As the 2008 Olympic Sailing Games were held in Qingdao, the entire world has recognized the Qingdao people’s love and passion for sports. 8 years later, when the Olympic Games will be held in Brazil, a shooting team working for the International Olympic Committee has recently come again to Qingdao to take a documentary on the Olympic Games and unveil the brand new life state of Qingdao young athletes to the entire world.

    Qingdao sports won good graces

    In the indoor track field of Qingdao sports school, we met Eric, the director of the documentary and his crew from America. A few days ago they just finished shooting the Chinese table tennis team. Eric told us that he was under the assignment of the International Olympic Committee to make a documentary about Chinese sports. Besides paying attention to Chinese advantageous sports, the documentary will also focus on competitive sports training at the grass roots level. In the past, the Chinese competitive sports were usually associated with high intensity, enormous pressure, extreme rigor, but lack of cultural education and Chinese athletes seemed to always live in agony. Nowadays, Chinese athletes have performed better and better in the international competition arenas and displayed the traits of being open-minded, self-confident, optimistic and knowledgeable. Therefore we want to know the realest training state and mentality of the young generation of Chinese athletes.

    Before shooting, Eric has made a lot of preparations. He found that Qingdao sports school was the most representative in China in both hard facilities and soft teaching capabilities. Meanwhile Qingdao is the birthplace of many Olympic gold medal and other medal winners. Therefore the shooting crew decided to locate themselves in Qingdao. Eric also said because Qingdao hosted the 2008 Olympic Sailing Games, people wanted to know in the 8 years after the Olympic Sailing Games, what changes have taken place in Qingdao. All of these are the elements he wished to show in the documentary.

    During the 4 days in Qingdao, the shooting crew came to the Qingdao sports school, Tiantai Gym and Olympic Sailing Center for views. In addition, Eric contacted Zhang Juanjuan who won the first Olympic gold medal for Qingdao and planned to have an exclusive interview with her.

    A 11-year-old girl under the camera

    On the first shooting day, Eric came to the Qingdao sports school on July 4th. They were busy shooting all day along and had their lunch and supper directly at the school canteen. Eric found it very satisfactory by saying: “We need to use the most down-to-earth means to shoot any documentary. Only in this way can we present the realest state of the objects under shooting.” During one day’s of shooting, Eric specially chose sports items including pole vault, boxing and archery and interviewees were all young athletes born in the 1990s and 2000s. In addition, he showed keen interest in cultural courses given in the sports school. “This morning we interviewed a young English teacher. We want to know from her the attitude of the new generation of Chinese athletes on culture learning.”

    During the interview of athletes, Yang Minshu, an 11-year-old girl, attracted the attention of Eric. Yang Minshu is the youngest athlete in the pole vault team of Qingdao sports school and under the guidance of coach Zhao Mingqiang. Yang Xiusen, Yang Minshu’s father, is the coach of the wrestling team of Qingdao sports school.

    Regardless of her young age, Yang Minshu is a “veteran” in the sports circle. According to him, because he and his wife were both trained as athletes, after their daughter war born, she lives with us all the time in the yard of Qingdao sports school. Before practicing pole vault, Yang Minshu used to practice trampoline and diving and she has won the champion of diving in the Shandong provincial games. Because of the job transfer, all the family of Yang Xiusen moved from Jinan to Qingdao last year but the sport career of their daughter has not been suspended. On the contrary, she took the advantage. She firstly practiced taekwondo for a while and then switched to pole vault.