In Shanghai Beach in the 1930s, there was a fashionable saying that was widely circulated: "Listen to the drama to listen to Mei Lanfang, watch the ball to see Li Huitang, and swim to see the mermaid."
In that old era, this "mermaid" who could be named on a par with two outstanding men was a female swimmer named Yang Xiuqiong, whose sports career was as brilliant and fleeting as fireworks.
He won the National Games and the Far Eastern Games, became famous at the age of 15, bid farewell to the pool at the age of 19, and died in a foreign country at the age of 63.
In Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "Daughter of the Sea", the mermaid princess drank the medicine given to her by the witch for love, the fish tail became a human leg, and with each step, the foot hurt like a knife, and the "mermaid" Yang Xiuqiong seemed to be a "daughter of the sea" who came to the land.
Since she became famous, rumors about her have been heard endlessly, and her gender, achievements, family lineage, and private life have all been spread under the eyes of the public, allowing people to arrange it at will...
Among them, the most popular rumor is that she was married to the 18th aunt by the "Hare Master" Fan Shaoqiang, which is true or false?
<h1>Days in the water</h1>
In 1933, the Nationalist government held the Fifth National Games in Nanjing, and for the first time added women's pentathlon swimming as an official event.
The women's pentathlons are: women's freestyle, women's 100m backstroke, 100m freestyle, 200m top and women's 200m relay, Yang Xiuqiong, as the representative athlete of the Hong Kong team, came to Nanjing with her sister Yang Xiuzhen to participate in the competition.
No one thought that the gold medalist of the final women's pentathlon swimming competition was the same person, and it was Yang Xiuqiong, who was only 15 years old, who pocketed all five gold medals.
Yang Xiuqiong, who has been known as a "swimming prodigy" since childhood, learned to swim in the river in her hometown in Guangdong as a child, and after moving with her father, she received professional and rigorous swimming training in Hong Kong.
At the age of 12, he began to participate in the competition, and when he was a fledgling, he defeated the foreign swimming veteran to win the championship, and made a name for himself in Hong Kong, and this time he won the championship of all women's swimming events, and the achievement was unprecedented, so that the elegant name of "Mermaid" also spread throughout the streets and alleys of Nanjing.
Subsequently, Yang Xiuqiong participated in the 10th Far Eastern Games held in the Philippines, and also won the women's 50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, 100m backstroke, and 200m relay team championships.
For athletes, the honor of swimming competition should be encouragement, encouragement and higher requirements, but for the outside world, Yang Xiuqiong's five champions are a resource for gimmicks and self-interest.
So for more than a year after winning the five crowns, the threshold of Yang Xiuqiong's residence was broken by various big people, and every day there were snowflake-like invitations and prayer posts stuffed into the mailbox, and this fifteen-year-old girl became a popular star in the high-class social circle at that time.
Jiang Song Meiling, who watched the competition at the scene, recognized her as a dry daughter and gave her a small car made of American products; when she went to Nanjing to perform swimming, Wang Jingwei, chief executive of the National Government, personally received her, and the secretary general of the Executive Yuan personally drove a carriage for her.
Of course, there will be praise and scolding, and when she first appeared on the field, there were men watching the game pointing at her, and even whisked her sleeves away, scolding while walking: "Sin! iniquity! Women take a bath, but also invite people to see, it is really a shameful thing in the world. ”
Applause and scolding are intertwined, and people in Vanity Fair are of course commonplace, but for Yang Xiuqiong, who has been with water since childhood, the podium has become a social field, which is really difficult to deal with.
The people who come and go are all those big people who are standing on the cusp of the times, how can they really be interested in a little girl, but use her "swimming genius" name to make a name for themselves and achieve political goals.
But a little girl neither understands nor is she able to refuse these false fame and fortune, and she must spend more energy every day on going back and forth to various dance parties and liquor stores.
Yes, underwater life is really too tedious, full of loneliness and loneliness, constantly practicing, frustrated, in exchange for a success, a praise. But in Vanity Fair, there will always be people who will praise you from the beginning to the foot, and no one does not like to listen to good words, what a temptation.
Yang Xiuqiong, who used to live in a simple living environment, was also confused when she saw the colorful world on land, and she no longer had time to practice swimming as hard as before, and her natural physical strength also needed to be put into coping with various social occasions.
People say that kung fu pays off, then if you can't work hard, the harvest will naturally become less, so Yang Xiuqiong, who did not train and swim as hard as before, first tasted failure at the Sixth National Games two years later.
She lost the women's 50m freestyle and the championship fell into the hands of others, which was once the most proud event for her, and you can imagine her inner reluctance and disobedience.
I don't know whether it was God's special care for genius or the stimulation of the defeat in the 50-meter freestyle, in the 100-meter freestyle and 100-meter backstroke, Yang Xiuqiong won the championship again, and broke the records of China and the Far East.
