People on earth must know Yao Ming, he is so famous that as early as 2005, the NBA made an exception to shoot a documentary for him.
In this documentary, called "Yao Next Year", there is a small clip in which an American said in an interview: "In order to welcome Yao's arrival, there are kung fu and lion dances everywhere and ......"
As soon as the words fell, the picture immediately shifted to a girl who was riding a unicycle and performing a bowl.
● Image source: Documentary "Yao Next Year"
Time flies, Yao Ming has retired this morning, and the little girl in the film has also become an "aunt".
Unlike Yao Ming, she is still "playing" for the NBA.
She has been active in the arena for more than 30 years, and this number is not only far ahead of Yao Ming, but even surpasses any professional athlete.
As the saying goes, "the iron-beaten battalion is a flowing soldier", but in the NBA, it seems that the story of the iron-beaten aunt and the flowing player is being staged.
In the NBA, she represents such a category of people: people who compete with brewers and urinals.
The halftime period of a game is the so-called "window period", when the players need to rest, the spectators need to go out for convenience, or just to relax and drink. And in order to make up for those few minutes, the organizers will find all kinds of actors and let them perform on an impromptu basis.
● NBA's halftime show
In the words of one of the halftime performers' agents, the organizers have only one requirement for this type of performance, "the show must be the freshest and most exciting", and if the audience is dead at the end of the show, the organizers will tell the performers bluntly, "Get your outfit and go back to your circus."
The NBA has 15 minutes of halftime, and for an entertainer, the time that is really allowed to play freely is only five or six minutes. These five or six minutes are still the least attentive moments for the audience, in other words, the performers must have considerable means to draw the audience's attention back to the venue in a few tens of seconds.
There is a saying among the artists of the old society: "Pick the cake on the flat ground, and take the thief on the other side." "From today's NBA organizers' requests, we may be able to feel the difficulty of implementing these eight words.
But "Auntie" Niu Rong - her real identity is an acrobatic performer during the intermission, with her superb performance, nearly 30 years as a day, bringing infinite novelty and excitement to the audience.
● In 2018, Niu Rong performed at an NBA game
In order to ensure that the performance is brilliant enough, other artists often go to great lengths, for example, dressing up with bells and whistles; Another example is the animal that leads a group of acrobatic troupes...... But Niu Rong only has two suitcases, and those boxes are both her "office" and "prop room".
Niu Rong relies on the traditional Chinese acrobatic technique of "top bowl", which requires relatively simple props, and her suitcase is surprisingly rudimentary. When I opened the box, I saw that it was just a makeup bag, a set of performance clothes, a wheelbarrow, and a stack of bowls.
Behind the humble props, there is her incomparably skilled skills as a support.
When a ball game is close to halftime, the headlights of the stadium gradually go out, and the players leave the field, and with the sound of brushing, the spotlight will be refixed on Niu Rong's body. Wearing high heels, she pedaled a 7-foot (2.1-meter) unicycle and slowly entered the center of the field with her arms outstretched.
The mascot of the stadium tosses a stack of bowls to Niu Rong, who swings them from the toes, ankles, and calves to the calves, and some bowls are even stacked on top of each other. At last, she kicked so lightly that all the bowls would fall neatly on top of her head as if they were obedient.
is such a "simple" hand that makes European and American audiences crazy fascinated by her.
In order to express their love for her, Americans even made the image of Niu Rong into the most popular basketball game "NBA2K24".
In addition, the professionals of the sports channel are also talking about officially inducting her, a person who has little compatibility with basketball, into the "Basketball Hall of Fame".
● 篮球游戏《NBA2k24》
In the early 70s of the last century, Niu Rong was born in an acrobatic family in Taiyuan, Shanxi.
In the past, in order to support the family, her father also walked the streets and alleys to perform. It was difficult and hard to perform, but in the course of a performance, my father met his lover. As a result, no matter how hard things are, they become sweet and happy.
Niu Rong's mother is also an acrobat, even more "rooted" than her husband, she studied under Niu Rong's grandmother and great-grandmother, that is to say, by the time Niu Rong's generation, their family is already the fourth generation of acrobatic families.
When she was very young, her mother once solemnly asked her daughter what she wanted to do in the future. Niu Rong thought for a moment and replied, "Dancer." "How about being an acrobat?" The mother asked her in an unquestioning tone.
From the age of 7, Niu Rong officially received training from her father. She started learning somersaults and handstands, but because it didn't work well, she switched to high-altitude bowl kicking.
