Students may get sporting chance A student from Shandong Liaocheng Sports College helps fifth-graders learn how to play basketball. The vo...
Students may get sporting chance
A student from Shandong Liaocheng Sports College helps fifth-graders learn how to play basketball. The volunteer activity at Yuhong Primary School in Liaocheng, Shandong province, was part of celebrations to mark World Basketball Day on Dec 21. Zhang Zhenxiang / for China Daily
Zhang Shangwu, a medal-winning gymnast who was forced into retirement by injury, performs acrobatics on the sidewalk in Beijing's Wangfujing Street. [Yang Tianxiao / for China Daily]
Want to know what impact Jeremy Lin, the point guard for the New York Knicks currently taking US basketball by storm, has had this side of the Pacific Ocean?
Just go to the ongoing two sessions of the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing, the most important events on China's political calendar.
Having scored more points in his first five starts -136 - than any NBA player since 1976, the 23-year-old Chinese-American and Harvard graduate has not only won the hearts of millions of Chinese fans, but has also made statesmen here re-evaluate the country's education and sports systems.
"Things have to change," said two-time Olympic judo champion Xian Dongmei, now a deputy to the NPC.
"In China, many sportsmen and women like me spent way too much time on physical training after they were enrolled in sporting academies."
Deng Yaping, a four-time Olympic table tennis champion and CPPCC member, said sports should play a bigger role in the national curriculum. "Despite the heavy pressure of academic studies, children need more time to enjoy sport," she said. "It will pay off."
What happens now is a small number of youngsters are selected for intensive training at an early age, while the rest get little exercise due to demands in the classroom.
As sport is not a priority for ordinary schools, it is hard for scouts to find fledgling talent among the world's largest population so that it can be nurtured in a systematic way.
In addition, stories of world champions struggling after retirement due to their poor education backgrounds are myriad, such as Zhang Shangwu, a former gymnast, who was discovered last year making a living by performing acrobatics in the streets of Beijing.
Next big thing
Deng, 39, was the best table tennis player of her generation. She also holds a doctorate from Cambridge University, one of the world's most prestigious colleges. Yet, it was only after she retired in 1997 that she entered full-time education, which began with her learning English alphabet.
Likewise, Yao Ming, the NBA All-Star, only enrolled at Shanghai Jiao Tong University last year at the age of 31, four months after announcing his retirement from basketball.
Such stories are rare for Chinese sportsmen and women, however, which is one of the reasons why teenagers and parents are increasingly reluctant to put more emphasis on physical education.
At 2.07 meters tall and having good flexibility, Guo Jian has shown great potential as a center, the position Yao Ming played. The 16-year-old was spotted by top coach Li Qiu-ping during a summer camp four years ago and soon left his hometown in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province to train in Shanghai.
Despite the lure of possibly becoming the next big thing, Guo quit after just a year.
"I was a top student at primary school, but the middle school in Shanghai was just so-so," he said. Although he could have been in the junior squad of the Shanghai club where Yao used to play within a year or two, it would have meant less time in the classroom. "It was too much of a sacrifice," he said.
His mother, Dong Yan, who is a teacher, said she fully supported the decision. "Families can only have one child in China what if he didn't succeed in basketball?" she said. "Even if he did, he can't play that game all his life."
Training techniques
As sports academies are losing their appeal among youngsters, the question is whether sporting potential can instead be developed at ordinary schools.
After leaving Shanghai, Guo was enrolled at a high school affiliated to Tsinghua University in Beijing. His decision came down to two things: Its basketball team is a five-time national champion and its students have a good record of success in the gaokao, or national college entrance examination.
The school has arguably the best conditions for teenage basketball players. Head coach Zhang Tao was a top scorer in the Chinese Basketball Association and a former national team player, while facilities include an indoor court and a fitness center. Sponsors even supply the school with kits and sneakers.
Yet, it is another story when it comes to less-developed areas.
Qiao Yapei, who teaches physical education at a middle school in Xingtai, Hebei province, said he has seen about 50 children playing under one hoop in a nearby village.
Tsinghua high school player Liu Lei, 17, who hails from Baoding in Hebei province, also said he had never seen an exercise machine before arriving in Beijing. His team has for the last four years traveled to Hawaii for an annual invitational tournament. Guo said he was impressed that squads there had at least five coaches, each in charge of a specific position. "I couldn't stop running when I stepped onto the court in Hawaii," he said.
That gulf in training techniques goes some way to explaining why most of China's exports to the NBA have been centers usually tall and strong, like Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian at the Dallas Mavericks rather than point guards like Jeremy Lin who dictate their team's offensive play.
"In basketball circles, we say it takes three years to develop a good center but more than a decade to develop a mature point guard," said head coach Zhang, who explained that point guards need to be strong and have a comprehensive understanding of the game.
"It has to be very systematic and consistent process," he said. "We have fallen behind (the US) a few inches with every step, which has added up to a huge distance."
Matthew Webb, head of sport at Tsinghua high school's international department, said: "Good players must be independent thinkers, especially point guards. They need to learn from making mistakes, but Chinese teachers and coaches don't encourage enough when they make mistakes."
Thanks largely to Yao Ming, who was selected by the Houston Rockets as the first overall pick in the 2002 NBA Draft and played for the team until last year, basketball has grown to be one of the most popular sports in China, at least among teenagers. (Table tennis is still more popular among middle-aged people and seniors.)
However, when China Daily visited Liuchangchun Gymnasium in Dalian, Liaoning province, on Tuesday to watch a game in the National High School Men's Basketball League (North), there were only about a hundred spectators in the stands.
The match featured Tsinghua high school, the reigning champion, against Dalian Economic Development Zone No 1 High School.
"Sport is not only about the players and coaches, it's about support from the whole community," said Webb, who hails from Indianapolis and has coached at more than 200 basketball camps, mainly in the US and Canada.
Despite China claiming the most gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, sports is still not a big deal among the nation's students, Sun Peng, a former college basketball player, told China Daily.
The 26-year-old was part of the Renmin University of China squad that won the Chinese University Basketball Super League in 2005. "If that had been in the US, it would have been a big victory, maybe the most important thing to happen at the college that year. Instead, everyone seemed to forget about it very quickly," he said with a sigh.
Wang Dianjun, principal of the high school affiliated to Tsinghua University, has gone on fact-finding missions to a dozen countries and said he has been impressed by the role physical education can play in students' lives.
Children overseas are largely free to indulge in sporting activities, with many excelling in several disciplines, he said. Yet, in China, youngsters spend most of their time in revision schools cramming for exams.
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