What’s Wrong with Chinese Men?

Jenny Zhu Post in China, culture, musings,Tags: , ,
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Out of the 4 gold medals that China has won in the Vancouver Winter Olympics so far, only half of a gold was won by a male athlete, Zhao Hongbo in pairs figure skating. Are the men having a bad run at these games? Actually, it has been like this for as long as many Chinese can remember. There is even a term which describes the phenomenon, ‘阴盛阳衰’(yin1sheng4yang2shuai1), which means rise of the women, decline of the men. (Note that the phrase uses the Yin/Yang concept. Yin refers to the female, Yang male.)

But why? A Chinese curling commentator had this to say when he tried to explain why the Chinese women’s team is in the semifinal, won the 2009 World Championship while the men struggled to qualify for the Olympics. The same goes for a lot of other sports, e.g. speed skating, soccer, tennis, swimming, etc. His explanation is that when China started to train for curling 5 years ago, men’s game was a lot more developed in its complexity than the women’s game. So it was harder for the Chinese men to match their competitors than for the women. That created a vicious cycle where the men always did poorly, resulting in scant chances to compete in world-class events whereas the women kept building on their success to refine their game. I don’t know how strong the argument is. After all, in their own gender group, I am sure it wasn’t easy for the women to catch up with the competitors.

Some think the imbalance is partly caused by physique. The difference between the build of a Chinese man and a Western man is generally greater than that between women. That’s why Chinese men are weaker than women in sports that rely more on physique, speed and stamina. I guess some of it is true. Simply by looking at the people in the ChinesePod office, the Chinese girls are not so different from the Western girls whereas Chinese men are at least 2 sizes smaller than Western men.

So it seems Chinese male athletes are disadvantaged, excluding things like table tennis and badminton. But once in a blue moon we are blessed with a guy like Yao Ming to tip the balance back.

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