The unhappy childhood of our king of the ring

Zou Shiming achieved two major breakthroughs in Chinese boxing history when he won a bronze medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and then went on to become the country's first world boxing champion in 2005. But few know that his childhood dream was to become a chivalrous martial artist.

Zou was born in 1980 in Zunyi, the city in which Mao Zedong was made chairman of the Communist Party of China (CPC), in Southwest China's Guizhou Province.

He was raised by strict parents. His father worked in a State-owned factory, and he recalls that when he was young, he became upset with his mother, who was a kindergarten teacher. Because she was always patient with other children while being stern with him, even with the most trivial matters.

"Sometimes I felt she was so strict that I didn't want to go home after school," he says.

Every day, he thought about breaking free from his mother's control, and at age 13, he enrolled in a martial arts boarding school.

"I was then too young to understand my parents' great expectations of me," he says.

At the school, Zou majored in wushu taolu, or "established series of skills and stunts in martial arts". He attributes his involvement with martial arts to his unhappy childhood.

"People always said I was pretty and looked like a girl," he recalls. "It hurt me a lot, so I swore that I would become an athlete in the future."

But over time, he found that his martial arts program at the school was more about form than function and didn't match the breathtaking stunts he'd seen on martial arts TV dramas.

So, after two years of studying wushu taolu, he shifted to boxing. And he knew he had made the right move after he took second place in a provincial-level boxing match after only three months' training.

In 1999, he became a sparring partner for the national team. He learned quickly, and his technique improved rapidly.

Zou stood out in a national competition in 2000 when he defeated his seed partner. And he has since reigned supreme in the national-level light flyweight division (with a maximum weight of 48 kilograms).

The turning point in Zou's athletic career began in 2003 and 2004, which also became critical years for Chinese boxing as a sport.

Before then, the top place won by a Chinese boxer in a world competition was fifth place in the heavyweight category (with a maximum weight of 91 kilograms) in the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

It was a pivotal moment when Zou won the silver medal in the world championship in Thailand in 2003, using an array of techniques that took the world by surprise.

"Chinese athletes are not as physically strong as the European counterparts," says Zou's coach Zhang Chuanliang. "But we are quick and deft, and we should capitalize on this advantage in order to compensate the physical disparity."

For Zou, boxing is a sport that's more about brains than brawn.

"I like the face-to-face counter strike," he says of his favorite technique.

And for him, there's nothing greater in the world than facing an opponent in the ring.

"Boxing is the ultimate men's sport," he says. "When I am standing in the ring, I feel like I'm at the center of the world. All eyes are on me, and it's a fantastic feeling."

(China Daily 09/27/2007 page19)