Text| MMM
Editor| Captain Zhang
In 2022, at the just-held Beijing Winter Olympics, Gu Ailing won the freestyle ski jump championship.
The eye-catching results have made the media from all sides compete for coverage, many people have raised the issue of nationality, and she has unabashedly said that she is a Chinese, and even said that she is a "Beijing girl", fluent in Mandarin, which makes people feel very kind.
The frank answer inevitably reminds people of another Chinese who is also an athlete- Yao Li.
Yao Li
Unlike Gu Ailing, after winning the London Olympics, she not only did not admit that she was Chinese, but also pretended not to understand Chinese, refused Chinese interviews, and disassociated herself from China.
Although she had already become a citizen of Kazakhstan at that time, such an operation could not help but confuse people, why did she commit such a behavior when she betrayed her homeland?
This also begins with the story of the first half of her life...
01. Ben is a descendant of Yan Huang
Yao Li was born in November 1985 in a small village in Fuxin City, Liaoning Province (later renamed Meiya. Maneza, who claims to have been born in Kyrgyzstan).
Her parents were ordinary farmers.
When she was a child, Yao Li, like the children in the village, went to school during the day, and after returning home from school in the afternoon, she helped her parents do farm work, and her life was still stable.
It is only because of the backward quality of education and her own greed, Yao Li's cultural class results have not been very good, and the results are average.
After entering junior high school, she became the kind of child in the class who was easily overlooked. She should have finished her junior high school life in this way, because of a physical education class, she ushered in a turning point in her life.
Accustomed to farming since childhood, she has amazing physical strength and explosiveness.
In physical education class, she is often far ahead of her peers. Her excellent physique surprised her junior high school teacher, and it was extremely rare to meet such a athletically gifted child in this small, underdeveloped place.
Her pedigree teacher also liked her very much, often giving her more training and teaching her more professional sports knowledge. In this way, it didn't take long for Yao Li to make rapid progress in terms of strength, far surpassing ordinary junior high school students.
At the age of 15, Yao Li represented her class in the sports meeting, and she easily won several sports championships.
The physical education teacher of the school team saw her outstanding performance on the judges' bench and felt that this was a rare good seedling, so he went to Yao Li's home and hoped that her parents would agree to Yao Li joining the school team and receive professional sports training.
At first, her parents, out of traditional thinking, did not agree, believing that a girl studying physical education was too hard, coupled with the rumors that many people at that time were not tall in weight training, so that Yao Li's parents once drove the physical education teacher out of the house.
But as Yao Li's "Bole", the physical education teacher has been unwilling to give up.
Finally, unable to resist the repeated persuasion of the physical education teacher, her parents compromised and agreed to let their daughter join the school team to practice weightlifting.
After joining the school team, the physical education teacher attaches great importance to Yao Li, although the school's sports equipment is old and the training ground is very small, he still gives Yao Li as much guidance as possible, and even uses his own salary to buy her nutritional products and supplement her physical fitness.
In this way, with the encouragement of the coach, her explosiveness is getting better and better, and her skills in the play are becoming more and more skilled, which makes Yao Li win many awards in the province and her fame has increased greatly.
In 2003, Yao Li ushered in her second turning point, When Zhu Mingwu, the coach of the Liaoning provincial team, was selecting sports seedlings in various places, he happened to pass through Fuxin City, and heard that there was a weightlifting genius here, so he couldn't wait to come here and meet Yao Li.
Coming to Yao Li's home, it just so happened that she was conducting daily training, Zhu Mingwu found at first glance that her weightlifting skills were very good, and was impressed by her tenacious spirit, plus after asking Yao Li's weightlifting data, he was very shocked, and immediately discussed with Yao Li's parents to take her into the provincial team.
As soon as the young Yao Li heard that after entering the provincial team, she could not only receive top-level training but also have a salary, so she happily packed her bags and Zhu Mingwu stepped on the train to the provincial team.
After joining the Liaoning provincial team, Yao Li's ability has been greatly improved, and her athletic talent has begun to really shine, even if there are many excellent people, she is still among the best, no one can match.
Many of the provincial team's resources were also tilted to her, and Zhu Mingwu, who was quite appreciative of her, also took her to more weightlifting top competitions, when she was not yet eighteen years old.
After lifting 90 kg and 90.25 kg, which are very exaggerated for women's weightlifting, Yao Li has become a rising star in China's women's weightlifting industry.
Two years later, Yao Li, who shined in this way, was taken over as expected with Zhu Mingwu's transfer to the Provincial Team of Hunan Province.
