一转眼亚洲最大的室内滑板场-北京Woodward-开业已经三年了, 现在回想起当年开业盛况还是有点不真实的感觉.美国滑板圈的各路大牛都飞跃半个地球来到大兴,职业滑手从Tony Hawk到Ryan Sheckler, 媒体从ESPN到Transworld,还有各大品牌代表…就是比起当年Danny Way飞长城都有过之而无不及, 那个周末的美国滑板圈一定非常安静吧. ESPN当年写了一个长篇报道 – The Shredder’s Libration Army. 三年后再读,个中滋味自己体会吧.
Another perfect example that skateboarding changed my life. Before 2010 I never thought that ESPN would quote me. Skateboarding made it happen. The Shredder’s Libration Army was written by Matt Higgins during the Woodward Beijing grand opening back in 2010. It’s quite interesting to re-read it now 3 years later. Something changed but something never gonna change… Until one day… Skate for your right!
当年ESPN Action首页的专题大图用的还是我给坑渠在北京大黑坡拍的一张照片
ESPN also used my photo of Keng Qu as featured image for the article.
By Matt Higgins
ESPN Action Sports
BEIJING — In a chaotic four-story marketplace here that’s sort of a shrunken version of the famous Silk Market, you can buy sought-after brands for bargain prices. And in the basement, among the luggage and designer handbags, sit stalls stacked with skate shoes — Nike, Adidas, Vans, Fallen and Converse.
“In a lot of cases, brands and products are being knocked off, going out the back door,” Glenn Brumage, vice president of the International Association of Skateboard Companies, said about the questionable provenance of such products. A California native, Brumage works as director of business development for a Chinese conglomerate, assisting western brands with licensing, manufacturing and distribution.
But counterfeit shoes aren’t the only things those working in action sports in China have to worry about. With the government engaged in a grand experiment that blends bikes, board sports, business and socialism, a bigger concern has become ensuring the authenticity of action sports culture. Several estimates put the total number of action sports practitioners in China at approximately 20,000 — fewer than in most Orange County, Calif., municipalities. Lack of leisure time and disposable income, and a culture that places a premium on scholastics, has left China’s youth lagging behind their western counterparts when it comes to shredding. But spurred by concerns about physical and social welfare — and visions of Olympic glory — government agencies in China have sponsored a sort of great leap forward.
Earlier this month the United States-based Woodward Camps opened an action sports training facility in Beijing, featuring two acres of state-of-the-art indoor and outdoor terrain. Burton and Nike 6.0, two brands with a prominent presence in China, have sponsored an indoor snowboard park that opened last year in Beijing. Quiksilver sponsors a park at Nanshan Ski Village north of the city center. In 2005, governments in China spent a reported $12 million of the $26 million cost to build a three-acre concrete skate park — the world’s largest — in Shanghai. And on Thursday the Asian X Games begin in Shanghai for the fourth consecutive year.
The nation’s sprawling urban centers offer miles of untouched skateable terrain, too. “As far as going to a place just to skate, it’s definitely my favorite,” Chris Cole, Thrasher Magazine’s Skater of the Year, said about China. Cole has skated in Shenzhen, Macao, and Hong Kong while filming for Fallen footwear. And visiting pros regularly shoot parts at the sprawling skate park in Shanghai.
“You can find stair sets everywhere,” Cole said about Shenzhen’s street scene. “You go to spots nobody has ever skated and there’s only been so many tricks done. There’s so many things you can do. It’s a blank palette.”
Tommy Chau moved to Shanghai from Delaware two years ago. He works freelance film jobs and skates with local pros. “The whole China scene I could compare to the Philly scene,” he said. “It’s like that because you just kind of know everybody. When you go to other cities you just crash on each other’s couches.”
In China, where local brands such as Society, Safari and Gift predominate, only a handful of skaters and snowboarders can be characterized as legitimate pros. The best are sponsored by western brands; Burton sponsors China’s national snowboard team. Among skaters, Wang HuiFeng, whom everyone calls Cyres, is sponsored by Vans; and Che Lin is sponsored by Nike.
“It’s our job to basically keep skating and get more kids on skateboards,” said Che, 29, through a intrepreter.
When asked what China needs to grow skateboarding, he said: “Time. Back in the west, skateboarding has been developing for 20, 30, 40 years. In China, how long has it been going on? Ten years. So we need time.”
Western brands have shown a willingness to wait, because as Brumage noted, “There are 1.3 billion people there — if they start surfing, if they start skating, the market is going to be massive.”
