Thursday, January 05, 2006

A tiny girl of the poor

Remember it well, she is called Bi Binbin. Not many people have heard of her name outside China, especially those not following the development of Xiangqi. She was born into a poor family, one day of January in 1985, her poor father was an orphan, her mother was hard pressed in her life most of the time. When little Binbin came to this world, her mother could not feed her tiny baby with her milk, the baby was sustained during the first few weeks of her life with water, sprinkled with just a few grains of sugar. Lack of minimum nourishment and daily needs of other items retarded unnecessarily her physical development.

Now it happened that the inhabitants of the small village in southern Hubei, where Binbin was born were, from time too long to recall in memory, ardent Xiangqi enthusiasts, thus if other children have beautiful toys and happy little friends to play with, she was to know only a few chess pieces as her playing toys and playing companions. Her father, impressed by her unusual attachment to the game at an earfly age, decided to train his daughter to become a strong Xiangqi player, contemplating no doubt that the game could one day brings glory and wealth to her beloved daughter and the family.

The decision was made. The hard training started almost immediately, no time to be wasted. During the day, Binbin was forced to learn the basics of the game, mostly theoretical and more theories from her father, who adopted a severe attitude in teaching her student daughter, then in the evening, she has to accompany her father out in order to watch others play. In reality the family could not afford to pay for a chess tutor proper. With this system of primitive training, a few months later, for the first time Binbin won a game against an adult -- one of her uncles!

Binbin's reputation as a child prodigy was growing fast, and before long she was already a village 'professional' Xiangqi player, winning more and more of her games, defeating more and more of grown up players, by then she was earning 'pocket money' of 20~30 yuan everyday, the family's living condition markedly improved. Long hours of serious play, at the same time not to neglect her school lessons and homeworks, Binbin had to balance her life between the chess pieces and exercise books. Playing and studying almost hundred of games everyday, the chess training was really a hardest work, very few people can imagined what this pressure of living looked like.

In 1994 she competed in the Hubei Provincial Sports's Xiangqi Tournament and won silver. In 1995 at the Hubei Provincial Agriculture Sports, she won gold, and a silver medal in the 'Piao Liu Cup' National Youth Championship, held in Lechang -- at that tournament, she led all the way up to round 6, and then fainted due to intense concentration, stress and bad health combined, she inevitably lost the vital game. No longer able to hold herself, she shed tears when she received her big trophy on stage, with her tiny frame, facing the arrays of cameras of Central TV and Guangdong TV and many others, it was too emotional, million of TV audience were moved and shaken by her story of struggle and misfortune.

Many people, including some Xiangqi masters, could not understand how Binbin achieved such brilliant results without formal chess training. It is left to her father who pointed out that Binbin grows up in a most unusual environment and trained under a most unusual system. For Binbin, she has her dream of her own too, she wanted to go to university, to improve her life, to be able to give her mother and sister the best medical care, to let her father live a little bit more comfortable . . .

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