|
|
|
This is the fourth and final part of the interview with Lu Yan, Zhang Xianming,
Lu Jinming and Dong Honglin, four members of the original Beijing Wushu Team.
In this final instalment they reminisce about their times on the Beijing Wushu
Team and describe how they would like to be remembered by future generations of
Wushu enthusiasts.
The interview has been left more or less exactly as transcribed so in places may
be a little rough around the edges. Due to its size, it has been split into four
parts:
- Part 1: Introductions, filming the Beijing Wushu
Team Instructional VCDs
- Part 2: Competitive and Traditional Wushu
- Part 3: The Rise of International Wushu, and
strains on Modern Athletes
- Part 4: Memories of the Beijing Team years
Thanks go to Andrea Falk from The
Wushu Centre for providing the interview transcript and the photographs used
on these pages.
[The Interviewer finishes the interview with several well chosen questions]
Interviewer: You have to get to back to work. Now if
you would each, one at a time, think of three things: 1) what is it you most
remember about your time on the Beijing Wushu Team? 2) How do you hope to be
remembered as an athlete by future generations of wushu players? For instance,
your fabulous sparring routine, how would you like to be remembered? 3) What
contribution do you hope to make to wushu?
Lu Jinming: That we are remembered, each generation
saying, oh, Lu Jinming, he was the one who...
Dong Honglin: Now? Can I just do the first question?
Interviewer: Ok, let’s all first do the first
question.
Dong Honglin: To the first question, the deepest
impact I can think of, thinking of the old days with the Beijing team, we did
everything together, studying, training, living, when I think of those times I
feel the attachment quite deeply. Especially now that I have been separated from
the team for a long time, we are not together, when I get together with them I
am very happy, I still feel very close.
Lu Jinming: All those years living together, over
twelve years, living together, it was like your own family. There are so many
good memories, so many things to remember, so many wonderful things, that we
will remember our whole lives. The memories are too deep. There isn’t one thing
specifically that stands out. It wasn’t a short time. We remember a lot of
things.
Lu Yan: We spent more time with the team than our
families, our brothers and sisters. The time we spent with our families was very
short. We went home on Saturday and came back Sunday evening. We got off at noon
on Saturdays. We were with our parents, our sisters and brothers, for only one
day, while we were with our teammates all the time, every day. At the time we
may have had arguments or times we were unhappy, but what we remember now is all
the good memories, very wonderful. We have so many wonderful memories that we
will hold forever, if we got together to talk of them we could talk for three
days without getting to the end. We were so close, now when we get together we
don’t have any feeling of being strangers. I don’t know how to describe it.
Interviewer: Like your own family?
Lu Yan: Yes, they are my family.
Dong Honglin: My family. I’d go as far as to say that
my teammates are closer to me than my actual family, my real brothers and
sisters. When I see them now I feel our time together was just yesterday. I
remember when he said my ‘lift knee balance’ was no good and I had to stand in
the corner half the day. I feel it was yesterday that happened. I remember
everything so clearly.
Lu Yan: When I dream, my dreams are often of those
times when we trained together as a team.
Zhang Xianming: My memory is of the hard training we
did as athletes. It was hard, but meaningful. Even now it affects me in my life
and work. I feel that if I hadn’t had that hard background, I don’t want to say
bitter, but hard, very tiring, it developed me as a person, trained me. I don’t
think I would have developed so well as a person. I don’t feel that it was
harsh.
Dong Honglin: At the time we were just kids, we didn’t
realize much about it, we just did it. Just when we coach now we realize how
good the training was.
|
|
Lu Yan: I feel that those 10+ years that we were on
the Beijing team were our most valuable years, under the strict training of our
coaches, we all worked together to bring glory to the country, were very hard to
realize. It is very difficult to have that sort of situation, very few ordinary
people can have experienced that. So we remember those days so clearly. It is
easy to overcome any difficulty now because of our training, nothing is as hard
as what we went through then. The problems we all worked together to solve, the
difficulties we overcame together. We learned how to ‘eat bitter’. So in our
present life we can overcome anything.
