After winning national championship,he returns to market sell...

Instead of taking it easy after winning the championship title in the men's 90kg judo competition at the 2021 China National Judo Championships, 23-year-old Xie Yadong went home straight away to help his parents sell pickles at a market in Shanghai.

When it came to selecting and packing pickles, weighing them, and calculating the price, Xie was pretty skillful at this, which would have made it hard for one to imagine that he is in fact a holder of many national sports awards, as well as one of the contenders who had helped the Shanghai judo team win its first gold medal in a recent competition, its first since 2009.

Xie’s parents launched their family business when he was six years old. As a boy, he was always seen offering a hand at the stall after school. When he was 12 years old, his parents sent him to learn judo at an amateur sports school in Shanghai’s Jiading district. Whenever he took days off, Xie always chose to help his parents with the small business.

However, the young man never stopped chasing his dream by training hard when he could. At the age of 14, he joined the Shanghai judo team, starting his career as a professional judoka.

According to Wu Huaian, the team’s coach, Xie’s tenacity made him stand out as an excellent athlete. "He is down to earth, extremely hardworking, and strong-minded, which let him improve his skills through training. He often would train for extra hours," Wu said.

"I really love judo. It’s worth my efforts to continue training no matter how hard it is," Xie said. The man never complained to his parents about the hardship he had encountered during his training.

Xie once suffered a collarbone fracture during his training, but he didn’t tell his mother until three months later for fear that she would have been worried about him if she had known about it. Xie explained by saying that his training and injuries were negligible compared with the hard work devoted by his parents to raising the family.

The 2021 China National Judo Championships is a qualifying event for the upcoming 14th National Games of China, scheduled in September 2021 in Xi’an, northwest China’s Shaanxi province.

Source:people's daily

Editor: Crystal H

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