On January 27, 2017 Chinese New Year's Eve, former table tennis world champion Li Furong and Liang Lizhen made an appointment to go to Dongguan to participate in school activities together. However, on that day, Li Furong and his wife did not wait for Liang Lizhen, and the phone call to her was never answered, so the two immediately rushed to the nursing home where Liang Lizhen lived in Guangzhou.
On January 28, the two arrived and asked the nursing home staff if they knew where Liang Lizhen was. But the administrator said that Liang Lizhen had already asked her for leave and said that she was going out and did not know where she was. The two already had a bad premonition in their hearts, and quickly asked the administrator to take them to Liang Lizhen's room.
Liang Lizhen
The administrator opened the door but there was no one, but the phone was still on the table, the administrator immediately went to the bathroom, as soon as he opened the door, he saw Liang Lizhen lying on the ground wearing a cotton coat, and went to help her to know that her body was cold and had long been out of breath. Why did a generation of female generals in the table tennis world live alone in a nursing home in their later years? Why did he quietly die in the bathroom?
Today's table tennis celebrities have won eye-catching results in the Olympic Games and won the attention of countless Chinese people. Ma Long, Zhang Jike, Liu Shiwen, etc., but in the 60s of the last century, the mainland also had many table tennis world champions.
These champions have been lost in time, covered in dust. Those glorious years will always be remembered in their hearts and remembered by that generation. However, these champions have never forgotten the past, and still contribute to China's sports cause in their respective fields, and a generation of national players Liang Lizhen is one of them.
Liang Lizhen won the women's team championship for the Chinese team at the 28th World Table Tennis Championships in 1965. Since then, her name has resounded throughout the city of Guangzhou, which is her highest year, and at this time she is only 20 years old, and her future in life is unlimited. But few people know that her initial starting point of sports was not to play table tennis.
Liang Lizhen was born in 1945 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, to live in Liwan District. Her parents raised her alone, the family conditions are excellent, and she deserves to be the pearl in her hand. Since childhood, he has traveled all over the city of Guangzhou and spent his childhood carefree. Guangdong Province is located in the southern coastal area of China, which coincided with the vigorous development of sports in China at that time and caught up with the wind.
Guangdong Province has a long coastline and many rivers in the province, which is blessed with unique conditions. As the provincial capital, Guangzhou vigorously supports the development of diving and swimming projects. When Liang Lizhen reached the age of school, she was sent to primary school by her parents. It just so happened that the principal at that time attached great importance to swimming, and every grade of the school was required to take swimming lessons and learn to swim.
When Liang Lizhen was young, she was often taken to the beach by her father and was very lively and active. Maybe Heaven had already arranged the road for her, and she had only learned to swim. As soon as she went to school, she was told to learn swimming lessons, and she was still very happy, after all, she had already learned to swim.
The school often organizes intercollegiate competitions, and Liang Lizhen, who has long learned to swim, always has the bottom few results. The girl has her own pride, and she has since plunged into the swimming pool to practice diligently. However, the results were minimal, and the results still did not improve. On this day's competition, Liang Lizhen once again occupied the bottom few, and her heart was very depressed, and the whole person was a little depressed.
Her physical education teacher, Wang Zhengyuan, has actually been paying attention to her for a long time. Liang Lizhen's efforts were all seen by him, and he was very pleased with Liang Lizhen's efforts. But the more I paid attention to Liang Lizhen, the more I understood that she was not the material for learning to swim. But Wang Zhengyuan saw another possibility in her, and he felt that Liang Lizhen could not go on like this, otherwise she would be buried if she drilled the tip of the horn.
So after this competition, he called Liang Lizhen to the office. Liang Lizhen thought that Wang Zhengyuan was going to scold her, so she hurried to open her mouth in front of Wang Zhengyuan, and said firmly with her eyes wide open: "Teacher, I will work harder, and I will definitely make progress next time." Wang Zhengyuan was amused by her behavior, and Liang Lizhen looked at Wang Zhengyuan's smile, and her eyes were full of doubt.
