Thursday, August 14, 2008

Culture Clash: Women's Gymnastics Team Medal Ceremony

On Tuesday August 12, 2008, during the medal ceremony for the women's gymnastics team competition, NBC's commentators drifted beyond discussing the sport of gymnastics and stepped into some cultural commentary.

I've watched quite a bit of the coverage and so far I've heard relatively little that has been critical of China or the Chinese government.

But when the little girls of the Chinese team were being awarded their medals, the conversation went like this:

TIM DAGGETT: You know these girls, these Chinese, young girls, they really are a family. They train together. They live together.

AL TRAUTWIG: A big part of that, Tim, is the one-child families that they come from.

DAGGETT: Exactly.

ELFI SCHLEGEL: They probably know each other better than their parents do.

DAGGETT: They're sisters in a country where that rarely happens.

In just a few sentences, Dagget, Trautwig, and Schlegel touched on dramatic cultural differences between the Free World and China's authoritarian system.

They covered China's one-child birth control policy, the rarity of having a sister in a country that doesn't value female offspring, and China's sports program that removes children from their homes and rips them from their families, setting them on a path of strict training. They see their parents only a few times each year.

Read more about "Project 119."

The Chinese training methods have led to athletic greatness, but at what price?

The price of China's gold medal in women's gymnastics was extremely high.

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Watch the medal ceremony.

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