By
MATT BLAKE
PUBLISHED: 14:44 GMT, 1 August
2012 | UPDATED: 16:41 GMT, 1 August
2012
Her face etched
with pain, a child trains for Olympic glory while her gymnastics trainer stands
on her legs.
 |
| Hard training: Her face etched with pain, a
child trains for Olympic glory while her gymnastics trainer stands on her
legs. |
The cartoon space rockets and animal astronauts on her tiny red
leotard are a stark and powerful reminder of this little girl's tender age as
she trains as hard as any adult athlete in the Western world.
Nanning Gymnasium in Nanning, China, is one of many ruthless training
camps across the country to which parents send their children to learn how to be
champions.
But while training techniques appear extreme to Western eyes, they
provide an insight into why China's athletes at London 2012 seem so easily able
to swim, dive, lift and shoot their way to victory.
Gymnastic stars are known for starting at an incredibly early age,
and this group of children appear no different as they battled to complete the
demanding routines on bars, rings, and mats.
Boys and girls who looked no older than five or six-years-old were
tasked with swinging on beams, hanging from pairs of rings and bounding across
floor mats during the physically strenuous training sessions.
 |
| Ruthless: Boys and girls who looked no older
than five or six-years-old were tasked with swinging on beams, hanging from
pairs of rings and bounding across floor mats during the physically strenuous
training sessions |
 |
| Growing strong: Nanning Gymnasium in Nanning,
China, is one of many ruthless training camps across the country to which
parents send their children to learn how to be champions |
 |
| Going for gold: While training techniques
appear extreme to Western eyes, they provide an insight into why China's
athletes at London 2012 seem so easily able to swim, dive, lift and shoot their
way to victory |
 |
| Stretchy: Gymnastic stars are known for
starting at an incredibly early age, and this group of children appear no
different as they battled to complete the demanding routines on bars, rings, and
mats |
The youngsters at the same training school will be hoping to emulate
the success of 16-year-old swimming sensation Ye Shewin, who glided into the
record books on Saturday night.
Only last January harrowing photographs were posted on the internet
showing Chinese children crying in pain as they were put to work.
In case they had forgotten why they were there, a large sign on the
wall reminded them. ‘GOLD’ it said simply.
Charges are often taught by rote that their mission in life is to
beat the Americans and all-comers to the top of the podium.
 |
| 24/7 routine: A child stretches at home
during a gymnastics training session in Nanning, China |
Posts
PICTURES DO NOT TELL THE TRUTH
ReplyDeleteBefore we take another "we are better than they" cheap shot China bash we should pause and think about ourselves.
In the pictures we see small Chinese kids literally tortured as part of their athlete training. It is a regime followed by even the Shaolin fighters for a few thousand years. You are toughened up from young and not be pampered and spoon fed.
But shift your mindset over to other places and cultures like Singapore, Japan and South Korea where the culture is to pressurize school kids to achieve 100% A grades and a few commit suicide. Is this not true?
To achieve in life is a Number One gaol in most of these Asian countries. Apparently not so in most European countries. This reflects the fierce competition for jobs and recognition in these overcrowded Asian places.
Of course we cannot comment on Malaysia where the official apartheid neo-colonial system is designed to make UMNO support base pampered lazy and dependent on handouts including billion dollar contracts to cronies for no effort or being qualified to do the job.
The “positive” side is that non-bumipuitras also behave like those in in China, S'pore, Korea or Japan are forced to fight for survival to earn their place in society and they can say “we did it on our own and did not steal and cheat or kill others”. Nevertheless this is a "dog eat dog" society which we should not be so proud of. We want a fair and egalitarian society.
China is not an exception to the mentality of wanting its children to go to the limit to become successful in their lives' endeavours. Can anyone say they don't care for their children's future?
Further, the Chinese are very proud of their nation which they have built up after several hundred years of revolutions and rebelling against injustice and inequality and foreign domination. Led by the Communist Party they set out to build a strong just and equal society. They achieved the liberation of women and semi-slaves from their feudal society and develop their economy to feed the millions. They freed themselves from the Western imposed opium scourge and most impost from foreign domination. They say they still have a long way to go and even more so in the eyes of Westerners who want China to be cast into their western style democracies.
