Reporter/Guo Huimin Intern Reporter/Liu Yixia
Editor/Liu Mi
Cen Xiaolin is practicing backflips
Because it is close to Baiyun Airport, a plane passes by every few minutes over the Qixing Primary School in Huadu District, Guangzhou. Recently, standing on the playground, you can see the porthole of the airplane. Almost everyone who goes to school here has a dream of flying.
The source of students at Seven Star Primary School is mainly composed of migrant children and left-behind children, and in 2013, physical education teacher Lai Xuanzhi formed a jump rope team here. What everyone did not expect was that in the past few years, this team has won the championship in domestic and foreign competitions in a "dark horse" posture.
Jumping rope helped the children realize their dreams of flying, and team member Cen Xiaolin still remembers that when he first went out to fly to compete, he helped his classmates who did not know the security rules, and drank four bottles of water and a can of eight treasure porridge.
Jumping rope also brings realistic opportunities, and in 2019, two demonstration high schools in Huadu District included jump rope in their independent enrollment programs. The children of these migrant workers, as long as they pass the single jump rope assessment, have the opportunity to enter the best local high school with the lowest admission score line.
In July this year, at the Skipping Rope World Cup in Norway, Cen Xiaolin broke the world record he set last year with a score of 1141 times in 3 minutes. He also wanted to continue to shake the jump rope in his hand desperately, shaking out a broader world.
Seven Star Elementary School
Exile school
On the morning of the end of August, Seven Star Elementary School was empty, and only in the training ground on the first floor of the teaching building, there was a burst of children's laughter. The jump rope team's training was not interrupted by the summer vacation, several girls fiddled with the jump rope in one hand, holding half of the millet porridge in the other hand, and several boys were also holding jump rope, and they were excitedly discussing last night's game match.
At 8:30, the training officially began, first the regular warm-up action plus backflip practice, several groups down, even cen Xiaolin, the "elder" who joined the team in the second grade, also had beads of sweat on his forehead.
Cen Xiaolin is 18 years old this year, because after arriving in Guangzhou, he started to read again from the lower grades, and now he is just in the third year of junior high school. Like Cen Xiaolin, who continues to participate in jump rope competitions in middle school, summer training is still carried out at his alma mater, Qixing Elementary School. In July this year, at the Skipping Rope World Cup in Norway, Cen Xiaolin just broke the world record he set last year with a score of 1141 times in 3 minutes. The entire Flower Jump Rope Team won a total of 37 individual championships.
The same backflip action, for the 15-year-old girl Liu Yichun is more difficult, slightly fat she hesitated to pace small steps, missed the position that should have been done. The classmates in front of her looked back at her, and Liu Yichun's face turned red and she smiled embarrassedly.
This training continues until 4:30 p.m., with a two- to three-hour break in between. Even with two air conditioners,
Four ceiling fans cooled down the training ground together, and the children's sweatshirts were quickly soaked with sweat.
"Alai, pour me a cup of Coke", between training, the children ran to the coach Lai Xuanzhi, for this 30-year-old physical education teacher, the children have no restraints, used to call his nickname or even a petite, "We want to fly out to play." ”
In 2010, Lai Xuanzhi, who graduated from the Physical Education College, came to Qixing Primary School as a physical education teacher. At that time, there were less than 150 teachers and students in the school, and 80% of the children of left-behind children and migrant workers accounted for 80%, and Lai Xuanzhi was the only university student teacher here.
Due to the backwardness of facilities and concepts, the children were helpless in physical education class, and Lai Xuanzhi found the principal and said: "Give me five years, I will definitely do a good job in sports!" ”
Before the establishment of the jump rope team, Lai Xuanzhi tried to establish a basketball team and a football team, but due to lack of funds, equipment and venues, they all failed. In 2013, when Guangzhou's Huadu District promoted skipping rope in primary and secondary schools, Lai Xuanzhi decided to try again and selected more than 50 people from the school to form a jump rope team.
At the beginning of its establishment, Lai Xuanzhi had no standards for selecting team members, and almost all students who were willing to join would be accepted, "after all, there are only more than 100 students in the school, and there is not much room for choice", Cen Xiaolin is one of the few team members who have been selected because of their good physical fitness.
