"Vaulting the Sea" and The Story of the Reformation of China's Elite Sports Schools
Above: 14 year old Chinese athlete Quan Hongchan holding up her gold medal earned from the Women's 10m platform final at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics As I was reading "Vaulting the Sea" by Xuan Juliana Wang, I was reminded of a documentary I watched long ago about China's Elite Sports Schools, where they take kids who place consistently low academically, but have a lot of athletic potential and put them in special schools where physical training and athletic performance is prioritized over academic performance. The main goal of these school is essentially to create the next generation of Chinese athletes who compete at the international and Olympic level. As I did some more research regarding this topic, I found out that this system has undergone change over time and is becoming less intense after China received criticism for manipulating children and forcing them to undergo grueling training regimes. In the story, Taoyu and Hai participate in the 2008 ...