Wang Zhengyuan finished laughing and said in a gentle tone: "I didn't scold you when I came to you today, didn't you find out?" Every time the whistle sounds, you're always the first to get into the water, but you're the last to come ashore. In fact, your reaction speed is very fast, you are just not suitable for swimming, I suggest you still learn table tennis, you can think about it yourself. ”
After Listening to the teacher's words, Liang Lizhen was also uncertain in her heart. When she got home, she talked to her parents about it, and they encouraged her to try it. Anyway, she's still young, and she has time to try. So Liang Lizhen held the mentality of trying, agreed to follow Wang Zhengyuan to learn table tennis, and her life changed completely.
Every day after school, Liang Lizhen carried her school bag and went to Wang Zhengyuan's home to train. Every day I was too tired to go home and finish my homework to rest, but Liang Lizhen still persevered. Gradually, Wang Zhengyuan had nothing to teach her, and in 1957, he recommended her to go to the First Youth Amateur Sports School in Guangzhou to continue to study table tennis.
But Liang Lizhen's technique really couldn't keep up with others, and at first the teacher didn't arrange for her to practice at all, so she let her practice against the wall. Even so, Liang Lizhen did not feel depressed, but more and more like to play table tennis, really fell in love with this cause, and was willing to dedicate her life to it.
At the end of the year when Liang Lizhen entered the sports school, the national team table tennis player Zhuang Jiafu came to Guangdong to select a group of outstanding athletes to enter the national training team, and Liang Lizhen's classmate Fan Zhengguang was selected. On the day Fan Zhengguang left for Beijing, all his classmates ran to send him.
Liang Lizhen saw That Fan Zhengguang was wearing a big red flower on his chest, and he stood up with pride on his face, and he was very envious. In her heart, she regarded Fan Zhengguang as her goal of catching up, cheered herself up, and vowed to enter the national team to participate in training in the future. After that, Liang Limin was like playing chicken blood, practicing on the ping-pong table every day until the latest.
Liang Lizhen's efforts paid off, and in just one year, she quickly overtook her teammates in front of her, showing amazing progress and unlimited potential. In 1958, Liang Lizhen, who achieved amazing results, was selected into the Guangdong Provincial Training Team and continued to grow and progress in a larger world.
Two years in the Guangdong Provincial Training Team. Liang Lizhen received more professional training and also met a large number of teammates walking in front of her. Liang Lizhen is more determined by her goal, must enter the national team. After all, the provincial team has been talented, and the national team is estimated to be Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Liang Lizhen understood that only by going higher and farther could she see the strength of others and see her own shortcomings. She has just entered the provincial team, and she is still the bottom of the people. At the age of 13, she is no longer a little girl frustrated by the bottom of her swimming performance, she knows the gap between herself and others, and she is ready to catch up.
For two years, she practiced the serve frantically for countless days and nights. Cherish every opportunity to practice, summarize the problems in each failure, and then overcome difficulties to reduce mistakes, desperately catch up day by day, and gradually surpass the opponents in the top rankings. Liang Lizhen's ability and level are displayed in the eyes of the coaches, and everyone knows in their hearts that she is only a missing opportunity.
The opportunity soon came. At the beginning of 1960, the training areas of the five provinces in central and southern China selected talents for the World Table Tennis Championships. Liang Lizhen, who was at the top of the provincial team, was not surprisingly selected. Liang Lizhen is particularly excited, which means that she has a certain opportunity to enter the national team training.
The provincial elites trained together, and they could quickly see the gap between them. Liang Lizhen once again found that she was the bottom batch again. Before every game, she can only pray that she is not at the bottom, and it is really impossible to get the first. The facts in front of her made Liang Lizhen suffer a big blow, and her initial firm confidence was also slightly shaken.