In a physical education class, Lai Xuanzhi gave each of the boys in the class a jump rope, without explaining the purpose, but just observing from the sidelines. At first, the students would pick up the jump rope and jump a few times, but as soon as the freshness passed, they threw down the jump rope and walked away. Five minutes later, only Cen Xiaolin was still there and insisted on jumping.
Lai Xuanzhi wants to get sports up, but the children's thoughts on joining the team are different.
Cen Xiaolin came to Guangzhou from his hometown in Guizhou, his parents have been busy working in the flower shed, and skipping rope has become Cen Xiaolin's only extracurricular activity. At one point, he didn't know what he was practicing, especially at the beginning, there was a lot of running, push-ups and physical training, and every day when he came home, Cen Xiaolin felt pain. "But if you quit, all you have to do is study."
Liu Yichun's hometown is also in Guizhou, and while training, she has to help her mother work as a flower arranger. At the end of the weekend morning training, most of the students went home for dinner, she called her mother to ask where to work, and then looked around to make sure That Lai Was not nearby, and then ran to the commissary opposite the school. "Alai was worried about our safety and wouldn't let me ride an electric car, so I hid it here."
The greenhouse where parents work
Honors and misunderstandings
At the beginning of the establishment of the team, Lai Xuanzhi did not know anything about skipping rope, and in the three basic jump rope tests organized by Huadu District, he became the only physical education teacher in the district who did not pass. The teacher at the school teased him: "If you can learn to jump rope, pigs can go up trees." ”
Lai Xuanzhi was not reconciled, and every day after work, he watched videos and looked for materials in the dormitory to study jump rope competitions at home and abroad. He found that he jumped faster with his waist bowed than straight, and jumped faster with his legs raised than with his legs raised, and on this basis, Lai Xuanzhi improved the traditional jump rope method into a semi-squat jumping method.
When the jump rope team was established, it coincided with the school's construction of a new teaching building, and there was a lack of funds to buy equipment for the jump rope team. Lai Xuanzhi found that the steel wire is soft and tough, it is the excellent jump rope material, he collected a bunch of brake lines and discarded wires to make a jump rope, did not expect to be better than the traditional jump rope effect.
Lai Xuanzhi led the team to practice twice a day, from 6:30 to 7:30 in the morning and from 4:30 to 5:30 in the afternoon, and only rested for five days a year. In addition to the culture class, children set aside two hours every day to practice jump rope, and on weekends, they need to practice all day. The sweat dripped again and again on the rubber floor of the training room, and finally formed a dark imprint circle after lap.
Lai Xuanzhi is not worried that the children will not be able to bear the hardships, and his greater troubles come from the doubts of the parents
Among the students of Seven Star Primary School, the children of migrant workers and local left-behind children are the largest, reaching 80% in 2010, as is the composition of the jump rope team. Most of the migrant workers have no more requirements for their children's education, and only hope to study well and find a good job in the future.
A year after the training, many parents went to the school to complain: "Does your school only carry out skipping rope, but also let the children not learn?!" ”
Cen Xiaolin's parents are also one of the opponents, they watch their son return to the house listless after training every day, do not take a bath, do not write homework, fall asleep on the bed, "no time to study, no food." ”
One day, after training, Lai Xuanzhi held a small meeting, and the team members were 5 minutes late from school. The parents waiting at the school gate could not contain their anger and scolded him.
More and more members of the team withdrew from the jump rope team, and the team of more than 50 people was once only two or three people.
Lai Xuanzhi went to the homes of the children who had retired from the team one by one, and told the parents about the benefits of skipping rope, and no one listened to it, and he promised that skipping rope would not delay learning. When he went twice, the parents did not let go, but they were still quite enthusiastic about Lai Xuanzhi and stayed for dinner; when they went for the third or fourth time, no parents invited him to drink water at the door; by the fifth time, the parents were really impatient, and said to Lai Xuanzhi: "Be well, we agreed, you take the child away for training." ”
In 2013, Lai Xuanzhi led the Seven Star Primary School jump rope team to participate in the second primary and secondary school jump rope competition in Huadu District, with a unique semi-squat jumping method, the team members won 80% of the gold medals in the first competition, and also won the first place in the overall team score. Subsequently, in the 2014 Anhui National Jump Rope Competition, Seven Star Primary School won more than 30 gold medals.
