The following profile of Chinese gymnast Li Yuejiu, published in the People’s Daily on March 29, 1982, exemplifies the distinctive style of state-sponsored sports journalism in early reform-era China. Written by Lu Guang for the Communist Party’s official newspaper, the piece transforms Li’s 1981 gymnastics career into an extended parable about patriotic sacrifice, revolutionary determination, and the superiority of socialist training methods.
The article’s rhetorical construction reveals much about how Chinese state media framed elite sport during this period. Li’s physical “shortcomings” become opportunities to demonstrate that socialist willpower can overcome natural limitations. His Hartford injury transforms into a morality play about bleeding for the motherland. The defeat of Japan carries obvious nationalist symbolism, framed through the “watermelon banquet” vow. Most explicitly, the profile’s final section—”The Flag in His Heart”—abandons any pretense of sports journalism for pure propagandistic celebration, with the five-star red flag appearing obsessively throughout Li’s training diary and “filling the space of the gymnasium” in his vision.
Despite its heavy ideological overtones, the profile does document genuine athletic innovation. Li Yuejiu was indeed a groundbreaking tumbler who became China’s first world champion in men’s gymnastics. (Li Xiaoping also won gold on pommel horse in 1981.) The challenge for contemporary readers is separating the factual athletic narrative from its ideological packaging. It requires recognizing both Li’s legitimate achievements and the ways those achievements were instrumentalized by state media to serve broader political purposes during a pivotal moment in Chinese sports history.
Enjoy this piece about the gymnast whom the Hartford Courant described as a “tiny fireplug” who “exudes charisma and elan.”
Explorer of Beauty
By Lu Guang, People’s Daily, March 29, 1982
In people’s minds, a world champion in floor exercise must have a very “handsome” physique—tall and athletic. Yet in him, none of these beautiful characteristics could be found. He stood only 1.54 meters tall, stocky and bullish, with a genuinely short-limbed build. If he weren’t wearing pristine white gymnastics attire, if he weren’t standing on the gymnastics mat, who would believe he was a gymnast? He was often mistaken for a weightlifter. But this Chinese young man with his less-than-graceful figure had created a thrilling beauty with enormous appeal that captivated audiences both at home and abroad. His name was Li Yuejiu.
A Rooster Born in the Year of the Tiger
On the wall of Li Yuejiu’s dormitory hung a painting of a rooster standing on a boulder amidst brilliant yellow winter jasmine flowers, stretching its neck to crow. On either side of the rooster were posted two images of tigers. The mixture of rooster and tiger seemed rather discordant. Perhaps the young man lacked some artistic sensibility?
When people stood before the wall, puzzled, Li Yuejiu would tell them with great interest: “I’m twenty-four years old, born in the Year of the Rooster. But I especially love tigers—I love their fierce character. It seems this ‘rooster’ of mine was born in the Year of the Tiger.”
Coincidentally, at the beginning of this year, Li Yuejiu received another “tiger” at the awards ceremony for the nation’s top ten athletes. This tiger came from the brush of the great painter Hu Shuang’an, rendered with lifelike detail. One could almost hear the earth-shaking roar of the fierce tiger descending the mountain. The painter inscribed four powerful characters in the upper right corner: “Fight with Might.”
This prize suited Li Yuejiu’s heart perfectly. Yes, he was a tiger—a fierce tiger fighting with might for the glory of his motherland!
The Hartford Competition
On the night of August 21, 1980, in a square gymnasium in Hartford, USA, Coach Gao Jian gently patted Li Yuejiu on the shoulder: “You’re up!”
Perhaps Li Yuejiu’s stature seemed too small in this towering modern gymnasium. As soon as he appeared, it caused a commotion. Laughter and whispered discussions merged into a great wave of sound that echoed through the space. Li Yuejiu understood in his heart that this reaction was directed at him. He wasn’t angry at all. Calmly, he raised his hand to the judges, thinking:
“Just wait and see!”
Tonight’s first event was the horizontal bar. He leapt lightly up and nimbly grasped the bar suspended high above his head. His bar work was so skilled, so innovative, so difficult and thrilling, so clean and decisive, that even his stocky body had transformed into something surprisingly beautiful. All sounds disappeared. The spectators’ gazes, like tens of thousands of searchlight beams, tightly followed Li Yuejiu’s figure in intense motion.
