Retrospective Note
March 28, 2020
I cringe a little bit watching this interview because I think that Xiao Yu was tired and had a lot of things going on, and I was probably pestering her too much with questions. But she is an awesome person and a great sport so fortunately she didn’t complain at all.
I like this video because she provides some great insights into how a professional wushu athlete thinks about the sport. I especially like when she talked about focusing on your unique characteristics with wushu and how those are the things that separate you from others. I haven’t been in touch with her in a few years, but last I heard she is teaching in Shandong province somewhere. Thanks again to Xiao Yu for the interview!
A week or two ago when Xiao Yu was in town I asked her to grant me an interview. We got together for lunch the day before she headed back to her hometown and she answered my silly questions about wushu and life as an athlete.
I edited the video down to 9:57, and then found out that I had my youtube limit raised to 15 minutes. Ah well, it takes an hour to upload the video from China to youtube so I don’t feel like waiting that long.
In the interview I should mention that Xiao Yu was rather tired from a lot of travel and taking care of various things in Xi’an and Dong Ming (her hometown in Shandong province). Her mother wasn’t feeling well, she was taking care of final administrative tasks related to her retirement from competitive athletics, and had seen a lot of friends and colleagues during her trip. It was very nice of her to take the time to meet up with me. Many thanks to Xiao Yu.
Oh, and yes, the video quality and sound quality are rather poor. I had forgotten my video camera so I was stuck with two HTC phone cameras with sub-par video capture capabilities. It won’t happen again, I promise.
In interview with Yue Xiao Yue (September 8, 2011)
Additional Context
March 28, 2020
The video above provided a little bit of Xiao Yu’s training, but I thought you might want to see a bit more, so here is a video of her training Nanquan on January 28, 2010.