Speeding up the process somewhat, the government in China spent $21 million to build Woodward Beijing, according to The China Daily newspaper. A key parcel in a development plan in Daxing, a rural district an hour south of the city center that’s renowned for watermelons, Woodward Beijing — officially called Beijing Fashion Skate Park for reasons lost in translation — resulted from a conversation four years ago in New York between a Chinese business delegation and executives at NBC Sports preparing to broadcast the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
As far as going to a place just to skate, it’s definitely my favorite. You go to spots nobody has ever skated and there’s only been so many tricks done. There’s so many things you can do. It’s a blank palette. –Chris Cole
Kevin Monaghan, senior vice president for business development at NBC Sports, screened a video of the Dew Action Sports Tour, recalled Zhou Qiang, who has headed the Woodward Beijing project on behalf of a Chinese state-owned corporation. Later Monaghan introduced Zhou to Gary Ream, managing owner and president of Camp Woodward. Two months later Zhou visited Camp Woodward, in a rural region of Central Pennsylvania: “I saw all these boys and girls in a mountain setting. It was really dynamic.”
Officials in China decided to build their own version in collaboration with a four-star government resort on 410 acres in Beijing. Run by Woodward staff under a licensing agreement, the camp will offer programs in skateboarding, BMX freestyle, inline skating, graphic design, video and photo labs, music recording, dry-land skiing and snowboarding and language lessons.
With a one-child-per-family government policy and a heavy study load, China has created a generation of isolated kids, Zhou said. Action sports suggest an antidote, encouraging kids to interact.
“Woodward Beijing will promote a healthy youth-oriented sports and a learning experience,” Zhou said. “Healthy is a key word. A lot of parents are worried that their kid is spending too much time online.”
But others in China see potential in Woodward Beijing for churning out Olympic champions.
Wei Xing is secretary general of the Chinese Extreme Sports Association, a national governing body for action sports created in 2004, and an advocate for introducing skateboarding to the Olympics. Although the Extreme Sports Association was not involved in building Woodward Beijing, Wei and other officers were on hand for the grand-opening ceremonies.
“The opening of Woodward training camp [Beijing Sports Park] has offered a world standard training site for the youth of China,” Wei wrote in an e-mail afterward. “We at the Chinese Extreme Sports Association are eager to see that skateboarding, which is popular among the youth, will become an Olympic event. Chinese Extreme Sports Association will…
work together with Woodward to make the Woodward training camp [Beijing Sports Park] a training center for the national team of China and a center for exchanges between Chinese youth with the athletes of extreme sports all over the world.”
Such sentiments conjure visions of China’s approach to snowboarding: Its state-run sports system selected athletes from sports schools based on physical traits and athletic ability and began training them to shred. One of those athletes was Liu Jiayu, a 12-year-old with a background in martial arts who had never been on a snowboard seven years ago. Practicing year-round, under the instruction of foreign coaches, she progressed quickly, winning the 2008-09 World Cup halfpipe title, then finishing fourth at the Vancouver Olympics in February.
Many wonder whether other action sports will receive the same treatment. “The government has put their whole stamp of approval on action sports,” Brumage said. “From a central standpoint, it’s, ‘How soon can we put a surf team together and kick everyone’s a–?'”
In China, they take competition really seriously. It kind of takes the fun out of it. I’m sure a lot of us wouldn’t ride BMX if we had coaches. –Anthony Napolitan
At Woodward Beijing’s grand opening, government officials rolled up, one by one, in dark sedans. Gathered on a dais above the skate plaza, they gazed down onto cheerleading squads performing peppy routines to pulsing pop music. The soundtrack switched to the Misfits for the skaters and BMXers before veering into surreal sounds for a parkour demonstration on a scaffolding setup.
A contingent of 120 skaters, BMX freestyle riders, action sports industry figures and media made the trip to Beijing for the grand opening gala. For many of them, the cheerleading-parkour combination was as mystifying as the menu at the hotel restaurant, featuring dishes translated as “The thick juice digs the skirt hem” and “Explodes the element meatball.”
World dirt champion Anthony Napolitan proclaimed the parks “really BMX friendly.” About the scene, he summed up the sentiments of several athletes on hand: “In China, they take competition really seriously. It kind of takes the fun out of it. I’m sure a lot of us wouldn’t ride BMX if we had coaches.”
Ream, for one, will wait to see how things turn out. “It’s very important to us that we adapt this Woodward experience to the Chinese culture and we need to accept that,” he said. “But if it steps outside the boundaries of what we’re comfortable with, there are clauses to change it.”
