MEDAL FATIGUE

BY GINGER HUANG (黄原竟)

MEDAL FATIGUE

BY GINGER HUANG (黄原竟)

Can China’s medal factories survive the market economy?

中国的后金牌热时代

Famed around the world for efficiency and brutality, inside the Li Xiaoshuang Gymnastic School children prepare, train and push themselves to new feats of corporeal impossibility, a symbol of a nation with an insatiable hunger for international sporting supremacy. This is the catalyst for Olympic success, the grinding wheels of a national obsession, children leading the charge to a patriotic domination of the world of sport…

“I think you’ve misunderstood us,” says Yang Rui, principal of the school, confused at this outdated mindset. “We are not really into competitive sports. We are more like a kindergarten.” Though theLondon Games are long over, schools like this continue to train athletes for their next chance at Olympic glory, but the world is changing and China along with it. For years, practices here have been criticized for their cruelty and for good reason, but no one really complains as long as China keeps bringing home the gold. As such, little seems to have changed on the surface. But the world outside those walls has been irreversibly altered.

"THE PARENTS DO NOT WANT THEIR CHILDREN TO GO THROUGH THE KIND OF PAIN IT TAKES TO BE A CHAMPION"

“The parents entrust their children to us because they want their kids to become braver, stronger, and more independent. Nowadays, most of the kids are the only child in the family, and—unless the kids choose to—the parents do not want their children to go through the kind of pain it takes to be a champion,” Yang says. “No, most of our children are not here for gold medals.” As lifestyles improve, fewer parents want to sacrifice their children to the hope of sporting glory; no one is really sure if these gold medal factories will be able to withstand the market economy’s foray into professional sports.

The school, located in Xiantao City, Hubei Province, trains kids fromfour to eight, the most crucial years in deciding whether or not a child will become an excellent gymnast. The child-gymnast schools have one of the worst reputations for abuse and cruelty, with some iconic images floating around the media of children being pushed to the breaking point. This particular school included star gymnasts like Li Xiaoshuang (李小双) and Yang Wei (杨伟). The former defined the 1990s gymnastics scene and the latter restored glory to Chinese gymnastics in the 2008 Olympics. The city was even honored by the General Administration of Sports as the “Hometown of Chinese Gymnastics”. But, this title has lost its luster.

“The old system is failing,” Yang says. “The market economy has already changed how the sports system works in China.” Schools like this give kids a chance at a lifetime of success, but it’s more likely that they will just end up undereducated and underprepared in a competitive world. This athlete shortage is a serious problem for those who still take Olympic gold seriously.

These athletes in Nanjing—the youngest only three—train year round and all day long with little hope of professional success

In 2012, Huang Yubin, the coach of the national gymnastics team lamented in the Jinling Daily that the best days of Chinese gymnastics were coming to an end. “We just don’t have enough talented athletes. The root of the problem is that professionalgymnastic teams at the provincial level are failing. The best of our athletes used to come from Hubei, Guangxi, and Hunan Provinces, but they are not delivering athletes that are as good as they used to be.” He was so pessimistic before the London Olympics that he predicted, “Although we got seven gold medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it’s possible that we will not harvest any gold medal in London at all.” Wrong as he was, this disillusionment is not being taken lightly.

CHINESE PEOPLE ARE GETTING TIRED OF GAMES LIKE PING PONG WHERE CHINA ALWAYS WINS

Getting to the bottom of the training pyramid reveals at least part of the reason for this athlete shortage. Recruitment, it seems, is where the problems begin. For some sports, it just doesn’t pay to play.

Deep in a Beijing basement, a heavy metal door opens to a spacious hall with bright red walls and row after row of green tables. A mixture of crisp ping pong clicks and short sneaker screeches flood into the hallway. Children, from eight to 12, bob up and down in front of tables that look just a bit too tall for them. Every day, these young athletes spend five hours training and only take a 15-minute break for a three-hour session. Their moves are so unbelievably repetitive and uniform that they look like little gifs on a loop, bashing balls back and forth. This is the ping pong training center at Shichahai Sports School. The school is known as “The Cradle of World Champions”, and its alumni include first class athletes and even a few kung fu stars, such as Jet Li (李连杰). Its history can be traced back to the mid-1950s, when sports schools sprang up all over China, following the Soviet Union’s lead in the race for sporting supremacy. Gu Yunfeng, 47, is the general coach of ping pong here, and, like many coaches at the school, he is a former national champion himself.