It may have been the fate of the so-called her, and she has now taken the acrobatic to the next level, even holding the world record for the most unicycle top bowls.
After studying with her father for two years, Niu Rong was sent to a boarding school that specialized in acrobatic arts. There, she received formal and systematic training. She trained 6 days a week, 7 hours a day, and she spent another 6 years like this.
After graduating from school, 16-year-old Niu Rong joined the famous Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe. Since then, she has toured the world with an acrobatic troupe, taking her toe to Asia, Europe and Africa.
● Acrobatic top bowl
In the 90s of the last century, there was a "fever for going abroad" across the country, and by various coincidences, in 1990, Niu Rong accepted an invitation from abroad and stayed in the United States.
Being in a foreign country, she felt more apprehensive than excited: Niu Rong knew almost no one, could only speak a few simple words of English, and she was capable of nothing but acrobatics. The only advantage can also be said to be a disadvantage, because as the old saying goes: "things are expensive to leave home, people are cheap to leave home", she really dare not guarantee that "acrobatics", an art that is popular in China, has room to play in a strange country.
For her, life ahead is like an uncertain adventure.
Fortunately, Niu Rong was naturally clever, and she quickly came up with an idea. She took the initiative to contact the church near her home and said that she was very willing to perform for her neighbors. Because she had never seen it before, Niu Rong's performance made them stunned throughout the whole process, and the reputation of the masses gave her the opportunity to perform in nearby schools and hospitals.
Later, a talent scout discovered her, and Niu Rong was able to perform at Disneyland in Orlando for 18 months. She finally got a "stable" job.
Her performances continued to receive applause, and the audience came up to hug her, along with the names of the theater managers and scouts. Niu Rong was delighted to find that soon after, the business card was almost as tall as the bowl above her head.
No amount of job opportunities is too many. At the suggestion of a friend, she paid someone to edit the clips of her performance into a video, and then sent it to the circuses in the form of tapes.
The evil thing is that after the resume was submitted, Niu Rong almost didn't receive any response.
The time came to the day before Thanksgiving Day in 1993. That day, she received a phone call, and the person on the other end of the phone told Niu Rong that she was the game agent of the Los Angeles Clippers, and that a new bicycle acrobat he signed could not go to the scene as scheduled because of a flight delay (another version is because of an injury), but if Niu Rong could catch the next plane immediately, she might be able to fill the gap.
The other party was asking for her advice, but Niu Rong barely thought about it, and a few hours later, she flew to Los Angeles.
The first time she went to an NBA arena to participate in a show, she was extremely anxious, and in fact, even the organizers didn't trust her very much. Before going on the court, the Clippers made repeated checks with Niu Rong to make sure that her unicycle would not damage the floor of the arena — it is said that each piece of floor used in NBA games is numbered, and the cost of a removable floor can easily start at more than 2,000 yuan. The stadium really doesn't want to lose the equipment in the stadium for no reason because of a newcomer.
Niu Rong is very sure that her props will not damage the floor, such as the bowl she used for her performance, which was designed by Niu Rong's father himself, and was actually made of plastic (and later changed to metal). The reason why the father designed it this way is not that he expected his daughter to appear on the NBA stage, because they don't have much money.
Her NBA debut can be described as perfect.
In 5 minutes, she topped a total of 4 bowls, each time the bowl was successful, the audience erupted in applause, with the increase in the difficulty of the performance, the applause became more and more enthusiastic, when the top of the 4th bowl, the audience cheered almost overturned the roof of the venue.
It was also from that moment that Niu Rong officially decided to become a halftime show actress.
According to the "rules of the rivers and lakes", she should give herself a well-known stage name, and Niu Rong imagined nicknames such as "Top Bowl Girl", but she had to give up because it was not loud enough.
Later, the audience who liked her gave her a name called "Red Panda": red, which represents luck and new life; The panda is a national treasure of China and represents where the cow paste comes from. The stage name is both concise and cool enough, and Niu Rong ends up being as good as it gets.
Because of its popularity, over time, Niu Rong became a "person who charges by the minute".
At her peak, she earned as much as $5,000 per 5 minutes of performance, equivalent to more than 30,000 yuan.
In addition to the monetary rewards, many tournament organizers have also begun to respect her in a down-to-earth manner. The baseball team in Durham, USA, has also invited Niu Rong to perform, and for her safety, the organizers did not hesitate to lay a section of glued flooring on the expensive lawn in the stadium; The NBA treated her even better, and one year, Niu Rong's unicycle was unfortunately stolen, and the Warriors spent more than $20,000 to rebuild one for her.