Giant swing, reverse to regular grip, backward somersault 180 degrees to catch the bar… This was a critical make-or-break move! He felt the bar was a bit soft, not quite what he was used to. If he caught the bar from far away, there would be no danger, but he might miss it entirely and lose 0.5 points. If he caught it closer, there was danger of hitting the bar, but a poor catch would only cost 0.2 points. And these fractions of a point concerned the honor of his motherland! Better to take some risk and catch closer to the bar! Oh no—his lips actually struck the iron bar, and struck it hard. He felt a burning pain in his lower lip. Ah, a large gash had been torn open, blood spraying out, splashing on his cheeks, on his gymnastics suit, splashing on Coach Gao who stood below the bar protecting him… Why was there half a tooth in his mouth? Ah, the iron bar must have broken his front tooth. Without the slightest pause, he continued performing various high-difficulty moves on the bar regardless of everything…
When Li Yuejiu dismounted from the bar, Gao Jian stepped forward to look and was shocked—the injury was too severe!
Li Yuejiu lay on a low bench, eyes closed. Coach Gao asked with concern: “Yuejiu, how are you?”
Li Yuejiu opened his slender eyes and, with difficulty, opened his mouth, saying: “Just a minor external injury, nothing serious. Don’t worry, go take care of the others!”
Dr. Lin, who accompanied the team, carefully cleaned the blood from his face and mouth. The wound was exposed—his lower lip had been torn apart. Dr. Lin quickly sprinkled hemostatic powder on the wound, used adhesive tape to hold the torn edges together, then placed a ball of gauze over the wound and had Li Yuejiu bite down on it with his teeth.
“Should we send him to the hospital?” Gao Jian looked at the doctor and asked worriedly.
Yuejiu had gauze clenched in his mouth and couldn’t express himself verbally, so he just kept shaking his head vigorously. Before long, the pure white gauze ball was stained crimson by the seeping blood.
Gao Jian was so moved. As if speaking to himself, yet as if to the team members standing around, he said softly and emotionally: “Now is the time for us to give our all for the motherland!”
Li Yuejiu nodded deeply. He understood his coach’s feelings too well. The “watermelon banquet” in Manila four years ago remained vivid in his memory. That time, Li Yuejiu had placed fourth in the individual all-around at the Asian Youth Gymnastics Competition. The top three places were all taken by Japanese athletes. Strangely enough, this loss only fired up Li Yuejiu’s determination. That night, in the Manila hotel, he said to Coach Gao Jian and teammate Huang Yubin: “The Japanese team members are older than us, and our technical skills are about equal to theirs. I think we can ‘devour’ them in the future.” Once they started talking about catching up to and surpassing Japan, everyone spoke at once, each full of passion—the air in the room was so heated it seemed ready to explode. Athletes weren’t permitted to drink alcohol, and besides, the room had neither wine nor soft drinks—only a few striped watermelons sent by overseas Chinese. Gao Jian had a sudden inspiration and suggested, “Let’s use the watermelon as wine and toast!” Li Yuejiu cut the watermelon into small pieces. Everyone raised a piece, clinked them together, and said: “To catching up to and surpassing Japan, cheers!”
The “watermelon banquet” had been more than a thousand days and nights ago, but the vow made at that banquet kept echoing in the depths of Yuejiu’s heart. As time passed, the sound grew louder and louder.
This Hartford International Gymnastics Invitational was a high-level world competition held in opposition to the Olympic Games in Moscow. Tonight was the team competition—the perfect opportunity to compete against the Japanese team. At this critical moment of fulfilling his vow, could he retreat? No, absolutely not! He said with difficulty to Gao Jian and his nearby teammates: “Minor injuries don’t leave the battle line. I’ll risk everything—I’ll fight!”
This was an extraordinary and severe test. Because after the horizontal bar competition, there were still five more events. In other words, there were still two long hours before the competition would end. Blood was still slowly seeping—could he hold out?
