Tsai Jung-pin's favorite athlete, Wang Hui-Chen, won a gold in the 200 meters at this year's World Games for college students. The victory is the R.O.C.'s greatest success ever in international track and field. Standing on the winner's platform as the R.O.C. flag was raised, her hand wiped tears from her cheeks. In the stands, Tsai's face was even more drenched with tears because his dream of 20 years was finally being realized.
Setback for a High Jumper: The only son of a famous Tainan family, Tsai, under the guidance of his parents, studied painting as a small boy and won an award for piano as a teenager even though at the time he preferred to blow on the saxophone.
"Though studying this or that ever since I was a child, I maintained a playful attitude and was always looking for something to throw myself into with all my heart," Tsai recalls. After a teacher discovered that he had natural talent for the high jump in junior high school, he began to compete. At one time he had the junior high school record in the event, and he was crowned district champion. "And so I started thinking my life would be in track and field," he says.
Once, 20 years ago, Tsai was chosen to represent the R.O.C. in the pole vault in an international meet in the Philippines. Suffering unexpected defeat, he didn't win a medal. Instead, he looked on as the winning foreign athletes proudly watched their national flags rise.
"This deeply depressed me, and I decided to give up athletics," Tsai explains. After seeing an international meet, he began to think that his body was unexceptional and his skills inferior. By further taking into account the limited athletic resources in the R.O.C., he decided that in the next few years he had no way of achieving success. Because he had always had artistic inclinations, Tsai went to Switzerland to study photography and then to the University of Southern California, where he got a masters in advertising.
But as he had left his true love, athletics, his achievements had no way to truly satisfy him. "For many years, I went into exile, taking my camera to every corner of the world in search of life."
Although he won many international photography competitions, he was dismayed by the unequal treatment he got as a result of his R.O.C. passport, and he regretted being unable to raise his country's flag and international standing through success in athletics.
A Dream Come True?: Hence he came back to Taiwan and established a successful, awardwinning advertising business, which provides financial assistance for the training of athletes.
At the same time, he started coaching at the China Junior College of Industrial and Commercial Management. "Photography and training athletes are similar," he says. "In both you're trying to create a work of art."
Among his works of art, he has already discovered a rough diamond in Wang Hui-chen, and he reveals that their true goal is the Olympics. She may just be his dream come true.
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(photo by Huang Lili)
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