Beautiful Country

by J. R. Thornton

  I could never figure why these recruiters came. It was not as if the Chinese boys represented any potential business opportunities for these academies. They expected students to pay tuition, and these boys were poor. The boys would try to shine so they might have a shot of getting noticed by one of the coaches and given a scholarship to their camp. Over time the boys developed the sense that everyone who came through was interested in cashing in on China and that there was no chance they would be rescued by one of the foreign coaches.

  All, that is, except Bowen. Without fail, whenever anyone came, Bowen lifted his game to an even higher level and played flawlessly. I remember on one occasion watching Bowen decimate Juan Esparcia, the founder of the top tennis academy in Spain that bore his name. Esparcia had once been a top world-ranked player himself. He moved beautifully despite being at least fifty pounds overweight. He tried to impress on us the need to constantly be moving during the point. “It’s a dance,” he said. “Never stop dancing.”

  He had asked us to play a game of king of the court with him, and he had planned to whip us all to demonstrate his point about movement. He had no idea that Bowen could hold his own with him. As we watched this Davis Cup veteran under pressure from Bowen, Little Mao repeated what Random had said: “He thinks he is going to get a scholarship, but he won’t.” He spat on the ground after he spoke.

  Within two games Bowen had control and was beating Esparcia at his own baseline game. I had never seen another player mimic the style of someone else so completely. At 4-2, Bowen switched to his game of attack, and Esparcia was finished off completely. I looked at Random and raised my eyebrows in approval. “Pretty good,” I said in Chinese.

  “Won’t matter.”

  “Why?”

  “He is too old.”

  “But he is only fourteen.”

  He shook his head. “Sixteen, he is sixteen.”

  “What? He’s fourteen.” I looked at him in confusion. Bowen had told me himself.

  “Bowen is sixteen.” Random waved me over and leaned his head in close to mine. “Everyone here,” he said, “is one, maybe two years more than they say. I say sixteen, but I am seventeen.” He pointed to each of our teammates one by one and listed their true ages. I was amazed to discover I was the youngest on the team by nearly two years.

  “Does she know?” I asked Random, lifting my chin toward Madame Jiang.

  He laughed. “Everyone knows but no one says anything. All the players in China do it. Even if we don’t want to, we have to. If we don’t lie then we have to play guys two years older than us.”

  I was stunned. Of course I had heard stories about this sort of thing. Stories of North Korean gymnasts who somehow had remained fifteen for three consecutive years, or the occasional rumors about Eastern European tennis players who showed up in Florida at age “twelve,” already over six feet with facial hair. But I had never been confronted by it in person. I had never seen it in such a blatant and unapologetic form as this. Random’s cool attitude about it threw me off and made me question the truth of what he was saying. Bowen wouldn’t have lied to me. I assumed that Random had made this up, perhaps out of envy of Bowen’s talent.

  “Well he’s still very good for sixteen,” I said.

  “He’s still too old for an academy.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “Come on, how do you know?”

  “I was one of them.”

  “Where?”

  “Bollettieri.”

  “Is that where you learned English?” Random’s English was much better than the other boys.

  He nodded.

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I was too young. I got homesick. It was four years ago, and I couldn’t speak English very good. My parents, they could not afford to come over. I wish I had stayed though. Much better than this.” He waved his hand around the complex. “I hate this. I don’t want to play anymore. Now my parents can afford to send me to America again, but it is too late.”

  Random’s words stuck with me. I thought about how I had sometimes tanked practices in the States when I was feeling tired or didn’t want to play. For Random, each minute on court at a place like Bollettieri represented hours of work and sacrifice made by his parents to give him the same opportunity that I took for granted. I thought about the times I had cracked rackets in anger during matches. Throwing a tantrum like that wasn’t an option when you couldn’t afford a new racket.

