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Zhou Yuquan prose
【周玉泉】滑冰HUA BING
In the Beijing Zizhuyuan Park, which is frequented, the lotus pond where thousands of lotus flowers bloomed in the east in the past has now become a snow-capped snow resort and a people's snow paradise, which is especially loved by children; the huge lake in the west has become a crystal clear ice rink, attracting many ice skating enthusiasts, speed skating, running to the swallow and sweeping the water, and returning to the horse; figure skating, dancing, and flying around.
The green bamboos by the lake stand in the cold wind, the dry branches of the weeping willows at the bridgehead swing with the wind, and the Cixi waterway next to the lake is not frozen and is still flowing. On the east side of the lake, the National Library's Ancient Books Hall stands tall and tall.
Looking at this warm scene, my mind gradually returned to 60-70 years ago, to the cold winter in my hometown when I was a child.
Skate. When I was about seven ~ eight years old, I lived at my uncle's house, which coincided with the National Ice Games held in Jilin City.
The speed skating field is the most popular, crowded with people, and we children got in front of the adults after a while, and saw the players skating so beautifully, so fast, enviable, amazing. From time to time, the radio was heard about who won the first place and who broke the record...... This left a deep imprint and fond memory of skating in my young mind.
Many of the children we went with were wearing skateboards, and I was so envious that I went home and told my uncle. My uncle was ingenious and a capable all-rounder, so he found a way to make it for me. A thick board of wood was sawn into the shape of a sole, a number of small holes were made around it with iron nails and iron rings for threading ropes (similar to shoelaces), two thick steel bars were inlaid into the sole, and the outside was unusually smooth, and a skateboard, my first "skate", was successfully completed.
I firmly attached my cotton shoes to the skateboard with a rope, and with one pedal, the weight of my body shifted to the side of the skateboard and I started to slide, and I could slide a long distance with a hard pedal. The winter in the north is icy and frozen, and there are places where I can skateboard everywhere, and I basically skateboard every day. The friends chased each other and wore similar skateboards. Because the weather was too cold, it was more than 20 degrees below zero, his hair and eyebrows were covered with frost, and his little face was red from the cold.
My house is close to the Songhua River, and there is a gentle slope leading to the river. This is the best place for us to play the game, to see who can skate far, slide steadily, wear it on a snowy day to have a snowball fight, roll a snowball, play with a climbing plow, smoke an ice monkey, play on the frozen ice by the river, especially the weather with rime, a piece of white, the scenery is beautiful, the cold has long been replaced by enthusiasm and happiness. This was my childhood, my formative years. How much fun and fun a skateboard brings!
After a few years, as I grew older and broadened my horizons, the first pair of "skates" made by my uncle was eliminated and replaced by simple skates bought by my father. This kind of skate blade has no leather shoes on the knife, only two slightly larger steel plates on the forefoot and back heel, and many iron rings are inlaid on the steel plates to bind the cotton shoes that are usually worn (cotton indigo, or liberation shoe style cotton indigo shoes). After a few years, I graduated to Beijing, it should be the seventies, I had a salary, and I went to Wangfujing Sports Store to buy a pair of "Black Dragon" brand standard speed skating blades, which was very fashionable at that time, and many professionals used this kind of skate. Later, at the end of the last century, the blade of the "Black Dragon" was bent and skated in a straight line, so I bought a pair of "Feihang" skates, which looked beautiful and had great quality, and have been used until now.
More than half a century has passed, and my skate blades have changed to many pairs, reflecting the changes of the times from one side, reflecting the gradual prosperity of people's lives, the peace and security of the country, food and clothing, and health, and exercise is the norm.
My sister took me to learn how to skate. My sister is the only woman in my family, more than 11 years older than me. My sister stayed in the school during the winter vacation of the year before graduating from the Jilin Provincial Light Industry School (about 1958, when I was nine years old), and stayed in the school to work as a volunteer (work-study). She took me to their school to learn to skate, the ice rink is very large, there are very few people, the students are on vacation, the skates borrowed by the school staff can not be returned on the same day, which gave us great convenience, so I lived in my sister's school for more than ten days, and went to the ice rink three times a day in the morning, afternoon and evening to learn to skate, and since then I have laid the foundation for skating.
The nine-year-old seemed to have endless enthusiasm, energy and drive, and did not know that he was tired, and blood blisters broke on his feet, which burst again, contaminating his socks and skates. My sister saw me at night, washed my socks and skates, and stipulated that I would not be allowed to go on the ice tomorrow, and the next day my sister went to work, and I sneaked into the ice rink again.
The skates are big and small, and my sister assisted the caretaker in rummaging through the skate library and finding a pair of smaller ones, but they are still large. My sister stuffed the extra space with cotton wool and rags, and made the shape of her feet, which was much more comfortable, and the problem of foot blisters was basically solved. One day on the ice rink to learn to step up, step is to change the direction of movement, the center of gravity of the human body is biased to one side (left), to achieve the purpose of turning-turning. This is a highly technical move. I accidentally scratched my cotton pants with a skate blade, revealing white cotton. My sister didn't complain about me when she saw it, but helped me take off my cotton pants, afraid that I would be cold and surrounded me with a quilt, and then mended my cotton pants with stitches and threads, and when I saw my sister's back under the lamp, my eyes moistened .......
If you exercise a lot, you will eat a lot, and in that era, there was a lack of material and food shortage, and it seemed that everything had to be ticketed. My arrival disrupted my sister's diet. My sister gave me all the delicious and nutritious food, and she ate by herself. It was a scene I will never forget.