The people who had just shouted at her to hurt Zhongyong instantly cheered for her again, and these people, who not long ago described this little girl as an unborn genius, wrote several large and empty articles to praise her.
Yang Xiuqiong does not understand this, from childhood to adulthood, her most confident, favorite, most familiar thing is swimming, but now, swimming is gradually stranger to her.
Although the fish will also be lonely and lonely when they are downstream, it is not the same as the pain of fluttering on the dry land, and Yang Xiuqiong is the fish that came ashore at this time.
The failure that really played a great role in Yang Xiuqiong's swimming career and even her life was at the age of 18, and for every athlete, the Olympic Games were a dream stage.
Most of their sports careers have been preparing for the Olympic event and doing their best, and Yang Xiuqiong is certainly the same, but when she came to the swimming competition field of the Berlin Olympic Games as the only female athlete of the Chinese swimming team, her dream slammed into the ground.
After seventeen days on the sea, Yang Xiuqiong was exhausted, but she still had to brace herself to swim through the 100-meter and 400-meter freestyles.
This time, the "mermaid", which is almost invincible in China and East Asia, did not even enter the final, although its results have set a new domestic record, but it is still too far away from international swimmers.
In an instant, Yang Xiuqiong, the proud son of heaven, turned into the toad sitting at the bottom of the well watching the sky.
At this time, the widows and widows who said that she insulted Sven when she first competed, who said that she hurt Zhongyong after her first defeat, and then wielded crutches to point fingers at this 18-year-old girl, and even a famous cartoonist published a cartoon satirizing Yang Xiuqiong in the newspaper, a lonely little girl, holding a duck egg and sitting by the pool.
The perseverance of swimmers is not what ordinary people can imagine, not only physical fatigue and hard work, all the emotions of their inner world, most of the time can only be conveyed to the wordless water by sliding limbs, how lonely.
When Yang Xiuqiong was under tremendous pressure and public opinion from all walks of life accused and ridiculed, she married her first husband, Tao Boling, who had the reputation of "the first jockey in the northern country".
The two were very affectionate after marriage, and the happiness of married life brought Yang Xiuqiong, who was extremely depressed after the Olympic Games, the strength to fight for shame again.
In the same year that they were married, Yang Xiuqiong was invited to participate in the "National Swimming Competition" held in Chongqing, won the women's swimming championship in the octathlon, and the king returned, but soon, Yang Xiuqiong disappeared from the pool.
<h1>The day of leaving the water is rumored</h1>
The mermaid princess in the fairy tale leaves the sea for love, and the story of Yang Xiuqiong leaving the pool in people's mouths is also related to love.
It is said that in the year of Yang Xiuqiong's marriage with Tao Boling, because the venue was held in Chongqing, Fan Shaozeng, a well-known "Hal Division Commander" in the southwest, also went to watch Yang Xiuqiong's game.
Yang Xiuqiong's name had long fallen into the ears of the lustful Fan Shaozeng, and now seeing the graceful figure in the water, Fan Shaozeng was even more distraught, and hurriedly asked Chiang Kai-shek for his daughter Yang Xiuqiong.
Yang Xiuqiong had just been newly married, and her husband Tao Boling was like glue, but she was helpless to Chiang Kai-shek's coercion and seduction and Fan Shaozeng's obscenity, and finally had to commit herself to Fan Shaozeng and became his 18th aunt.
It is rumored that the front page of the Chongqing Daily also carried such a message: "Yang Xiuqiong, a mermaid in the southern country, married General Fan Shaozeng, the commander of the Sichuan Army."
The subtitle is: "Yang Xiuqiong and Tao Boling divorce", and the divorce certificate signed by the husband and wife is also printed.
According to rumors, Yang Xiuqiong was promoted by Fan Shao to become an aunt, and has been locked in the fan family's deep mansion compound, and the "southern mermaid" can only serve Fan Shaozeng, a big warlord, cautiously, and leave the pool she loves forever.
Only soon Fan Shaozeng, who was careful, got tired of Yang Xiuqiong, and the newcomers entered the Fan family mansion one by one, and the unfavored Yang Xiuqiong could only live in the high wall in humility and loneliness all the time, and only escaped from the clutches of the devil after liberation.
After escaping from the magic cave, Yang Xiuqiong continued her tragic fate, and it was rumored that she lived alone in Canada after that, never returned to her hometown, and was left unattended when she died.
<h1>The Day Of Leaving Water The Truth</h1>
The rumor that Chiang Kai-shek's daughter Yang Xiuqiong was made the 18th aunt by Fan Shaoqiang is still convinced to this day, and it is precisely at that time that Yang Xiuqiong divorced Tao Boling and rarely appeared in swimming competitions, making this rumor more and more intense.