However, Hunan Province, as a major sports center in China, especially in weightlifting, has more equipment and talents than Yao Li has been exposed to before.
The players here not only have more strength than her, but also have a lot more practical experience than her, which makes Yao Li, who was originally at the top of the mountain, fall down and lose for a while.
02. Change nationality and change foreign name
The loss of the Hunan provincial team did not last long, and she regained her spirits and threw herself into daily training. Her grades improved very quickly and she gradually became one of the best in the team.
However, there is no smooth sailing in the world, and it is not long before she enters the bottleneck period, no matter how hard she tries, she cannot improve her performance.
At the time of confusion, it coincided with the announcement of the "Talent Exchange Plan" by the state, allowing athletes with excellent national strength to go to small countries around the motherland, study and train in the name of foreign aid players, and compete for glory in international competitions.
After Yao Li heard about this plan, she decided to join and leave China for a while to recuperate her state. Therefore, after the application was approved in 2008, she was sent to Kazakhstan as a foreign aid there.
In Kazakhstan, where there were not many sports talents, she quickly became a well-known local weightlifter with the strong and solid basic skills accumulated in China.
Seeing such outstanding athletes, the General Administration of Sport of Kazakhstan has a selfish heart, they want to leave this "good seedling" and fight for their country completely.
Therefore, in several meetings, Kazakhstan secretly threw an olive branch to Yao Li, promising to induce her to change her nationality and stay in Kazakhstan forever.
In the face of such conditions, Yao Li, who was already wavering, happened to be ill in her father, and dialysis again and again made her really unable to afford the high medical expenses.
In this case, in order to reduce the burden on her family, Yao Li signed an agreement in another meeting, agreed to become a Kazakh citizen, and gave herself a new name - Meiya. Maneza.
Kazakhstan also promised to give Yao Li 1,000 US dollars a month, about 7,000 yuan as a "salary".
With a new nationality and a new name, Yao Li got more and better resources in Kazakhstan, and after her injury was cured, she represented Kazakhstan in international competitions large and small, and achieved remarkable results.
For a time, her fame in Kazakhstan soared, and it didn't take long for her parents who were far away in Liaoning to take over and leave China completely.
In 2010, she participated in the Asian Games in Guangzhou and successfully won the weightlifting championship.
In post-match interviews, she conducted as a Kazakh athlete, but always used Chinese to communicate with reporters.
When reporters questioned her nationality, she not only avoided answering, but also denied that she was a Chinese, and fabricated that she was born in Kazakhstan and had never trained in weightlifting in China.
Her answer surprised everyone present, and once the interview was released, it caused an uproar in China, and many people were quite critical of Yao Li.
However, because she was not in China, no one responded to these questions for a long time, and the public opinion was gone.
Soon after, at the 2012 London Olympics, Yao Li won the weightlifting event again, but the next operation made people's jaws drop...
03. The ending
Originally, as a compatriot, everyone felt very kind when they saw this girl with yellow skin and black hair on the field, and they also applauded her.
But in subsequent interviews, she once again denied her identity as a Chinese in public, and complained that she could not use Chinese to talk to her in the interview, ignored reporters in her hometown, and deliberately emphasized that she taught Meiya Maneza instead of Yao Li.
Later, she pretended not to understand the reporter's Chinese, and did not even admit that she had been trained in China, saying only that she had only lived in China for a few years, and all her success came from the cultivation of Kazakhstan.
The strange behavior made everyone completely angry, in fact, nationality is a personal choice, and others really have no right to interfere, if you frankly admit that everyone does not have any opinions.
China is a vast country, and there are many athletes itself, and the competitive pressure between relative players is often quite strong.
Yao Li changed her nationality, sought better opportunities for herself, and got more resources, which is understandable, and now many Chinese athletes have broken through their own world abroad through the same method.
The difference is that after the game, Yao Li not only did not thank the motherland for her basic cultivation, but also denied her former hometown, such an "deviant" behavior, which really hurt the hearts of the domestic people.
In addition, because of her speech, the people of Kazakhstan also began to spread rumors that Yao Li's withdrawal from Chinese nationality was due to China's lack of attention and contempt for her.
Huge public opinion fermented, so that her mother had to accept interviews from domestic reporters.
Knowing what her daughter has done, she is also very helpless, although Yao Li's original intention is to share for the family and treat her father's illness, after all, there is no other income in the family except for the few acres of thin fields, and Yao Li's father's illness is getting worse and worse, but such an extreme approach also makes her parents ashamed, and once covered her face and cried.
