A Pictorial Biography of Li Na, Tennis Grand Slam Champion – An Interaction Between Author and Reader

New ver­sionTen­nis Dream—The Sto­ry of Cham­pi­on Li NaCov­er + Back Cov­er

 Recent­ly (this is a record of my 2020 lec­ture tour), while tour­ing with this book, I met many read­ers, and their feed­back gave me a lot of encour­age­ment and inspi­ra­tion. I’d like to share it below:

So far, the only book I know of is “Li Na: Be a Bet­ter You” (the new edi­tion is renamed:Ten­nis Dream—The Sto­ry of Cham­pi­on Li NaThe most inter­est­ing use is by a father in Wuhan who want­ed to get his daugh­ter to play bas­ket­ball. They read it togeth­er at least once a day (main­ly the father read­ing it to his daugh­ter, of course), and appar­ent­ly it real­ly res­onat­ed with them, mak­ing their bas­ket­ball games much more excit­ing…

Anoth­er lit­tle sto­ry a father in Shen­zhen told me was about his eldest daugh­ter. She was­n’t doing well before her high school entrance exam this year and lacked con­fi­dence. Unex­pect­ed­ly, after read­ing this book, she was great­ly encour­aged and vowed to “become a bet­ter ver­sion of her­self.” Lat­er, through hard work, she got into her dream high school. I thought it sound­ed a bit like a made-up sto­ry, but the father told it so sin­cere­ly that I chose to believe him. ^_^

But what’s even more inter­est­ing is the inter­ac­tion with read­ers of all ages—

Lit­tle Lamb, a young read­er from Guangzhou: Why are there cir­cles drawn all over this book?

A‑Jia: The book was orig­i­nal­ly titled “Dream Come True,” and the cir­cles through­out might be relat­ed to that, rep­re­sent­ing the process of ful­fill­ing dreams. Also, ten­nis balls are round, bicy­cle wheels are round, many things are round… There’s a book called “The Book of Cir­cles,” where the author sug­gests that every­thing in the world can be expressed using cir­cles.

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Front ring bush­ing

 Lit­tle Lamb, a young read­er from Guangzhou: Why is there a ten­nis ball on the front (front end­pa­per) and anoth­er ball on the back (back end­pa­per)?

A‑Jia: That’s one of the advan­tages of cir­cles. Cir­cles can roll and jump. The ball in front might jump and roll all the way to the back. Of course, this book was illus­trat­ed by Yu Rong, so we’ll have to ask her why she designed it this way.

rear ring bush­ing

 

Guangzhou read­er Lit­tle Lamb: Why is the child in the pho­to on the (back end­pa­per) side so small on one side and so big on the oth­er, and why is there anoth­er pho­to of him hold­ing a tro­phy?

A‑Jia: The fol­low­ing pho­tos are from dif­fer­ent peri­ods of Li Na’s life. You can see her growth process. Even though she even­tu­al­ly won the tro­phy in a leg­endary way and became a hero, she was just like any oth­er ordi­nary per­son when she was a child. And was­n’t she chub­by in the child­hood pho­tos? She had a bit of baby fat, which is why her father would take her for morn­ing runs.

Guangzhou read­er Lit­tle Lamb: Why is there a child shirt­less in this pho­to?

A‑Jia: Haha, that used to be quite com­mon in Wuhan dur­ing the swel­ter­ing sum­mers. Sum­mers there were so hot that some lit­tle boys would get so sweaty from play­ing that they’d sim­ply take off their clothes and con­tin­ue play­ing shirt­less. It’s not so com­mon any­more.

Xia Tian, a young read­er from Tang­shan: Why did you write this book?

A‑Jia: This is a ques­tion that’s both sim­ple and dif­fi­cult. Sim­ply put, this is a book I was com­mis­sioned to write. Miao Hui, the edi­tor of Li Na’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, *Play­ing Alone*, want­ed me to write the text for this illus­trat­ed biog­ra­phy. I spent over two months research­ing it before final­ly decid­ing to take on the task. The dif­fi­cul­ty lies here: why did I ulti­mate­ly decide to write this sto­ry? Look­ing back, there are two rea­sons: First, from Li Na’s life sto­ry, I saw not only a leg­endary ath­lete but also an ordi­nary per­son. Her sto­ry with her father remind­ed me of my daugh­ter and me, and I want­ed to write from that per­spec­tive. The oth­er rea­son is that I believe writ­ing is a form of expres­sion, an explo­ration, not about giv­ing oth­ers answers. Although I’m almost fifty, there are still many things I don’t under­stand, so I need to keep explor­ing.

