Jing Mei's daughter Yin Shanjie at the 2019 China Figure Skating Club League in Chengdu. Courtesy of Jingmei
Recently, at the competition of the China Figure Skating Club League in Chengdu, a group of young players from Xi'an were quite eye-catching. Xi'an is not a traditional area for ice sports in China, nor is it a rising star in the development of ice sports in China like beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other first-tier cities. However, in the past two years, the development of children's ice sports in Xi'an has also made great progress. Now, Xi'an's figure skaters can finally participate in the national competition in groups, all of which is directly related to a bold decision made by an ice mother two years ago.
Watching her daughter Yin Shanjie dance on the ice like an elf and watching 10 figure skaters from Xi'an emerge in the national competition, Jing Mei felt great satisfaction. Jing Mei is the ice mother who has directly promoted the development of ice sports in Xi'an. Two years ago, under the pressure of opposition from her family and friends, she undertook an ice rink in Xi'an that had been closed twice due to poor management, and crossed from a businessman who did import and export trade to an ice rink owner, which was a turning point in her life and an inflection point in the development of ice sports in a city.
In a recent interview with a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Network, Jing Mei recalled why she made such a bold decision. The ice rink under her plate is exactly where her daughter Yin Shanjie began to learn figure skating at the age of 4.
Ice sports are often very attractive to children, and girls are exposed to figure skating and boys are exposed to ice hockey and often become obsessed with the sport. The same is true of my daughter, who has been unable to give up since learning figure skating.
Jing Mei is very happy that the child can have such a hobby that she is willing to stick to, so for her daughter to learn figure skating, she is unconditionally supportive, "I think that investing in education is more cost-effective than anything, plus the child likes it so much."
But more than a year after her daughter learned figure skating, a major twist occurred.
The daughter's coach decided to leave Xi'an and go to Chongqing to develop. At that time in Xi'an, except for the coach of her daughter, the other coaches were all at the primary teaching level, and could only bring children with entry-level figure skating. If her daughter's figure skating level wants to continue to improve, she can only follow this coach to Chongqing.
A difficult journey began.
Every Thursday evening, Jing Mei took her daughter from Xi'an to Chongqing by plane, studied with the coach for 3 days, and then returned to Xi'an early the next Monday morning. The cost of transportation and accommodation is already much higher than the cost of training children to learn figure skating. Fortunately, because of the perennial import and export trade, the Jingmei family has a solid family foundation and has the conditions to support children to develop interests and hobbies with such a large amount of manpower and material resources.
Under such a rush, her daughter's figure skating level is indeed improving, and her love for figure skating is increasing day by day, and what makes Jing Mei even happier is that her daughter's academic performance has always been among the best in the class. "In the first and second grades of primary school, although my daughter missed a day of class every Friday, she basically did not have to make up lessons to keep up, and after the third grade of primary school, we ensured that my daughter's studies kept up with the progress through make-up classes." From the daughter, we can also see that there is no contradiction between the child's development of a sports hobby and learning, but has a mutual promotion effect."
I thought my daughter's figure skating trail was probably going to continue in a "trapeze artist" fashion, but an opportunity to change the status quo came two years ago.
In the early summer of 2017, the ice rink where Jing Mei's daughter first received her figure skating education began to look for new tenants. The ice rink was on the basement floor of a large business district in Xi'an's West Second Ring Road, and the investors of the ice rink approached Jing Mei and asked her if she intended to rent it.
With an area of 1,200 square meters, the ice rink is the largest of the only three indoor ice rinks in Xi'an, and it is also the most important base for children's ice sports in Xi'an. Her daughter learned to skate here, and left here in order to follow the coach, Jing Mei is still very affectionate about this ice rink, at the same time, in the process of her daughter being forced to travel back and forth between Xi'an and Chongqing for many years to learn figure skating, Jing Mei also deeply felt the trouble caused to the local ice baby family because of the backward ice teaching conditions in Xi'an. Jing Mei was moved by the ice rink, not only to create a condition for her daughter to continue to learn figure skating and avoid the pain of running, but also, from the perspective of an ice mother, she also hopes to provide a better ice sports training environment for more Xi'an ice babies.
However, Xi'an's ice sports foundation was weak, there were very few children involved in ice sports at that time, the market space for ice sports training was small, and the two companies that had previously opened ice clubs at the ice rink failed. For Jing Mei, who has no experience in the operation of ice rinks, taking over the ice rink is likely to face operational difficulties, and her family and friends have advised her to take over the idea of taking over the ice rink.
