At ten years old, Song Feng never thought of herself as unusual, when she gave it much thought at all. She was only 142 centimeters tall, but that wasn't particularly strange. Certainly, she was from a village in rural Guangdong and she had a younger sibling when most of her teammates were only children, but while that put her in a minority, it didn't make her an oddity. Even under China's One Child policy, rural people were allowed to have multiple children. Her hair was still long, black and straight like thousands of other Chinese girls. She preferred to keep her hair shorter, but according to the regulations of the national gymnastics team, it needed to be long enough to keep up in a neat bun. Her eyelids, to her disappointment, did not have double folds but again, this did not make her different either. All the girls whose eyelids did not have double-folds bemoaned them.
If she had thought about it a little more, she would have conceded that being a gymnast in mainland China, in the People's Republic, was somewhat atypical. Only about three hundred boys and girls in all of China, go into the sports academy system for gymnastics. At ten, she was one of the youngest members of the junior national team, the best gymnasts in the entire nation. Still, despite this tiny percentage that she was actually a part of, she always had the company of the twenty or so other girls on the national team, so she felt that she was among sisters, friends and rivals, even if she wasn't with her biological family.
She still wouldn't have considered herself odd in any way, but perhaps that is part of the nature of children: to treat the abnormal as banal.
Like most of her fellow gymnasts, she had shown promise for the sport at an early age. Her parents said that she had been a handful as a toddler, constantly getting into things, trying to climb up drawers, anything she could reach. They had been afraid she would hurt herself. If she had thought about it, then she would have presumed that nothing happened since she was alive, healthy and whole. When she was barely three years old, a gymnastics coach came to look for new prospects at the nursery school. Her parents had been happy and sure that she would be chosen.
Sure enough, she was one of the lucky ones that were plucked directly from nursery school to gymnastics academy. She trained six days a week, six hours a day, from the time she was three, year after year after year. Her parents gave her to the state to raise and she was determined to be the best. For her, that was the end of that story. She would go on to be an Olympic champion and represent her country in front of the eyes of the world with gold medals around her neck. There was nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Everything that someone needed to know about her was emblazoned on her leotard right on her chest: the National Emblem of the People's Republic of China.
Her parents never told her that she had fallen. She had been climbing to the top of the biggest, tallest dresser when her foot slipped and she fell. Her mother, Song Lin, saw it happening as if time itself was slowing down, that Feng was going to fall on her head and die. Instead of her darling only daughter falling and killing herself, she landed and then bounced a meter in the air. Lin had grabbed her daughter and held her before she could drop, tears landing in the soft baby hair, even as the baby still giggled.
Song Bing, her father, had watched everything from the next room. He had been frozen in shock watching his daughter fall. Now that his precious daughter was safe, he managed to walk into the next room and pet her head gently. His hands were rough from a lifetime of working in the fields harvesting rice and in the factories that Deng Xiao-Ping had brought to Guangdong, which just emphasized the softness of his daughter's baby hair.
Lin and Bing had exchanged a look over their daughter's head. "The little Phoenix can fly," he said softly, referencing their daughter's name.
"More like bounce," Lin replied, still holding Feng, tears still wet on her round cheeks.
They never really talked about it again, but after that incident, Song Bing made sure to do calisthetics with Feng every morning before he and Lin went to work. The calisthetics tired her out and kept her from trying to climb the drawers. They also told her grandmothers, her Ngin Ngin and her Po Po, not only to keep her from the drawers - which they would have done anyway - but to make sure that she kept doing those exercises throughout the day.
"Who knows," Lin said once, "perhaps she is meant to compete for China."
Song Bing didn't respond to that initially. He just watched their daughter go through the set of exercises again. Her eyes had always been focused, determined, even as a baby before she could crawl. Her eyes scared people occasionally because of the energy in them, the ferocity and spirit in them. Occasionally, someone would remark that it was too bad she was not born a boy, because her spirit seemed ill-suited to a girl, particularly a girl baby.
"She will do well at anything she puts her mind to," he said finally after a long moment's thought. "If she stays that determined, then perhaps she will compete for China." He smiled. "Or perhaps she will join the Party or become a doctor. Who knows?"
Their daughter finished the set and ran to her father who picked her up. "You did well," he told her. She smiled broadly.
When a gymnastics coach came to her nursery school, it seemed like the sign they were waiting for. Her dark eyes had stared the coach down, before she jumped as high as she could. The coach barely cracked a smile, but that was enough. At three years old, she went to train with the provincial team, in the capital of Guangdong, Guangzhou.
At the provincial gymnastics academy, they were examined every day by the doctors. Training for six hours a day, six days a week is akin to torture on a young body and stresses it almost beyond what human beings are supposed to bear, so the children were carefully watched for health problems related to training.