The second event, floor exercise, began. Li Yuejiu removed the blood-soaked gauze ball from his mouth and strode confidently onto the floor. His tumbling was high and floating, truly fast as lightning, swift as a meteor, light as drifting clouds. He earned a high score of 9.9. There wasn’t any sign that he was an injured casualty! But when he walked off the floor and lay back on the bench, his serious injury was again visible to everyone. The wound held together with adhesive tape had reopened from the intense exercise just now, and blood was flowing again…
Everyone present was deeply moved by his spirit of fighting through bloodshed. With trembling hands, the doctor tore off the bloody tape, sprinkled hemostatic powder on the wound again, used new tape to close it, and applied a fresh ball of white gauze…
The competition continued event after event. Li Yuejiu, bearing his severe injury, tenaciously captured one high score after another. On vault, blood unfortunately sprayed from his wound into both eyes, so he couldn’t open them. Unable to see the ground on landing, he stumbled backward and sprained his ankle, dislocating the joint. He gritted through the piercing pain and stood firm. When the electronic display board showed 9.7 points, he stood there unable to take another step. Gao Jian came forward to support him, walking him out while excitedly telling him, “After five events, we’ve surpassed Japan.”
What inspiring news! It looked like tonight the Chinese team really had hope of beating Japan and capturing the team championship. As the doctor cleaned the blood from Li Yuejiu’s face, he pleaded: “Doctor, take some temporary measures! I still have one more event!”
Doctors are normally calm people, but in front of this tiger of an athlete, even his heart couldn’t help but beat with excitement. He reset Li Yuejiu’s ankle and used adhesive tape for local stabilization. Li Yuejiu stood up and stamped on the floor. Pain—intense pain—made his whole body break out in hot sweat. He bore it and began his final sprint…
For the first time in history, the Chinese gymnastics team defeated the Japanese team, which had won world championships more than ten times. His comrades embraced Li Yuejiu tightly, saying emotionally, “Yuejiu, this championship really wasn’t easy to come by!” Yuejiu still had the blood-soaked gauze ball clenched in his mouth, but he smiled through tears.
When he arrived at the hospital, it was already past 11 PM. The American doctor stitched him with 9 sutures: 4 inside, 5 outside.
“You’re being admitted!” said the American doctor, leaving no room for argument.
Exhaustion, fatigue, and anesthesia attacked him together. His whole body went slack, eyes closed, sinking into sleep. The word “admitted” struck his central nervous system like an electric current, jolting him awake. He opened his eyes and looked at the American doctor with pleading and determined eyes: “No, I won’t be admitted. I still have to compete in the individual finals!”
The American doctor had perhaps never encountered such a patient. He shook his head in amazement and said, “What if the wound gets infected?”
Li Yuejiu smiled at the doctor and said, “Thank you for your concern. But I still have to leave!”
The next day, the wound didn’t become infected, but his ankle was badly swollen. Gao Jian sat by his bed, massaging it while asking with concern: “Yuejiu, for the individual finals, should you…”
Before the coach could finish, Yuejiu expressed, “I can hold out!”
The doctor decided to give him an anesthetic injection, but with the ankle numb, how could he perform such difficult and intense moves? If not careful, he might even break a bone. In the end, they just wrapped his ankle with gauze.
The first event of the individual finals was floor exercise. Li Yuejiu was the first Chinese athlete to compete. His comrades all held their breath for him. But he himself was optimistic. Narrowing his slender eyes, he said humorously: “I’ll go open it up and raise the flag! You follow with the national anthem!”
Before going on, to move more freely, he bent down and unwrapped the gauze from his ankle. Although floor exercise only lasts 50 to 70 seconds, in this brief moment, how much willpower he would need to muster!
His beautiful yet heart-stopping floor exercise performance once again conquered the hearts of the audience and judges. 9.9 points—he finally won the championship!
Li Yuejiu limped toward the awards podium with difficulty. Hero, Yuejiu! Your courage is not that of an ordinary person, but the heroic courage of a tiger!
The Explorer
Gymnastics is a melody of beauty! Whether it’s the beauty of grace, the beauty of strength, or the beauty of thrilling danger, for spectators, it’s all a pleasing artistic enjoyment. But creating this beauty requires wisdom and courage. That’s why people call gymnastics the art of the brave.
For someone with Li Yuejiu’s physical condition, without great wisdom and courage, forget about plucking this artistic flower—he couldn’t even enter the door of gymnastics art.