When speaking about the sport directly, he is not concerned about whether or not his students will excel. “In China, we have the best resources for ping pong. There is a large population of ping pong players, and we have the best coaches in the world. You see, kids are coached by national champions like me from eight-years-old. The problem is, we are so good at it that China is monopolizing the gold medals. It is not a good thing for China to have all the gold medals.”

It has been the talk of the mainstream media for a while—Chinese people are getting tired of games like ping pong where China always wins. Indeed, ping pong is to China as football is to Brazil, but ratings for the ping pong games have been dropping, hopelessly, for several years. As a matter of fact, viewership and interest only ever pick up when the Chinese team losesunexpectedly. With that comes a loss of sponsorships and earning potential for youngsters hoping to be domestic ping pong stars.

Despite Chinese supremacy in the sport, these youngsters train hard at ping pong in a national sports system that is slowly becoming out-of-date

While they are studying, the athletes receive money for food and lodging and are cared for to a reasonable degree. But, ping pong students between 13 and 20 who made their way into the Beijing City Team at that school earn a salary of just 1,000 to 2,000 RMB, not much of a prospect for parents who need their children to look after them. Of course, pay rises dramatically for anyone put on the national team; the chances of this, however, are extremely slim. In the end, when the athletes retire (assuming they’ve been able to make it to the big leagues), they are given a compensation package that varies drastically from province to province.

The retirement and welfare of athletes after they’ve done their country proud is another dark side of the national sports system and another reason for lax recruitment, often ending in very depressing headlines. In 2007, Ai Dongmei (艾冬梅), champion at the 1999 Beijing International Marathon was so impoverished that she sold her medals at a price of 1,000 RMB each. Her feet were grotesquely deformed due to the brutal early years of training. With the story out, she received free surgeries from a hospital in Beijing and is now back on her feet. Zhang Shangwu (张尚武), a two-time gymnastics champion at the World University Games, was making a living begging in Beijing’s central commercial area by performing gymnastic tricks under an overpass, jailed twice for theft. More and more stories began to surface of retired athletes living in poverty, with permanent injuries, and without health care. Yang Yang (杨扬) is the founder of Champion Foundation (冠军基金 GuànjūnJījīn), a charity that helps athletes rebuild their confidence and enables them to find a new place in the world. She was an ice-skater for 23 years and is now a member of the International Olympic Committee. “About 20 years ago we were still under the planned economy, and over 90 percent of the athletes went on working in the sports system after they retired. Their livelihoods were not a big problem. However, now with the market economy, more and more retired athletes have to look for a job.”

Beijing International Marathon winner Ai Dongmei studied at No. 3 Yi'an Primary School (above). Once Ai left the world of sport, all she had to show for it were medals and disfigured feet from years of intense training.

THERE IS LITTLE IN THIS EQUATION THAT WOULD MOTIVATE AN AVERAGE STUDENT TO DEVOTE THEIR LIFE TO OLYMPIC SUCCESS

Employment is a big problem, according to Yang Yang, largely because of how sports education is conducted. “Their intensive training keeps them cut off from the outside world. The training system has not changed that much over the years, but the outside world has. There is a huge gap.” What’s worse, there is a great deal of negative social stigma attached to being an athlete.

“To a lot of Chinese people, being an athlete is associated with being undereducated, having underdeveloped social skills and possessing few connections with other people,” Yang Yang claims. “Our skills are not recognized, as if we became worthless after we retired. What we try to do at the Champion Foundation is to try to make them realize that they have useful qualities too, that they shouldn’t feel inferior to university graduates.” The former skater believes these athletes have something to offer, saying they can handle pressure, have a good team spirit and are reliable and trustworthy.

However, while the Champion Foundation may be a boon to athletes who have fallen on hard times, it is hardly a stellar review for the system at large. There is little in this equation that would motivate an average student to devote their life to Olympic success, something with which the public and authorities have seemed utterly obsessed for decades.