The part of Li Na and her father’s sto­ry that makes me most uncer­tain is: is it real­ly a good thing to instill the father’s dream in a child at such a young age and then have them strive to achieve that dream? Return­ing to the sto­ry, we can expe­ri­ence it for our­selves. Li Na is now a moth­er of two, and she prefers to give her chil­dren more free­dom of choice in their upbring­ing. But when I vis­it­ed her, I asked her this ques­tion: If your father had­n’t raised you that way, would you have achieved what you have today? Li Na thought for a moment and answered very firm­ly: No.

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A pho­to tak­en dur­ing a vis­it to Li Na in Jan­u­ary 2019.

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In the process of writ­ing this book, dis­cussing how to present the sto­ry with the edi­tors and illus­tra­tors, and engag­ing with an increas­ing num­ber of read­ers, we dis­cov­ered more and more ques­tions than sim­ple answers. The impor­tant thing is that through this shared ques­tion­ing and explo­ration, we have the poten­tial to become bet­ter ver­sions of our­selves. This is per­haps one of the great­est joys of writ­ing.

A moth­er from Taiyuan asked: Why isn’t Li Na’s moth­er men­tioned in this book? Is it because the author is a father…?

A‑Jia: I am tru­ly sor­ry for this! Please allow me to bow and apol­o­gize to all the moth­ers here! Li Na’s growth is cer­tain­ly insep­a­ra­ble from her moth­er, but in this sto­ry, I focused on how her rela­tion­ship with her father affect­ed her growth. As a pic­ture book, the space was sim­ply too lim­it­ed, so in the end, I had to leave the moth­er out.

In the sev­er­al draft ver­sions I will be show­ing you (soon), you’ll find that the sto­ry orig­i­nal­ly includ­ed a moth­er. She pro­vid­ed sup­port dur­ing Li Na’s morn­ing runs, and lat­er, when Li Na was train­ing at board­ing school, she often spent time with her daugh­ter after get off work. The fam­i­ly of three enjoyed hap­py meals togeth­er on week­ends… How­ev­er, after sev­er­al revi­sions, we found that these became extra­ne­ous details out­side the main sto­ry. Explain­ing them would be too ver­bose and unclear, but doing so would require adding extra space. Those who have read Li Na’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy may know that her rela­tion­ship with her moth­er was quite com­plex and sub­tle. Per­haps a female writer will rewrite Li Na’s child­hood sto­ry in the future and explain this part more clear­ly. But in this book, we ulti­mate­ly had to reluc­tant­ly aban­don this effort.

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The ear­li­est man­u­script (the ear­li­est sto­ry men­tioned the moth­er).

This is prob­a­bly the fifth draft of the illus­tra­tion, and the moth­er is also involved in the sto­ry.

 

Anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant omis­sion in this book is of Li Na’s hus­band, Jiang Shan, who also made a tremen­dous con­tri­bu­tion to Li Na’s rise to Grand Slam cham­pi­on sta­tus. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to space lim­i­ta­tions, he has to be left out here. How­ev­er, you might be able to spot him in the stands dur­ing the match­es :)

A moth­er from Shenyang said: “When I first opened this book, I did­n’t have a strong feel­ing, but when I turned to the last fold-out page and saw Li Na’s real pho­to, I was very shocked. I won­dered if this kind of bio­graph­i­cal pic­ture book would be even bet­ter if the entire book was pre­sent­ed with pho­tos?”

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Unfold­ed brochure

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A‑Jia: Thank you for agree­ing with our idea of includ­ing a pho­to at the end! We actu­al­ly searched for that pho­to for a long time. Ini­tial­ly, we want­ed to find a pic­ture of Li Na with the ris­ing nation­al flag, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, we could­n’t find a suit­able one (one that both fit the sto­ry’s expres­sive­ness and was poten­tial­ly copy­rightable). Per­haps it was pre­cise­ly because the pho­to “sud­den­ly” appeared at the end that it restored a cer­tain sense of real­i­ty, remind­ing the read­er that this was not a fic­tion­al sto­ry, thus cre­at­ing a pow­er­ful effect. Why could­n’t we present it entire­ly with pho­tographs? Per­haps doc­u­men­taries could, but pic­ture books are unlike­ly to be so. Glob­al­ly, pic­ture books that tell a sto­ry entire­ly with pho­tographs and achieve suc­cess are very rare. More­over, we are going back to Li Na’s child­hood and ado­les­cence. Recre­at­ing the past through illus­tra­tion car­ries more of the nar­ra­tor’s emo­tions, feel­ings, and opin­ions. For exam­ple, if the nar­ra­tor choos­es to look back with joy and pos­i­tiv­i­ty, a suc­cess­ful image needs to leave the read­er with that impres­sion.

