Here's part 1 (of 4 ) of my translation of a recent article on An Xiangyi (or rather, her mother mainly...) that was discussed in the Team China thread and has sparked controversy online due to its depiction of what many consider to be a toxic family/training environment. Lunalovesskating has posted a link to the original article along with some other material in Team China's 2019-20 thread, but some posters suggested creating a new thread to draw more attention, so here it is.
By and large, Google Translate is alright, but in a few instances it's very difficult to read/inaccurate, hence why I am exercising my rusty Chinese. I've included a few translation notes (TN). This is a long-winded magazine-style article so please pardon the slow pace... no wonder people have only bothered with rough snippets! Good translation practice, though. Members from Mainland China, feel free to offer input especially on slang specific to your country's fandom, such as 'Face Sister (面姐)'!
Original article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/LzQq035W35eOO3qLFwJRAg
"The girl prodigy and her tiger mother"
For more than 20 years, China as a great sporting nation has produced exactly zero medals in ladies singles figure skating.
During this time, skating fans have been hoping for someone to break this embarrassing record.
In 2019, a 12-year-old girl, An Xiangyi, stormed out of nowhere and won the national senior ladies' title, hence becoming the 'hope of the nation'.
Does An Xiangyi have the best training conditions? The answer is no. The best team? It's hard to say. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that in Zhang Aijun she has a "fanatical" mother who will not give up.
Author: Wu Fenfeng
Editor: Du Qiang
Photography: Li Songshu [TN: maybe a pseudonym - literally 'squirrel']
53-year-old Zhang Aijun watches the rink.
Skates sound as they glide across the ice, then her daughter Nini takes off like a bird. After revolving in the air, instead of landing securely on the ice as intended, she falls. Her slender frame curls as she punches the ice in frustration.
Zhang Aijun's expression is stern and silent. As her daughter skates over to her again, she calls out tightly, "Underrotated lutz and a fall on the toeloop - you didn't prove yourself. You have to prove yourself!" Her sharp voice echoes through the rink. By 'prove yourself' she means 'hold yourself to Olympic standards'. She intends to develop her daughter to become a top international figure skater.
Others on the ice - languid-looking coaches holding sticks, rambunctious children learning to skate, the Zamboni uncle - find nothing remarkable, being used to seeing the intense training of this unusual mother-daughter pair.. However, to people familiar with ice sports, Zhang Aijun's goal is by no means a walk in the park.
In figure skating there's a saying: after piloting, the most difficult profession in the world is figure skating - even more so for those who aim to be at the top. Nonetheless, while Zhang Aijun agrees about the difficulty of skating, she will not be deterred - goals that have been decided on must be followed through with.
Thus, at a time when all mothers in the world would feel the urge to wrap their babies in a peaceful embrace, in 2007, following a U.S. physical fitness curriculum for infants, Zhang Aijun would carry 2-month-old Nini and practice spinning - turning 10 times clockwise then repeating counterclockwise. Regarding the potential effectiveness of this type of training, Zhang Aijun says that those who did so would be able to ride a rollercoaster ten times without getting dizzy.
Throughout her infancy, Nini would receive different types of training from Zhang Aijun each day, including crawling on the ground and revolving with her head downwards. As she got a little older, Zhang Aijun would have Nini stand outside during Level 7 wind [TN: a Chinese meteorological classification] during Beijing's winter. Passersby were curious: what were two children doing standing outside on such a windy day instead of going home?
"One kid was our Nini, and the other was some labourer's child [TN: migrant workers from the countryside, ubiquitous in large Chinese cities] who happened to be out there freezing!" said Zhang Aijun with a chuckle. This was the first stage of her plan to make her daughter world-class.
From Zhang Aijun's perspective, in future her daughter would be competing internationally against Russian and Japanese skaters, and therefore needed a robust physique ("What we're doing is exactly like preparing for war.") Zhang Aijun was satisfied by the results from the fitness training; after continuous progress in load, by 7 years old Nini was able to run 4 kilometres - a sight that would leave others on the athletic grounds gobsmacked.