After listening to Yao Li's mother's explanation, the Chinese people also said that they could understand and did not harshly rebuke her, but her behavior still made many people feel ashamed, thinking that her denial was a rather ungrateful act.
Her actions not only hurt the hearts of the Chinese people, but also hurt her mentor Zhu Mingwu, in many interviews, as long as Yao Li is mentioned, Zhu Mingwu is lonely and does not say a word.
He excavated her from so far away, exhausted his mind, and finally betrayed the country, undoubtedly stepping on the red line of Chinese athletes, Zhu Mingwu may also be regretting why he did not stop Yao Li and not care more about her spiritual world!
And just as everyone was talking about her, the International Olympic Committee issued an announcement.
Yao Li was found to have used doping before the game after winning the gold medal, and her Kazakh coach was an internationally renowned "medicine king", and the cheating was undoubtedly confirmed.
The accident not only cancelled the gold medal she won at the London Olympics, but also invalidated all her previous medals and banned her from all competitions, the struggle was shattered in an instant, her great future was ruined, and naturally, the weightlifting career ended here.
Now she is useless to Kazakhstan, lost her use value, naturally will no longer enjoy a high income, two fatal mistakes let her destroy herself, a good weightlifting genius fell, all of which are choking sighs.
If she hadn't been seduced by profit, she might have been able to get the same honor now with her talent and hard work.
But when a person's patriotic exercises are useless, the moral bottom line can naturally fall again and again.
The mainland weightlifting team, starting from Liu Changchun, who participated in the first Olympic Games, even if he went to the meeting with a single knife, he still bravely moved forward.
This kind of sportsmanship is not felt by other countries, and my Chinese athletes have always been proud to wear the national flag of that side, even if they are in other places, they are excited to hear the national anthem.
Today, when China is becoming more and more powerful, our sports career is also thriving, and we are no longer suffering from our predecessors.
Although the treatment of athletes was not particularly good because of national strength, China's sports system was also relatively short of resources.
However, after so many years of efforts, the mainland's treatment system for athletes has been continuously improved and repaired, and even surpassed many Western countries, and many foreign athletes have come to China.
If Yao Li had been firmer at that time, she might not have come to the present and become a "traitor" in people's mouths.
Just like at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, in addition to our common Chinese faces, there are many different crowds.
Whether it is Gu Ailing, who picked gold at the age of eighteen, or Lin Xiaojun, who was recuperating from the Winter Olympics, they all grew up in a more suitable environment for themselves through their own choices, and shined on the sports field.
As for Yao Li's "medication" behavior, perhaps she was deeply afraid of losing her original resources in Kazakhstan, resulting in the inability to continue to provide financial support for parents in the motherland, so she had to make a decision, which made this decision desperately.
Now Yao Li's parents have also returned to the motherland, refusing to follow her to live in Kazakhstan, knowing that there is no hope of returning to China, she also gave up this idea, unable to earn income by lifting weights, so she turned around and married a Kazakh man, opened a Chinese medicine hall, and lived an ordinary life.
Sports have no borders, and it is understandable that individuals want something more suitable for themselves.
For example, Ni Xialian, who later immigrated to Luxembourg, also settled overseas to participate in the competition for other countries, but no matter where she went, she did not forget her motherland, and frankly admitted that she was more suitable for herself to go abroad.
Ni Xialian
But the most different thing about her and Yao Li is that she "doesn't forget Ben", and in an interview, she always said that she was Chinese.
Today, we can glimpse Yao Li's married life from foreign social media, "not acknowledging that she is a Chinese", celebrating the "Lunar New Year" in 2021.
Judging from recent photos, Yao Li's life is moist, and the family of three looks very happy.
He even opened a "traditional Chinese medicine" clinic in Kazakhstan and hired local Chinese to serve as resident doctors.
But there is a saying that goes: "Success is important, but if the character is not good, then such an honor is worthless." ”
Now, denying herself Chinese, she seems to have been unable to break her relationship with China as "her heart is in Kazakhstan".
Opening a TCM clinic, the staff is also Chinese, which looks particularly ironic.
Past issues are wonderful
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Weightlifting champion Tang Gonghong: In order to win the championship and risk death, the state rewards 4 bedrooms and 2 halls, marrying a handsome husband
"Gymnastics champion" Zou Kai: won 5 gold medals at the Olympics, married a wife with a height of 5 centimeters, and welcomed 2 children at the age of 33