With their own Woodward now, officials from the Extreme Sports Association want to know how soon Chinese athletes can qualify to compete at the X Games, Ream said. “We had a deep discussion that the importance of it is not all about competing at the X Games,” Ream explained. “It’s also about embracing the culture, and providing the youth opportunities to be creative in ways that are relatively inexpensive.”
Andrew Guan, who runs kickerclub.com, a China skateboarding blog, described a government strategy of supporting skateboarding with projects that make a big splash. He assisted Quiksilver, the main sponsor when China gave its blessing for Danny Way to launch over the Great Wall in 2005 using a MegaRamp. And he noted that the Shanghai skate park, while impressive, sits virtually empty most days due to its remoteness, admission fee and intimidating size for all but the most accomplished skaters.
“I think the government only cares about doing something big to prove we are better — we are strong now,” Guan said. The Shanghai skate park compares to the South China Mall, near Guangzhou. It is the world’s largest at 9.6 million square feet, more than twice the size of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. Yet it’s bereft of people and merchants.
With such a development record, many openly wonder how Woodward Beijing, which is an hour’s drive from the central part of the city, and will charge an admission fee, can possibly succeed?
“To start, Woodward will invite [Chinese pro] team skaters out for a week to improve their skills,” Eli Kislevitz, an American who has lived in China since 1998 and works as a consultant for the camp, said about the evolving business model. “Because right now parents will not pay to send their kids for a week to a facility an hour from their home in Beijing.”
Perhaps their renegade nature would seem the biggest impediment to action sports flourishing in China — a nation seen as suppressing individualism. For instance, following dinner (and some drinks) downtown with a group from Woodward Beijing, Jimmy Carlin, who skates for Mystery, performed a Michael Phelps imitation and plunged into a restaurant fountain shirtless, leaving a flood on the floor and the staff in stunned silence.
“One of my biggest fears is that the wrong message is going to get out there,” Brumage said, “and the government is going to say, ‘No, you’re not going to do that.’ If skateboarding does something negative, then they will shut it down so fast it will be illegal.”
Yet maybe there’s room in 21st Century China for western-style skater antics, after all.
Li Zhi Xing, an impish skater known as Little Star from northern China, near Mongolia, competed at the Dew Tour’s amateur Free Flow Tour stop in Salt Lake City last September, where he created a flap with sponsors when he refused to wear their shirt.
“He’s this little kind of punk,” Monaghan said of NBC. “He’s got this mischievous smile on his face. You could put him in the middle of Orange County or down on the Lower East Side, and he would fit right in.”
When a bus bound for the airport carrying Ream, his family, a Fuel TV crew and BMX freestyle rider Trey Jones eased away from Woodward Beijing a week ago, Little Star stood with Zhou, waving from the hotel. Zhou looked uncomfortable, perhaps by the realization that he would now be responsible for filling the facility. But Little Star had a sort of serene look on his face, like he knew that he was about to have Woodward Beijing more or less to himself for the foreseeable future. And it connected with something Andrew Guan had said days earlier about those in China who have discovered action sports. “Most of the Chinese young people don’t have dreams,” he said. “I ask, ‘What’s your dream?’ They say, ‘Buy an apartment.’ Buying an apartment is everyone’s dream in China.
“Skaters, action sports kids, they are different,” Guan said. “They’re catching their dream.”
And that’s something that simply can’t be faked.
