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SCHOOLGIRL SPORTS SENSATION CREDITS CHINESE MUM
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EMMA RADUCANU, the 18-year-old half-Chinese tennis player who is scooping up the top titles in the game, says her secret is an appetite for hard work and a level of self-assurance that she got from her Shenyang mother. China is a “tough country” and people tend to “have very good self-belief” she told an interviewer from Vogue magazine.
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“It's not necessarily about telling everyone how good you are, but it's about believing it within yourself. I really respect that about the culture,” she said.
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Emma finished her exams in UK this summer and almost immediately became a global sports superstar.
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In China, Emma has long been a rising star on the table tennis circuit, and played annually on the Shenyang circuit during her visits to see her Chinese family. She also did a great deal of training at a sports institute in China, far away from the growing attention she was receiving in the UK.
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FAMILY HISTORY
Emma’s mother, Dong Mei-zhai, is from Shenyang in Northeast China. She moved to Toronto where she met her Romanian husband Ian, and started using the English name “Renee”. Emma was born, and two years later, the family moved to Bromley in Kent, in the southern part of England.
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But they keep up a close connection with China. Until Covid closed down international travel, the family would go back every year. “My mum's side of the family are so mentally resilient. It's like nothing can bring them down. I would say I take a big part of my inspiration from her. My mum has worked very hard,” she told interviewers.
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It was her father Ian who encouraged her to go into sports, but like most children of Chinese moms, she did a lot of activities outside school, including ballet, horse-riding, swimming and go-karting.
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INSPIRED BY LI NA
Young Emma’s hero is Li Na, China’s tennis idol, who reached the level of world number two. “Even though Li Na has retired, I've watched lots of her matches on YouTube, because she was really aggressive,” she said in July.
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“Her movement was what impressed me the most. She was so agile and quick, and very powerful. She wouldn't miss an opportunity to be aggressive."
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VALUED HERITAGE
And has the young sports star kept in touch with her Chinese heritage? Emma is proud to say that she can understand Mandarin Chinese, but her ability to speak it herself “requires work”.
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Both China and Romania were tough countries which gave her parents a strict work ethic, she said, and that enabled her to put in the necessary hours of training.
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After becoming a Wimbledon star in the UK this summer, the youngster told Vogue: “My mom has always instilled a lot of the qualities, like discipline and respect for other people, into me, so I think having parents like I do, they always push me, they have high expectations, so I've always tried to live up to that.
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“I would say I take a big part of my inspiration from her. She always shows me by example what 'hard work' means.”
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[From Fridayeveryday media] |
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