中国体育体制得到外国专家认可
作
为中国体育运动方面的权威，苏珊•布朗奈尔(Susan Brownell)的资历在西方恐怕无人能比。在研究当代中国体育的西方学者中，她是唯一一个会用中文读写的。她已在中国生活多年，认识所有高层体育官员。此外，她还是一名国家级的美国田径运动员，并曾在中国参赛。
但生于弗吉尼亚的布朗奈尔得出了令许多西方人大跌眼镜的结论：她认为中国的体育体制并非许多媒体所描述的邪恶金牌机器。她还认为，中国不仅会举办一届出色的奥运会，也是一个值得尊敬的奥运会东道国，即便是西方因西藏问题而对之横加指责也无损于这一点。
布朗奈尔说：“现在正是中国举办奥运会的好时机。”她认为最近的骚乱能促使中国反思其对西藏及其他少数民族的政策。“中国如何应对，我们会拭目以待。”
Susan Brownell
事实上，她说连她母亲都对这本书有意见。
去年夏天，她审校这本书时，她回到家看望母亲，并让她也看一看。当布朗奈尔坐在楼上的阳台上看校样时，她听到母亲在下面的院子里大叫。
布朗奈尔说：“她朝楼上大喊自己的不同看法。她的观念就是，中国是个邪恶的政府，在人权、宗教自由等等方面压迫其人民。”
布朗奈尔并不否认中国存在问题，但她表示，许多西方批评言论都很虚伪，或是忽视了中国在许多领域所取得的巨大进步。另外，她还认为，中西双方未能互相理解是个悲剧。
布朗奈尔说：“当你看到中国人对未来抱有的更高的热情、理想和信心，然后看到国外的观念：认为中国是在维持自己的统治，只看到这里的空气污染、从小就培养运动员的机械体制──这就是认识的脱节。”
47岁的布朗奈尔是圣路易斯密苏里大学的人类学家，她最近还将国际奥委会唯一的中国成员何振梁的自传翻译成英文。而且她更进一步，有时会就如何更有效地与西方沟通向中国官员提出建议。
在以中国体育为研究对象的一小群学者中，布朗奈尔的立场是最乐观的。
马萨诸塞州艾姆赫斯特学院的教授阿伦•古特曼(Allen Guttmann)曾著书探讨体育史，他在一封回应质询的电子邮件中写道：“苏珊想要反对对中国的偏见，有时她似乎成了中国政府的辩护者。不过，我认为她大多数时候还是尽可能地做到客观。用人类学术语来说的话，我认为她并没有被同化。”
Susan Brownell在北京为其新作进行调研
在体育方面，她接受了五项全能和七项全能的训练。她参加了1980和1984年的奥运会试训，但未能入选。1985年，她以加州大学圣巴巴拉分校人类学研究生的身份来到中国。在中国期间，她参加了一支北京运动队，出战1986年全国大学生运动会。她获得了七项全能的金牌以及两枚银牌，这份惊人的成功让她成了“为北京争光的美国姑娘”。
当时她正准备参加1988年美国奥运会试训，那意味着要连续参加三场试训。但她认识到运动已不再是她的事业，并留在了北京。她说：“我只能说，我是一名人类学家，不是运动员。”
1995年，她写了一本书，内容是体育在中国的地位日渐重要，其中还讲述了她在中国体育界的经历。她说，参与中国体育让她明白，中国运动员与其他国家的运动员没有什么不同。
她说：“我参与过美国的花样滑冰，相信我，那里的孩子们也得成天训练，他们的父母也逼着他们。当我看到美国媒体上说中国的体育学校是‘痛苦的流水线’时，我觉得很荒唐。”
Susan Brownell（最左边）在1986
年全国大学生运动会中获奖
年全国大学生运动会中获奖
她说，西方记者还认为中国的很多事都很神秘，并将这一点作为得出各种主张或结论的借口。最近，美国一个国家级杂志的记者请她运用自己的关系给他弄一份中国对于运动员接受商业赞助的政策。半小时后，布朗奈尔就给那个记者发了一份──体育部门的网站上就有。她说：“人们想当然地认为这一切在中国都是不为人知的，但那只是因为他们不懂中文。”
同样，她也很怀疑说中国没有体育传统的结论，这一说法通常用来贬低中国的金牌数量。其论点是，中国参加奥运会只是为了为国争光，并不是真正出于体育传统。但布朗奈尔说，我们对奥林匹克运动所知的一切大多来自在希腊进行的考古研究。而这样的研究从未在中国开展过。
不过，只要随便翻翻书面记录，就会发现赛马、摔跤等一些体育运动在中国的一些朝代中占有重要的地位。布朗奈尔说：“中国被排除在体育历史之外。”
这解释了为何奥运会上缺少西方以外的运动，事实上，奥运会仅有的非西方运动项目就是日本的空手道（1964年东京奥运会被列为比赛项目）和韩国的跆拳道（1988年汉城奥运会被列为比赛项目）。中国试图让其本土的武术成为今年的比赛项目，但这一要求被拒绝了。
虽然布朗奈尔现在在大学任职，但她致力于理解甚至帮助中国的行动却并非总是为了自己的事业。她花了四年时间为中国的一家政府媒体翻译IOC成员何振梁的自传。她这样做是因为她觉得有种使命感，要从中国自己的角度去解释中国参与IOC工作的情况。她还为中国政府拍摄了面向外国人的奥运会广告。
她说：“中国人跟西方人交流确实存在问题。他们更为保守拘谨，也更小心翼翼。”
布朗奈尔作为富布莱特(Fullbright)奖助学者在北京居住了多年。她正在研究一本关于奥运会如何举办的书，并不时会在博客上写下自己的想法（http://thechinabeat.blogspot.com/）。美国驻华大使馆请她撰写一个博客，每半个月更新一次。
“我将自己的工作视为一座文化桥梁。我觉得，我所写的并非中国人所认为的，他们不会赞同我所说的一切，但我尽自己所能去代表他们的观点，让他们能够得到外国人的理解。”
Ian Johnson
China's Sports System Wins Scholar's Nod
SUSAN BROWNELL has qualifications that few can match as an authority on sports in China.
Alone among Western academics who study contemporary Chinese sports, she speaks and reads Chinese. She has lived in China for years and knows all the top Chinese sports officials. To top it off, she was a nationally ranked U.S. track and field athlete who also competed on Chinese teams.
But the Virginia native has a conclusion that many in the West might find surprising: that China's sports system isn't the evil medal machine portrayed in the popular press. She also thinks China will not only put on a good Olympics but is a worthy host in the best tradition of the Olympics -- even with the turmoil in the West over Tibet.
'The moment is right for China to hold the games,' says Ms. Brownell, who thinks the uproar can help push a rethink in China about its policy toward Tibet and other minorities. 'How it responds, we'll see.'
