.
One of the undoubted new stars to emerge from Rio 2016, part of a new generation of athletes that are real people rather than just medal machines, is the swimmer Fu Yuanhui. Described by the New Yorker as “adorkable”, Fu delighted not just her fellow Chinese but audiences around the world with her bubbly personality. When a poolside journalist informed her of her time after a race where she’d won a bronze medal, rather than being disappointed at coming third, Fu’s genuine excitement at her fast time and her funny, off-the-cuff comments (e.g. “I used up all my mythical energy!”) endeared her to millions. When the journalist asked how she was feeling about her next race, Fu’s answer was simply that she had no expectations. Later in the Games she was praised, particularly in western media, for speaking openly about the affect her period had had on her performance. Her natural style and the fact that she enjoys competing without being desperate for gold and glory are a breath of fresh air and a stark contrast from the conventional, robotic Chinese athletes whose only purpose in life is to win gold on behalf of the motherland.
Through these athletes, and in the reaction of Chinese audiences to them, we catch a glimpse of a China that is confident in its own identity and place in the world, and which doesn’t need sporting dominance and a mountain of gold medals to affirm its status. That’s not to say the government isn’t still frantically pouring in cash and churning out athletes with the aim of displacing the US at the top of the medals table in four years’ time (and of all places, Beijing will feel it has something to prove in Tokyo), but there has been a perceptible shift away from the overt politicization of medals in the past towards a more relaxed, human-focused enjoyment of sport and competition for their own sake. Perhaps the government will eventually realize that the likes of Lang, Lin and Fu do far more for the country’s image around the world than a hundred gold medals ever could.
Contributed by Philip Nelson