When Song Feng was five, she trained on the uneven parallel bars until her hands blistered and then until she bled. She hid the bleeding, not wanting to get in trouble, but one of the coaches noticed the blood on the bar.
"Who's bleeding?" Coach Ma demanded. He was one of the largest of their coaches and Song Feng was most scared of him. She wondered how he had ever been a gymnast because he was so fat now.
All of the girls were silent.
"Someone is bleeding and that person should go to the doctors." His voice threatened worse than just going to the doctors.
She hoped fervently that her blisters would heal and the blood would disappear. She didn't want to go to the doctors, she didn't want to spend time away from training. She definitely didn't want to know what Coach Ma was threatening without directly saying it. Her hands ached, but it didn't matter. She needed to practice.
The entire gym waited a long second while Coach Ma paced in front of the assembled girls.
Song Feng tried to keep her face impassive as she hoped for a miracle. She rubbed her hands together nervously behind her back, wondering if Coach Ma could tell. He would walk along the silent row of girls and then stop and stare at a particular one and then keep walking.
Finally he barked: "Everyone show me your hands. Palms out."
By the time she extended her hands, the blood was gone and the blisters looked like they were old and healing, not fresh. She breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Coach Ma, on the other hand, was baffled. Someone had gotten blood on the bars, yet none of the girls in front of him had bleeding hands. "Alright. Go back to training," he barked. He eyed all of the girls wondering which of them it had been.
Song Feng immediately leaped back on the bars. Coach Ma stared. Had her feet touched the springboard at all? He hadn't heard the sound. He shook his head. There was no way that a five year old could jump straight on to the bars, even the lower bar. He turned back to spotting her. "Hand stand." She forced herself up into a hand stand. "Hold it." He placed his hand on her stomach. "Tighten your muscles in here." He kept her there for another moment. "Now swing back down and come back up."
Later that night, she looked at her hands. They were perfectly smooth, like they hadn't blistered that day on the bars at all. She shrugged. If it let her practice longer, practice harder, then it didn't matter. She didn't quite know why, but she had the feeling that she should keep it a secret. After that she regularly fixed her blisters, but she was sure not to let anyone know.
Song Feng also became an older sister when she was five. All of the girls were excited because none of them had younger siblings. The One Child Act ensured that most Chinese children were only siblings, but her family was rural and given an exception. Even though her little brother, Song Chun Yin was born in May, she had to wait until the following winter, at New Year's, to go home. Her parents had to plead and beg for a few extra days off, to visit home and meet her younger brother. Eventually, her coaches relented after Song Feng swore solemnly, on her honor, as a gymnast and as a citizen of the People's Republic, that she wouldn't eat junk food, that she would train every day and that she would be the kind of older sister that her brother would be proud of. Even the coaches didn't question her resolve after that kind of oath and that kind of fearsome energy in her face.
Song Feng went home and slept in her own bed for the first time in two years, but it was still for less than a week. Her grandmothers tried to spoil her with food, and she did her best to please them while keeping her promise to the coaches. Still, it was nice to eat home cooked food by her grandmothers, and her mother and she permitted herself a few extra helpings of jeen mein, pan fried noodles, and red bean soup. She just made sure to run laps and keep training.
It seemed like the entire village stopped by their house at some point. The prodigal daughter had returned and they also had a young son in the house. Her parents were the envy of the entire village.
The first evening when it seemed like there was finally a break in visitors, her mother reminded her, "You haven't properly met your own little brother yet." They were all sitting in the living room, her father casually smoking a cigarette, her mother mending an old sock, while Feng did handstands against the wall and Chun Yin just sat in his chair watching everyone. He was generally a quiet child, not prone to much screaming or crying. Like his older sister he had a very solemn gaze. Unlike her, he laughed with much more frequency, a big smile on his chubby face.
"Hi, little brother," she said to the baby solemnly. "I'm your big sister, Feng."
He smiled up at her. "Big... sister?" he asked, reaching his short little arms towards her. Their parents had tried teaching him the words for the last few weeks before she arrived because they were determined that their daughter would still feel at home, even if she lived far away in the training center. He had finally copied the sounds and it was one of the few things he said now. They held hands and smiled, looking at their children, finally meeting each other. Their lives were difficult working in factories, but they could live at home and they had two healthy children.
Song Feng grinned and gently stroked her little brother's head, marveling at how soft his hair was. "Yep, I'm your big sister. Big sister," she repeated solemnly, tasting the feel of the words.
"Big sister!" he cried happily, trying to pull at her hair.