Ms. Brownell has laid out her views in her second book on China's sports system, 'Beijing's Games: What the Olympics Mean to China,' which was published in February. She says she expects the book to be widely criticized.
In fact, she says even her mother had trouble with the book.
Last summer, when she was revising the book, she went home to visit her mother and asked her to review it. While Ms. Brownell sat on an upstairs balcony reading proofs, she began to hear her mother on the patio below.
'She'd yell upstairs her disapproval,' Ms. Brownell says. 'It was the idea that China is an evil government that oppresses its people -- human rights, religious freedom and so on.'
Ms. Brownell doesn't dispute that China has problems, but she says many Western criticisms are hypocritical or ignore the huge progress China has made in many fields. More than that, she sees the two sides' failure to understand each other as a tragedy.
'When you see the enthusiasm, the idealism and the faith in a better future and then when you look at the perception abroad -- that it's propping up a regime, air pollution, child-athletes factories -- there is a disjuncture,' says Ms. Brownell.
A 47-year-old anthropologist at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, Ms. Brownell has also recently translated into English the biography of China's only member of the International Olympic Committee. And she has gone further, sometimes advising Chinese officials on how to be more effective in communicating with the West.
In the small world of academics who write on sports in China, Ms. Brownell's positions are by far the most optimistic.
'Susan wants to counteract prejudices against the PRC and she seems, sometimes, to become an apologist for the regime,' wrote Allen Guttmann, a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts who has written on sports history, in an email answer to a query. 'Mostly, however, I think she's about as objective as is possible. I don't think, in anthropological jargon, that she's 'gone native.''
Ms. Brownell says some of her sympathy for China comes from her personal athletic and educational background. She grew up on a farm near the impoverished Appalachian mountains in Lexington, Virginia. That was before the Title IX federal act required schools to give girls equal access to sports. She ran on the boys track team in high school and went to University of Virginia on a full athletic scholarship. She was immediately attracted to anthropology because she felt it tried to understand other cultures rather than immediately judge them.
In sports, her disciplines were the pentathlon and heptathlon. She competed in the 1980 and 1984 Olympic trials but didn't make the team. She went to China the next year as a graduate student in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. While in China, she competed for a team made up of Beijing athletes in the 1986 National College Games. Her stunning success -- she won a gold in the heptathlon and two silvers -- earned her the sobriquet of 'The American Girl Who Won Glory for Beijing.'