Chinese sports were not always so gold greedy. The people of China had their first taste of sporting ecstasy in 1984, when shooter Xu Haifeng (许海峰) won the first Olympic gold in Los Angeles, creating a propaganda firestorm. His story went into Chinese primary school textbooks, which described his last gunshot in excessive detail: “The last bullet, the air around him was frozen. People held their breath. Xu knew the weight of the last bullet—the pride of his motherland was hanging on it…Finally, he pulled the trigger. The ninth ring! Xu won first place by just one ring!... With his last gunshot, Xu Haifeng not only won the first Olympic gold medal for China, but also announced to the whole world that a strong competitor has been added to the arena of the Olympic Games!”

For some time, it was unforgivable for athletes to fail. The ups and downs of Li Ning (李宁), a star athlete in the 1980s, perhaps best embodies the gold fever in the early days of Chinese Olympic hopes. Li was hailed as “The Prince of Gymnastics”in the early 1980s and was welcomed home as a national hero on festooned vehicles paraded through the streets. However, in the 1988 Olympic Games, his palm slipped on a ring and he lost. On his return, hate mail flooded in from all directions, some even contained nooses and knives, suggesting he kill himself. Years later, Li said: “At that time, China had just broken away from utter isolation from the rest of the world. People were just hungry for more gold medals, not sports.”

1917: TRANSFORMING SPORTS

“Sport” 体育 (tǐyù) in Chinese literally means “the cultivation of the physique”. Cai Yuanpei (蔡元培, 1868-1940), the dean of Peking University and education minister of the Republic of China, said to his students, “The cultivation of the physique is the best way to cultivate a flawless personality (完全人格，首在体育 Wánquán réngé, shǒu zài tǐyù). However, he didn’t much care for traditional Chinese physical training, considering it quite boring, so he turned to popularized Western sports like boating, swimming, and gymnastics for Chinese schools.

All this patriotism and glory came to a head with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when China spared no manpower or expense in hosting and won the most gold medals of any country. However, this gilded circus was the turning point for Chinese Olympic sports. On the last day of the Beijing Olympic Games, writer and social commentator Lin Siyun wrote a blog entitled“The Trap of Olympic Gold”. He looked back at China’s first gold medal in 1984 and commented, “Xu Haifeng couldn’t have known that with that last gunshot that he also triggered a trap—a trap of Olympic gold medals.” His calculations claimed that the General Sports Bureau’s investments in producing gold medal winners cost around 700 million RMB for each gold medal.

YOUTH SPORTS SCHOOLS ARE LIVING LEGACIES FROM THE COMMUNIST ERA

This eight-year-old girl devotes all her time to a national sports system that too often ends in life-altering injuries and poor career prospects

1971: PING PONG DIPLOMACY

In 1971, everything was political, including sports. Having been wholly preoccupied by class struggles, vanishing from the international sports arena for six years, China reappeared at the World Table Tennis Championships despite the State Physical Commission’s warning of “destructive foreign forces”. Mao Zedong personally issued instructions to the State Physical Commission:“Our team should go, and the athletes should not fear hardship or death (一不怕苦，二不怕死 Yī bú pà kǔ, èr bú pà sǐ).” So, determined to overcome these “foreign forces”, the Chinese team won four championships and found the American athletes quiet friendly. After that, Mao invited the American team to China, an important event that precluded the establishment of China-U.S. diplomatic relations. In 1972, when Mao met Nixon, he said: “We have not agreed on anything in 22 years, but it’s only 10 months since we played ping pong. And, here we are.”

Though this figure is loosely-based and likely inaccurate, it sparked a period of retrospection on what gold medals really mean to China. At the forefront of the controversy was the “national sports system” (举国体制 jǔguó tǐzhì).

Youth Sports Schools are living legacies from the Communist era and are the most fundamental section of the national sports system. The 1980s were the golden times for professional sports schools. Under the planned economy, the government gave jobs to the graduates and an urban hukou (户口, permanent residence permit) to those who came from rural areas. There was never a problem with enrollment. However, as China turned to a market economy in the early 90s, sports schools gradually lost their allure. Although the government still pays for the students’tuition fees and their training expenses, the students are not given decent training in anything other than the sport in which they major and are left highly vulnerable in an extremely competitive world.

The system dates back to the 1950s when coaches hunted potential talent from all over the country, especially in rural areas, and the government threw money into the training of medal-earning athletes, subsidizing their living expenses. The athletes’ performance in international games represented not just sporting elitism, but also national pride and a symbol of China’s international status.