Determination pays off. In 2019, 12-year-old Nini competed in seniors at Chinese Nationals, becoming the youngest ever champion. Thus, Chinese figure skating finally had a successor to Chen Lu - a girl prodigy with the potential to compete for international medals. Skating fans were instantly smitten with An Xiangyi [TN: Nini is her pet name], creating a fan club and following her every move closely on Tieba [TN: mainland Chinese version of Reddit, sort of...], as well as inevitably worrying for her prospects - China's ladies singles has had a medal drought for more than 20 years, with the best result being Li Zijun's 7th place at the 2013 World Championships.
Ladies' singles skaters not just in China but all over the world live under the shadow of the Russian iron-blooded queen 'Face Sister' a.k.a. Eteri Tutberidze [TN: No idea whatsover why they call her that...], to the point that people say that there are only two teams in ladies' singles: Face Sister's team, and everybody else. Face Sister's girls are tall [TN: Seriously?!] and shockingly powerful, and can do quadruple jumps and outscore male skaters at just 13 years old. At the previous Olympics, they claimed both gold and silver, forcing the ISU to discuss possible rule changes.
This is what 13-year-old An Xiangyi is due to face. Thin, small, still young, but already carrying others' fierce expectations of raising the national flag on the figure skating stage.
Those who care about her cannot avoid asking: Does An Xiangyi have the best training conditions? The answer is no. The best team? It's hard to say. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that in Zhang Aijun she has a "fanatical" mother who will not give up.
To Zhang Aijun, it was only natural to have her daughter learn figure skating, not just because her husband An Longhe is a figure skater, but also because she was already a seasoned figure skating fan before her daughter was born. "I know all the techniques," Zhang Aijun recalled casually with confidence. She believes her knowledge of skating is of an international judging standard.
Zhang Aijun's affinity with skating began when she 'retired'. In 1998, at the age of 31, she had become fed up with her work at a foreign-invested enterprise. When she first began working at the company, Zhang Aijun had been determined to succeed, hoping to manage her own project and be a female leader [TN: this term can be negative if mentioned in a conservative context]. However, reality threw a wrench in the works: all she did every day was pour coffee, pace the carpet, check the weather forecast to confirm what level of typhoon the boss's flight would encounter and so on. Even worse, the company gave her no say in project direction. Later, Zhang Aijun noticed that many people were being made redundant across departments, prompting further misgivings about her situation.
Still, there were some positives, such as the fact that she became slimmer due to the heavy workload and thus finally had the self-confidence to wear dresses like other women and feel attractive 'like Madonna'. But this joy wasn't enough. "Without direction, I couldn't stay in the company - I had to succeed", Zhang Aijun said. "My life is finite."
In 1993, at a banquet at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, Zhang Aijun asked an old American lady, "Could you tell me what the most important age for a woman is?"
After that, Zhang Aijun quit her job. She took up figure skate recreationally with acquaintances, as skating made her feel free. At the same time, aspiration to succeed continued to accompany her, only this time, she desired to excel within her circle [TN: the local adult skating community, I assume]. During this period, she would arrive at the rink at 8 am and return home around 10 pm. Early in the morning there were no people, and the security personnel would clap encouragingly for her. She even had an abortion in order to continue skating, and as wished, finally taught herself five single jumps. [TN: Apologies - I originally thought it was miscarriage based on inaccurate comments in the Reddit thread. '流产/liu2chan3' may refer to either abortion or miscarriage, but the source material is clear in this regard.]
Still she believed that nothing was impossible for her, even walking out of the abortion theatre wearing high heels, holding her head proudly to signify as proof that she was able to handle this matter on her own. However, Zhang Aijun's certainty was suddenly shattered by a fall on a camel spin, which almost fractured the right side of her face, after which she never dared to go on the ice again. After this, she devoted her efforts to organising videos of figure skating competitions, studying the movements of the skaters and judges' comments and gradually becoming an unofficial figure skating expert.