你能在中国北京的秀水街珍珠市场里找到你想要的一切品牌，在地下一层，则是滑板鞋——耐克,阿迪, Vans, Fallen和匡威。
“因为这些水货，许多外国品牌和产品都无法在中国打开市场，”美国滑板商协会副总Glenn Brumage表示。
但假货并不是中国极限界最头痛的问题之一。
中国政府把车类运动、板类运动、商业和社会主义全部搅和到了一起，确保中国极限运动文化的正宗性似乎成为了最紧要的问题。部分人士估计中国极限运动拥有2万从业者——这比美国加州橘子郡的参与者还要少。
中国年轻人不仅缺少娱乐时间、缺少零花钱，学业为重的文化氛围也让他们远远落后于西方玩板、玩车的同龄人。
现在，考虑到国民身体和社会福利，同时在奥运荣耀的呼唤下，政府机构也开始将部分资金投入到极限运动产业了。
2010年5月中旬，美国Woodward极限营地在北京大兴开幕；北京营地覆盖了8000多平方米的室内外场地。近几年，Burton 和Nike 6.0赞助的室内大冰箱单板实验室也于去年在北京开张；Quiksilver赞助了北京南山滑板公园。2005年政府修建了世界最大滑板场地SMP；在上海举办的亚洲极限锦标赛也已进入第四个年头……
自由摄影师、滑手Tommy赵2年前从Delaware回到上海，现在和上海的职业滑手一起滑板，“这一切都太熟悉了，你认识所有人，当你去其他城市玩，只是换个朋友的沙发睡而已。”
“遍地都是台阶，” Chris Cole提到深圳给他的最深印象“那些地方似乎还没被任何人滑过，这让人很有滑板的冲动。”
这个国家就像未经开垦的滑板处女地。年度最佳滑手、街式冠军Chris Cole说： “就滑板地点来说，我最喜欢中国”。Chris Cole曾随Fallen Team来深圳、香港、澳门拍片。各国的“访问专家”们在上海发现了更多的滑板地点。
今年29岁的车霖说：“我们的职责是继续滑板、让更多孩子爱上它。”当问到中国滑板的发展需要什么时，他说“需要时间。在西方，滑板已经发展了4、50年，在中国，真正发展只有十年。我们需要时间。”
在中国， 社会、Safari、Gift、沸点等滑板品牌让一些滑板人成为了职业滑手（尽管只是一小部分）。那些最好的滑手得到了西方品牌的赞助：Burton赞助了中国国家单板队，Vans赞助了王汇丰，Nike赞助了车霖。
西方的品牌也在充满耐心地等待。Brumage说：“这里拥有13亿人——如果他们都开始冲浪，都开始滑板，市场潜力会很巨大。”
无论是否是为了加快极限运动发展得目的，据China Daily报道，政府投资2100万建造了Woodward北京。大兴区，这个北京南城区以盛产西瓜闻名。这里距北京市中心约1小时车程。作为大兴区发展规划的重要一环，“北京时尚体育公园”这个名字来自4年前中国代表团和NBC体育台在纽约接洽奥运会转播事宜时的一次谈话。
据Woodward北京中方代表周强回忆，Kevin Monaghan为中方录制了一段Dew Tour比赛的视频——Kevin是NBC体育台主管商业发展的副总。之后，Kevin将周强介绍给了woodward的所有者+主席Gary Ream。在2个月后，极限银河公司的周老板亲身造访了位于宾夕法尼亚州的woodward营地：“我看到孩子们在玩耍，背后是连绵的大山。那景象太动感了。”
于是，中国的官员决定建造中国版本的营地。在大兴一处4星级酒店的基础上，美国Woodward的工作人员（under a licensing agreement）开始工作。这里即将为营员提供滑板、BMX小轮车、极限轮滑、旱地单双板滑雪、平面设计、视频制作、摄影、录音等培训课程，新增的特色课程是中英双语教学。
周强说，在“只生一个好”的政策和繁重的学习压力下，中国创造了一代“独”生子女。极限运动提供了绝佳的解决办法——鼓励孩子们互相交流。
“Woodward北京将推动健康的年轻人热爱的运动项目，这将会是非常积极的学习经历，”周强表示，“关键是健康。许多家长都担心自己的孩子沉溺于网络。”
魏星是中国极限协会的秘书长。中国极限协会诞生于2004年，是中国国家体育总局的下设机构，该协会提倡滑板进入奥运会。尽管极限协会并未参与woodward北京的建设，魏星和其他协会官员出席了盛大的开幕式。
“营地的开幕为中国的青少年提供了世界级的训练基地。”魏星在一封电邮中表示，“我们中国极限协会非常渴望滑板运动能成为奥运会项目，滑板在年轻人中颇受欢迎。中国极限协会将与Woodward北京一起，努力使这个营地成为中国极限国家队的训练中心。我们希望这里能成为中国年轻人和全世界极限运动爱好者的交流平台。”
这样的情感也能从中国发展单板滑雪运动窥见：举国体制从那些基因好、天赋高的体校运动员中选拔出有潜力者，然后开始训练他们滑雪。这其中的佼佼者就是刘佳宇。
7年前，当时年仅12岁的刘佳宇还从未摸过单板。这个有着martial arts背景的单板选手在经过长年的训练和外籍教练的指导下，技术进步飞速。她赢得了08-09赛季单板世界杯半管冠军，然后在10年2月举办的温哥华冬奥会上获得第四名。
在Woodward北京的盛大开幕式上，北京市政府官员们乘坐黑色的轿车悉数到场。他们坐在室外街式滑板场地边搭设的看台上，俯瞰啦啦队表演。（The soundtrack switched to the Misfits for the skaters and BMXers before veering into surreal sounds for a parkour demonstration on a scaffolding setup.）
大约120个美国人组团来参加开幕庆典：滑手、BMX车手、极限运动人士和媒体记者。对他们中的许多人来说，这种啦啦队+跑酷的古怪组合就像酒店餐厅的菜单一样格格不入，比如，典型的Chinglish的菜名就有”The thick juice digs the skirt hem” ，还有”Explodes the element meatball.”
