Source: Sports Weekly
Watching last month's National Championships, 1985 figure skating national champion Chen Tingting couldn't help but sigh at the changing times. When she won the national championship, Chen Tingting was an 18-year-old Lotte girl, but this did not prevent her from being keenly aware that her previous champions were different from her, and in that era, there were few Asian faces on the ice rink.
At the 2022 U.S. Championships, Asian faces covered single skating, pair skating and ice dancing, and their names spread across the adult and junior categories. At the weekend, the American figure skating team announced the winter Olympic list, and 4 of the 6 players were of Chinese descent: Chen Kaiwen, Chen Wei, Liu Meixian and Zhou Zhifang (the latter two have withdrawn from the competition due to the new crown infection). There is also ice dancer Madison Jock, whose father is of Chinese Hawaiian descent. Chen Tingting exclaimed: "So many Asians. It's so exciting. ”
On January 3, 2018, when the annual National Championships were held in San Jose, California, ice fans applauded Cheung Chau's future. Cheung Chau Future represented Team USA in the 2010 and 2018 Winter Olympics, and her parents struggled to raise money for her training and competitions by running a Japanese food store. In the United States, a land where Asians are not often associated with sports, figure skating is clearly becoming the home of Asian faces, with Asians making up only 7 percent of the U.S. population, but the percentage of Asians at all levels of figure skating rinks and competitions from the East Coast to the West Coast is clearly much higher than that.
The New York Times commented that Asians were gradually changing a sport. Until the 1990s, Figure Skating in the United States was the domain of white people. The rise of Asians introduced Asian musical culture to the competition, reinforced their rise to control of the sport, and firmly expressed their roots in the climate of anxiety caused by the atrocities of anti-Asian racists and the dangerous directions led by social media propaganda of hatred.
"I think representation is really important," said Chen Wei, an American men's singles brother, when he competed in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, when 7 of the 14 figure skaters on the U.S. team were Asian-Americans, "So it's still very cool to see the same faces as you on TV doing very cool things, in my opinion, for a kid." ”
2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, Asian athlete on the American figure skating team
In the series of drivers behind this phenomenon, nearly every Asian-American figure skater was inspired by an early pioneer. Chen Tingting was regarded as an idol by Christie Yamaguchi, who was 4 years younger than her, and yamaguchi won numerous figure skating careers and was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, but when she was a little girl, as long as Chen Tingting came to the Bay Area to compete, Yamaguchi was a must-see in every game, and marveled at her skills, and asked for an autograph, "I have always respected her." There's definitely a bloodline factor, that intrinsic connection, because she's Asian. ”
Liu Meixian, a 16-year-old talented girl, has won the National Championship twice, and her figure skating path began with her father's love for legendary Guan Yingshan. Guan Yingshan is regarded as a figure skating hero by a generation of Chinese immigrants, and she won a silver medal at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, which greatly improved the social image and status of the Chinese people.
The success of Christie Yamaguchi and Kwan pushed the American figure skating fever to the top, coinciding with the massive addition of ice rinks across the country, creating the conditions for this boom. Chen Tingting, Yamaguchi and Guan Yingshan all grew up in California, a state with a large Asian population that is still the center of figure skating today, and later Chen Kaiwen, Qiao Ke, Liu Meixian and Zhou Zhifang were all born in California.
Kwan opened her own ice rink in Artesia, California, in 2005, quickly attracting Asian families here. Chen Tingting, who now teaches in Southern California, revealed that 40% of her students are Asian. Zhu Yi, who represented China in figure skating team and women's singles, was also born in California.
Some people say that Asians dominate American figure skating because they are small or because their parents are strict, such as the well-known "tiger mother" image, and these views are even shared by some Asians. But experts bluntly dismiss this as a stereotype. Christina Chen, lecturer in the sociology of sport at California State University, Fullert, said: "Every race has the physical conditions to succeed in figure skating. Asians shine as a result of a combination of cultural acceptance, social pressures or opportunities, structural forces, and institutions. ”
Of course, as to why Asians have become mainstream in figure skating, rather than other ethnic groups in the United States, there is an undeniable reality: figure skating is more expensive, and East Asians are the immigrant group with the highest average household income in the United States.
Asians have long been agonizing over their lack of representation in American pop culture. So, for those who work in figure skating, seeing top athletes with the same elements as themselves can be an exhilarating experience. Over time, Asian-American figure skaters have become more willing to publicly express their bloodline. At the 2018 Winter Olympics, Chen Wei wore a "wedding dress queen" Wang Weiwei designed Kausten to compete, and the soundtrack came from the biographical film "The Last Dancer" by ballet master Li Cunxin. Chen Kaiwen integrates her folk dance experience into the performance, and uses small props such as folding fans, and her short program score this season is "Liang Zhu". The identity issues didn't come to the 22-year-old women's singles player, "I think my race and cultural background has had a huge impact on me personally, as does skating. It's what motivates me, and it really makes me proud of who I am and what I've become. ”