  Another time an Australian coach came to practice with us. Madame Jiang, as she almost always did, brought out the basket of balls and had us all begin practice with juggling. I had gotten better at it, but I still didn’t see the point. Usually Bowen took six or seven balls, but this time Madame Jiang handed him three and snapped at him when he tried to take more. Not to be deterred, Bowen adjusted his bandanna so it was loose, and while he was juggling he shook his head so his bandanna fell over his eyes. He continued to juggle flawlessly. Madame Jiang became furious at him for shifting the attention to himself, and she ordered him to do fifty push-ups clapping between each one. Bowen smiled at her as if to say, “Finally you are going to let this coach see how athletic I am.” He sprung into a handstand, walked on his hands to the baseline, flipped backward to his feet, and then did fifty push-ups. Madame Jiang stood over Bowen. I turned to Random and asked, “What’s her problem with him?”

  Random pulled the corners of his mouth down. “She thinks she is too good to be coaching us. She still hasn’t given up the past. My father told me she was a famous national volleyball player. She was meant to win the gold medal in 1980, but China didn’t participate in Olympics because of politics. So she missed the chance to be the first Chinese to win the gold medal.” Madame Jiang saw Random talking to me and shot him a harsh look. He resumed juggling and whispered, “She is still angry about it.”

  Bowen completed his fifty push-ups, and on his last one, he clapped his hands twice. The Australian coach stood up and applauded. He was obviously charmed and amused and impressed. Bowen would have to deal with Madame Jiang’s anger later.

  After the professionals left, Madame Jiang would follow a sort of watered-down version of their drills. Because there was no methodology or theory underpinning her training routine—as she did not completely understand the purpose of the drill—she would have us do some version of it, but it was always a little off. After about two or three weeks, she would stop asking us to do the drills and would return to the practice she had devised.

  Among the senior leadership, tennis is a popular sport in China. As Victoria and I had inadvertently learned, every Thursday the indoor courts were reserved for senior government officials. Often several members of the men’s team would be required to play with these officials. On a few occasions the top women players were brought in to play. China had no men ranked in the top 500 of men’s world tennis, but they did have several women who were breaking into the top 100 in the world. The highest-ranked player was a girl named Peng Ai. She was originally from Tianjin and had trained at the same facility as Bowen. Bowen had heard that she was coming, and he was determined to watch her play. She had gotten to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open and was Beijing’s only hope for the 2008 Olympics.

  How Bowen learned that she was coming I do not know, but somehow he found out. “Watch for Thursday,” he had said to me, and sure enough on Thursday, Peng showed up and practiced with us for two hours. Madame Jiang assigned Hope and Bowen to hit with her. We watched as the two of them drilled Peng. She was big and strong and hit flat and hard with two hands on each side—two hands for her forehand, two hands for her backhand. Several times in the rallies when Peng hit a ball out, Bowen caught it on his racket strings before it hit the court without ever letting it leave the strings. It was almost as if he made the ball disappear, and then, with the deft grace of a gifted magician, he made it reappear. This display of hand-eye coordination and racket control delighted Peng, and she asked Madame Jiang if she
could play a set with Bowen. Madame Jiang didn’t like the idea, and Bowen tried to act neutral about her request, but he was, I could tell, thrilled. Madame Jiang said Bowen had to go to the gym. He contradicted her and said he could go after he played a set. Madame Jiang had been boxed in, and there was nothing she could do. She made the rest of us run sprints on the court, but we did our best to watch Bowen handle Peng’s power. Peng liked to take control of the points, and once she had control, it was almost impossible to win the point. Bowen started taking the ball early and hitting it on the rise. Bowen knew that he was throwing her off her rhythm. Peng started to lose confidence and make unforced errors. She was a baseliner and was uncomfortable at net, so Bowen created situations that forced her to come to net and hit volleys.

