Li Da, the first female freediving instructor in China, held the world's first mermaid performance competition in Shenzhen, and many of the firsts in the history of the development of domestic mermaid sports are related to Shenzhen
On December 21, 2021, the winter solstice, Sanya, south of 20 degrees north latitude, was warm and sunny.
In the Atlantis Aquarium by the sea, a group of "mermaids" swaying gorgeous and exquisite fish tails under the water, dancing to the music, in the clear blue water, their swimming posture is flexible, like princes and princesses from the underwater mythology, and the bubbles in the water add a little cuteness to the mermaids.
This is the scene of the first Chinese Mermaid Performance Competition. After the two-day competition, the first, second and third places in the three events of women's singles, men's singles and team groups were born. What makes Li Da (netizens prefer to call her Dada) is pleased that in the three groups of champions, the team champion and the women's champion are from the "Mermaid Army" she single-handedly created that year, and now they all belong to the Shenzhen Mermaid Athletic Team.
As the first female freediving instructor in China, Li Da trained the first batch of professional mermaid diving and underwater performance actors in China in 2015. In September 2017, she held the world's first mermaid performance competition at the Shenzhen Shekou Value Factory. Entrusted by the Aquatic Management Center of the State General Administration of Sport, Li Da served as a technical consultant and participated in the preparation and formulation of the National Mermaid Event Manual and judging standards. In the first China Mermaid Performance Competition, she was one of the three technical referees, leading more than 20 assistant referees to judge the final result of the performance competition.
"The world is so big, I want to see it." In 2015, the phrase, which appeared in a resignation letter, quickly became popular. It was also that year that Rida resigned and lived a life of "chasing whitetip sharks in Mexico, flirting with tiger sharks in the Bahamas, and swimming with Indonesian whale sharks...". But her life is not just about diving, she's an ocean explorer, a stage director, an underwater model in advertising and a travel blogger with millions of fans, and she also makes documentaries.
She said that there is only one way to succeed in life, and that is to always love your life.
The Little Mermaid Project
A month before my interview, Rida was out to sea again.
The Azores in the North Atlantic, the destination of Rida and her German film crew, is the world's largest whale sanctuary. Rida's film crew specializes in filming marine life underwater, filming underwater footage and documentaries for television. As part of the team, she was responsible for filming behind-the-scenes footage. The team holds a chartered diving license and often has the opportunity to photograph the creatures under the sea up close underwater.
Rida told me that this is just one of her many recent projects. To that end, she traveled from Shenzhen to Germany in April and is currently based in the southwestern German city of Stuttgart, where, as a travel blogger, she wants to continue to export content based on island travel. In 2019, Li Da had made plans for herself, hoping that starting in 2020, it would take a round-the-world trip for a year or two, continue to travel around, and continue to do content, but she never expected that a new crown epidemic disrupted all these plans and arrangements. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, she has often thought about whether to transform in the past three years. But one thing has not changed, that is, she still wants to explore more marine life and sea areas that she has always wanted to see, and thus get a steady sense of satisfaction. "The original intention has never changed." Despite the difficulties she is facing, Rida chose to continue to set out, because she hopes to "complete some of the plans or life directions she set for herself as soon as she is younger."
In June this year, As a producer, Li Da also participated in the French International Sunshine Documentary Festival with a new documentary project "Looking for the World of Sea Fault Maps" with the theme of China's marine history, culture and marine environmental protection, which is the only Chinese proposal shortlisted for this year's conference. The special promotion of works on the international platform about the search for the current situation of ancient Chinese marine life is an unprecedented new experience of Li Da, who originally planned to do this documentary well, and she herself did not expect to be able to step by step to share the stage with the relatively mature international documentarians. It's more like the extra surprise that life gives to a traveler who is focused on the road. "I have always believed that the road is step by step, and often only by going all out can we see hope." When Li Da made her official debut on the stage of the documentary festival with "In Search of the World of Sea Faults" and received the attention of policymakers, she wrote in the circle of friends.
On Rida's intensive itinerary, there is also a "Little Mermaid Project". That was a project she worked with a European association of people with disabilities to teach people with disabilities to dive. The project stemmed from a series of disabled dives that she and her team had filmed. At that time, she taught three of the disabled people to learn freediving, because freediving is relatively simple in equipment compared to scuba diving, which can reduce the burden of disabled people underwater. Rida was very touched to see the three disabled people who had learned to freedive find their center of gravity buoyancy in the water, and the whole person straightened up like a healthy person.
Among them, there is a girl who is paraplegic and in a wheelchair, and a boy who is missing a whole leg. Once, with The help and guidance of Rida, the two men tried a dance performance in the water. The girl found balance in the water, standing upright in the water, the boy swam by her side, and the two of them made a small dance movement, which surprised and surprised the two young people, who could not imagine that they could do such a performance. "They are completely incomparable with normal people on land, and in the water even better than some of my past students, who have achieved a relatively sound human state completely on their own ability in the water. I even felt like they were born again. This performance deeply touched Li Da.
