"Vaulting the Sea" and The Story of the Reformation of China's Elite Sports Schools


Chinese diving superstar Quan Hongchan's village mobbed by fans after Olympic Games victory - ABC News
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 Olympics in Beijing, as well as the 2012 and 2016 Games in London and Rio de Janeiro respectively. According to Olympics.com, it was after the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing that China decided to reform its sports school system, meaning for all the training Taoyu and Hai underwent before their first Olympics, they were subject to China's old Sports School system. The story describes propaganda type text painted on the wall of the school, and training lasting the duration of the whole day, broken only by a two hour study session. When Holidays came around, Taoyu and Hai were requested to stay at the school to continue training, so they pretty much never had a break. I wanted to learn more about how the descriptions of the system in the story relate to the system in real life, so I decided to do some research.

    To better visualize Taoyu and Hai's lives, I tried to find some stuff on Youtube to show exactly what went on in the old Sports Schools. I found a 2012 video from ITV News (linked at the bottom of this blog), that shows what the lives of children in sports school were like. I found the video strikingly similar to the story. The host described living at the school, training seven hours a day for seven days a week, and interviewed kids who complained about tiredness and muscle pain. The descriptions of the goings on and the images of student life inside the sports school matched exactly with what was described in the story. It showed how China's strategy to produce world class athletes and win medals in competitions is clearly different from the strategies of other countries. In another video, there was a brief interview with former Chinese Olympic athlete Jia Wen, she described how China's system is not set up for athletes to enjoy the sport they are competing in, it is solely to create athletes who will win gold medals.

    Since the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, the Chinese Sports School system has reformed after they were criticized for excessively harsh treatment of athletes. The new sports school system has raised academic standards to give students a better chance to do things after their athletic career, placing academics on the same level of importance as sports, and encouraging students to seek success in athletics just as much as success in school. In an interview I found from Olympics.com with Qiao Xiangdong, the headmaster of the Qingdao Sports School, he explained how parents whose children had athletic talent were becoming less interested in sending their children to the old form of sports schools, so reinvigorating the system with more emphasis on academic performance, and less on the grueling training regimes was necessary to maintain the system's popularity and help maintain China's high level of performance in various athletic stages across the world.

Thanks for Reading!

Here are the Sources I used:
- ITV report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_4hs_hobAY
- Video that includes interview of Jia Wen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Eb6980iJqk
- Olympics.com report on Qingdao Sports School and Sports School reform in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk05mo71YX8

Image Above: abc.net.au/news

Comments

  1. DavidDecember 19, 2023 at 8:23 AM

    Hi Pieter,
    This is the most interesting article I've read about this story thus far! It's really cool to see what Taoyu and Hai were doing, contextualized with the real world. Your descriptions remind me somewhat of a news article I read at some point, about a teen named Li Ao who was sent to an 'internet addiction treatment camp' and was found dead two days later, after his parents spent thousands to send him there. It helps to show how cruel the Chinese education system can be when it comes to creating their ideal citizens. Also, I have the same birthday as Quan Hongchan, which I thought was weird.

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  2. Grace W-KDecember 21, 2023 at 12:44 PM

    This is really interesting, Pieter! The historical background information (and knowing how realistic the descriptions of Hai and Taoyu's training were) makes Taoyu's story more painful in a way. China's old sports system seems very intense and thinking back on the story, it must have been so difficult for Taoyu to both cope with his complex feelings for Hai as well as the physical burden of training. In the story, the training is described as strengthening Hai and Taoyu's relationship, but the reality of the training seems much more harsh, which is interesting. I really enjoyed reading your post!

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