HANGZHOU – It has been four years since Jin Yujia was last in her hometown in the Binjiang district of Hangzhou owing to the pandemic.
The 26-year-old, who moved to Singapore when she was 11, finally returned last Friday ahead of the women’s doubles badminton event at the Asian Games, although it is a place that has transformed significantly since her previous visit.
She said: “I’m quite excited to be back. It’s a place that I feel I’m familiar with but is foreign to me at the same time because I’ve been out for the majority of my life.
“Back then, the area was considered the outskirts of Hangzhou, it wasn’t really the central area. But as Hangzhou developed, it kept expanding and the area got bigger.”
In place of old houses that stood about six storeys high are high rise apartments and office buildings. Her old home was demolished about five years ago.
Jin and doubles partner Crystal Wong, who are ranked 28th in the world, will begin their campaign in the round of 32 on Tuesday. They face Malaysia’s world No. 9 Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan at the Binjiang Gymnasium.
Jin spent most of her childhood in Hangzhou, before attending a sports school in the Xihu district when she was in Primary 3.
She would go on runs in the area, with famous landmarks like Baoshi Mountain forming the backdrop for those training sessions.
But when she was 11, her mother Yang Nianhong, decided to send her to Singapore to study. Having experienced how competitive the environment was as a professional badminton player in China, she also wanted her daughter to focus on her studies to have more options in the future.
Jin went over alone, before Yang, herself a national player for China in the early 1990s, joined her six months later. Her father only relocated to Singapore a few years ago after retiring.
Jin would visit Hangzhou every year during the December holidays for about two weeks, occasionally spending time at places like West Lake, which is a Unesco World Cultural Heritage site, and Linying Temple.
Before the Asian Games, postponed from 2022 due to Covid-19, Jin had been following the news online and on social media about how the city had changed and did not recognise the landmarks in the images she saw.
She said: “In some ways, I actually am quite excited to see the development of Hangzhou. They’ve built quite a lot for these Asian Games and the new stadium, everything is new.”
Her parents also travelled to Hangzhou, with Yang stopping by her own hometown of Longquan to visit her own family, hoping to watch the daughter in action but were unable to get tickets to the badminton matches.
But Jin is looking forward to possibly seeing old friends from her old badminton club in the crowd. They had expressed interest to support her ever since the dates for the competition were confirmed.
On her Asiad debut, Jin, who has a 2022 Commonwealth Games bronze medal from the mixed team event, said: “I’m quite looking forward to everything – the place, people and volunteers, I’m sure they will be quite welcoming and China is always top-notch in organising any Games.”
2023-10-02 04:00:47
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