"That's right." She wondered if he would remember her at all or if he was even aware of what the words meant. Eight months seemed too young to really remember anything. She turned towards her parents. They gestured towards her to say something else. She turned back to her brother, still burbling "big sister" over and over. "I'll always be your big sister. Even when I'm not..."
She was unsure how to put it. She stood there, feeling very awkward as her parents watched them. Finally she settled on "Even when I'm not here, I'm still your big sister. And you're still my younger brother." It seemed a very inane thing to say but she wasn't sure what else she could tell him. He wouldn't remember anyway. "And I'll always be thinking about you. I'll make you and mom and dad proud of me," she promised, hoping it was enough.
Song Chun Yin just smiled at her. "Big sister," he repeated.
"Little brother," she said back to him, a small smile forming at the edges of her lips.
It was one of the few times she was allowed to go home, so she also went to pay her respects to the dead. She stood with her parents and grandmothers, her brother strapped to her mother's back, as they burnt heaven and hell money for her grandfathers and their other ancestors and lit incense.
She bowed in front of the graves, hoping that her grandfathers were watching over her and protecting her.
At seven, she had an accident on the vault. Vault is one of the hardest events for a very young person. It takes a great amount of strength and size to sprint down the runway, hit the springboard with enough power to generate enough force to land on the horse, smack it and then flip and twist three or four times in the air and land.
Song Feng and the other girls in her group were only practicing simpler vaults - sprinting, hitting the springboard and hitting the horse and going over.
When it was her turn, Song Feng, ran as fast as she possibly could, but she hit the springboard badly. Her hands landed badly on the horse and she landed - not on her feet, like she should have - but with an ankle turned over. The bone cracked and she screamed in pain, tears running down her cheeks. Coach Li ran to her, quickly assessing. She had landed badly, her ankle was turned at a bad angle. It was almost certainly a break.
"Sssh, ssh," he whispered. "I'm going to pick you up now, ok, Xiao Feng?" He called her "Little Phoenix" in lieu of her actual name. She was one of his favorite students and when they were outside the training center he tended to call her "Xiao Feng" as a joke since one of the other girls also had the character "Phoenix" in her name.
She nodded, biting her tongue.
"Fengfeng," he said quietly, using a diminutive pet name to calm her down, "be brave, ok? Just relax for me and breathe."
Her jaw relaxed and she breathed deeply. Coach Li had been the one who soothed her when she had nightmares. He was the one who she actually sometimes called 'uncle' but privately called 'Coach Panda' since that was what he looked like. "Good girl," he said, picking her up gently, making sure not to bang her ankle.
He brought her to the doctors who gave her x-rays. It confirmed the worst. Her ankle was broken. She would have to be in a cast for at least six weeks , making it impossible for her to actually train on any of the apparatus, though, she would still do basic training and strength training. She didn't bother trying to hide her sigh. While strength training was important, it was much less fun than training on the different apparatuses.
"Come on, Song Feng," Coach Li called, returning to a more formal language, now that she had been fixed up. "Enough flying today, right?"
"Yes," she responded, slowly hop-walking forwards with the crutches.
She went to bed early that night, since it was annoying to get around with crutches and she didn't want to deal with anyone else. Everyone else was still at dinner or had other plans. At least one of the girls had mentioned going back to train more. It didn't matter to Song Feng. What mattered was that they were all gone. She glared at her broken ankle. Then she wondered, If I can make my blisters go away, I wonder if I can make my ankle heal?
She still wasn't sure how exactly she had managed to heal her blisters, but when she had thought at them to heal up, they had. She frowned. Could that be it? Wanting it badly enough made it happen? That didn't make sense. Then again, it certainly couldn't hurt.
Heal, she thought at it. Please heal. I want to get better quickly. It's hard to train in crutches. Heal, heal, heal. She fell asleep repeating her mantra in her mind: heal, heal, heal.
When she woke up the next morning, she felt a little groggy, as if she had over-exerted herself. She was also a little disappointed that her ankle still felt swollen and it still hurt.
Of course, she reasoned, an ankle is a lot harder to heal than just blisters. It's marrow and bone that need to be fixed, not skin.
She repeated that routine every day for the next two weeks. She would go to bed early and lie in bed, encouraging her ankle to heal up. She felt a little ridiculous, but it was better than just waiting for it to fix itself, even if she did wake up feeling tired. Besides, the more she did it, the less groggy she felt when she woke up. Exactly two weeks after her accident, when she went into the doctor, he gave her a routine x-ray. He blinked at the screen. It showed that the bone had completely healed.
"Your accident was two weeks, ago correct?" Dr. Chan asked, looking over the chart, gray hair falling into his face.
She nodded. "Two weeks exactly."