Seeing this, Li Da immediately showed the girl her intention to make a set of fish tails for her. "Her eyes lit up, she was excited, and you could see that you ignited the need for someone to be recognized." This made Li Da remember it vividly. In November, Rida will meet the girl in Mexico with a custom-made fishtail, allowing her and her friends to realize their dreams of diving in the real sea. At that time, their diving process would also be recorded by Lida and her team on camera.
▲ People have many dimensions, and the ocean and free diving give Lida a different perspective on the world.
▲ Li Da said that there is only one way to succeed in life, that is, to always love your life.
▲ When not going to sea, Li Da likes to paint, and the creatures and landscapes that she has met in the water have met her in another way.
▲ Rida at the International Sunshine Documentary Festival in France.
Fly like a bird
"Underwater, what fascinates you the most?" I asked Rida.
She asked me, "Can you swim?" ”
"Have you ever divened underwater in a pool?" Is it to lie under the pool and look at the water? She continued to ask.
"I didn't look at the water from the bottom up. But my most comfortable state in the water is to borrow the buoyancy of the water to float on the surface of the water, and I feel very relaxed at that moment. I answered her with the experience of an amateur swimmer.
"I might be similar." What fascinated Rida the most was her state in the water.
Li Da is a native of Guangzhou, she has loved to swim since she was a child, and when she looks at the world from under the community pool, she finds that "it is different", and this special perspective and experience have run through her life so far. "Later, when I actually dive, I feel like flying in the water, you get rid of the shackles of gravity, you are completely communicating with the water, you don't feel too much physical touch, wrapped in water, the physical sensation it stimulates is different from all the feelings I have ever felt on land, so this part fascinates me very much." Especially when I put on my flippers and my legs move slightly, I'm like a bird, I can paddle somewhere else in the water, and then move again, and then paddle to another place. You can use the buoyancy of the water to connect with your dreams, sometimes I dream of flying, and then I find that I can really (fly) in the water, and this feeling still fascinates me to this day. Speaking of what it was like to be underwater, Li Da was clearly not finished.
The fate with the water can be detected in her name. My father once told Li Da about the meaning of her name, "Li Da's word 'Li' is split into 'water', like the relationship between people and water, which probably makes me have a kind of closeness and yearning for water." My dad also said the word 'Da', like a boat, and I was very smooth when I met the water. "In Rida's view, this may be an arrangement in the darkness of fate, from childhood to adulthood, her father guided her to bravely and firmly choose and pursue the life she wanted to live." When I was young, I was also able to swim because my father often took me to swim, especially since my father did not raise me as a girl since I was a child, for example, he would take me to climb trees and adventure. Some of the characteristics in me may have been planted by my father in my early years, so that I can get help at some key moments in the future. She said.
Li Da was one of the earliest people in China to be exposed to diving and mermaid performances, but she did not come from a professional background and initially only used it as a hobby. She studied logistics engineering in maritime transport at Dalian Maritime University, and since 2009, she has worked and lived in Shenzhen and worked in international trade. Because of the maritime trade, she is familiar with many overseas ports and canals, and the foreign life that this maritime work exposes to has opened up her cognitive boundaries and realized that it is different from the previous living conditions. Perhaps by then, the seeds of diving and ocean exploration had been quietly planted.
During the 2012 "Eleventh" holiday, Li Da, who was busy with work, finally had time for a trip, and in Phuket, Thailand, she was exposed to freediving for the first time. This new underwater world suddenly attracted her, and the shock and surprise brought by diving made Li Da obsessed with her dreams after returning home, "I found that my previous understanding of this world had been subverted, so I thought every day, I have to go into the water, I have to learn it." Later, she traveled to the Philippines several times, not only obtaining a freediving qualification certificate, but also becoming a freediving instructor training officer of PADI (International Professional Diving Training System) and an international freediving instructor and referee of AIDA (International Freediving Development Association).
Although she is the first female freediving instructor in China, Li Da has not really taught students to dive for a long time. In 2015, after the 31-year-old quit her job to concentrate on being a coach, an accidental car accident broke her leg, which was also a period of time when she could not go into the water as a coach, so that she really groped out what she wanted to do - through visual performance, let more people participate in diving and fall in love with diving. "I started posting some of my underwater videos, including mermaid performances and diving videos, which got a lot of attention on the Internet, and I thought it might be something different from other people working in the same type of work, I prefer visuals, more performances than competitions. I don't care how long I hold my breath or how many meters I dive, I think everyone should enjoy the sport. "Infecting everyone through vision, this is also her original intention of cultivating mermaid performers and travel bloggers later."