  Bowen finished the set 7-5. Peng stayed on court with him and chatted for a while after the match while Madame Jiang clenched her jaw. We had been given instructions by Madame Jiang not to chat with Peng. She told us that Peng didn’t want to be bothered with conversation. Peng spoke to Madame Jiang before she left. We finished practice, and I asked Bowen what Peng had said. We spoke quietly and quickly while we were getting a drink at the water fountain to avoid Madame Jiang’s irritation. He told me that Peng was playing an exhibition match against a teammate from Beijing that evening for the officials. She had invited him to come watch and told Madame Jiang the same thing. As he wiped his arm against his mouth at the fountain he said, “Madame Jiang didn’t say yes.”

  “Did she say no?” I asked.

  “No, but she didn’t say yes, which is the same thing.”

  十四

  The next day I arrived at practice early and found the courts empty. A few minutes before practice was scheduled to begin, all the boys except Bowen came in. They walked in a tight group and spoke in hushed voices. They looked upset. I went over and tried to listen in to their conversation, but I didn’t catch enough to understand what they were talking about and none of them offered to clue me in. I pulled Random aside and asked him what was going on. He said Bowen had gotten in trouble, and now we were going to have a hard practice. “Bowen yinggai huidao Tianjin (Bowen should go back to Tianjin),” Little Mao blurted. I asked Little Mao what he meant. I thought he said something about how Bowen had been on the Tianjin team, but I didn’t hear him clearly and when I asked again, none of the boys would clue me in on what he had said. A few minutes later Bowen came in with his head held high. He seemed to be looking over all of us.

  Madame Jiang arrived and ordered us to stand in a row. She walked back and forth with her hands behind her back. We felt like convicts awaiting our sentencing. She said Bowen had, against permission, slipped out to watch Peng play her exhibition match and was caught in the high bleachers of the indoor facility. So, as punishment, he and all of us would have to run the bleachers. The boys all looked back at her and showed no emotion. No one made a sound. She lifted her chin toward Bowen and said he was going to lead. Bowen looked at her and smiled condescendingly.

  “Keyi, mei guanxi (Sure, no problem),” he said with the same nonchalance as if she had asked him to hand her a tennis ball.

  Bowen had not even had time to put down his tennis bag. He started walking toward the indoor courts. The other boys hoisted their tennis bags onto their backs.

  “Aren’t we coming back?” I asked.

  Random answered, “Bags might get stolen.” It was as Victoria had warned, everything in China was vulnerable—even at a state-run athletic facility that had a guard posted at the entrance and several who patrolled the grounds.

  As we walked toward the stadium, Little Mao repeated, loud enough for Bowen to hear, “Bowen should go back to Tianjin. He only thinks about himself.” Dali didn’t say anything but he looked at Little Mao and nodded in agreement.

  “He doesn’t have a choice,” Random said.

  “Madame Jiang didn’t have a choice either,” Little Mao snapped back. “And now we have to pay for that.”

  I sped up my pace so that I walked just behind Little Mao. I hoped that his temper would cause him to drop his guard and reveal more about why Madame Jiang had such an intense dislike for Bowen. But he said nothing further, and we marched toward the stadium in silence. I wanted to ask Little Mao what he meant when he said Madame Jiang didn’t have a choice, but I knew there was no point. All direct questions I asked my teammates were met with cryptic answers and subtle remarks that seemed to reveal little, if anything. As my time in Beijing progressed, I came to realize that it was hopeless to wait for a clear, direct answer. To find answers to my questions, I would have to learn to pick up the subtleties in what my teammates said, how they said it, and perhaps most importantly, what they did not say.

  I could never get any of them to explicitly tell me why Madame Jiang had it out for Bowen, but I came to understand that she had never been consulted about Bowen joining the team. He had been imposed on her. The cities are autonomous in China, and the officials wield a lot of power. My guess was that a superior had informed her one day that Bowen would be joining her team. She had to accept it, but she didn’t have to like it, and she didn’t have to treat him well. And when he was defiant and refused to submit and be broken by her training practices, it infuriated her all the more, and eventually the dislike grew into something stronger.