After the abortion, conception became difficult and she had two failed two rounds of IVF before finally succeeding in 2006 at the age of 38. Zhang Aijun would come to regard 38 as the most important age in her life, seemingly corroborating the old American lady's answer to her from years ago, though not perfectly - she had told her that day that the most important age was 39 years.
At first, Zhang Aijun thought that the baby was going to be a boy. She thought: male skaters have it easy. Unlike girls, growth and puberty brings benefits to boys' physical ability, and they deal better with the changes to their bodies. But on Christmas Eve 2006, Zhang Aijun was greeted by a plump, thick-haired little girl.
At first, she named Nini 'An Yibing' [TN: 冰/bing1 = ice], hoping that her daughter wuold like to skate. Later, the fortune-teller said this name was unlucky, as ice is frigid, so Zhang Aijun changed her daughter's name to 'An Xiangyi' - she chose 'Xiang' because it is found in the names of many top ladies skaters, such as Yuka Sato or Shizuka Arakawa [TN: 香/xiang1 in Mandarin Chinese can be pronounced 'ka' in Japanese and means 'fragrance' in both languages. Side note: Japanese 'ka' can be written with different characters/meanings, e.g. the 'ka' of Rika Kihira is '花’ i.e. 'flower'.]
[TN: It's a traditional practice to consult fortune-tellers and amend names to bring luck or ward off misfortune - e.g. my father's family made him change a character in his name, even though he was already a teenager at the time.]
The plans for her daughter's skating life began even before she was born. While pregnant, Zhang Aijun would edit skating music - looking on, husband An Longhe remarked that she was nutty for editing skating music when their kid hadn't even been born yet. After Nini was born, to pre-emptively avoid any future accusations of age falsification, Zhang Aijun mentioned her date of birth on YouTube - she was determined for that sort of shame not to befall her daughter. [TN: YouTube is banned in China, so the implication is that by providing early evidence for the date of birth on a platform for international viewers, it could prevent foreign sporting bodies from disqualifying Nini under false charges of being underage.]
To be continued... (if you like)
By and large, Google Translate is alright, but in a few instances it's very difficult to read/inaccurate, hence why I am exercising my rusty Chinese. I've included a few translation notes (TN). This is a long-winded magazine-style article so please pardon the slow pace... no wonder people have only bothered with rough snippets! Good translation practice, though. Members from Mainland China, feel free to offer input especially on slang specific to your country's fandom, such as 'Face Sister (面姐)'!
Original article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/LzQq035W35eOO3qLFwJRAg
"The girl prodigy and her tiger mother"
For more than 20 years, China as a great sporting nation has produced exactly zero medals in ladies singles figure skating.
During this time, skating fans have been hoping for someone to break this embarrassing record.
In 2019, a 12-year-old girl, An Xiangyi, stormed out of nowhere and won the national senior ladies' title, hence becoming the 'hope of the nation'.
Does An Xiangyi have the best training conditions? The answer is no. The best team? It's hard to say. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that in Zhang Aijun she has a "fanatical" mother who will not give up.
Author: Wu Fenfeng
Editor: Du Qiang
Photography: Li Songshu [TN: maybe a pseudonym - literally 'squirrel']
53-year-old Zhang Aijun watches the rink.
Skates sound as they glide across the ice, then her daughter Nini takes off like a bird. After revolving in the air, instead of landing securely on the ice as intended, she falls. Her slender frame curls as she punches the ice in frustration.
Zhang Aijun's expression is stern and silent. As her daughter skates over to her again, she calls out tightly, "Underrotated lutz and a fall on the toeloop - you didn't prove yourself. You have to prove yourself!" Her sharp voice echoes through the rink. By 'prove yourself' she means 'hold yourself to Olympic standards'. She intends to develop her daughter to become a top international figure skater.