BMX土腾冠军Anthony Napolitan认为大兴的场地“非常适宜玩车”。对于营地内这些非常具有中国特色的事物，他和周围几个朋友都认为：“在中国，人们把比赛看得非常重，这让比赛的乐趣消失无踪。我很确定如果有BMX也有教练的话，我们才不会玩车呢。”
Gary Ream则属于期望等待情况慢慢变好的一个。“我们必须承认，对我们来说，重要的是我们能将woodward的经验和中国文化很好的融入到一起。但如果情况超越了底线变得让我们感到不适，我们可能就要有所改变。”
现在，中国人也有了自己的woodward，极限协会的官员们开始想了解什么时候中国运动员能在X Games大赛晋级。对此，Gary Ream说：“我们之前对于营地的性质有过深入的探讨——这和去X Games比赛完全是两码事。同时Woodward营地希望能传达极限运动文化，让年轻人能以低廉的价格体会到他们有机会创造自己的人生。”
中国滑板博客kickerclub.com的创始人管牧认为中国政府支持滑板的方式有点只顾雷声大。管牧帮助Quiksilver在2005年促成了Danny Way滑板飞跃长城的壮举。他提到了上海的SMP滑板场。那里因距离市区远、收费高，一年中的绝大多是时间是空置，而且道具的尺寸过于巨大让几乎大部分滑手都望而却步。
“我认为政府只想着把事情做‘大’，证明中国现在更好更强大了，”管牧说。上海SMP滑板场就像广州附近的南华商厦。为了世界第一，那里的面积相当于2个明尼苏达州Bloomington 的Mall of America。可是那里根本没什么人去。
这样的发展纪录，不禁让人想到，距离市中心1小时车程的woodward北京，收费多少才能成功呢？
“在营业初期，woodward会邀请中国职业滑手来此提高，” 在中国生活了12年的美国人Eli Kislevitz说，Eli现在是营地的顾问。“因为现在中国的家长不会把孩子送来一个礼拜，何况这个地方距离他们在北京的家要一个小时的路程。”
也许极限人士们反叛的天性将会是极限运动在中国发展的最大阻碍——毕竟，这个国家压抑人的个性。例如在美国团队在北京的这几天里有个插曲。在外面吃饭的时候，Mystery旗下滑手Jimmy Carlin就对饭馆里的小喷泉产生了兴趣，一个菲尔普斯式的鱼跃就跳进了水中，把饭馆的地板弄得像发了洪水一样。饭馆工作人员惊得目瞪口呆。
Brumage说，“我最大的恐惧之一就是给这里的人们消极印象（wrong message），那样的话政府就会说，‘不行，你们不能再办下去了’。一旦滑手们做了特别出格的事，说不定政府立马就会关掉Woodward。”
不过，也许在21世纪的中国，西式的滑手也大有人在。
李祉兴就是一个爱玩的滑手，他来自中国东北，大家都叫他“小兴”。去年9月，小兴参加了Dew Tour Free Flow在盐湖城的分站赛。
“他就像个朋克，” Kevin Monaghan说，“他脸上挂着恶作剧式的笑。把他放在加州OC的任何地方，他很快就会融入那里。”
当上周，大巴载着Gary Ream一家、Fuel TV员工和BMX车手Trey Jones一行离开Woodward北京的时候，小兴和周强站在一起，向大巴挥手送别。周强看起来很不轻松，也许是意识到了现在营地未来的重任就落到了自己肩上。但小兴则很平静，似乎想着在未来自己能更多的体验这个场地了（like he knew that he was about to have Woodward Beijing more or less to himself for the foreseeable future）。这表情让人想起管牧所说的发现极限运动的那些中国年轻人。“大多数中国年轻人都没有梦想，我问‘你的梦想是什么’？他们会说‘我的梦想是买房子’。在中国，买房是所有人的目标。”
不过，中国的滑手和其他玩极限的孩子，他们不一样，他们在追寻自己的梦想。”
无论极限运动在中国的发展是否正宗，对梦想的热爱却是无法伪装的。