  The facility was locked, and we had to wait for Madame Jiang to open it. Bowen stood facing the door, not wanting to look back at us. Hope stood directly behind Bowen and patted him on the shoulder as if to say, “I’m with you.” He left just enough room for Madame Jiang to get by to open the door without him having to step aside.

  The building was cold and dark, and Madame Jiang disappeared to turn on the lights. Three loud thwacks echoed across the courts and the lights came on. She returned and pointed where we should run. Up the steps of the first aisle, over thirty feet, down the steps, over thirty feet, up the next aisle, over thirty feet, down the next aisle. She waved her hand in a circle indicating that we should continue all around the stadium until she said stop. She said something abrupt that I did not understand, and then she clapped her hands, her white gloves muting the sound. Bowen took off and went up the bleachers three steps at a time. We followed—Hope, Little Mao, Dali, then me, and finally Random. Hope set a conservative pace. He didn’t skip any steps. Little Mao and Dali continued to gripe under their breath. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but after twenty minutes of going up and down hundreds of stairs, no one could spare any energy to complain. Everything had to be saved for the ordeal that lay ahead of us.

  After forty minutes I thought I had nothing left. After an hour I was sure that I couldn’t go any farther. I had ditched my hat after the first lap and sweat ribboned down my forehead and over my eyebrows and into my eyes. It stung but I had nothing to wipe the sweat away with. My light gray shirt had been turned a shade that was closer to black and it clung to my skin. I doubted there was a dry patch of skin anywhere on my body. My lungs burned and my breath came in gasps and my calves began to cramp. But even though our bodies were beginning to rebel, we kept running, lap after lap around that damn stadium.

  Madame Jiang had not moved from her position at the net post. I kept hoping that she would call time at an hour and fifteen minutes. There was a large clock at the end of the courts. I began to stare at the second hand, willing it closer and closer to the top. On the ascents, my legs had begun to feel uncoordinated and even the descents were getting difficult. We were all struggling by this point, all of us except Bowen. He was about to lap us a third time. His face showed no pain, only focus. Bowen would never let anyone, especially Madame Jiang, know. Each time he lapped me he said first in Chinese and then in English, “Jia you wai guo ren (Come on, foreigner).”

  By the fourth time he lapped us, he didn’t say anything, and I caught his eye as he passed, and I saw he was hurting and struggling to finish with the pace he had started. My legs were numb, and I didn’t even know where I was putting my feet anymore. Black and yellow smudge
s floated across my field of vision. Dali and I were lagging, and Madame Jiang clapped her hands again and yelled at us to speed up. 1:50. I watched the minute hand of the clock shudder and then click closer to the number 12. At 2:00 all of us, except Bowen, collapsed. Bowen kept going and then turned and looked behind himself at his fallen teammates. He stopped and walked back to us with as much of a jaunt in his step as he could muster. Little Mao held his side and was sucking in huge gulps of air with his mouth wide open. I bent over and threw up. Bowen stood while all the rest of us had crumpled over on benches or steps. He looked at Madame Jiang, and I was fearful he would challenge her with a statement like, “So what’s next,” and she would rise to the challenge and make us do something more. But he didn’t—whether out of self-preservation or regard for us, I couldn’t tell.

  Madame Jiang didn’t like the fact that she hadn’t broken him, but she wasn’t going to let us know that. She pointed to the indoor courts and told us to start warming up. Needless to say, practice was without any energy. We were all there physically, but everyone had checked out mentally, even Bowen. At the end of the practice she ordered us to play tiebreakers in a round-robin pattern. Normally tiebreakers were extremely competitive because it was your one chance to beat someone better than you if you had a fast start or got a few lucky breaks and, usually, everyone took a shot at Bowen. But on this day we played points expecting the customary outcome: Bowen was expected to beat us, and Dali would beat everyone except Bowen. Even Little Mao and Hope didn’t seem to care. Somehow while we were running up and down those steps the resentment toward Bowen had been transformed into anger at Madame Jiang.