Among the children in his hometown of Yingkou City, Liaoning Province, Li Yuejiu was famous as the “Little Tumbling King.” One day, he and a group of young friends were tumbling on straw-covered ground at his alma mater, Yanfeng Elementary School. Coach Lü Zongguang, who had come to select athletes for training, took a liking to him. Coach Lü brought him to the provincial capital. With that build, could he become a gymnast? Of those who saw him, few didn’t shake their heads. He’d be quite suitable as a weightlifter. A weightlifting coach had his eye on him and quietly came to recruit him to be a “strongman.” The acrobatics troupe also wanted him to become a performer. The martial arts team wanted him to practice kung fu, too. But Li Yuejiu politely declined all of them. He was so confident, feeling that he had strong imitation abilities—he could learn any move at first sight and would definitely be able to train successfully. Interest and confidence are the foundation of an athlete’s success. Lü Zongguang liked Li Yuejiu’s character. He told his colleagues, “This child is bold, clever, and willing to work hard. Let him forge his own path!”
He was kept for provincial team training. First, Lü Zongguang coached him. Later, Coach Sun Guosheng took on this unremarkable disciple and carefully guided him throughout.
The provincial team coaches brought Li Yuejiu to Hangzhou to participate in the national gymnastics competition to broaden his horizons. As soon as Li Yuejiu appeared at the competition venue, it immediately sparked various comments in the gymnastics world:
“Couldn’t Liaoning find anyone else…”
“Why did they bring such a strange creature…”
Some comments were too harsh and unbearable to hear. Li Yuejiu felt hurt by the insults, even angry. But he was neither sad nor argumentative. He told himself, “Don’t look down on people! I’ll train well and show you!”
He was simply mesmerized by the difficult and beautiful moves of the famous national team athletes. While national team members were still performing in the arena, he snuck off to the practice area to imitate their moves. He wasn’t timid at all, but the moves were too difficult—he couldn’t master them right away…
The Liaoning team coaches found out and hurried over, earnestly warning this honest, headstrong youngster: “Don’t practice without someone protecting you—it’s dangerous.” Though they criticized him, they were secretly pleased. The saying goes: “What’s precious is courage!” How much courage this child had! This was the most valuable quality of an excellent athlete!
Tumbling on the dirt ground in his hometown was, while not entirely unrelated to modern competitive gymnastics, fundamentally two different things. Li Yuejiu had to train from scratch. Training was extremely monotonous and arduous. Take his two arms, for example—they were naturally bow-shaped, which is taboo for a gymnast. They had to be straightened! To make the bow-shaped arms straight, the coach helped him press them every day. Each press was piercingly painful, making him break out in sweat, but he endured it. When the coach wasn’t there, he pressed them himself. Persisting every day. He pressed for over a year and finally made both arms straight. When he first started practicing on bars, his hands kept developing purple-red blood blisters. How could such tender skin work? He began toughening his hands: wherever blisters formed, he specifically squeezed there until the blisters burst. They’d form again, he’d squeeze again—repeatedly toughening them until finally he had palms with skin as hard as iron.
Under the guidance of famous teachers, his tumbling got better and better. In 1974, his first time abroad, he went to Wiesbaden, West Germany, for the World Student Games and immediately made a splash, winning the men’s gymnastics individual all-around championship. Facing the slowly rising five-star red flag, he felt immensely proud. He became even more confident, thinking. “Who says I’m not gymnastics material? I think I can do it.”
The Little Tumbling King hoped to become the World Tumbling King!
Becoming the World Tumbling King—easier said than done! Imitating others is convenient, but chewing what others have chewed isn’t satisfying, and following in others’ footsteps leads nowhere. Moreover, gymnastics has “impression scores.” As Li Yuejiu himself said: “When others stand in the arena, they gain points; when I stand there, I lose points.” The path before him had only one option: innovation—creating high-difficulty moves that no one else in the world could do. Only this way could he hope to surpass others. In his diary, he wrote two philosophically rich sentences: “Innovation alone can break through the stagnation of technical standards! Innovation alone can produce world champions!”