In the international arena, Seven Star Primary School is also a dark horse, and in 2016, at the World Jump rope Championships in Sweden, they won 34 gold medals and won China's first team championship in this event. Lai Xuanzhi said that when the national anthem was played, he cried and sang the whole time. ”
Honor instead brings new misunderstandings.
Cen Xiaolin's father once heard a neighbor say that there would be a lot of prize money when he won the jump rope competition, and his co-workers also ridiculed him: "Your child is so famous, he has taken so many bonuses, what else can he do?" ”
This made him wonder, "Don't say thirty-fifty thousand, I haven't seen three hundred and five hundred, what is the bonus?"
Lai Xuanzhi was helpless and could only explain to his parents, "Skipping rope is not an Olympic project, and there is no prize money in the competition." But this will not convince all parents, Lai Xuanzhi was once again scolded by parents at the school gate: "You train these children, just to give you the championship and get the prize money, right?" ”
One night, Lai Xuanzhi didn't close his eyes in the school dormitory all night and sat until dawn, "I really wanted to give up." But at 5:30 the next morning, I saw the team members come to the training ground on time to warm up, and beads of sweat slid down the children's cheeks. Lai Xuanzhi suddenly felt that everything was worth it.
Lai Xuanzhi in training
The outside world
There are a large number of vegetables and green lotus plantations in Huadu District of Guangzhou, and the demand for labor is huge, so a large number of Guizhou migrant workers gather here, and Cen Xiaolin's family is also among them.
When he was young, Cen Xiaolin was left in his hometown village, the family only had mobile phones for his parents who worked outside, there was no public telephone in the village of his hometown, and Cen Xiaolin's vision was also trapped in the mountains of Guizhou.
Because it is very close to Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, a plane flies over Qixing Primary School every few minutes, and most recently, the porthole of the plane can be seen on the playground. Almost everyone who attends school here has a dream of flying.
Cen Xiaolin's first flight was to participate in the jump rope national race in Nanning, Guangxi, and before he set off, he just brushed the news of the plane crash on his mobile phone, which scared him into goosebumps, but the event was imminent, and he could only go to the airport with a hard scalp.
The first time I flew on a plane, a classmate bought a lot of water and milk and planned to eat it on the road, but when he arrived at the airport, he knew that liquids could not be taken on the plane. Just when it was Cen Xiaolin's turn to pass the security check, he quickly returned and helped his classmates drink four bottles of water and eat a jar of Eight Treasures Porridge.
Liu Yichun had a similar experience. When she took the plane for the first time, she bought 12 bottles of milk, learned that she could not pass the security check, and could only distribute the milk to her classmates, and everyone also ridiculed her: "Before I didn't give it to you, how is it so good now?" ”
Flying is only the first step to face the strange world, when he first went to participate in an international jump rope competition, Cen Xiaolin was very introverted and would hardly take the initiative to communicate with his opponents. "The language barrier, I'm afraid others won't understand, so I simply don't talk to others."
The classmates in the team are similar, only talking to "their own people", unlike foreign opponents, who will take the initiative to run to other countries to communicate, "They all look confident and smile when they play." ”
Confidence still comes from achievements, when a piece of gold medals fell under the name of Seven Star Elementary School, more and more foreign players came to the rest area of Seven Star Elementary School between competitions, raised the rope in their hands to compare, and wanted to know why Cen Xiaolin could jump so fast. Cen Xiaolin demonstrated with jump rope while searching for English words in his mind to explain the action.
Once, Cen Xiaolin also took the initiative to add a Japanese player's WeChat, after returning home, the other party sent a message in Japanese, Cen Xiaolin copied the content into the translation software, "I just knew, he hopes I have the opportunity to go to Japan to learn skipping rope." ”
His son frequently went out to play, and Cen Xiaolin's parents once felt huge financial pressure. Their income from flower arrangement is about 7,000 yuan a month, but the planting and trading of green lotus is greatly affected by the season, and the income is not stable.
