Ma's army video

Great stuff. Thank you

Letsrun.com should pay someone who is biluingal to voice over that.

gilbertcrockett wrote:

Letsrun.com should pay someone who is biluingal to voice over that.

Why should Letsrun pay someone? How about you?

Because it would attract attention to their website, thus gaining more ad revenue and $$.

duh.

gilbertcrockett wrote:

Letsrun.com should pay someone who is biluingal to voice over that.

Bi what?

gilbertcrockett wrote:

Letsrun.com should pay someone who is biluingal to voice over that.

Was going to offer to post a summary of the important/interesting points made in the vids, but then I realized they combined for a total of 80 minutes. Going to have to put this one off until I have some more free time.

From what I watched though, it's quite interesting. I didn't think footage like this even existed.

Holy f**k - at 17.20 in that first video, some dude (Ma?) chops off the head of a live turtle with a meat cleaver, drains the blood straight into a mug and a poor female athlete drains the mug.......!?

Wow, that comment about the turtle is 100% accurate and not at all a joke. Could someone with more knowledge of Chinese culture than me address whether consumption of raw turtle blood is a normal occurrence, or would this seem strange to most Chinese people, too?

I booked this several years ago- basically describes what we're seeing in the videos.

http://web.archive.org/web/20071022054006/http://www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/98/1204/feat3.html

There's also a book about Ma's Army, but it's in Chinese. I got it about 8 yrs ago through an interlibrary loan, but of course- can't read it!

Why are they short-step running back and forth (@ around 2 minutes) in the middle of the night? Some weird training techniques but intriguing.

Surprised wrote:

Wow, that comment about the turtle is 100% accurate and not at all a joke. Could someone with more knowledge of Chinese culture than me address whether consumption of raw turtle blood is a normal occurrence, or would this seem strange to most Chinese people, too?

"Blood" (usually bovine or pig) is a part of many normal meals, especially hotpot. To the best of my knowledge though, it is typically not raw. So yes, it is somewhat bizarre that they would be consuming raw turtle blood. However, each province tends to have different customs, and my cultural knowledge is mostly limited to that of Anhui, so there's a chance that it COULD still be normal (but I doubt it).

Thanks for posting the videos and the article.

Thanks a lot for these links!

To keep the World Records stright is one of the main tasks for the IAAF. I know there are many practacally unsolvable problems (doping) regarding this. But the Chinese distance records from 1993 are definitely something even more special than all the other (difficult) records. I really can't understand the IAAF that they don't put some effort to try to find out what really has happened. Two things should not be too difficult: to interview as many of the involved persons (athletes, trainers, spectators, officials, OMEGA a.s.o.) as possible and manage to get hold of the full vids of all the races. But - as so often - there main task seems to find the way how to bring as much money as possible out of the sport.

Great to see some more clips from these races. Thanks again for this!

My wife, Chinese, lived in Beijing till she was 28, translated a lot of this as I watched. One thing that cracked me up is that Ma Jun Ren was insisting that all of this stuff is 'scientific'. Getting advice on curing shin injuries via Chinese medicine from some random peasant lady in the market and getting advice from some dude selling chickens on what 'color' chickens are best for athletes to consume. Light-feathered chickens - not good; brown, red, black - good for the athlete. All "scientific", according to Ma. but he did have those girls running 30K in the morning and another 10K (sometimes in 35:00) in the evenings at 2000m altitude. All of the girls were poor, country girls who were used to (maybe like the Kenyans?) getting everywhere by foot, and at altitude. He insisted no Westerners could tolerate training like his girls could. Also, no other country besides China has the Chinese Medicine. I haven't watched the second video yet.

There were many storys about that back in 1993, especially in Germany, since one of the leading German athletics journalists at the time (also not a good one in my opinion) has had a asian (malaysia) wife. He has written many articles and some books about tahletics in China. I have little doubt that all the athletes from "Ma's army" have trained very hard (probably much harder than "western" athletes usually do). But it's also true that many have tried to train like this and couldn't. But to me this can't be the full explanation. I don't buy the storys about the chinese medicine.

RacistX wrote:

One thing that cracked me up is that Ma Jun Ren was insisting that all of this stuff is 'scientific'. Getting advice on curing shin injuries via Chinese medicine from some random peasant lady in the market and getting advice from some dude selling chickens on what 'color' chickens are best for athletes to consume. Light-feathered chickens - not good; brown, red, black - good for the athlete. All "scientific", according to Ma.

Why didn't they just get drugged up on scientific medications, like us Americans do.

In American we watch peasant people selling drugs on TV.

As a sophomore in college I wrote a persuasive essay about why the records set by Ma's Army should be looked at again, because they seemed a little...off. During my research I found photos taken by a person named Forrest Anderson who was working with TIME magazine. I asked him about his experiences and got this reply:

[quote] "I looked back through my whole take of these photos and there are no foreign officials or press in the pictures. For the era, the absence of non-Asian press or officials was not unusual. China was a bit of a backwater then from a media perspective. I was the only foreign magazine news photographer who lived and worked in Beijing, although Hong Kong-based ones popped in and out occasionally, and there were only two or three foreign wire photographers based in Beijing. The foreign press corps, especially photographers, was very small and I was the only one who spoke Chinese and covered a lot of Chinese events, mainly because my employer, Time magazine, had an Asian edition.

The Asian Games were not considered a major international event and mostly didn’t get covered by foreign photographers except for me. The main reason I covered it at all is that the Chinese planned to bid for the Olympics. This was pre-Internet, and there weren’t that many outlets for foreign news so this kind of story had to compete for limited space with everything that was going on in the world that day. I think Sports Illustrated ran about a third of a page on it. I don’t remember if Time even ran anything on it.

As far as video, ABC, CBS, etc. had videographers based in Beijing, but I don’t know if they covered it because they mainly showed up at major political events. Like all other news photographers of the time, I was shooting film on a still camera. I didn’t get into video until much later.

I wasn’t even shooting on assignment initially - I covered it because I was covering the Asian Games on a slow news day. It wasn’t until Wang set a world record in the first round that the story attracted attention. Then I covered her breaking another world record. I don’t remember if I was assigned to shoot the second record or if I shot it first and then offered it to Time and Sports Illustrated. Part of my job was to keep Time and Sports Illustrated informed about what was happening in Beijing, so it may have been the latter.

It just wasn’t considered that big of a deal - a pretty routine news story." [\quote]

I always found it weird that the only footage released was condensed, and wish somebody would push for the entire races to be released. I doubt that will ever happen, though. I believe that track the records were set at was also demolished. The ladies of Ma's Army proved they were world class at the Olympics, but they never approached the times of their world records again. Thus, a shadow will always hang over these unbelievable records.

If somebody wishes to contact Mr. Anderson (who was very gracious) his email is

I can't believe I'm seeing this. Insane.

The stuff of legends, seriously.