By this time, the famous national team coach Gao Jian had become his instructor. People say the first person in the world who dared eat crab was a remarkably brave person. Well, the first person who dares to tackle high-difficulty moves no one has done before is an even more remarkable warrior. Because performing any high-difficulty move for the first time is full of risk and requires courage. In Li Yuejiu’s own words: On my path exploring beauty, what awaits me is injury, disability, even the price of life itself.
This was one of his heart-stopping close calls. He was performing high-difficulty moves on the towering horizontal bar. Suddenly, the bar snapped in the middle, the supports collapsed to both sides, and he was flung far into the air, then fell heavily downward. So close! Right ahead of where he was falling was a hard wall, to his sides was the hard wooden floor, but he fell neither left nor right, neither forward nor back—he landed precisely on a thick foam mat.
Of course, such life-threatening accidents are quite rare, but injury and illness constantly threatened him.
His moves were truly too difficult. Take floor exercise. In more than one second of flight time, he had to perform such a difficult series of moves. If the takeoff strength, rotation speed, or angle of the moves were off by even a little bit, danger could result. On many nights, he lay awake for hours, pondering and thinking over and over about how to perform those high-difficulty moves well. Even when he’d thought everything through in advance, in thousands of practice attempts, his head had struck the ground, causing a concussion; his foot arch had ruptured; sometimes while practicing, his elbow or leg joint would suddenly be locked in place by fallen bone fragments and couldn’t move.
He had several surgeries. Once, his right elbow was operated on, and three small bone fragments were removed. After surgery, his arm wouldn’t straighten. The doctor said it would return to normal within three months. But after three months, there was an important international competition he needed to attend. He was anxiously impatient. At night while sleeping, he propped up his arm with a pillow and forced it straight. The pain—piercing pain—made him break out in sweat all over, soaking the quilt, but he disregarded all this and kept the arm straightened. At first, the pain kept him awake, but later the pain became numb and wooden, and he fell into deep sleep. When he woke the next morning, the arm was indeed straightened, but now, he couldn’t bend it. He forced it to bend again. Of course, this again brought out torrents of sweat. This way, through harsh treatment for less than a month, his arm could flex and extend freely. He went back to practicing new high-difficulty moves in the foam pit. When the coaches and teammates returned from competition elsewhere, they discovered this miracle and asked in amazement: “Yuejiu, how did you treat it?”
He smiled honestly and said, “Folk method—I figured it out myself.”
Even more remarkable was another time when a famous surgeon from Beijing Medical University Third Hospital discovered a depression the size of a thumb on Li Yuejiu’s right arm. Clearly, a bundle of bicep muscle had been severed when hitting equipment during a move. Severing muscle is very painful. When the doctor asked Li Yuejiu when he’d severed it, Li Yuejiu actually couldn’t answer.
What an explorer of beauty! In the face of danger, he never flinched but bravely explored and explored again, pursued and pursued again. He discovered that in the realm of gymnastics art, there were still many beauties yet to be developed by people… These beautiful flowers bloomed at the summit of art. He climbed upward regardless of everything. He wanted to pluck those brilliant artistic flowers and present them to his mother—his motherland.
The Flag in His Heart
In late autumn 1981, when Li Yuejiu came to Moscow to participate in the 21st World Gymnastics Championships, he was already a well-known, outstanding gymnast. The previous year, at the World Cup gymnastics competition held in Toronto, Canada, he had won the parallel bars championship. On the Moscow competition posters, though the names of world-famous athletes from various countries were prominently printed, this Chinese star’s name was absent; Soviet newspapers also didn’t mention him. Naturally, Soviet audiences weren’t familiar with him either. Li Yuejiu still had that same old temperament: “Just wait and see!” He wanted to use the language of his gymnastics art to communicate with the audience, to make them familiar with him and understand him. Indeed, his floor exercise performance in the team competition immediately connected with the audience’s hearts.
He stood in a corner of the light gray floor exercise mat and composed himself. The first series of moves—high-difficulty, thrilling, and beautiful—already won the audience’s admiration. This series was commonly called the 720-degree rotation: after taking flight, the body rotates horizontally twice and vertically twice. This series of moves was his original creation under Gao Jian’s guidance; no other person in the world could do it. His tumbling was high, floating, light, and fast. The second series of moves was dazzling—also his original creation. The closing third series was the 360-degree rotation that ordinary athletes do at the start. On landing, he was like an iron tower—motionless. Too successful! The audience applauded and cheered from the heart. But when the electronic display board showed 9.9 points, the whole arena erupted in protest.
