With excellent results on the field and a well-run small family, Xu Xin married and upgraded to a dad-level player during the Tokyo Olympic cycle. It is worth mentioning that his relationship with his wife Yao Yan entered the public eye during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
After the Rio Olympic men's team won the gold, Xu Xin kissed Yao Yan, who was his girlfriend at the time, backstage. Subsequently, Yao Yan posted a group photo on Weibo and disclosed the relationship. "With victory and regret and faith, we will come back in four years, and I will always be with you." In the photo, Yao Yan's neck is hanging on Xu Xin's men's team gold medal.
Speaking of which, ping-pong is still their matchmaking red lady. Born in 1988, Yao Yan, who is one and a half years older than Xu Xin and has a height of 1.75 meters, entered the Shanghai Table Tennis Team in 2002 and is a two-sided anti-glue player with a right hand. In 2005, she was selected for the national second team and officially joined the national first team a year later. As an athlete, Yao Yan won the women's singles championship and the runner-up of the women's team at the 2009 East Asian Games.
Yao Yan was once recognized as a temperament beauty in the national table tennis team, as early as the beginning of the introduction of the dress rules by the national women's table tennis team, she won the applause with a beautiful short skirt at the 2009 East Asian Games. In addition, it is worth mentioning that Yao Yan is also a friend in the circle of "Great Demon King" Zhang Yining.
In November 2016, Yang Zongwei held a concert in Shanghai, and Xu Xin went to the concert as his cross-border friend. The climax of the day was that when Xu Xin was singing "Once is Good", the words "Yao Yan, are you willing to marry me" were typed on the big screen of the scene, and after the singing, he walked to his girlfriend sitting under the stage and knelt down on one knee to confess his marriage proposal. In the month of successful marriage proposal, Xu Xin and Yao Yan received a marriage license.
In Xu Xin's view at the time, entering the marriage was not only a serious treatment of the relationship between the two in the past seven years, but also a thing that helped to prepare for the Olympic Games. "For seven years, whether it was when I was happy or at a low ebb, Yao Yan has always encouraged me, accompanied me, and chosen to propose at the beginning of the new cycle, hoping that after starting a family, I can be more mature and can concentrate on and fully impact the Tokyo Olympic Games."
In September 2019, the small family welcomed a new member, their son , Little Snake. This nickname fully echoes Xu Xin's nickname "Big Python".
However, in the busy and compact Olympic preparation cycle, Xu Xin's time to accompany his family is extremely limited, and even when his son was born, he participated in the Asian Championships in Indonesia. Fortunately, Yao Yan especially understands the difficulties of athletes, so despite the hardships, she still almost shoulders the burden of the small family.