Shanghai Sports Museum and Shanghai Audio-visual Archive
Launched the Shanghai Sports People Publicity Project
The second season of "The Field of Time" is here
Continuation of the oral format of the first season
August 5-11
During the "National Fitness Day· Sports Awareness Week".
Introducing one person to you every day
Dedicated his life to the cause of sports
Sports workers
Here's what they have to say
Understanding the "Past and Present" of Shanghai Sports
The third guest was the first batch of rowers in New China
Chen Shilin
1. I started boating in college
I was admitted to Shanghai Fisheries College (now Shanghai Ocean University), and in my sophomore year, the rowing training class in the city recruited students from various universities, including Tongji, Fudan, the First Medical College, and the Fisheries College. My classmates and I wanted to see and study, but when we got there, it seemed that we had never seen this kind of boat before, it was pointed and long, and I was very interested in it, so I signed up. At that time, I trained three times a week, at the pier under the Waibaidu Bridge. I rode my bike over, trained and rode back to school for dinner. At that time, there was no college team, so everyone trained together and formed a training team.
In 1957, the National Seven Cities Championship was held in Wuhan, and I participated in the eight-person boat event and won the championship. I was excited because I had never won a championship before. After winning the championship, the school also attaches great importance to it. In 1958 I was selected to participate in the national championships that year. After the championship, the teams participating in the first National Games began to be organized. In 1958, I started practicing double sculls with a coxed boat and teamed up with Wu Huaiyi, a student at Shanghai Jiaotong University. The two of us were about the same height and physical fitness, so we organized the two of us to partner together. Unexpectedly, in the National Games the following year, we won the championship. This time, we have a further understanding of rowing training. When the rowing club was founded, I didn't expect to be a lifelong rowing player, but it was too early to realize that it was after I participated in the competition that I gradually deepened my understanding of rowing, and after I won the championship in the first National Games, I basically knew that I wanted to do this work.
In 1958, Chen Shilin won the men's double sculls helmsman championship at the Seven Cities Rowing Championships
2. My dual identity as an athlete and coach
In the first National Games, our main goal was to win all the gold medals and win glory for Shanghai. At that time, the leaders of the sports committee were very concerned about us, and the coaches were Cheng Jundi and me, both of us were athletes, he rowed a single boat, and Wu Huaiyi and I rowed a double boat, and we won the championship in both events in the 1959 National Games. When preparing for the National Games, we did not choose the Suzhou Creek for training, but chose the section of the Huangpu River from the port to the water near the Minhang Power Plant. We train together in two boats, one round trip a day, and it takes two and a half hours to train at a time.
When I participated in the National Games for the first time, I lost to the Heilongjiang team for one second after the preliminaries and semi-finals. In the finals, as soon as we started, our team rushed to the front, and several teams such as Jiangsu, Shandong, Bayi, and Fujian were behind us and wanted to catch up with us. When I paddled to the end of the 300 meters, I looked up and was startled, the Heilongjiang team was ahead of us. They are in the first way, and we are in the fifth way. I just looked at the eyes, not them. I told Wu Huaiyi, "Let's sprint ahead of schedule." After we started the sprint, they didn't find out at first. By the time they start rushing again, we'll be there. They were actually physically better than us and more capable than us, but we won by three seconds with strategy. After the first National Games in 1959, my relationship was transferred to the Shanghai Sports Team.
In 1959, Chen Shilin (first from left), Liao Chongxian and Wu Huaiyi won the men's double sculls coxswain championship at the first National Games
3. I translated books on water sports
In 1959, I got a Russian version of the book "Boat Racing" and thought it was very good and valuable. The book uses advanced mathematical calculus to analyze the basic movements of paddling mechanics, and the content is very profound, rich and practical, and I was very inspired after reading it. So my first translation started with this rowing book. With regard to translation, I would like to conclude that there are three basic conditions that are required. First, you must have knowledge of the Russian language; second, to understand the Chinese language; Third, have professional knowledge. I'm rowing a rower myself, so I'll say I'll translate this book.
After translating about 200,000 words of "The Row", I would like to translate another "Kayak". I can't row a kayak myself, what should I do? I'll learn it myself. After paddling by myself, I felt that it was not enough, so I held a training class to train students. At that time, one of the students I trained was Wen Shunxing, a college student from the School of Foreign Trade, and the other was a student from Shanghai Normal University, named Zhu Wenying. After reading books by yourself, you will teach and research, and gradually go deeper. The kayak started with me step by step, from translation, self-study, to training classes, and then translation and so on. This book is mainly used as a textbook.
Chen Shilin training after being selected for the Shanghai rowing team
Fourth, the first kayak drawings made in China were drawn
Earlier, the National Sports Commission organized a national team based on the team from Shanghai to participate in the 12th World Canoe Championships, which was held in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia at that time. When our athletes got there, they saw that the boat we were using had been hung on the wall as a specimen. There were only 4 people in our team, and all of them signed up. The main purpose of participating is not to win the championship, but to use their ship as a template. During the day I measure it with a ruler, and at night I plot it based on the data. Before I transferred to the sports team, I was an assistant professor in the mechanical teaching and research group of the Fisheries College, so I am familiar with this aspect. Single, double, quadruple kayaks, a full set of drawings were obtained. When he came back, he brought it to the No. 3 factory in Shangti and built the first four-person kayak, which should be the first kayak made by China itself.
Profile of Shanghai Sports People
Chen Shilin, male, born in 1935, was one of the first rowers after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and served as the coach of the Shanghai rowing team and the deputy director of the Shanghai Water Sports Stadium. Graduated from the 1959 Marine Fishing Department of Shanghai Ocean University, he has won the men's eight-person rowing championship in the 1957 Seven Cities Rowing Championships, the men's double sculls with helmsman championship in the 1958 Seven Cities Rowing Championships, and the men's double sculls with helmsman championship in the first national games in 1959. Later, he served as the head coach of the Shanghai rowing team and the national men's rowing team.
"The Arena of Time"
Oral History of Shanghai Sports
Project Introduction
Shanghai, the birthplace of modern sports in China. Since the opening of the port, Shanghai sports have undergone earth-shaking changes. From the spread of modern sports only among overseas Chinese in concessions to the popularization of national fitness, from not allowing Chinese to participate in the world arena to win gold and silver...... This is inseparable from the contributions of generations of Shanghai sports people, who continue to forge ahead and explore on the road to building a world-famous sports city, and they are the experience and witnesses of Shanghai's sports development history. Starting from the end of 2021, the Shanghai Sports Museum and the Shanghai Audio-visual Archive have cooperated to conduct oral interviews with famous Shanghai sports athletes, sports managers, sports scholars and social participants with "oral history" as the starting point, reviewing the development of Shanghai's sports industry since the founding of the People's Republic of China.