But Jingmei still made up her mind in just one month, Jingmei believes that it is not that the market for ice sports training in Xi'an is not good enough, but that the previous enterprises have paid too much attention to short-term business interests and have not done a good job in market cultivation. Jing Mei's idea is to operate the ice rink with the vision of promoting the long-term development of ice sports in Xi'an, as long as the market is slowly cultivated, the operation of the ice rink will naturally continue to go up.
In July 2017, Jingmei officially took over the ice rink. Jingmei's plan is to promote ice sports in Xi'an for at least two years, so that the public is familiar with skating, figure skating and ice hockey. The ice rink profit will be considered in a few years.
Jingmei said that in the past two years, the operation of the ice rink has indeed been a loss, but this loss is in Jingmei's expectations, and the amount of loss is also within the controllable range. However, with the promotion of ice sports in Xi'an, and the ice rink really takes children as the core, carries out ice sports training at a lower price and higher quality, more and more children come to the club to learn figure skating and ice hockey, and for a long time, more and more children hope to develop to a higher level. Ice sports in Xi'an began to develop in a good direction.
Two years ago, when Jing Mei took over the ice rink, there were more than 20 children learning figure skating on this ice rink, and there was not a single child learning ice hockey, but two years later, there were more than 280 children learning figure skating in this ice rink, and the children's ice hockey team had grown from scratch, and there were more than 30 children playing ice hockey.
Children's ice sports are expensive aristocratic sports in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, but in Xi'an, the charging standard is only half or even one-third of that of first-tier cities. Jing Mei introduced that in her ice rink, the junior coach of figure skating and ice hockey is 130 yuan a lesson per child, and the highest level coach only charges 240 yuan per child for a lesson. But the remuneration paid by the ice rink to the coach is basically uniform across the country, basically the first-tier cities and the second- and third-tier cities are the same price; and even higher remuneration, because better coaches may not be willing to go to the second- and third-tier cities. Therefore, the ice rink can reduce the price of training fees for children, which is actually compressing their own profit margins.
Jing Mei introduced that in Xi'an, if a child only maintains an interest in ice sports, comes to participate in ice sports training once a week, whether it is figure skating or ice hockey, the lowest, the annual cost is only a few thousand yuan, which is acceptable to the vast majority of working-class families. It can be said that ice sports in Xi'an have taken off the cloak of aristocratic sports.
As more and more children participate in ice sports, more top-notch children emerge. At present, in Jingmei's ice rink, there are about twenty or thirty children like her daughter, not only like figure skating or ice hockey, but also hope to develop to a higher level of ice sports. In order to let these children get the guidance of high-level coaches as much as possible without leaving Xi'an, Jingmei regularly invites excellent coaches from Beijing and Northeast China to Xi'an to give guidance to children. This has greatly promoted the improvement of xi'an children's figure skating and children's ice hockey.
From the perspective of an ice mother to the perspective of an ice rink owner, Jing Mei can also more fully see some of the problems encountered in the development of ice sports that have been booming in recent years.
The first is that good coaches are still sorely lacking. Jing Mei said that after running her own ice rink, she invited her daughter's enlightenment coach back to Xi'an from Chongqing, but when her daughter's figure skating level continued to improve, her daughter eventually needed to leave Xi'an for Beijing and seek a higher-level coach in the northeast. Because the ice sports training market in second- and third-tier cities is limited, it is understandable that good coaches are reluctant to go. However, from the perspective of the overall development of national ice sports, can the relevant sports departments and associations introduce corresponding incentive measures to allocate some outstanding coaches to temporarily coach in second- and third-tier cities for a period of time, which can greatly promote the development level of ice sports in second- and third-tier cities.
The second is that only when the ice rink is operated will it be known that it is not easy. Jing Mei said that the operating costs of the ice rink are huge, and their own ice rinks are not invested in construction because they are in the mall, but in the past two years, the hardware investment in maintaining the ice rinks has also reached millions of yuan, and it can be imagined that the cost of those enterprises that invest in the construction of independent ice rinks will be amazing. During the operation of the ice rink, the cost of electricity is also a huge burden for enterprises. In recent years, the state is vigorously promoting the development of ice and snow sports, but many preferential policies have no rules or have not really been implemented to ice and snow sports operating enterprises. For example, the call for the nature of electricity used in ice rinks to change from "commercial electricity" to "industrial electricity" has been called for many years, but it has never been heard. Jing Mei hopes that the relevant state departments can not really reduce the burden on ice and snow sports operation enterprises, only when the enterprises reduce the burden, they can have the ability to hire good coaches, can the consumer price of ice and snow sports be reduced, and can the goal of driving 300 million people to fall in love with ice and snow sports can be achieved as soon as possible.
Beijing, August 5 (Xinhua) --
China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Ci Xin Source: China Youth Daily