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A Flawed Champion for a Lost Belief

Full disclosure: When I was ten in 2006, I achieved 5 dan in amateur Go, the limit that was allowed by only participating in provincial events. Then my parents were given the hint by my instructors to seek further help if they'd like me to become a professional. My life never turned that way. Many years later, I came to know that they only sought advice from Nie Weiping's academy, the most famous at the time and was told 5 dan at 10 was already 'too old'.

Come to think of it, it might just be that they were looking for a top-up of my tuition; similar practices exist across sectors: from hospitals to non-sport schools, there are ways to earn extra for employees and to give the less talented an equal chance to prove themselves. Given the economy was booming, few parents wouldn't accede to the opportunity.

Yet somehow on this score mine took the words at their superficial value. Having worked in the industry, I now feel a sense of relief, given Nie's Academy was already only the most famous for its founder's towering stature in the sport, but also for the complete dyeing pot that is Chinese Go, whose professionals, as in other discplines, give up formal education too early not to be touched by bad habits of society. Prostitution, gambling, drugs, the items familiar to other athletes, are equally available and ready for this purportedly gentlemanly pursuit.

Nie Weiping himself, who died on 14 January, has suffered both physically and reputationally since his heyday in the 80s, when he descended on the scene as a superstar, achieving an unprecedented 11-game win streak in China-Japan Supermatches, a record in international team tournaments not broken until 2005. Alongside with the triple by the women's volleyball team and the breakthroughs at the 1984 Olympics, 'Whirlwind Nie' was an international vortex that swept through every household in China. The image of a man with an innate septal heart defect breathing through an oxygen machine at the climax of the game while fighting for the country's honour was heaven-sent for front and back pages.

However, just like every tornado, Nie waned after waxing, and eventually faded from view. Few people knew at the time that, as the head coach of the Go's national team, he arranged the annual training camp to be held in Chongqing, closer to his mistress's family. The son from his first marriage felt neglected, moved to Japan to play and married locally, which took the sheen out of the anti-Japanese hero. His public appearances became undignified, too: he turned up at many events that had nothing to do with his vocation and it seemed in every one of them he nodded off.

And finally, there is his academy, which he still endows with his name, even in the afterlife, but never tended to justify the exorbitant fees on and off the menu. My parents, by some luck, saved a fortune on a rare occasion when they didn't listen between the lines.

But when he finally died, I couldn't but notice people's nostalgia toward him: it had little to do with their passion for Go, which few can play. Nor was it personal; the man had been the butt of jokes for years if not decades. But through a symbol, people hankered for a time that the combination of talent, in Nie's case a lot, and hard work (not his prominent trait but sufficient) could lead a mana man who, among other things, unintentionally caused the 5·19 incident, to go far. That nostalgia has only grown stronger as avenues for social ascent have narrowed. It is one of life’s and history’s ironies that Xi Jinping, Nie’s childhood best friend, has presided over precisely such a transformation.