After the Beijing Olympics, a jokey saying circulated online: “The Olympic Games are like a party where people are playing cards and having fun, and then a professional gambler comes in and wins everyone’s money.” Instead of demanding more gold medals, people are starting to demand budgets for sports venues and equipment that everyone can access.

With their entire futures on the line, few are willing to risk their lives on a shot at gold, and parents are none-too-keen to have their children enter a reality where their child’s financial prospects end with their physical prowess. So, where does all this leave the Chinese system of training super-athletes? No one is certain, but mindsets are changing about Olympic gold, and a national conversation is underway about how the country should handle its athletes on the international stage. It’s pretty clear things are changing; Xu Haifeng’s emphatic success story has already been taken out of primary school textbooks.

BY TASHARNI JAMIESON, RESEARCH BY MATTHEW DUBOIS

Paying the bills with broken bones

你所不了解的综合格斗运动，对他们来说是梦想、希望和意志力

Even though the air is thick with sweat and grunts, it doesn’t look like what you might imagine. The floor is a checkerboard of padded puzzle pieces—the type you might see at a kindergarten—and bottled water sits atop neatly stacked shoes. The flag of Brazil, harkening back the perceived beginnings of this sport, partners the Chinese flag on the wall. After the obligatory stretching, partners pair off; then, they square off. Sparing is rigorous, technical, and painful, often involving broken fingers, torn muscles, and not a few black eyes. The painful training is necessary, partly because bouts are imminent, but also because this is serious. This is a job.

Zhang Tiequan (张铁泉) stands with his arms crossed, watching his students with great regard. Directing and advising other coaches, Zhang slips a smile to two young jujitsu fighters as they grapple fiercely on the floor; despite being in guillotine chokes and ankle locks, they return the smile. Training is tough at China Top Team, but they all feel somewhat at home on the sweat soaked floor. As the most well-known Chinese MMA (Mixed Martial Arts, 综合格斗 zōnghé gédòu) fighter on the international scene, Zhang“The Mongolian Wolf” Tiequan hails from the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia and was the first (of two) Chinese fighters to ever be contracted to the world-renowned UFC league. One of the founders of China Top Team—a collection of some of the finest MMA fighters in China today—he currently trains and coaches the next generation of brawlers in Beijing.

Zhang started his fighting career—as many young Inner Mongolians—practicing boke (搏克), a style of wrestling specific to Mongolia and the Inner Mongolian region. At the age of 15, Zhang began to study Greco-Roman wrestling, and, in 1999, began practicing the Chinese militaryinspired fighting style of Sanda (散打).

“The first time I saw a video of MMA, I felt incredible!” Zhang recalls, remembering when, in 2005, he was recommended for an MMA project by Chinese-American jujitsu instructor Andy Pi. Zhang was drawn by the prospect of being able to use the many skills he had learned in his varied background.

“The most important reason was that, as a sportsman, I liked the sport of MMA itself, and I like to challenge myself.” Zhang says, adding: “It can also be profitable, and a good way to earn money.”

But, “The Mongolian Wolf” is one of the few to make it. While fighting in the big Asian leagues is a dream for these MMA fighters, it doesn’t keep the lights on. Fighters on their way up have to suffer physically and financially. MMA is a relative newcomer to the international sports scene, a bedlam of fighting styles as a form of sport and entertainment. But, the game’s relative youth means there aren’t many organizations in place to recruit and support fighters, putting the financial burden on the athletes and the clubs.

Zhang "The Mongolian Wolf" Tiequan is China's most sucessful MMA fighter, and today he spends much of his time training the country's next generation of brawlers

Yao Honggang (姚红刚), a recent bantamweight champion at Legend Fighting Championship, started his career in Chinese-style wresting traditional shuaijiao (摔跤). But, Yao soon saw profit in MMA, as opposed to wrestling.“MMA competition is a particularly goodplatform on the international scene; it is widely recognized around the world,”Honggang says. He and his younger brother Yao Zhikui—collectively known as Big Yao and Little Yao—were born and raised in Zhoukou, Henan Province, the sons of a PE teacher. Big Yao initially came to Beijing as a migrant worker, working as a cook, taxi driver, and doing air conditioning installations to support himself and Little Yao, who followed his older brother to Beijing to train in MMA.