But that is not the road the Chinese chose when they freed themselves from the foreign occupation of China and the anti-national KMT which nominally espoused western values. The Communist Party and Chinese patriots saved China
The Chinese underwent the extremely harsh part of the 1900 to 1980s with major civil wars, internal life and death struggles and they emerged again and made a dramatic change as seen in the past 30 years where they put their new system to the test to “modernise' Chinese.
At first they took the road of modernising like the Third World countries which became dependent on the western consumer economy. They make mistakes but they learned and improved on what they learned from the West.
5 years ago they re-orientate their approach and shifted their thinking from the export oriented west-dependent slave economy to that of developing their vast internal economies. That is why the collapse of the western based world economy did not really affect China.
China can practically survive on its own without the need to rely on the west. Stop and think- China was a self sufficient country for at least 2,500 years.
cont'd Part 2
ReplyDeleteCHINA SHAKES THE WORLD
CHINA did trade with the West as evidenced by the famous Silk Road but this was not the fulcrum the Chinese economy turned on. The Chinese relied on themselves as shown in many examples not to mention the current situation. One example is when the Russian dumped the Chinese and withdrew all their technical assistance in the 1960s and left the Chinese in the lurch. The Chinese did not prostrate themselves and bewail that heaven had once more punished them.
Instead their government simply called on the people to stand up and go it alone. In 1968 Nanjing they built the Yangtse Bridge all by themselves and this was a great engineering feat as the Russians and the West sneered at them and said it could not be done. It took 10 years but it was done by themselves. The iron pots and pans from many Chinese kitchen holds up this bridge.
They also build the nuclear bomb as deterrent against Western aggression and invasion. They build the Great Wall when the West was just emerging from the stone age and gave many useful invention to the world.
We all know the Chinese led by their leaders “modernised” China in the last 30 years and easily went past neo-colonial Malaysia which had 55 years of developing under the protection and guidance of western democracy, massive corruption, repression and a one party apartheid rule.
In the past the UMNO government sided with the West to isolate and encircle China but now it is even trying to sell durians to China. (That is another story). Mahathir built bridges to nowhere.
With UMNO in power it has been 55 years of plunder and looting the wealth of Malaya and 49 years in the Sabah Sarawak colonies for the benefit of UMNO leaders and henchmen of all races.
UMNO misgovernance run Malaya and Sabah and Sarawak into the ground with misrule abuse of power and corruption to benefit the privileged minority of UMNO and network of crony billionaires. They turned Malaysia into a new colonial plantation economy with the land grabs and stripping native lands of trees and making landless thousands of native landowners both in Malaya and more so in Sabah and Sarawak.
Switching back to China, today they have modern mega cities, bullet trains, space flights and many innovative things.
Yes it is an uneven achievement as there are still hundreds of millions of poverty stricken people, many billionaires and official corruption but they stuck to their goal of becoming an independent self-reliant nation.
Part of this nation building is to build up your youths. A rigorous upbringing will lay the foundations for a strong nation. The Chinese do this on a mass scale. When the 16 year old Chinese swimming champion won at the London Olympics jealous Westerners immediately declared she was on drugs. They ignored the fact she trained from young and was already a Chinese national champion swimmer.
So in a few years time when those suffering tiny tots start to compete with the West and win medals do be more generous with your applause. They worked for it and earned it.
China stood up in 1949 and wanted to be strong so that no foreign country like the US UK or Japan can bully them again. China did not set out to be the centre of the world but today most countries seem to gyrate towards this vibrant industrious and disciplined land.
So when we look at the pictures we must reflect on what is going on in China. If we are keen to China Bash we need to also at least acknowledge that it is a successful example of national independence and self reliance.
“China bashing” is part of the Western anti-Asian and anti-China treatment of China has been getting for the last 200 hundreds since the West and Japan invaded and occupied parts of China. The Chinese drove them out in 1949. They survived 5000 years of trial and tribulations. They have time on their side.
As a reminder the neo-colonial Malaysia system has existed a mere 50 years and is in the trauma of collapse.