“Unfair!”
“Add points!”
The audience raised a ruckus, stamping feet, booing the judges, shouting—everything. They protested injustice for Li Yuejiu in various ways. How interesting! Just a minute or two before, they weren’t familiar with him, thought he looked unremarkable, even mocked him. But in an instant, they had become devoted to him and tried their best to fight for points for him. Five minutes later, under strong public pressure, the judges had to change the score to 9.95.
During the floor exercise finals, the situation wasn’t favorable for Li Yuejiu. Among the 8 people in the finals, his score ranked only third. The first Soviet athlete to compete, Korolev, got 9.9 points. This meant Li Yuejiu had to score 9.95 to ascend to the championship throne. Li Yuejiu took to the floor, full of confidence. He lightly brushed his loose hair with his hand, then lightly tugged his form-fitting white gymnastics suit. The whole arena watched him. The Soviet coach and Korolev stood nearby, eyes wide open, staring at Li Yuejiu’s every move.
His movements were just like in the team competition—beautiful, clean, steady. When Li Yuejiu stood firm, the Soviet coach and Korolev couldn’t help but glance at each other and nod silently. They were convinced by Li Yuejiu’s superb technique.
9.95 points! Li Yuejiu finally, with a total score of 19.775, tied with Korolev for first place and ascended to the world championship throne. This was China’s first men’s gymnastics individual world championship!
The “World Tumbling King” dream had finally become reality. No one mocked or criticized him anymore—there was only praise and admiration. Reporters used all kinds of beautiful language to describe him, saying he was “a ball with great elasticity,” saying his legs were like “powerful springs.” A foreign commentator even sighed: “The Chinese can train even someone like Li Yuejiu to become a world champion. It seems our country has wasted enormous talent!” Among his Moscow colleagues, Li Yuejiu became a beloved hero. At that night’s farewell reception, athletes from every country came looking for him, invited him to their tables, toasted him, gave him commemorative pins, embraced him, gave him thumbs up in praise, and said humorously, “These are medals we’re giving you!”
How moving this scene was! The honor Li Yuejiu received here far exceeded a perfect score in competition. This young man, who faced danger without blushing or his heart racing, now had a heart beating like a drum, his face flushed crimson with excitement. This iron man, who never shed tears in the face of setbacks and injuries, now had moist eyes.
He stood on the high awards podium, gazing at the slowly rising five-star red flag, overwhelmed with emotion. Tears burst from his eyes. Through the crystalline tears, the national flag looked even redder and larger. The bright red flag covered his entire field of vision and filled the space of the gymnasium. At this moment, before his eyes was only the brilliant flag; in his ears, only the majestic national anthem; in his heart, only the great motherland! In life, what moment could be more solemn, more happy! Tears of joy, flow freely!
Li Yuejiu had a training diary with a light blue cover. Opening the diary’s cover, on the title page was a very large five-star red flag. Turning further, every few pages, at the top of the page number was drawn a five-star red flag. If you counted them, there would be no fewer than a dozen! Someone once asked him: “Yuejiu, why do you draw so many five-star red flags?”
A strange, bright light shone in his slender eyes as he answered: “Actually, they’re all in my heart. Now I draw them in the notebook, but in the future they’ll all be raised up one by one—raised into the sky above the international sports arena.”
These past few years, Li Yuejiu has repeatedly achieved extraordinary feats for his motherland. His grand aspiration has been realized.
Ah, the slowly rising five-star red flag, you didn’t rise from Moscow’s gymnasium—you clearly rose from the depths of the heart of this devoted son, Li Yuejiu!
Beauty, where do you come from? You come from suffering, from skill, from danger, bursting forth from Li Yuejiu’s beautiful heart where the five-star red flag flies!
A Note on Li’s Birthday…
Li Yuejiu has a particularly intriguing birthdate story. During his competitive career, his date of birth was listed as November 19, 1957. Yet when he was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame, his birthdate appeared as July 4, 1957. The year remained the same—still the Year of the Rooster—but the month and day shifted entirely.
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