Others on the ice - languid-looking coaches holding sticks, rambunctious children learning to skate, the Zamboni uncle - find nothing remarkable, being used to seeing the intense training of this unusual mother-daughter pair.. However, to people familiar with ice sports, Zhang Aijun's goal is by no means a walk in the park.
In figure skating there's a saying: after piloting, the most difficult profession in the world is figure skating - even more so for those who aim to be at the top. Nonetheless, while Zhang Aijun agrees about the difficulty of skating, she will not be deterred - goals that have been decided on must be followed through with.
Thus, at a time when all mothers in the world would feel the urge to wrap their babies in a peaceful embrace, in 2007, following a U.S. physical fitness curriculum for infants, Zhang Aijun would carry 2-month-old Nini and practice spinning - turning 10 times clockwise then repeating counterclockwise. Regarding the potential effectiveness of this type of training, Zhang Aijun says that those who did so would be able to ride a rollercoaster ten times without getting dizzy.
Throughout her infancy, Nini would receive different types of training from Zhang Aijun each day, including crawling on the ground and revolving with her head downwards. As she got a little older, Zhang Aijun would have Nini stand outside during Level 7 wind [TN: a Chinese meteorological classification] during Beijing's winter. Passersby were curious: what were two children doing standing outside on such a windy day instead of going home?
"One kid was our Nini, and the other was some labourer's child [TN: migrant workers from the countryside, ubiquitous in large Chinese cities] who happened to be out there freezing!" said Zhang Aijun with a chuckle. This was the first stage of her plan to make her daughter world-class.
From Zhang Aijun's perspective, in future her daughter would be competing internationally against Russian and Japanese skaters, and therefore needed a robust physique ("What we're doing is exactly like preparing for war.") Zhang Aijun was satisfied by the results from the fitness training; after continuous progress in load, by 7 years old Nini was able to run 4 kilometres - a sight that would leave others on the athletic grounds gobsmacked.
Determination pays off. In 2019, 12-year-old Nini competed in seniors at Chinese Nationals, becoming the youngest ever champion. Thus, Chinese figure skating finally had a successor to Chen Lu - a girl prodigy with the potential to compete for international medals. Skating fans were instantly smitten with An Xiangyi [TN: Nini is her pet name], creating a fan club and following her every move closely on Tieba [TN: mainland Chinese version of Reddit, sort of...], as well as inevitably worrying for her prospects - China's ladies singles has had a medal drought for more than 20 years, with the best result being Li Zijun's 7th place at the 2013 World Championships.
Ladies' singles skaters not just in China but all over the world live under the shadow of the Russian iron-blooded queen 'Face Sister' a.k.a. Eteri Tutberidze [TN: No idea whatsover why they call her that...], to the point that people say that there are only two teams in ladies' singles: Face Sister's team, and everybody else. Face Sister's girls are tall [TN: Seriously?!] and shockingly powerful, and can do quadruple jumps and outscore male skaters at just 13 years old. At the previous Olympics, they claimed both gold and silver, forcing the ISU to discuss possible rule changes.
This is what 13-year-old An Xiangyi is due to face. Thin, small, still young, but already carrying others' fierce expectations of raising the national flag on the figure skating stage.
Those who care about her cannot avoid asking: Does An Xiangyi have the best training conditions? The answer is no. The best team? It's hard to say. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that in Zhang Aijun she has a "fanatical" mother who will not give up.
To Zhang Aijun, it was only natural to have her daughter learn figure skating, not just because her husband An Longhe is a figure skater, but also because she was already a seasoned figure skating fan before her daughter was born. "I know all the techniques," Zhang Aijun recalled casually with confidence. She believes her knowledge of skating is of an international judging standard.