The school's ice rink is mostly attended by young students, among whom there are many masters who skate very well. They were very enthusiastic when they saw me as a child learning Xi, this one taught me a move, that taught me an essential, so I had no shortage of coaches on the ice rink, and my sister also entrusted her classmates to help me.
Time flies so fast, ten days have passed in a blink of an eye, my sister's volunteer is coming to an end, my skating Xi is coming to an end, and we are going home for the New Year. These days I never put on my skates and couldn't stand up while sitting on the ice, never moved to one step at a time, from sliding slowly to being able to step and turn...... The progress is evident and the results are significant.
I started a new sport under my sister's leadership, and it is something I really enjoy and have benefited greatly from for more than 60 years. My sister took me to the photo studio to commemorate this event, you must know that photography was very luxurious at that time, the group photo of my sister and brother with a skating cap has always been treasured in the album, and the affection of compatriots has always been treasured in my heart!
Ice rink at the university. In the early 70s of the last century, several university campuses in Changchun were splashed with ice rinks in winter. The ice rink of the Faculty of Geology is located on the square of the vast Geological Palace. This square is located in the center of the city, can accommodate more than one million people, surrounded by big trees, beautiful environment, open space, tall and magnificent geological palace, red pillars and green tiles, antique, with scattered around the eight major ministries of the puppet Manchukuo building complex, it seems ancient and mysterious.
The ice rink is generally open at the beginning of December of each year. Our students have weekly PE classes, with ice as the main part of the curriculum, and they also visit the rink in their spare time. On the ice for the first time, students from all over the world performed in a variety of ways. Most of the students in the south have never been to the ice rink, and some may not have seen the ice rink before. There are also many students in the north who have never been on the ice rink. The winter weather in Changchun is cold, the ice surface is frozen hard, the friction coefficient is very small, and the mirror surface is as smooth as a mirror, and it is difficult to walk normally on it, let alone wear a thin steel knife to slide. The difficulty and fear can be imagined.
In the early days of the ice rink, the enthusiasm of the students was very high, and almost the whole class was on the ice rink, but if you look closely, there are more people sitting on the ice, lying on the ice and falling on the ice than standing, in other words, there are more people who can't skate at all than people who can skate slightly. Some students were ridiculed by their classmates for wetting their pants because they had been sitting on the ice for a long time. There is a rush on the ice rink, and wrestling is commonplace, almost one step at a time, and it is not uncommon to fall ten or eight in a class. One person fell, and the neighbors fell down with .......
The slightly sliding ones gradually outward, and the highly skilled ones are in the outermost circle, and the gliding distance is the longest, so as to form a relatively complete space, which will not interfere with each other in principle.
Suddenly, in the outermost circle, several people in special clothes slipped in. We are all two cotton jackets and two cotton pants, what do we usually wear, what do we wear to the ice rink. The men were brightly dressed and brightly colored, with standard bodybuilding skating suits, bodybuilding skating pants, skating caps, skating gloves, and a stark contrast to our outfits. Their skates are also special, very nice and upscale, not borrowed from the school, but seem to have been brought by themselves. This group of people has excellent ice skills, beautiful movements, orderly pedaling, and extraordinary skills. I saw them:
The body is as light as a swallow and as fast as flying,
The upper body leans forward and swings the big arm,
Bend the lower limbs and push hard,
One by one.
If you look closely, it is Da Pan of our class who takes the lead, and there are Daguan and so on in the back. They were the best skating in our class and in the whole school. They seem to have undergone formal rigorous training and years of accumulation on the ice. Their arrival caused a commotion among the people who were already struggling on the ice, and their eyes turned to them in unison.
Think about how much joy and lifelong athletic skills the ice rink in college brought us. More than half a century has passed, and it seems like yesterday in retrospect.
Ice and snow sports
In addition to short track speed skating, I have also been to ski resorts in the suburbs several times since I came to Beijing. Since I have a basic knowledge of skating, the movements such as slalom, braking, and avoiding obstacles in skiing are basically similar to the principles of skating, and the key to skating is also to master the balance of the body and control the balance of the body.
More than 60 years have passed since my sister brought me to the ice rink, and my physical fitness and self-play have basically not stopped, intermittently, needless to say in the School of Geology. In the first few years after graduation and assignment to Beijing, I was unfamiliar with the place, and the pressure of study and Xi work was very high, and I basically did not go to the ice rink. Since moving my family to Hokkeji Temple (2000), my home is very close to Shichikuin Park. The ice rink at Zizhuyuan Park opens every winter, which reinspires my interest in ice skating. In the past 20 years, I have skated all over the ice rinks in Beijing, Zizhuyuan, Shichahai, Summer Palace, Taoranting, Houhai, University of Geosciences and other ice rinks have left traces of my skate.
However, my technical progress has been very small, and some of them are still regressing. Either way, it's a sport that I love and enjoy, and I want to keep it going.
In 2022, the 24th Winter Olympics held in Beijing brought new vitality and development to ice sports on the mainland, and promoted this physical fitness sport to enter an epoch-making new stage. As a young man, we have also been infected and inspired, and we have all participated in it. I have put on skates many times, put on ice hats and gloves, and are ready to look for and chase the footprints of the year on the ice rink, but age mercilessly tied my legs and feet, I can only recall the good old days countless times, fortunately the memory is still good, so I use the pen to describe the past skates, ice rinks, skating, skiing related people and things, in order to understand my yearning for the ice rink and skating, and the nostalgia and memories of youth.
Author's biography: Zhou Yuquan
Beijing, geologist, hobbies: writing, reading, traveling, sports, photography, etc.
Manuscript Appointment: Happy Reviewer / Typesetting: Wang Shan
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