The first time he went abroad to participate in the competition, Cen Xiaolin had to go back to his hometown in Guizhou to apply for a passport, and his father took him to the bus from Guangzhou to Guizhou, which lasted 24 hours, and the one-way ticket for two people alone cost more than a thousand. "I have three children to raise in my family, and there are old people in my hometown, which is very stressful."
In addition to the achievements obtained, what made Cen Xiaolin's parents grit their teeth and insist, there was also a change in their son's personality. Cen Xiaolin's father recalled that when he first came to Guangzhou, his son was timid and did not like to talk, "after all, we came from such a poor rural area."
Cen Xiaolin once did not adapt to this unfamiliar environment, "people do not know, the road does not know." Once on the way out of school, Cen Xiaolin got lost, circled around the same commissary several times, and then remembered the direction of home, which was originally ten minutes away, and walked for two hours.
Now, having had the experience of going abroad to compete several times, Cen Xiaolin is becoming more and more confident, and he has made many good friends in the jump rope team before, and he has made many good friends in the jump rope team, often practicing together or playing games.
Cen Xiaolin once imagined what his life might have been like if he hadn't met Lai Xuanzhi and joined the jump rope team, "Maybe he would have been an ordinary person and went out to work early, but I now want to become an extraordinary person." ”
New opportunities
In 2011, when Cen Xiaolin first arrived at Seven Star Primary School, he had already read to the third grade in his hometown, but because of the poor results of the entrance test, the 100-point math test paper only scored 20 points, and the 10-year-old Cen Xiaolin could only re-read from the first grade.
"The 20-point score in our hometown school can be ranked in the middle," Cen Xiaolin said, the education level of the hometown is relatively poor, every day over the mountains to go to school, one way takes more than two hours, in the school, some teachers have not even graduated from high school. "Once, a classmate in the class scored more than fifty points and won the first place in the school."
Two years ago, Cen Xiaolin was about to graduate from elementary school, and his parents wanted him to return to his hometown to go to school. Full of reluctance, he wrote a status in the QQ space: "I don't want to be the next cousin (the cousin is studying in his hometown). ”
After Lai Xuanzhi knew, he called Cen Xiaolin's parents, "Don't go back to your hometown, go to school in Qixing Primary School, and insist on jumping rope is good..."
"Benefits" really came, in 2017, when Cen Xiaolin graduated from primary school, Huadong Middle School began to form a jump rope team, including Cen Xiaolin, children with jump rope expertise, were successfully recruited. Huadong Middle School hired a professional coach to waive the annual accommodation fee of 500 yuan for the jump rope team members, and also provided free breakfast and dinner during training.
"We don't want to waste such a good jump rope talent." The principal of Huadong Middle School believes that since the children have received systematic training in primary schools and achieved excellent results, it would be a pity if they were abandoned after they advanced to school. "Only by continuing this sport can we truly change the fate of our children."
The reason why Liu Yichun has always insisted on the jump rope team is also from her desire to read, and she does not want to repeat her mother's old path.
Liu Yichun and her mother rent a bungalow on the outskirts of Guangzhou for three hundred yuan a month. There are a lot of rats in the house, and every time he goes out, Liu Yichun has to carefully put away all the doll toys, but when he comes back a few days later, each doll will still be bitten out of several holes by rats.
Liu Yichun's current surname was changed during her mother's second marriage, her mother has been married three times, and speaking of everyone, Liu Yichun is used to calling "that father".
Liu Yichun could not adapt to the high-intensity training of the jump rope team at first, but what was more tempting for her was the preferential treatment of the conditions for further education after achieving results. Her mother also encouraged her to persevere, and if she could go to school smoothly, she could at least find a better job, "When I was a child, I didn't go to school, so I hoped that she could go to school well and support herself in the future."
Because of the repetition of grades, the 18-year-old Cen Xiaolin is still in the third year of junior high school, most of the classmates are four or five years younger than him, and some people often joke that he will be in his 20s when he goes to college. Cen Xiaolin didn't care, and laughed at himself: "Although I am a little older, my height is still about the same as theirs." ”
His parents had discussed with him that if he could not get into a public high school next year, the family would leave Guangzhou and go to other places to make a living. However, the opportunity arose again at this time.
