In China's modern history, women's liberation is also an important issue. Under the grand proposition of women's liberation, whether women can swim freely is often regarded as one of the important indicators of women's liberation, and in Chinese history, there has been such a female swimmer who single-handedly triggered a national wave, her name is Yang Xiuqiong.
Yang Xiuqiong was born in 1918 in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, which is close to the tropics, warm and rainy all year round, so the rivers and lakes are longitudinal, it is said that when she first learned to walk, she was taken into the water by her father to learn to swim, and it took less than 10 days to fully learn.
In 1928, Yang Xiuqiong moved to Hong Kong with her father and was arranged to study at the Hong Kong Zun Tak Girls' School, during which time, her father took advantage of the convenience of being a staff member of the South China Sports Association to teach Yang Xiuqiong to swim, and even took her to fight against the waves in the sea water of the 10th wind.
In this way, Yang Xiuqiong had mastered extraordinary swimming skills when she was a teenager, and at the Hong Kong Swimming Competition held in 1930, Yang Xiuqiong, who was only 12 years old, won two gold medals in the 50-meter freestyle and the 100-meter freestyle, and then won two consecutive years in the Swimming Competition in Hong Kong.
In 1933, the Nationalist government held the "Fifth National Games" in Nanjing, the first official women's swimming competition, and Yang Xiuqiong, who was only 15 years old, represented the Hong Kong team. It is said that in the women's swimming competition, many former Qing elders dressed in robes and horse coats were directly frightened to leave the field when they saw female swimmers in swimsuits.
In the renovated Nanjing Central Stadium, Yang Xiuqiong showed her might, winning five gold medals in the 50-meter freestyle, 100-meter freestyle, 100-meter backstroke and 200-meter backstroke in one fell swoop, and teamed up with her teammates to suppress Shanghai, Guangdong and other strong teams, and won the championship of the women's 200-meter relay in the collective event for the Hong Kong team. Together with Liu Changchun, the original Chinese flyer, she became the most shining sports star at the fifth National Games of old China.
After the First World War became famous at the Games, Zhu Minyi, who was a senior official of the State Government who loved sports at that time, was then the secretary general of the Executive Yuan of the Nanjing Government, and the commander of the Games, was even more "an old man talking about juvenile madness", and actually personally pulled a car for Yang Xiuqiong and drove her around the Nanjing street market, which became the explosive news at that time. Even her performance directly attracted the attention of Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, and Song Meiling recognized Yang as Gan's daughter and gave her an American car.
Later, at the 1934 Far East Games, Yang Xiuqiong represented the Chinese team in the Philippines, winning 3 individual championships and 1 relay championship, which can be said to have won glory for the country in the poor and weak Republic of China. It became a well-known figure in the people's country at that time, and the Magazine of Shanghai even painted Yang Xiuqiong with Chiang Kai-shek, Lin Sen, Zhang Xueliang and other bigwigs when drawing group portraits of "People of the Year".
After becoming famous, Yang Xiuqiong indulged in hedonism and various activities, and the competitive state began to decline, and at the "Sixth National Games" held in 1935, although Yang Xiuqiong still won two golds, she lost to her teammate Liu Guizhen in the 50-meter freestyle and was second.
However, the final defeat was still in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, due to the weakness of the country, dozens of Chinese athletes at the last moment to rush to Germany, after 17 days of drifting at sea, the result was that except for shanghai pole vaulter Fu Baolu, no one entered the rematch, Yang Xiuqiong Although she refreshed a number of women's swimming records in the Far East, she still failed to enter the rematch, and had to return to China. The poor performance of the Chinese team was also criticized and ridiculed by the domestic media, and Yang was not spared.
In 1937, Yang Xiuqiong married the famous equestrian Tao Boling. She came to Chongqing and announced her retirement from the army to work in physical education, when she was only 19 years old.
After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance, at an event, Yang Xiuqiong's beauty was taken in by Fan Shaozeng, a famous "Hal division commander" in the Sichuan Army, and Fan immediately proposed to Chiang Kai-shek that he wanted to take Yang Xiuqiong as a concubine. In order to win Fan Shaozeng over, Jiang even disregarded the happiness of this "dry daughter" and agreed.
Therefore, under the pressure of Jiang and Fan's power, Yang Xiuqiong was forced to announce a divorce with Tao Boling in Chongqing Daily, and became Fan Shaozeng's eighteenth aunt. After that, with the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the domestic sports industry entered a low period, and the people who had once worked for Yang Lache even defected to Wang Fei and became traitors.
The vulgar Fan Shaozeng could not win the favor of Yang Xiuqiong, and she later managed to escape from Fan Shaozeng's family, but at this time, she was a weak woman, lacking her ability to survive, and inevitably became a "vase" of flattery among several big people, until after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, she returned to Hong Kong, and then went from Hong Kong to Canada, and died in Vancouver in 1982.
Throughout Yang Xiuqiong's life, it can be said that from glory to loneliness, a sharp turn, it can be said that this transformation, to a large extent, the era imposed on her. When the situation in the Republic of China was slightly stabilized, Yang Xiuqiong, as a female swimmer, her significance of representing women's liberation and sportsmanship suddenly appeared, so it was sought after by the whole people; and when the Anti-Japanese War broke out, the situation became chaotic, the power rose, the inherent settlement and feudalism of the Republic of China prevailed, and the beautiful Yang Xiuqiong could only become a plaything of power and went to silence.