Big Yao had always taken an interest in Chinese martial arts, but started to formally train in wrestling while working as a security guard for a Beijing restaurant, earning around 500 to 600 yuan per month. “In the first two years, I practiced MMA during the day, and at night would to go to the restaurant to be a security guard,” Big Yao says. “I didn’t need to pay for my training because my wrestling was pretty good. The club I joined thought I might have a promising future, so they helped me out and let me train for free. The security guard job gave me enough money to get by.”

Unlike many of his friends and fellow MMA fighters, Big Yao managed to work his way up the road to MMA professionalism. Big Yao, also nicknamed“The Master”, commented that, while the skill and physical condition of some of his colleges may be at a higher level, most people do not have the ability to fight through the rough times and low pay connected to amateur and semi-professional MMA competition in China. “In the beginning, there is too much hardwork and practice, with only a little income. Most people find an easier way to make a living, so they change to another job.”

Zhang Tiequan takes down Jon Tuck at a UFC event in Macao.

For many young Chinese, the bright lights of Mixed Martial Arts fighting look like a good way to make money, but, for others, it’s a way out. Big Yao acknowledges that,due to his poor grades and education, university was unrealistic, putting him on a decidedly rougher road. Big Yao says: “I don’t know ifican be the world champion or not, but I won’t spare any effort. Ificannot achieve it in the end, I hope I can train my students to be able to do so.”

Success stories such as Zhang’s and Big Yao’s are hard to come by, with Chinese fighters seldom making it to a national, let alone international, standard. In Western and East Asian nations, MMA has developed into a thrilling form of entertainment, with winners taking home fame, glory, and the big bucks. However, the booming sport has struggled to find its feet in the Middle Kingdom, and young professional and amateur fighters alike have faced many obstacles on the road towards the bright lights of MMA stardom. Beijing-based MMA trainer, and international business manager (not to mention Ph.D. holder), Laurent Pinson, hailing from France, has been involved in the Beijing MMA scene since its infancy, first coming to the capital in 2005. “China often attempts to imitate the outside of things,” Pinson commented. “At the time, it was the fighting style in vogue, Chinese fighters tried to replicate it.”

Vale tudo in Portuguese means “anything goes”, and refers to a full contact combat event, with few rules, that gained popularity in Brazil during the 20th century. “It didn’t matter that vale tudo should only be for professionals,” Pinson reflected almost affectionately on the fledgling fights of some of Beijing’s initial MMA matches: “Its one 30-minute round, with head butts, elbows, knees….it didn’t make sense!” After competing himself in these early, chaotic I matches, Pinson and a friend decided to get a bit more serious and opened MMA Beijing, a martial arts training club based in Haidian District, Beijing. While Pinson is competent in teaching MMA in Mandarin, the overwhelming majority of his students and trainees are foreigners.

In the eyes Chinese viewers, Pinson mentions: “As soon as you go to the floor, it is considered very violent, because this looks like a real fight. It becomes a dajia (打架), or a brawl, rather than a civilized competition.” In Pinson’s experience, when Chinese audiences see the close-quarters grappling and submission techniques common to MMA and unfamiliar as they are with the technique and training of the sport, they often laugh.

However, a break from the traditional aspects of kung fu may be the firestarter this sport needs in for the new generation. Cui Yihui, a 22-year-old student on his summer holiday back to Beijing from studying economics in Chicago, is one of China Top Team’s eager youths who see the real-world value of a sport such as MMA, as opposed to traditional Chinese martial arts.

Big Yao, born Yao Honggang and today known as "The Master", practices his reverse elbow. Before he was a successful brawler, he worked security at a restaraunt.

"WHILE MMA DOESN’T NECESSARILY LOOK GOOD, IT IS MUCH MORE INTENSIVE AND PRACTICAL"“Personally speaking, kung fu is just like a show; you need to make it look good.” Tie commented that, while MMA doesn’t necessarily look good, it is much more intensive and practical.“Take a look at my appearance!”He beams, sweat dripping off his brow after an intense training session in Brazilian jujitsu. “As you can see, MMA is much more real.” The short, action-packed rounds in MMA may also appeal to a new generation of young people who are accustomed to instant gratification and jammed-packed entertainment.

While agreeing that support for MMA will have to start from the youth in China, trainer and gym manager Simon Shieh sees that encouragement for young people in amateur competition is where the sport will get its foundation. Shieh is the product of the supportive amateur league communities, often found outside of China, for combat sports. After moving to China in 2006, Shieh studied Sanda for two years, moved to learning Muay Thai, and later training in Zhang Tiequan’s China Top Team at the age of 19. At just 21 years of age, Shieh now manages one of the Black Tiger gyms in Beijing and was part of the team that helped coach Zhang in his second UFC match in 2011: Zhang vs Darren Elkins, in Huston, Texas, USA.