"I think I'll take off the cast and examine your ankle more directly." He cut the cast off and looked at the ankle. It did look fine. He gently twisted her foot one way and then another. "Tell me if it hurts." She nodded. "And don't lie. This could be very bad for your health and your future career if your ankle heals badly now."
She nodded again, this time more enthusiastically. "Yes, Dr. Chan."
He continued the examination. "Nothing hurts?" he asked at the end.
She shook her head. "Nothing."
He looked at her, over the frame of his glasses. "Are you sure, Song Feng?"
"Yes, Dr. Chan." She wasn't sure what the big deal was. Sure, broken ankles were supposed to take six weeks to heal, and then even more physical therapy, but what was so bad about being cured in two weeks?
"Well, we'll keep watching your ankle. No apparatus work for at least a little while, and make sure that you do physical therapy on both your ankles. You don't want to break either of them again. You need them strong. One break weakens the bone and the joint, and makes it more susceptible to breaking again, do you understand?"
"Yes, Dr. Chan." She slid off the examination table and then walked out the door, looking like she hadn't just had a cast come off for a broken ankle.
The doctor watched her go and noted in her chart: Exceptionally quick healing. Keep an eye on.
When Song Feng was ten years old, the Guangdong provincial team sent an group to compete at a national meet and she managed to be chosen. It was an important meet because coaches from the national team would be there and to make the Olympic team, a gymnast had to be a member of the national team first.
They had to travel six hours by bus to get to the competition site. Song Feng wished that she could just sleep on the ride over, but she was too nervous. She had practiced until her hands had blistered and bled again, and the coaches had ordered her to stop. It was even worse because she was entered in all of the events: uneven parallel bars, floor exercise, balance beam and vault. Her nerves were driving her crazy.
Calm, she had told herself. Calm, calm, calm.
She breathed deeply through her nose like Coach Li always said and forced the tension out of her muscles one at a time. She knew all of her routines. She could fly on the bars and the vault. She would dance and do her tumbling passes on the floor and beam. She would land perfectly. Feng smiled to herself. I've got this.
She wore a dark purple leotard. It was her absolute favorite color and she considered it a lucky charm, particularly since there was also a red star on the side. It was a highly unusual design - usually patriotic designs with stars were also only in red, white and yellow. She loved it even more for that.
Her first event was the uneven parallel bars. Song Feng tried not to grin. It really wasn't fair putting her on her best event first. She chalked up her hands and waited for the announcer to call her name. She saluted the judges with a wide smile and then turned back to the bars. She took a deep breath before jumping on the springboard and grabbing the bars. It was a familiar routine, she could probably do it in her sleep and she had dreamed it before: handstand, swing, handstand, reverse hand hold, reverse back to normal, leap for the high bar, swing, handstand, swing, handstand, back to the lower bar. It was all as familiar as her own room. Finally, it was time for the dismount. She swung around the top bar, gaining momentum, bending her body to go faster. Then she let go of the bar, spinning, twisting, flying through the air. It was a difficult dismount because she couldn't see the ground before she landed. Ground! Her feet planted themselves firmly and she landed with her chest up and a grin on her face. She turned to salute the judges again and then walked off.
The coaches congratulated her. It was an excellent routine, very few flaws. She high-fived her teammates hands and wished them luck.
She knew she would do fine on the floor and the vault. After her broken ankle on the vault, she had worked at it and even though she would probably never be the best at vault, she was quite decent at it.
The balance beam was a completely different kind of event than the bars. The bars asked for upper body strength, a complete lack of fear, but most importantly, a real daredevil's desire to fly. The beam, on the other hand, demanded perfect balance and a different kind of fearlessness: that even though the beam is only 10 cm wide, the gymnast will not fall or even bobble even while doing tumbling passes, pirouettes and leaps. Gymnastics is a sport of subtraction, every bobble is another tenth of a point subtracted; a cruel sport where there is no way to do better, only less bad.
Song Feng had always felt that performing on the beam was akin to trying to balance on a nail. This time, it was as if somehow she knew it would be fine. It was like she was disconnected from her body, as if she was just practicing in the gym. She made her penultimate salute to the judges. She placed her hands on the beam and pulled herself up into a handstand and then splits. She performed the leaps, the pirouette, the dance moves, the tumbling passes almost in a daze, but still she never slipped, never even bobbled. Finally, she was on the very end of the beam, readying herself for the dismount. She took a deep breath, then she ran for a few steps, did a cartwheel, flipped off the beam, twisting three times in the air and landed. She had to take a step back to steady herself, but she was still grinning. She saluted the judges without having to fake the smile on her face.
She knew she was in. Coach Li hugged her tightly, knowing it might be the last time he could see her in a long time.
When the results were posted a few hours later, it confirmed what she already knew in her bones. She had made the national team. She was moving to Beijing.