On January 4th, Stony Brook University junior Yuyu Shen, who immigrated to the US five years ago, had the opportunity to spend the day with two youth hockey teams from her native country. They were brought here by the NY Islanders National Hockey Team. The Harbin Red Stars and the Qiqihar Snow Leopards competed in the Bell Capital Cup in Ottawa, Canada, and then visited the Islanders and saw NY. Here are her impressions:

Meeting the two teams of youngsters on the hockey teams from China was an interesting experience. When we got to the Nassau Coliseum, the Harbin Red Stars were playing on the ice against a local youth team, the Long Island Gulls. There were only a few people in the audience - the parents of the Ducks and several graduate Chinese students from Stony Brook University - but both teams played with utmost energy and professionalism.

Soon the other Chinese team, the Qiqihar Snow Leopards, who had played earlier, came out of the dressing room and I started my interview with them. They were like any kids anywhere. They had different personalities, some were a little timid, some were very outgoing, some were quieter, and some liked to fight with each other. Of course though, they were all interested in kids stuff such as the Game Boys they had bought, but they liked to pretend to be grown-ups sometimes too.

I later asked the chaperones and the coach how it felt to take this team outside of China for such a long time and if it felt any different than the adult teams they worked with. They all said it takes much more effort and energy with the kids because they have to be cared for in every aspect, and kids do like to run around and make noise. Well, kids are kids any time. I didn't fully realize that until we went with them to the hotel for more interviews. They had been here for two days already and had gotten familiar with the place. I saw kids running around the 6th floor (where both teams lived), and later on the ground floor too. Some of them started playing in the hallway because they couldn't find their keys to get into their rooms. The whole environment on the sixth floor was like a Kids Kingdom - loud, energetic, and after all, very cute.

Of course, there were a lot of things special about them too. It's not only that they got to visit out of their home country, flew several thousand miles to Canada, and built great friendships with their host families despite the unfamiliarity and language burdens. It's not only that they managed to do very well in their first world-wide tournament in such a situation - both of the teams got into the quarter-finals and one made it to the semi-finals. Its something more than that. I remembered when I heard Mr. Mike Milbury, then the general manager of the New York Islanders hockey team, who went to China and brought the teams out with Charles Wang's help.

Mr. Milbury said that when he saw the kids love for hockey and how serious they were even when they didn't have good equipment and rinks to practice, he was determined to make something happen for these kids. Their passion and love for sports, determination despite any disadvantage there is - maybe this is the most valuable thing the young players have to offer, and the most effective universal language they can use.

You can read all the many articles about the Harbin and Quiqihar teams in Canada and the US at
http://www.aaezine.org/articles/vol13/N1BellCapitalCup2005.shtml

The photo gallery is at http://aasquared.org/gallery/harbinqiqiharnyislanders

The video needs a page of explanations but here they are as simply as possible. What is up now is temp until we have time to go back and re-edit it into multiple parts with translation on all parts, and remove duplicate clips. Yuyu is the only person on the Zine who speaks Mandarin and those who tried to help her made things much worse! We were able to have grad student Gary Wu do part of it and we owe him lots of hugs. Separating an hour's worth of clips into 1 to 3 second intervals and adding text in English is soooooooooo time consuming. There is probably a better way but we don't know what it is.

The video is way too long even as a small wmv file and because it's not on a streaming server, it has to download to your computer first. So if you are not on a high speed connection, do not even try! If you do download it, move past the skating part. It is the raw, unedited 10 minute clip, much of which is meaningless without explanation. 

http://www.aaezine.org/videos/HarbinQiqiharIslanders.wmv

If you do not have MS Windows Media Player you can download it from Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/
AllDownloads.aspx?displang=en&qstechnology=