Located right in the middle of downtown Beijing, Beijing Shichahai Sports School is quite unassuming from the outside amid bustling bars as well as imperial residences swarming with tourists. If not for a large stone with its name imprinted on it at the entrance of the school, one would easily miss it from the street.

Even with its nameplate, the school is still not very familiar to many. Only if someone cares to look it up, will he or she notice that the school's name appears in the biographies of some big names in sports. For instance, it is the alma mater of kungfu superstar Jet Li and a host of Chinese Olympic gold medalists.

Since its establishment in 1958, the school has produced hundreds of national champions and over 30 world champions, and is regarded as the "cradle of champions."

Humble beginnings

After the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the PRC started developing sports to address its absence at major international sports events. China had never won a medal at the Olympic Games, and the country was eager to change this situation.

In 1958, Shichahai Amateur Sports School was set up as a recreational center for students to play sports after school.

There were coaches for different sports. As part of the effort to build professional sports in the newly established republic, coaches visited almost every elementary school in Beijing on bicycles, looking for potential athletes.

Lu Yan, a Beijing local born in 1964, was selected in 1971, when she was in second grade. "The coach said I had great potential for martial arts, but I had no idea what martial arts were at the time," Lu told Beijing Review. "I thought it was similar to gymnastics and went directly to the gymnastics class on my first day of training."

There were two martial arts coaches at that time: Li Junfeng, who later became Lu's coach, and Wu Bin, who taught Jet Li, Lu's teammate.

As Lu recalled, the facilities at the school in those days were extremely rudimentary. "We didn't have any real areas for training in the early 1970s," Lu said. "The ground was just plain packed earth, but we just kept practicing under these harsh conditions."

Lu was the youngest in the team, and as she acquired more understanding of and practice in martial arts, she gradually got into the sport, which in the next few years brought her unexpected surprises.

In 1974, two years after U.S. President Richard Nixon visited China, Lu, Jet Li and another teammate were selected to go to the United States for a martial arts demonstration.

"We went to four cities: Honolulu, San Francisco, New York City and Washington, D.C., and got a warm welcome everywhere we went," Lu said. "We were the first martial arts group from the Chinese mainland and at that time, martial arts were still novel to Americans."

On their return, the Beijing Martial Art Team was formally set up at Shichahai. It was during this time that Lu decided to make martial arts her career. Her schedule consisted of half day of academic classes at a nearby school and half day of training at Shichahai.

She later participated in many national competitions and won several medals. In the 1980s, Lu enrolled in Beijing Sport University and after graduating in 1990, became a professional martial arts coach.

"The experience at Shichahai Sports School totally changed my life," Lu said.

Ma Yanhong, an Olympic gold medalist, also regards the school as a life changer. In 1970, she was selected as a potential top gymnast by a coach from the school and started her professional sports training and life.

In 1978, Ma was part of China's national women's gymnastics team and won a gold medal at the Asian Games. A year later, she won another gold medal at the World Gymnastics Championships, becoming the first Chinese gymnast to do so. In 1984, she added to her historic career by becoming the first gymnast from China to win an Olympic gold at the Los Angeles Olympic Summer Games.

Along with her gold medal, China also won 14 other gold medals at the 1984 Games, boosting domestic sports development. In 1986, Shichahai Amateur Sports School was transformed from a recreational center into an elite sports school and changed its name to Beijing Shichahai Sports School.

The alumni

It was also in 1986 that Feng Kun, who later became a core player of the national women's volleyball team, joined Shichahai. She was 8 years old.

"Shichahai Sports School is where my dream took root," Feng said.

Initially interested in track and field, Feng's first choice in sports was not volleyball. Wang Guilan, the school's volleyball coach, saw Feng's potential and persuaded her to join the volleyball class.

Wang had coached Lang Ping, a household name in China who was part of the first national women's volleyball team that won an unprecedented five gold medals in world competitions during the 1980s. Today, Lang is head coach of the current women's volleyball team in China.

In 1994, Feng was selected for Beijing's volleyball team, embarking on her professional career.

In the same year, Zhang Yining, a table tennis player, was training professionally at Shichahai. Born in 1981, Zhang started her table tennis career at 5. Unlike Lu and Feng, who initially had vague ideas about the sports they eventually excelled in, Zhang was very clear that table tennis was her love from an early age.

"The training in Shichahai Sports School was very important to me," Zhang said. "It deepened my understanding of table tennis from a game to a sport."

In 1995, after training in Shichahai for four years, Zhang joined the Beijing table tennis team. Two years later, she joined the national team. In 2004, at the Athens Olympic Summer Games, she won two gold medals. It was also during this Olympic Games that Feng and her teammates won the gold medal, reviving the spirit of the Chinese women's volleyball team.

Luo Wei, who was a gold medalist in taekwondo at the 2004 Athens Games, is also from Shichahai and was part of the first group of taekwondo trainees.

The taekwondo team was set up in 1997 and was made up of only 13 people including the coaches. "We didn't have our own training facilities and could only use the other training areas when no one else was using them," Luo said, adding that all her memories of those days were filled with incredibly harsh training.

But the work paid off as Zhang won two gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games. He Kexin, a gymnast from the school, also won gold in 2008.

Even with all these shining sports stars, Shichahai maintains a low profile and doesn't talk to the media much.

"The school has changed fundamentally in the past 61 years," Lu said. "Now it has many types of training courses for trainees from all over the world with much more professional facilities. As a graduate from the school, I believe more excellent athletes will come out of here in the future."

Copyedited by Rebeca Toledo

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