● In 2018, the Warriors paid for Niu Rong to replace the unicycle
Niu Rong deserves this respect, and she has also paid too much for this art.
Among other things, she spends more than 200 days a year on the road alone. Because of running back and forth like this, love has become a luxury for Niu Rong. She was once married, but because of the lack of gatherings and separation, she finally had to separate from her husband.
During that time, Niu Rong often cried, sometimes even crying until she couldn't speak.
In addition to the pressure from the family, Niu Rong can also feel the oppression from the audience. Yes, even if everyone loves "Red Panda", there are still viewers who are "hostile" to her. The audience is not necessarily aimed at Niu Rong, when the team they support performs badly, the fans can't help but take the midfielder at it.
Once, Niu Rong planned to participate in the performance at the home court of the "Wizards", and that day's game was supposed to be a close match, but by halftime, the "Wizards" were 10 points behind the opponent.
Just as Niu Rong was on the stage, an angry fan happened to throw his T-shirt at the big lights in the stadium, and other fans did the same, so countless T-shirts flew to the lights, "creating temporary darkness like a solar eclipse".
Niu Rong couldn't even stand on her feet for a while, so she had to jump down and hand the unicycle to her companion, when a drunk fan in the audience shouted at them with a mouth full of alcohol: "Can you ride a unicycle?!" ”
In a game, the goal of the players is often clear: just dunk and score without stopping, but the midcourt actor has a much more onerous task, not only to give the audience a great performance, but also to appease their emotions.
Although the role positioning is different, it can't stop the NBA from evaluating her by the standards of players. To borrow a head coach's assessment of Niu Rong: "She is the most dominant performer in the NBA, and her top bowl skills are even better than Curry's three-point shot (Curry is the record holder of the "NBA three-point list"). ”
As a tenacious acrobat, Niu Rong can indeed overcome many difficulties, but she is not invincible forever. The affection of her parents is her weakness.
As a child, her father picked up his daughter on a wheelbarrow and taught her acrobatics by hand. Niu Rong will always remember this scene, she once recalled that because of her unskill, she often fell out of the car, but every time, her father, who was standing below, always caught her steadily.
Even when she grew up and went to a foreign country to struggle, her father still seemed to be by her side, and almost every prop she made was made by her father. She missed her father so much that in the early 2000s, when Niu Rong had just gained a foothold in the United States, she took her parents to her side for the first time.
Finally, the father can continue to guide his daughter's performances, and sometimes he himself will go on the stage to throw bowls for her. But even if her father doesn't play, even if she just sits in the audience, Niu Rong will feel at ease, and her father is like her totem.
Time came to 2013, this year, 42-year-old Niu Rong was "out of the circle", she signed up for that year's "America's Got Talent", passed all the way, and successfully reached the quarterfinals. But what is puzzling is that just when the judges were looking forward to her next performance, Niu Rong withdrew from the competition without warning.
● Niu Rong participated in the eighth season of "America's Got Talent"
It turned out that almost at the same time, her father was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, and as the only person in the family who could speak English, Niu Rong had to give up the game and take care of her father wholeheartedly. As the saying goes, "illness comes like a mountain", the daughter's careful care did not save the father's life, and a year later, the father unfortunately passed away.
The death of her father caused a devastating blow to Niu Rong, and she seemed to have lost the ability to "focus" all of a sudden. Once, she was standing on a wheelbarrow to practice acrobatics, and for some reason, one by one, the bowls fell to the ground with a clatter, the bowls jammed the wheels, and then, Niu Rong fell to the ground and broke her wrist. - It was also her first serious injury as an acrobat.
Immediately after, she suffered from severe depression. Niu Rong locked herself in the hut, licked her inner wounds alone, did not go out for months, and did not speak all day.
Just when it was rumored that Niu Rong was old and could no longer pedal a wheelbarrow, after 3 years of repair, she came back in high spirits.
Niu Rong said to fans who were looking forward to her: "The audience, passion, and challenges are all part of my life, and although I lost my father, I still have a life." ”
Now, almost a decade has passed since her return as king, and to this day, she is still active in the center of the stage.
At the cultural level, Niu Rong has consistently brought our things to the world, so that more people are willing to understand China; On the spiritual level, she always inspires us, telling us that everything is possible with hard work, struggle, and perseverance.
When the "Little Panda" exclusive BGM "Big Sedan Chair" sounds, when she rides into the stadium in a national costume, the crowd will look at her, which is a legend in itself, and the legend continues. Text/Shinichi