Fortunately, at that time, a sister named Xu Ruiqin from the Hubei team felt that Liang Lizhen had closed her eyes and liked her very much. Therefore, after each competition, she will come to encourage Liang Lizhen, cheer her up, and firmly believe that she is still an unpolished jade and will definitely be seen one day.
Xu Ruiqin also used her rest time to practice with Liang Lizhen to help her find out the problem. It is precisely because of Xu Ruiqin's help and expectations that Liang Lizhen regained her confidence. Later, Liang Lizhen insisted on getting up three hours early every day to train, followed by training with the team, and worked silently alone.
It is this kind of hard training that helped Liang Lizhen complete the transformation. In the second month of the training, Liang Lizhen was no longer the bottom part of the person, but successfully sneaked upstream. Since the third month, Liang Lizhen has been able to break into the top eight, which surprised everyone.
It was during this period of experience that Liang Lizhen successfully entered the national team and realized her dream. Therefore, Liang Lizhen has always regarded Xu Ruiqin as a master sister, regarded her as her nobleman, and has always been obsessed with Xu Ruiqin. This experience also inspired Liang Lizhen a lot in the future.
At the end of 1960, Liang Lizhen successfully entered the national team training. The national team has excellent conditions in all aspects, which is much better than the provincial team. Liang Lizhen felt that only by training harder could she be worthy of what she enjoyed, and she would not feel weak-hearted. The training intensity of the national team is much larger, and Liang Lizhen, who has just entered the team, cannot adapt well.
After a day of training, Liang Lizhen's whole body was trembling. Sometimes I don't want to eat when I'm tired, so I go back to my dorm room and fall asleep. The next day, my muscles ached, and if I hadn't relied on the faith in my heart, I might not have been able to get out of bed, or even walk. On such a day, Liang Lizhen still gritted her teeth and insisted on it for a year.
In 1961, the fledgling Liang Lizhen partnered with Han Yuzhen to defeat the Japanese team at the 26th World Table Tennis Championships and win the third place. Her name only appeared in the public eye, and the real sense of the word came to the fore. However, at the 27th World Table Tennis Championships, the Chinese women's table tennis team suffered Waterloo, and none of them entered the final, let alone won the prize.
In contrast, the men's team, men's singles and men's doubles of the men's team have all won the championship. The pressure on the women's team is very large, the national team quickly adjusted its strategy, and the men's table tennis world champion Rong Guotuan joined the women's team coach and adopted the "men to help women" way of training. In addition to learning the skills of playing in Rong Guotuan, Liang Lizhen is more in learning to meet the mentality of fighting and learning psychological things.
Liang Lizhen received years of devil training from Rong Guo and competed as the main team at the 28th World Table Tennis Championships in 1965. The women's team withstood the huge pressure of the previous edition and achieved nothing, facing the Asian and European powers and sweeping everyone with thunder. Liang Lizhen also lived up to expectations and won the first women's world team championship for China.
This year, Liang Lizhen's name resounded through the streets and alleys of Guangzhou, and the whole country was cheering. She was only 20 years old this year, and she also teamed up with her teammates to finish third in the women's doubles and women's mixed doubles, and her highlight moment stayed in this year. In 1973, at the age of 28, she chose to retire from the national team and returned to Guangzhou.
The help of three important people in life made Liang Lizhen understand that her mission is to help the group of people who love table tennis, have the opportunity and encouragement, and can always persevere and continue to work hard. When she returned to Guangzhou, she devoted her time to popularizing and promoting the development of table tennis.
In 2005, Liang Lizhen, who felt lonely, chose to move to a nursing home, chat with other people, occasionally bring a camera to take pictures, and ask old friends to go out to participate in activities in her spare time. Although she never got married or had children in her life, her old age was not lonely and lonely, but full of warmth and color.
Liang Lizhen, 72, is already running for a table tennis career and has agreed to participate in activities with her old friends, but she did not expect to fall. And she could not call for help, and left quietly in the Chinese New Year's Eve night. Although she has gone, the style and experience of the famous players are still worth learning and remembering.