In China's Medal Factory, Winners Cannot Quit

By Juliet Macur | The New York Times
June 21, 2008

FENGCHENG, China -- As a reward for winning an Olympic gold medal in flatwater canoeing four years ago, Yang Wenjun -- the son of peasant rice farmers -- was handed the deed to a three-bedroom apartment here in a neighborhood called Sunny City.

The local government bought and decorated it, hanging giant scrolls in the living room that announce in Mandarin: "Yang Wenjun won gold in the Olympics. It brings good luck here." But his mother, Nie Chunhua, said Yang had been anything but lucky. She wiped away tears with hands dark and swollen from farming.

"If I had better economic condition, I would not like him to do sports," Nie, 49, said this spring. "Every time I think about him training, I feel so sad that my heart hurts. For him, and for me, there is so much pain."

Yang, one of China's most successful water sports athletes, has never lived in his apartment. He has not seen his parents in three years. At 24, he lives 250 miles away at his sport's training center, where he is preparing for the Beijing Olympics.

Yang said he could not stand his life.

For nearly a decade, he has tried to quit canoeing, he told The New York Times during an interview at the training center. He said he would rather attend college or start a business, but acknowledged that he was ill-equipped to do either one.

Many Chinese sports schools, in which more than 250,000 children are enrolled, focus on training at the expense of education. Critics, like the former Olympic diving coach Yu Fen, are calling for changes. They say athletes are unprepared to leave the sports system that has raised them.

"I do not want to work as an athlete, but as an athlete here I have no freedom to choose my future," Yang said, speaking through the team's official interpreter. "As a child, I didn't learn anything but sport, and now what do I do? I can't do anything else. I have my own dreams, but it is very difficult. I don't have the foundation to make them come true."

Officials refused to let Yang retire, even after he won Olympic gold in the C-2 500-meter race with Meng Guanliang at the Athens Games in 2004. He described how they had threatened to withhold his retirement payment if he did not compete through the Beijing Games.

"It is not possible to survive without those benefits," said Yang, whose parents say he receives a monthly stipend of $230 and performance-based bonuses.

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