She was on her way to qualifying for the 1988 U.S. Olympic trials, which would have meant an impressive three straight trials. But she realized that it wasn't her profession anymore and stayed on in China. 'I had to say I am an anthropologist, not an athlete,' she said.
In 1995, she came out with a book on the growing importance of sport in China, which also recounted her adventures in Chinese athletics. She said participating in China made her realize that Chinese athletes are hardly different from other countries'.
'I got involved in figure skating in the U.S. and believe me, the children there are up at all hours practicing, and the parents are pushing them, too,' she says. 'When I see things like 'assembly line of pain' in the U.S. media to describe Chinese sports schools, I think it's ridiculous.'
One of the main problems, she says, is that the people who write about Chinese sports know very little about China. 'One of the problems really is sports journalism,' she says. 'Most sports journalists are commentators and don't really investigate.'
Western reporters, she says, also assume that much is secret in China and use that as an excuse to make all sorts of claims or generalizations. She was recently asked by a reporter for a national U.S. magazine to use her contacts to get him a copy of China's policy on athletes' commercial endorsements. Half an hour later, Ms. Brownell emailed the reporter a copy -- it had been on the sport authority's Internet site. 'People assume it's all secret in China but that's only because they can't read Chinese,' she says.
Likewise, she views skeptically generalizations about Chinese not having a sports history -- a critique often made to debase China's gold-medal haul. The argument is that China participates in the Olympics only to win national glory and not out of any legitimate sporting tradition. But Ms. Brownell says that most of what we know about the Olympics is due to over a century of intense archaeological work in Greece. That sort of work has never been done in China, she says.
A cursory glance at the written record, however, shows that some sports, such as horse racing and wrestling, played key roles in some of the dynasties that ruled China. 'China has been written out of sports history,' she says.
This accounts for the lack of non-Western sports in the Olympics -- in fact, the only explicitly non-Western sports are karate from Japan (introduced at the 1964 Tokyo games) and tae kwan do from Korea (introduced at the 1988 Seoul games). China tried to get its own form of martial arts, wushu, introduced this year, but the request was turned down.
Although she now has tenure at the university, her efforts to understand -- and even help -- China haven't always been to her professional advantage. She spent four years translating the biography of IOC member He Zhenliang for a government-run press in China. She did it because she 'felt a sense of mission' to explain China's IOC involvement from its point of view. She has also screened government Olympic ads aimed at foreigners.
'Chinese do have trouble communicating with Westerners,' she says. 'They are more reserved and formal and careful.'
Ms. Brownell is in Beijing for the year on a Fulbright grant. She is researching a book on how the Games played out and putting down her thoughts occasionally on a blog. (http://thechinabeat.blogspot.com/) The U.S. Embassy in Beijing has asked her to write a biweekly blog.
'I view my work as a cultural bridge. I assume that how I write is not how Chinese people see it, and they wouldn't agree with everything, but I do my best to represent their views so they can be understood by English speakers.'
Ian Johnson
Alone among Western academics who study contemporary Chinese sports, she speaks and reads Chinese. She has lived in China for years and knows all the top Chinese sports officials. To top it off, she was a nationally ranked U.S. track and field athlete who also competed on Chinese teams.
But the Virginia native has a conclusion that many in the West might find surprising: that China's sports system isn't the evil medal machine portrayed in the popular press. She also thinks China will not only put on a good Olympics but is a worthy host in the best tradition of the Olympics -- even with the turmoil in the West over Tibet.
'The moment is right for China to hold the games,' says Ms. Brownell, who thinks the uproar can help push a rethink in China about its policy toward Tibet and other minorities. 'How it responds, we'll see.'
Ms. Brownell has laid out her views in her second book on China's sports system, 'Beijing's Games: What the Olympics Mean to China,' which was published in February. She says she expects the book to be widely criticized.
In fact, she says even her mother had trouble with the book.
Last summer, when she was revising the book, she went home to visit her mother and asked her to review it. While Ms. Brownell sat on an upstairs balcony reading proofs, she began to hear her mother on the patio below.
'She'd yell upstairs her disapproval,' Ms. Brownell says. 'It was the idea that China is an evil government that oppresses its people -- human rights, religious freedom and so on.'
Ms. Brownell doesn't dispute that China has problems, but she says many Western criticisms are hypocritical or ignore the huge progress China has made in many fields. More than that, she sees the two sides' failure to understand each other as a tragedy.
