By columnist Zhang Xiaozhou

National competitions for professional female weightlifters in China are far more difficult than the Olympics. The outcomes are disparate as well.

Among those who did not reach the Olympics was national champion Zou Chunlan. She wound up working at a bathhouse after retiring from the Chinese team.

Overall, salaries for professional weightlifters are low – between 1,000 and 2,000 yuan a month.
 
But for competitors who rise to the Olympic stage, life takes a sharp turn upward. A medal generates opportunities and gifts that total to more than 1 million yuan.

Chen Xiexia, the Guangdong woman who won China’s first gold medal at the Beijing Olympics, can expect fabulous rewards. Before she raised the bar to victory, her poor parents burned wood for cooking and washed clothes in a river.

An Olympics rule allows a country to send no more than four female athletes to compete in four of seven weightlifting events. The rule prevents China from dominating the sport and sweeping the gold count. It also means only four lucky Chinese women can win a gold medal every four years and rise to the status of national hero.

China’s media pays little attention to national champions, and few people remember their names. But they practice no less than Olympians.

The total lifted by one athlete every day equals the weight of a gymnasium. Over a career, a weightlifter may push up the equivalent of a Bird’s Nest national stadium.

Chen Yanqing won a gold medal at the 2004 games in Athens and, as a result, got to pursue a graduate degree.

But fellow weightlifter Sun Caiyan, who never advanced beyond the national level, may be better known for an emotional comment she made after watching the Olympian win.

“Now she is in heaven,” Su said. “And I’m on earth.”

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