In 2019, it was approved by the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Education. Two demonstration high schools in Huadu District have included skipping rope in their independent enrollment programs, one is the best Xiuquan Middle School in Huadu District, and the other is also a veteran school in Xinhua Middle School.
In 2019, Xiuquan Middle School's local score line was 645 points, and foreign candidates like Cen Xiaolin needed to achieve 684 points. However, according to the policy of independent enrollment, if the jump rope team members can successfully pass the jump rope single assessment, the score of the middle school entrance examination only needs to reach the minimum admission score line of 490 points of the ordinary high school in Guangzhou, and they can enter the best public high school in Huadu District.
Prior to this, after the children of migrant workers graduated from junior high school, few people were able to be admitted to public high schools such as Xiuquan Middle School and Xinhua Middle School, some people reluctantly enrolled in vocational secondary schools, and more people returned to their hometowns to enroll, or went out to work directly.
Liu Yichun's home
Skipping rope is about my future
Liu Yichun and her mother talked about how she felt when she first flew on a plane, and her mother was very envious, saying that she also wanted to try it. Liu Yichun found that such words were rarely spoken from her mother's mouth. "I feel like she's changed a lot, she used to be very playful, maybe it's too hard now."
Liu Yichun's mother "arranged flowers" to earn money in a family that planted green lotuses, and the work content was to cut the seedlings of green lotuses and then insert them into the pots, each pot should be inserted about 50 pieces, and the manual cost was between nine cents and one piece. Most of the Guizhou people who come to Guangzhou's Huadu District are engaged in flower arrangement, and when the season of planting green lotuses is over, they go to the vegetable farm to work and grow vegetables.
Liu Yichun's biggest wish now is that he can skip the rope 95 times in 30 seconds, so that he can pass Lai Xuanzhi's test, stay in the jump rope team to continue training, and two years later, he will be admitted to Xiuquan Middle School as a jump rope team member.
"I can't do without the jump rope team because it's my future." In Liu Yichun's view, the future is very close and far, and she can't think of which city and occupation she will engage in in the future, but she is very sure that she should grow up.
Cen Xiaolin's academic performance is still the middle of the class, but it is not a concept at all from the middle school in his hometown, and now with a full score of 150 points, Cen Xiaolin can get 130 points. For the middle school entrance examination a year later, he said bluntly: "Jumping rope is no problem, but the culture class still needs to be strengthened." ”
When he was in his hometown, Cen Xiaolin had no concept of dreams, and felt that he could go to high school and college, but he really couldn't go out to work like his parents. But now Cen Xiaolin's dream is to become a jump rope coach, which is the job he is most sure to do.
His plan is to first go to the big city to become a coach, it is best to be like Teacher Lai, bring out a strong student, after earning money, and then go to his hometown in Guizhou to be a coach. "Because my hometown is relatively poor, many people go out to work after junior high school, and I may be needed more there."
Skipping rope changed the fate of children and the fate of schools. Under the honor of successive events, Seven Star Primary School has gained a better reputation and more financial support. Lai Xuanzhi said that the school now has more than 400 students and more than 30 teachers, of which more than 20 teachers are college graduates. The children have a new basketball court, soccer field and jump rope training ground. The newly built teaching building is four stories high, with the first floor balcony inscribed with the words "Rope to Cultivate Virtue" and the fourth floor balcony inscribed "From here to the world!" ”
On August 22, in the jump rope training room of Qixing Elementary School, all the team members sat cross-legged on rubber floors, and Lai Xuanzhi stood in front of him and announced that he had recently had the opportunity to go to Beijing to participate in the recording of a TV evening, but the number of places was limited.
As soon as the words stopped, the children scrambled to put their names on. A few children fell behind when they saw their mouths open, and they also looked down and wiped their tears, "I haven't taken a plane, I want to sit down", "I haven't seen Tiananmen, I also want to see..."
Lai Xuanzhi made a mistake, and the recorded name far exceeded the number of places, but he could not bear to cross out even one name.
This article was created by the author of the Tree Project [Beiqing Shen Once], and was exclusively published in today's headlines, and may not be reproduced without authorization.