'When you see the enthusiasm, the idealism and the faith in a better future and then when you look at the perception abroad -- that it's propping up a regime, air pollution, child-athletes factories -- there is a disjuncture,' says Ms. Brownell.
A 47-year-old anthropologist at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, Ms. Brownell has also recently translated into English the biography of China's only member of the International Olympic Committee. And she has gone further, sometimes advising Chinese officials on how to be more effective in communicating with the West.
In the small world of academics who write on sports in China, Ms. Brownell's positions are by far the most optimistic.
'Susan wants to counteract prejudices against the PRC and she seems, sometimes, to become an apologist for the regime,' wrote Allen Guttmann, a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts who has written on sports history, in an email answer to a query. 'Mostly, however, I think she's about as objective as is possible. I don't think, in anthropological jargon, that she's 'gone native.''
Ms. Brownell says some of her sympathy for China comes from her personal athletic and educational background. She grew up on a farm near the impoverished Appalachian mountains in Lexington, Virginia. That was before the Title IX federal act required schools to give girls equal access to sports. She ran on the boys track team in high school and went to University of Virginia on a full athletic scholarship. She was immediately attracted to anthropology because she felt it tried to understand other cultures rather than immediately judge them.
In sports, her disciplines were the pentathlon and heptathlon. She competed in the 1980 and 1984 Olympic trials but didn't make the team. She went to China the next year as a graduate student in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. While in China, she competed for a team made up of Beijing athletes in the 1986 National College Games. Her stunning success -- she won a gold in the heptathlon and two silvers -- earned her the sobriquet of 'The American Girl Who Won Glory for Beijing.'
She was on her way to qualifying for the 1988 U.S. Olympic trials, which would have meant an impressive three straight trials. But she realized that it wasn't her profession anymore and stayed on in China. 'I had to say I am an anthropologist, not an athlete,' she said.
In 1995, she came out with a book on the growing importance of sport in China, which also recounted her adventures in Chinese athletics. She said participating in China made her realize that Chinese athletes are hardly different from other countries'.
'I got involved in figure skating in the U.S. and believe me, the children there are up at all hours practicing, and the parents are pushing them, too,' she says. 'When I see things like 'assembly line of pain' in the U.S. media to describe Chinese sports schools, I think it's ridiculous.'
One of the main problems, she says, is that the people who write about Chinese sports know very little about China. 'One of the problems really is sports journalism,' she says. 'Most sports journalists are commentators and don't really investigate.'
Western reporters, she says, also assume that much is secret in China and use that as an excuse to make all sorts of claims or generalizations. She was recently asked by a reporter for a national U.S. magazine to use her contacts to get him a copy of China's policy on athletes' commercial endorsements. Half an hour later, Ms. Brownell emailed the reporter a copy -- it had been on the sport authority's Internet site. 'People assume it's all secret in China but that's only because they can't read Chinese,' she says.
Likewise, she views skeptically generalizations about Chinese not having a sports history -- a critique often made to debase China's gold-medal haul. The argument is that China participates in the Olympics only to win national glory and not out of any legitimate sporting tradition. But Ms. Brownell says that most of what we know about the Olympics is due to over a century of intense archaeological work in Greece. That sort of work has never been done in China, she says.
A cursory glance at the written record, however, shows that some sports, such as horse racing and wrestling, played key roles in some of the dynasties that ruled China. 'China has been written out of sports history,' she says.
This accounts for the lack of non-Western sports in the Olympics -- in fact, the only explicitly non-Western sports are karate from Japan (introduced at the 1964 Tokyo games) and tae kwan do from Korea (introduced at the 1988 Seoul games). China tried to get its own form of martial arts, wushu, introduced this year, but the request was turned down.
Although she now has tenure at the university, her efforts to understand -- and even help -- China haven't always been to her professional advantage. She spent four years translating the biography of IOC member He Zhenliang for a government-run press in China. She did it because she 'felt a sense of mission' to explain China's IOC involvement from its point of view. She has also screened government Olympic ads aimed at foreigners.
'Chinese do have trouble communicating with Westerners,' she says. 'They are more reserved and formal and careful.'
Ms. Brownell is in Beijing for the year on a Fulbright grant. She is researching a book on how the Games played out and putting down her thoughts occasionally on a blog. (http://thechinabeat.blogspot.com/) The U.S. Embassy in Beijing has asked her to write a biweekly blog.
'I view my work as a cultural bridge. I assume that how I write is not how Chinese people see it, and they wouldn't agree with everything, but I do my best to represent their views so they can be understood by English speakers.'
Ian Johnson