Excellently informative news from Seah Chiang Nee:
Li Jiawei
She's leaving and that's that
If what is surmised is true and she's going for good, it’ll be a
big setback for Singapore's overseas medal-scouting ventures. red
sports.
Oct 15, 2008
By Sports Fan
A member of the public, Edmund Lin, wrote to a local newspaper (see
full letter below) about Li Jiawei’s probable departure for Beijing
to get married and pursue her studies.
I
couldn’t help being amused by Edmund Lin’s last paragraph in which
he wondered whether the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA)
and the Singapore Sports Council (SSC) will pull out all the stops
to encourage Li to stay on and contribute to the local sports
scene.
Let’s
be realistic.
There
is NOTHING that the STTA and the SSC can do to keep Li in Singapore
simply because she does not have a sense of belonging to the
country beyond table tennis. In fact, I wonder whether Li has ever
felt a sense of belonging to Singapore in the first
place.
Don’t
get me wrong. The above sentence is not - I repeat - not a
criticism of her.
But
it harks back to my previous postings of what the Singapore
passport and the pink identity card means to all these foreign
sports talents who have been scouted and brought in by some of our
national sports associations (in particular, the Singapore Table
Tennis Association and the Singapore Badminton
Association).
As
I wrote previously, the Singapore passport, in such instances, is
just the symbol of the exchange of services that takes place
between the foreign-born athlete and the National Sporting
Association (NSA).
The
NSA offers the foreign-born athlete citizenship and the chance to
represent a country at the highest levels of competition,
opportunities which will not come the athlete’s way if he or she
continues to stay in his or her country.
This
offer also includes many lovely carrots too, namely all the
financial rewards that can be reaped from winning international
competitions.
In
return, the foreign-born athlete offers the NSA the best years of
his/her life as a professional athlete, and immerses
himself/herself in a life that revolves only around training,
competition and bringing sporting success to the
country.
After
several years of servitude, the foreign-born athlete decides to
retire or stop playing. When that happens, there’s nothing left to
attach him or her to the country. Why? Because it’s just the end of
a well-paying playing contract.
The
foreign-born athlete decides it’s time to go home to his/her
country of origin - and Singapore sports fans throw up their arms
in despair because the numerous sporting honours that the athlete
has won for Singapore suddenly seems hollow and
meaningless.
Sense of belonging
- never likely
Coming
back to Li - how could one have ever expected her to feel a sense
of belonging to Singapore when each and every single day of her 15
years here was spent either in training or travelling overseas to
represent Singapore in competition?
I
am given to understand that she never had any form of public or
private education here, and spent many years living in STTA
quarters. So the chances of her interacting with Singaporeans on a
daily basis were minimal at best.
It’s
also why even after 15 years, she is still only seen and heard
speaking in Mandarin and can barely utter a sentence in
English/Singlish.
Also,
look at who she has (publicly) fallen in love with in the time she
has been here: first it was Ronald Susilo. Now, it’s this Beijing
businessman. One can only conclude from here that she is only able
to identify with a fellow foreign-born athlete or with a fellow
Chinese national.
So,
really, could one really expect Li to continue living in Singapore
after wrapping up her playing career?
Once
again, the people at fault here would have to be the STTA officials
and to a certain extent, the SSC.
And
let me clarify: when I say STTA officials, I don’t mean Lee Bee
Wah, who became the NSA’s new president in July, and her management
team.
I
mean the people of the previous regime - in this case, the ones
responsible for scounting her and bringing her in 15 years ago and
who have been looking after her development as a player.
Clearly,
there were no efforts by them to help the likes of Li and her
fellow foreign sports talents to get to know their new country
better. It doesn’t look as though the SSC did much either to ensure
that the STTA do a better job of integrating their new citizens
with their new country.
So
now, the STTA, the SSC and Singapore sports find themselves finally
reaping what they have sown. And my, my, what a bitter harvest it
is turning out to be, hey?
Silver
meal: A sour taste
What’s
worse, there’s nothing both organisations can do now by way of
damage control. Because the damage was done a long ago.
And
as a result, slowly but surely, the sweet euphoria of winning that
Olympic silver medal in Beijing is starting to leave a bitter
aftertaste in the mouth. The sense of national pride in that
achievement is starting to deflate and the win is now increasingly
looking like a hollow victory.
Can
you imagine what you will be telling your children or even your
grandchildren in future if they should ever ask about this historic
sporting achievement?
Can
you imagine yourself saying: “Yes, we won an Olympic medal after 48
long years. But most of the players who won it for us have all gone
back to China. I don’t know what they are doing now.”
Better
start practising - because it’s going to happen.
Even
heroine Feng may leave
Because
now that national women’s table tennis coach Liu Guodong has
huffily rejected a new contact with the STTA (see report here), the
word is out that his protege, Feng Tianwei, regarded by many
Singaporeans as the true heroine of the Singapore team’s capture of
the Olympic silver medal, may soon leave to join him wherever he
goes (they have a very close relationship, apparently).
Well,
like I said, we are now reaping what was callously sowed by the
previous regime of the STTA.
Nice
feeling, hey?
redsports
Comments
singaporesportsfan says:
To be honest, there’s nothing wrong in trying to make a living out
of sports. If a country is willing to let you represent it and help
you to make a living out of it, then why not.
But I am starting to conclude that it is the national sports
association that is at fault when these foreign-born athletes
decide to leave Singapore when their playing careers are
over.
What has the NSA done to help them to feel a sense of belonging to
Singapore? If the NSA has been remiss in this, then really, the
real betrayers of Singapore - and Singapore sport - are its
officials, not these athletes.
Like I said, we are now paying the price for these NSAs’ relentless
pursuit of personal glory.
Now the next question has to be asked: did they really want to
achieve something for Singapore, or was it for their own glory and
bragging rights ie the chance to swagger around and boast: “Hey, it
was me that helped Singapore to win that Olympic medal, you
know?”
watanabe says:
They are Singaprean, aint they? These foreign has no sense of
belonging to Singapore. You call them Singaporeans but what they
have in heart is the $$$-dollars that Singapore can provide…
When you buy service byusing $$$ it is very natural that the
loyalty is very short and weak.
It is like marrying a woman who only sees the old man’s money, no
love just sex in exchange for wealth.
jan says:
This is so true.
It’s funny how Singapore fails to ‘retain’ the Chinese talent,
which is never an issue for other nations that take in foreign
talents from China. I mean, I do not think that the Chinese foreign
talents I know in France, Germany or Netherlands or other European
nations do ‘identify’ with the country too, yet they stay on.
BUT, I do notice that these Chinese nationals have all picked up
the local language because there is no way they can survive
speaking in their mother tongue unlike in Singapore.
So this makes me consider how this ‘retaining talent’ issue mght
have to do with the complex issue of how Singaporeans also struggle
in defining a ‘national identity’, so I think it is even tougher
for these foreign talents to identify with the country no matter
what is implemented to ‘assimilate’ them.
Even the younger Singaporean generation themselves struggle with
identifying with the nation too, hence brain draining
overseas.
Moreover, Singapore being the pragmatic society it is, the
prospects of retiring as a sports personnel is very bleak, which
explains why the local youths are not encouraged to pursue a
full-time sporting career.
I trust there may be the prospects of a well-paying coaching
contract, however, if it is implicated with the issue of marriage,
then it is a different story altogether.
I mean, recent statistics show that, Singapore is not doing that
well in ensuring that Singaporean women marry locally, Li’s choice
doesn’t come to me as a surprise at all.
http://redsports.sg/2008/10/15/li-jiawei-table-tennis/