Pinson remarks that the concept of amateurship in Chinas MMA sphere doesn’t really exist; it’s all about the professional: “There are two divided systems.” Within the semi-professional system the quality of competition is fairly low and the standards in the professional system are substantially higher. “Even if you have people who have the sprit, the quest, the dream,” Pinson says,“if they don’t compete with each other [through amateur leagues], then the level of the professionals will never be extraordinary.”

Champions rarely come through the amateur system in China, as there is little financial or moral support for those who seek to make it big. Shieh also observed that the MMA league systems themselves can be somewhat difficult to navigate for an amateur fighter, as MMA doesn’t have the “visible ladder” seen in more conventional sports like football or tennis.

Most up-and-coming MMA fighters, like Big Yao, are required to self-fund their studies, and simultaneously work and train, just to make ends meet. With this setback, Pinson laments that—by the time a fighter has found a way to support their dedication to MMA—it’s often too late.

Despite the obstacles, Cui commented on the improvement of youth support for MMA in recent years, “It’s getting better and better,” he says. “Now you can see many teenagers studying MMA. They use it to relax or get healthy, and it pays off.”

“The Mongolian Wolf” also sees the future of MMA in China’s youth:“Once young people pay more and more attention to MMA, the sport will become popular in China.” Zhang’s investment in the next generation of MMA fighters is clear, and his dedication to his club is undeniable. Zhang hopes that, through his guidance, MMA will provide a future for these young athletes. “Concerning the future, I mainly want to be responsible for my club, and I want to expand our club. There are currently 16 people following me who want to go down the path of MMA. These fighters have a passion for MMA and train themselves conscientiously.”

Zhang Tiequan spars with Legend Fighting Championship welterweight champion Li Jingliang

At 24, Liu Jiajia, or Alison, is one of the few females following the MMA path, and embodies Zhang’s faith, seeing him as a mentor: “We have great respect for Zhang Tiequan,” Alisonsays. “He has been leading us.” It’s clear that Alison (a student, fighter and worker at China Top Team) looks at Zhang as her MMA guru, one of the benefits of being a pioneer in the field.“The club earns almost nothing, but those of us who are passionate about MMA have the same goal; we help each other to go on.”

One day, Alison hopes to make it to a professional level and make MMA her job, not just a hobby. “I am not sure what kind of results I can achieve, but I want to see how far I can go on this road. I hope I can reach the top.” She coyly smiles as she says, “This is my dream.”

While a lot of significance is placed on reaching the professional level, Alison says it’s not all about winning:“Becoming a champion is of course very important, but it is not all just to take the title. In each match, there are winners and losers, and through this competition, you can continue to improve.”

“On the way,” Alison reflects on the journey to MMA stardom,“some people will give up half way. I think a person who can persist to the end, regardless of the outcome, is the real winner.”In China, there are currently only two commercial MMA promoters in town; Ranik Ultimate Fighting Federation (appropriately known as RUFF and based out of Shanghai) and Legend Fighting Championship (Legend) from Hong Kong. RUFF, founded by Canadian businessmen Joel Resnick and Saul Rajsky, is the only MMA organization to be sanctioned by the General Administration of Sports of China and is the largest exclusively Chinese MMA promotion. Zhang feels strongly that commercial and media support, rather than government support, will be the driving force for Chinese MMA in the future.“I believe that, with more media attention, MMA will increase in audience ratings and a lot of people will start to like the sport.”Regardless of how long it takes for mainstream support of MMA to kick off in China, the encouragement of the existing MMA community will ensure that those who have the passion will find their way to the guts and glory of MMA fame, whether it’s in the domestic or international arena.

Young athletes like Alison know they’re fighting an uphill battle, but hope is still very much alive:“But we continue to go on, relying on the dream [of reaching the big-time]”. Thankfully, young and up-and-coming fighters like Alison and Big Yao are not alone on the MMA road, and they have the experience of veteran fighters like Zhang to help guide them. “If it is just one person, it’s really hard to go on,” Alison says, “but we can continue to move forward if we do it together.”