Interviewer: Toast to the Beijing Wushu Team!
Lu Jinming: OK, the second question.
Interviewer: How would you like to be remembered? How
would you like wushu fans and athletes to remember you?
Lu Jinming: Present day athletes?
Interviewer: Present day athletes, and fans, how would
you like them to remember you? In one phrase.
Zhang Xianming: Now we are all here, and this is being
taped, but at that time we were very seldom taped. We didn’t have the equipment,
there just weren’t the same conditions. We don’t have anything to remember our
days by. That’s why we’re so happy to get these VCDs you gave us. Now we can
show videos to our athletes to show them what we expect of them. If we had
photos that was pretty good, a good souvenir. We are trying to bring our
athletes up to our level that we had as athletes. But our athletes can’t achieve
the same level. They don’t know how we were before. We have to teach them by
coaching, but they don’t know what we were really like.
Interviewer: So you feel that no one knows what you
were like as an athlete?
Zhang Xianming: They never saw us. They really have no
idea. There are too few materials.
Lu Jinming: Now, people much younger than us haven’t
seen us, but people more our age might still remember, they’ve seen us perform,
lots still remember. Older people remember our performances, lots of people,
especially foreign friends, when they see us, they still remember.
Interviewer: But for example, I remember some specific
things from twenty years ago. Like your sparring form. If there was some way for
people to remember something, what would you like it to be?
Lu Jinming: What I’d like everyone to remember, right?
Of course we’d like people to remember me.
Zhang Xianming: If they could remember us, and love
wushu, if they loved wushu more from what we did, what we did to help people
love wushu? If we were able to introduce more people to wushu, to spread the
love of wushu, that would be fine.
Interviewer: Of your accomplishments, what makes you
the proudest? Like that sparring routine, is there anything, my this, or that…
Lu Jinming: What makes people remember me?
Interviewer: If there was any impact, I wish it were
this. If there were a video, I wish it were that.
Lu Jinming: My own thing.
Interviewer: Just one thing. One minute of your time,
or one event.
Lu Jinming: I don’t need one minute. Just one
movement. My tornado kick, my two footed kick. If they remember me for that,
right? Everyone is different. Like her three section staff or his baguazhang,
his that. Everyone is different.
Interviewer: Right. His tornado kick?
Lu Yan: He did a two footed takeoff tornado kick. Not
like everyone else. His was special. Everyone else does one leg after the other,
but he did a two footed takeoff. That would be against the rules now. He’d lose
points.
Dong Honglin: I feel for me it is the sparring
routine. I feel myself that our sparring routine was great.
Lu Yan: It was the best. Their co-operation was
incredible.
Dong Honglin: I don’t think you’d see that level of
co-operation these days.
Lu Yan: I don’t think I would pick a certain event. I
would be happy if a lot just remembered, oh, Lu Yan, she did beautiful wushu,
that would be enough.
Dong Honglin: I think it was this move in the three
section staff versus staff.
Lu Yan: Yeah, oh yeah, there was one move. It should
be the trick that I mastered the best - that flourish with the bare hands versus
spear with Li Lianjie. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!
Interviewer: Like Li Xia’s trick.
Lu Yan: Yes, the straight kick to empty stance.
Interviewer: What contribution do you hope to make to
Chinese wushu?
Lu Jinming: What contribution? Work hard to make a
contribution [Laughs]. Develop good athletes, get some with good results,
to have high level athletes, that’s the biggest contribution a coach can make.
Develop new thinking, new directions, help it progress. Make a big effect.
Zhang Xianming: Help develop wushu.
Dong Honglin: Help spread Chinese wushu.
Lu Jinming: That’s the key.
Zhang Xianming: It’s just a different angle. The main
thing is to meet with as many people who put a lot into wushu like you.
|
Want to learn more about Lu Yan's Wushu Career? Visit the
Wushu Career pages
Want to learn more about training with Lu Yan? Visit the
Train with Lu Yan pages
|
|
