FEATURE | Jia Rui – From teenage athlete to gold medalist

Jia Rui poses for reporters after winning a gold medal at the 2010 Asian Games

With his casual wear and nice manners, Jia Rui looks like just any young person in Macau. But the 27-year-old is in fact a champion of martial arts, specializing in the quick and elegant maneuvering of rods, swords and other traditional kung-fu equipment.
As Macau’s leading wushu athlete for the last decade, Jia has won gold medals at the Asian Games, East Asian Games and other international events.
This year, Jia will retire from professional competitions but will continue to work as a coach to local young athletes. “Macau has given me so much. It is my obligation to pay back to society.”
Jia, born in impoverished Henan province, has come a long way from an inexperienced teenage athlete to becoming a famous gold medalist. He was one of a small number of wushu athletes brought in from mainland China to help raise the standards of Macau’s home-grown team.
Jia’s parents were not athletes: his father was a civil servant and his mother a worker. This only child however showed talent in sports from a very young age. “I was not born strong and I got ill sometimes. My mum reminded me that her pay cheques often went on medicines and paying my doctor,” he said.
Jia came across wushu by accident when he was five years old. He was taken to a painting class, when he saw someone teaching wushu in the same building. He joined the classes for two weeks for fun and quickly quit when he found it clashed with his favorite cartoon program on television. “I lied to my parents saying that I wanted to concentrate on my studies and not do wushu.”
But the martial-arts teacher saw great potential in Jia and convinced them to have the young boy stay in the class. “I was not the strongest among his students, but I was a fast learner. It usually took me one lesson to learn a new technique,” he said.
Two years later, the teacher, a businessman who taught wushu as a hobby for free, recommended Jia join the team of Kaifeng city. It was tough training for the seven-year-old, as Jia had to get up at seven in the morning and practice with other youngsters until the late evening. “It was hard work but I enjoyed it very much. I was able to do difficult postures, like somersaults, which even older classmates could not manage. I had a great sense of satisfaction as I was able to take on challenges and overcome them.”
After one year of intense training, Jia quickly rose to become one of the top three wushu athletes in the whole of Henan province. Jia’s talent caught the eyes of the more important Henan wushu team and he was asked to join them.
At this juncture, Jia and his parents had to decide whether to quit school and opt for full-time professional training. “I was doing well at school, sometimes being the top of the class. But it was increasingly difficult to do both training and school work well.”
His parents finally decided to have the 13-year-old  join the provincial wushu team full time because “career prospects were good”, he said. Being a full-time athlete would also allow him to earn extra credits when the time came to enter university.
In the ensuing four years, Jia immersed himself in the demanding world of professional athletic training. All athletes ate, trained and slept in the same place. They woke up at five and started jogging and doing other exercises for hours. Jia found the training especially hard when his nasal allergy irritated him during winter.
Today, Jia recalls those days with nostalgia. “In the evenings, we played cards and had a good time. We were close friends with each other. Our teachers were caring as well. They wanted us to learn not only about wushu, but to have “cultural studies” three evenings in a week. We learnt different subjects, including calligraphy and English.”
In 1999, Jia and his fellow colleagues came to Macau to perform, to celebrate the handover of the city to China. Little did Jia realize that the next chapter of his life would begin in the region.
At 17, Jia was picked to be a Macau athlete, under an arrangement to have promising mainland athletes join the local team. “My family was worried that I would be alone in a new world full of temptations. I personally did not have many anxieties. I just wanted to seize this valuable opportunity and use my ability to the fullest to develop my sporting career.”
Jia’s first impression was that Macau was a clean city and that people were polite and the traffic orderly. “People said Macao was a small city, but to me, it was big.”
Jia was made to feel at home quickly. “My team members were very friendly, teaching me to speak Cantonese and taking me to good eating outlets. I learnt to like local snacks like curry fish balls and bean-curd dessert.”
Training hours in Macau were shorter − about two to three hours each day. “Given the shorter training sessions, we had to make up the shortfall in quantity with quality,” he said. During the daytime, Jia studied physical education at the Macau Polytechnic Institute. He studied human anatomy, nutrition, psychology and other sports-related subjects, which have helped him to perfect his sport. He received his first degree in 2009 and is now doing his second one.
Jia’s path to becoming a gold medalist was not without bumps. In 2004, the first year of his arrival, he did not perform well. He was full of ambition and confidence but made serious mistakes in his performance at the Asian Wushu Championship in Yangon. His team got a bronze medal, but he did not get a medal himself. “I did not give up, but reflected on how to improve myself. It was a trying time for me.” A year after the disastrous setback, Jia returned with a vengeance. In 2005, he won his first gold medal at the East Asian Games in Macau. “Everyone was cheering on my behalf. I was very touched.” In 2006, Jia had another unforgettable time at the Asian Games in Doha. He suffered from insomnia the night before his performance. His team did not manage to get a prize and he was the last hope it had. He ended with a silver medal. Jia said the pressure was so intense then that his fingers still slightly trembled whenever he spoke about the experience later. In the ensuing years, Jia came first in many international competitions. Most of the matches involved him doing an 80-second choreographed performance within a floor space of 112 square metres.
One landmark for Jia was the Asian Games of 2010, in the Nansha Stadium of Guangzhou. On 14 November, he won Macau’s first-ever gold medal in the games, making him the hero of a city longing to have such glory for a long time. He got 9.8 marks out of 10, with his trademark elegance. One press report wrote, “The cool-faced master has quick, fierce, strong movements that resemble those of a tiger.”
Years of competition have severely tested Jia’s emotional intelligence. He has a “Ground Zero” policy at all times. “Getting the top prize means you are good in only one particular match – not all future matches. After winning a competition, it’s back to square one.”
Jia has been voted an outstanding athlete in Macau for many years. In 2008, he was picked to represent Macau to carry the Olympic torch. In 2013, he was awarded the prestigious Silver Lotus award by the government.
Jia downplays the many awards he has received. “One should not place too much emphasis on getting gold medals. It is the process that is more important. Wushu helps us to develop a strong personality that does not give up easily.” Jia knows he serves as a role model for local athletes. “I have to set a good example so that they can continue to uphold the fine tradition of wushu in Macau,” he said.
Jia is imbued with a great sense of responsibility towards Macau, his adopted hometown. “When I speak in public, I am speaking not only for myself but also for my team. I am grateful to this city that has given me so much support.”
(by Louise do Rosario MDT/Macauhub)