In fact, a little comparison between history and Yang Xiuqiong's life trajectory will find that this is just a boring rumor.
In 1937, Yang Xiuqiong married Tao Boling, and in the same year she was invited by Chiang Kai-shek to accompany the capital Chongqing to participate in the national swimming competition, and on July 7, 1937, the Lugou Bridge Incident broke out in full swing.
At a time of national crisis, Yang Xiuqiong did not enjoy himself comfortably in Fan Shaozeng's mansion, but went to Shanghai, an isolated island ravaged by the Japanese Kou and in the depths of the water.
Yang Xiuqiong's activities during his time in Shanghai now lack the data to conduct in-depth research, but there were rumors that Yang Xiuqiong came to Shanghai to secretly engage in underground anti-Japanese work by borrowing her identity.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Yang Xiuqiong worked as a reporter in Shanghai's Qiao Sheng Bao, and later transferred to the Finance Department of the General Administration of Rehabilitation and Relief of the Executive Yuan; at the same time, Yang Xiuqiong's interaction with Fan Shaozeng was nothing more than a nod on the social field.
Fan Shaozeng did not have 18 aunts, and Yang Xiuqiong and Tao Boling divorced in Shanghai in 1947, not In Chongqing in 1937, and even in Chongqing at that time, there was no publication Chongqing Daily.
Yang Xiuqiong and Tao Boling were married for ten years, in order not to affect the development of sports, the couple decided to contraception, helpless war gunfire turned Yang Xiuqiong's sports dream into ashes, and the marriage of the couple also regrettably ended, they had a pair of children after marriage, all raised by Yang Xiuqiong.
Yang Xiuqiong divorced Tao Bolin and remarried with Chen Guangzhen, an Indonesian overseas Chinese businessman, and before liberation, she had moved to Thailand with her husband, and returned to Hong Kong after giving birth to two daughters.
After her marriage, her main job was to assist her husband in his affairs and involvement in charity, and she was awarded the Medal of Honor by the Commonwealth Headquarters and the Award Signed by Marshal Mountbatten in recognition of his outstanding contribution to charity in Hong Kong.
Yang Xiuqiong did die in Canada, and indeed there was no one around when she died, but it was far from the rumored lonely and desolate scene.
In 1978, Yang Xiuqiong and her family moved to Vancouver, Canada, and lived with her family, but there was no one at home on the day of the accident, so it caused Yang Xiuqiong to fall to the ground when she took her belongings on the high ladder, and was sent to the hospital for rescue and died.
Even today, Yang Xiuqiong can be called a role model among women, she has her own proud career achievements, and once raised a pair of children alone.
Therefore, in that era, she must not be tolerated by the currents, whether it is the media or the public, it is really unfair to portray such an independent and self-reliant woman as a victim of the warlord's power, a poor and helpless weak woman, and to pour sewage on her name.
As for Yang Xiuqiong's swimming performance, outsiders only see whether she has won the gold medal, whether she has always won the gold medal, and for her, it is a painful failure.
Standing up strong again and again, no athlete can always win the gold medal in the sports field, such a harsh requirement Yang Xiuqiong, inhumane, she has done her best in her time, for her life to shine gold.
When the two versions of Yang Xiuqiong's life story are all displayed in front of people, we find out how strong and independent this "southern mermaid" who was "hurt by Zhongyong" is.
She was born in an era when she participated in swimming competitions and was denounced as "a woman bathing and inviting people to see", and she rushed to various places to win glory for the country in a false reputation and fortune.
Her dreams were shattered by the gunfire of war, and the fame and fame she had exchanged for sweat and patience were covered in a dirty dress by rumors.
In people's mouths, she is the dry daughter of Chiang Kai-shek, the eighteen aunts of Fan Shaozeng, and she has been painted with vulgar colors, but what people need to remember even more is that she is a female swimmer who has won glory for the country, a swimmer who has to bid farewell to her beloved swimming pool because of the war, and a woman who is still tenacious and indomitable at the cusp of the times.
Yang Xiuqiong (1918-1982), a native of Dongguan, Guangdong Province. In 1930, Hong Kong held a national swimming competition. At only 12 years old, Yang Xiuqiong tried her hand for the first time and won the 50m and 100m freestyle championships in one fell swoop. In 1931, Yang Xiuqiong participated in the Hong Kong-Kowloon Sea Crossing Competition and won the championship again. In October 1933, at the Fifth National Games, she won all the gold medals in the women's swimming of the National Games, and the elegant number of "Mermaid" did not go away. Chiang Kai-shek's wife, Soong Mei-ling, who was present to watch, recognized her as a dry daughter.
Text/Shi HaiGuanfu