Guest Blogger: Let’s Be Proud of Lang Ping
Lang Ping is receiving a lot of criticism from Chinese netizens after the USA women’s volleyball team she coached defeated the Chinese team. There are people calling her a traitor, or accusing her of breaking Chinese people’s hearts.
I really don’t see that any anger is necessary. Lang Ping has done her part to lead the Chinese women’s volleyball team to win a world championship and later help to coach a new Chinese team. Her contribution and achievement as a member of China’s national team is impeccable.
Living and working in the U.S. was her personal choice, to which she is totally entitled. As an athlete not born and raised in America, she managed to continue to shine with her talent and became the head coach of the national team of the U.S. It’s not hard to imagine that she had to overcome a lot of challenges, including language, culture and pressure from her home country. And yet, again, she made prominent achievements.
Coaching a national team to compete on the international stage isn’t easy at all. It is even harder when leading a team not from her home country and competing with many top coaches from around the world, most of whom, as it turns out, happen to be male. Still, Lang Ping is doing a great job, leading her team to advance to the semi-final at the Beijing Olympics.
Winning is not just about getting the points. Watching the American women’s volleyball players playing with such upbeat attitude and excitement, I can tell that Lang Ping taught them not just skills, but also passion for the game. And I believe it was passion for volleyball that sustained Lang Ping to overcome all the difficulties to succeed in her career, gave her the courage to lead the US team to compete in China, and perhaps the heart to tolerate so many harsh words throwing at her from her fellow Chinese.
I admire her capability to excel, her courage to choose her own life, and her professionalism as well as passion to pursue the career she loves. She is successful, graceful, and professional, and we should be proud of her.
Very likely the women’s volleyball final will be between China and U.S. As a Chinese, I certainly hope that the Chinese team, which is also a incredible team with a terrific coach, Chen Zhonghe, will win. But I will be happy, too, if Lang Ping’s team gets the gold. Because, after all, she is a world champion from China, and a remarkable individual as well.
(By Josie Liu. This is cross-posted on the China in Transition blog.)
POSTED COMMENTS: 5 Responses
This is crazy. she is making her life at best possible and she did i in USA with her excellent coaching. they should rather be feeling proud.. i am sick of hearing those nationalism… and so on.
[...] the U.S. team’s coach, Jenny Lang Ping, a star of China’s 1984 gold medal team, has been called a traitor after her U.S. team beat China during preliminary rounds of competition. And when Chinese teams [...]
This is an interesting phenomenon that someone should research in-depth. Other examples abound:
* the manager of China’s baseball team is American
* Becky Hammon couldn’t make the US women’s basketball team, so she’s playing for Russia
* Shawn Johnson’s coach is from China
* the swimmer that Michael Phelps out-touched by 1/100th of a second is an American swimming for Serbia (who, incidentally, chose not to put his and over his heart when the US national anthem was played).
* pretty much all of Jamaica’s amazing sprinters are trained in the US
Are any of the above people being accused as traitors in blogs?
Do some countries take this issue more seriously than others?
How much does one’s citizenship really matter in the Olympics?
This would make an interesting term paper for an undergraduate sociology course.
I remind the naysaying Chinese commentors that China has hired many foreign coaches in the past. How do they reconcile those actions?
Re:Phil
They don’t reconcile their own actions. At all. That’s what nationalists do, they accuse and defame, without regard to reality.
I’m glad to see that many Chinese posters rejected this antiquated hateful attack upon Lang Ping.