Zhang Aijun's affinity with skating began when she 'retired'. In 1998, at the age of 31, she had become fed up with her work at a foreign-invested enterprise. When she first began working at the company, Zhang Aijun had been determined to succeed, hoping to manage her own project and be a female leader [TN: this term can be negative if mentioned in a conservative context]. However, reality threw a wrench in the works: all she did every day was pour coffee, pace the carpet, check the weather forecast to confirm what level of typhoon the boss's flight would encounter and so on. Even worse, the company gave her no say in project direction. Later, Zhang Aijun noticed that many people were being made redundant across departments, prompting further misgivings about her situation.
Still, there were some positives, such as the fact that she became slimmer due to the heavy workload and thus finally had the self-confidence to wear dresses like other women and feel attractive 'like Madonna'. But this joy wasn't enough. "Without direction, I couldn't stay in the company - I had to succeed", Zhang Aijun said. "My life is finite."
In 1993, at a banquet at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, Zhang Aijun asked an old American lady, "Could you tell me what the most important age for a woman is?"
After that, Zhang Aijun quit her job. She took up figure skate recreationally with acquaintances, as skating made her feel free. At the same time, aspiration to succeed continued to accompany her, only this time, she desired to excel within her circle [TN: the local adult skating community, I assume]. During this period, she would arrive at the rink at 8 am and return home around 10 pm. Early in the morning there were no people, and the security personnel would clap encouragingly for her. She even had an abortion in order to continue skating, and as wished, finally taught herself five single jumps. [TN: Apologies - I originally thought it was miscarriage based on inaccurate comments in the Reddit thread. '流产/liu2chan3' may refer to either abortion or miscarriage, but the source material is clear in this regard.]
Still she believed that nothing was impossible for her, even walking out of the abortion theatre wearing high heels, holding her head proudly to signify as proof that she was able to handle this matter on her own. However, Zhang Aijun's certainty was suddenly shattered by a fall on a camel spin, which almost fractured the right side of her face, after which she never dared to go on the ice again. After this, she devoted her efforts to organising videos of figure skating competitions, studying the movements of the skaters and judges' comments and gradually becoming an unofficial figure skating expert.
After the abortion, conception became difficult and she had two failed two rounds of IVF before finally succeeding in 2006 at the age of 38. Zhang Aijun would come to regard 38 as the most important age in her life, seemingly corroborating the old American lady's answer to her from years ago, though not perfectly - she had told her that day that the most important age was 39 years.
At first, Zhang Aijun thought that the baby was going to be a boy. She thought: male skaters have it easy. Unlike girls, growth and puberty brings benefits to boys' physical ability, and they deal better with the changes to their bodies. But on Christmas Eve 2006, Zhang Aijun was greeted by a plump, thick-haired little girl.
At first, she named Nini 'An Yibing' [TN: 冰/bing1 = ice], hoping that her daughter wuold like to skate. Later, the fortune-teller said this name was unlucky, as ice is frigid, so Zhang Aijun changed her daughter's name to 'An Xiangyi' - she chose 'Xiang' because it is found in the names of many top ladies skaters, such as Yuka Sato or Shizuka Arakawa [TN: 香/xiang1 in Mandarin Chinese can be pronounced 'ka' in Japanese and means 'fragrance' in both languages. Side note: Japanese 'ka' can be written with different characters/meanings, e.g. the 'ka' of Rika Kihira is '花’ i.e. 'flower'.]
[TN: It's a traditional practice to consult fortune-tellers and amend names to bring luck or ward off misfortune - e.g. my father's family made him change a character in his name, even though he was already a teenager at the time.]
The plans for her daughter's skating life began even before she was born. While pregnant, Zhang Aijun would edit skating music - looking on, husband An Longhe remarked that she was nutty for editing skating music when their kid hadn't even been born yet. After Nini was born, to pre-emptively avoid any future accusations of age falsification, Zhang Aijun mentioned her date of birth on YouTube - she was determined for that sort of shame not to befall her daughter. [TN: YouTube is banned in China, so the implication is that by providing early evidence for the date of birth on a platform for international viewers, it could prevent foreign sporting bodies from disqualifying Nini under false charges of being underage.]
To be continued... (if you like)