▲ You can use the buoyancy of water to connect with your dreams, sometimes I dream of flying, and then I found that I can really (fly) in the water, this feeling is still very fascinating to me. - Rida
Mermaid Exhibition Match
Due to the combination of freediving, fins, synchronized swimming, yoga and dance, mermaid sports derived from the legend have become the new tide of underwater sports. But many people do not know that many of the firsts in the history of the development of the domestic mermaid movement are related to Shenzhen.
On June 18 this year, the Shenzhen Mermaid Athletic Team was officially established, which is the first municipal mermaid athletic team in China. The captains of this competitive team, Lei Yingtao and Jiang Keying, were the men's and women's champions of the first China Mermaid Exhibition Competition, respectively. The winner of the first China Mermaid Exhibition Competition team was the Shenzhen South China Sea Mermaid Group. Li Da was invited to participate in the compilation of the world's first national mermaid competition manual "National Mermaid Competition Manual", written by Shenzhen Nanshan Diving Association, which took 4 months to write. The assistant referee team led by Li Da and two other technical consultants was also born at the "First National Mermaid Referee Training Class" held in Nanshan, which was the first batch of mermaid sports referees in China.
"Mermaid performances have made very good progress in China in recent years, and the number of participants is large, especially the influence of these events we run is too large, so it is suddenly thrown away from many levels in other countries." Now in foreign countries, people look at it and think that it is really incredible that China has done this thing, and feels that foreign countries have not done such a thing in decades of development, and we have achieved catch-up in the past two years. Li Da, who is deeply involved in the global diving circle, has a deep understanding, and it is her moment to mention the development of early mermaid performances in China.
As the first stage director to combine diving with mermaid performance, Li Da posted a video of herself diving in a fishtail on the Internet in 2015, unlike ordinary mermaids, because of the mastery of freediving skills, she was really performing underwater with professional skills, which was natural and agile, so this video made Guangzhou Grandview Aquarium, which was planning to open a huge museum at that time, notice her. Since she has loved creating and directing since she was a child, in her opinion, this is the time for her to find a new opportunity to use her diving skills and creative performances. She went around looking for professional swimmers who had retired at the time to "show their true strength" in the water.
Soon, Li Da was invited to form her own "Mermaid Army". "In those two years, the 'Dada Mermaid Legion' was very popular in the domestic aquarium and diving circle, and the mermaids performed by this team were very popular, especially the children loved to watch." Chang'e Running Moon, superheroes... The idea-driven Rida created different thematic performances for this purpose, and she put all her whimsical ideas into short plays and tried them all underwater. At her peak, three or four venues in China invited them to perform on site, and during that time, she was constantly recruiting new people, training them, and sending them to different venues to perform. At the same time, she also tried to do mermaid classes, hoping that the team members could teach more people to join in the future.
The birth of new things is often accompanied by speculation and follow-up. In those two years, the domestic mermaid performance developed particularly fast, and the competition became fierce, and the industry was chaotic. Some venues do not pursue original performances, only need mermaids to be present to help, the market space is squeezed, unwilling to compromise on content, Li Da chose to give up leading mermaids to continue to move forward. In 2017, she disbanded the team, and later, many became coaches and found new directions.
Therefore, at the award ceremony site of the first China Mermaid Performance Competition last year, seeing that the team members not only did not leave this profession, but also climbed the national podium, Li Da cried a lot, but as a referee, she also admitted: "I was not biased, they accepted my strong training at that time, and there was also my understanding of performance in the process of competition." I can build this thing through my own experience and efforts, let them stand here and receive the award, I think life is worth it. It was a good end for my Mermaid Legion, and there must have been regrets when they disbanded five years ago, but it was a very worthwhile thing when they presented them on another stage that was also related to me."
More than once, Rida was asked how diving had shaped her. In her opinion, diving is not how to shape her, but has become an indispensable part of her life, "free diving has led me into a certain state, because the diving itself covers my own difficulties or fears that I need to overcome, it prompts me to face it cautiously and thus gain the corresponding ability, and then when I face the challenges of different moments, I can choose not to be afraid, which is the great impact of diving on me."
From freediving instructors, to leading teams to promote diving, becoming the organizer of diving exhibitions, to ocean storytellers and ocean travel bloggers, Lida's diving career is interspersed with filming and making documentaries and marine public welfare and environmental protection. Despite many role reversals, she always believes that people have many dimensions, and the ocean and freediving give her a different perspective on the world, so she embraces the changes it brings her, to give back or pursue her own life, is a way to get life satisfaction.
The new China Mermaid Performance Competition is still in preparation. These two days, the life-loving Rida went to the Azores again, and she will encounter new marine life and unknown landscapes.
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