For exam­ple, when Li Na played ten­nis at the Zhong­shan Park train­ing court as a child, in the late 1980s and ear­ly 1990s, con­di­tions were quite harsh. Chil­dren played on grav­el courts, and every day they had to draw lines with white pow­der and always have mer­curochrome and gen­tian vio­let on hand. They often cut their legs and feet, espe­cial­ly their knees. They would rinse the wounds under run­ning water, apply med­i­cine, and then con­tin­ue train­ing. If viewed through a ful­ly real­is­tic col­or pho­to­graph today, it might seem “hor­ri­ble,” but in a paint­ing, it could very well cap­ture the feel­ing Yu Rong depicts. Fur­ther­more, the child­hood events described in the sto­ry cer­tain­ly weren’t pho­tographed at the time, and hav­ing actors pose for pho­tos now is clear­ly less effec­tive than depict­ing the sto­ry in a paint­ing.

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The illus­tra­tor’s favorite inner page

 

A moth­er from Shenyang wrote: “When I read this book, I felt that the Li Na in the illus­tra­tions was dif­fer­ent from the Li Na I remem­bered. I pre­fer Yu Rong’s illus­tra­tions in ‘I Am Mulan,’ as those books seem to have more detail… Did she hold back a bit when she illus­trat­ed this book?”

A‑Jia: Haha, you’ve hit the nail on the head regard­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of non-fic­tion pic­ture books! I bet Yu Rong put even more effort into illus­trat­ing *Li Na* than she did into *I Am Mulan*, because this book pre­sent­ed a greater chal­lenge for her! As you said, the Li Na in the book is dif­fer­ent from the “Li Na in your mem­o­ry,” which is the biggest chal­lenge in por­tray­ing a liv­ing per­son (espe­cial­ly a young ath­lete like Li Na), because every­one’s image of them is dif­fer­ent! Fic­tion­al char­ac­ters, on the oth­er hand, exist only in the world of imag­i­na­tion, since no one has ever seen them, and the illus­tra­tor has much more free­dom in inter­pre­ta­tion; what­ev­er the illus­tra­tor does, it has its own log­ic. Yu Rong faced this prob­lem when she illus­trat­ed Li Na; no mat­ter how she drew it, there would always be read­ers who were dis­sat­is­fied. Inter­est­ing­ly, when Li Na read the book to her chil­dren, the two lit­tle ones quite liked the 15-year-old Li Na in the book. They were curi­ous, “Why was Mom’s hair green back then?”“

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The book depicts Li Na at age 15 with “green hair.”“

The dor­mi­to­ry build­ing here is a build­ing built in Wuhan in the 1980s, and the pro­to­type is the build­ing where the author lived when he was a child.

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Fur­ther­more, you can notice many small details hid­den in the line draw­ings of this book. Unlike fic­tion­al sto­ries, these real­is­tic details are quite metic­u­lous­ly researched. For exam­ple, what was Wuhan like in the 1980s? The appear­ance of Wuhan’s bridges and fer­ries. There’s a small detail, like the dor­mi­to­ry build­ing with wreaths placed below it, which is actu­al­ly a very care­ful recre­ation of the build­ing I lived in when I was a child (from ele­men­tary to junior high school)… These details could­n’t be arbi­trary because this is a real­is­tic sto­ry. How­ev­er, the artist added her own inter­pre­ta­tion in some places. For exam­ple, to remind the read­er that Li Na and her father’s morn­ing run was in Wuhan, there’s a Yel­low Crane Tow­er in the back­ground, and she drew an immor­tal rid­ing a crane, which even­tu­al­ly flew to the Eif­fel Tow­er; includ­ing the rela­tion­ship between the Wuhan Yangtze Riv­er Bridge and the Eif­fel Tow­er, and the recre­ation of the Fer­ris wheel in the amuse­ment park from my child­hood… These are all sym­bol­ic.

 

The first image on the inner page fea­tures an immor­tal rid­ing a crane at the top.

 

As a book intro­duc­ing ten­nis cul­ture, the last few dou­ble-page spreads metic­u­lous­ly present a ten­nis match court, with every detail care­ful­ly researched. For the artist, the most ardu­ous task was actu­al­ly paint­ing the spec­ta­tors at the side­lines. We also earnest­ly request­ed Yu Rong to painstak­ing­ly depict those spec­ta­tors to make the illus­tra­tions more believ­able and allow read­ers to bet­ter expe­ri­ence the atmos­phere of the match. Frankly, this was incred­i­bly time-con­sum­ing and labo­ri­ous work, requir­ing metic­u­lous atten­tion to detail and avoid­ing mis­takes. For exam­ple, could the nation­al flag be unfurled, and how should it be unfurled? When Yu Rong became tired, she added some amus­ing lit­tle details, includ­ing an exag­ger­at­ed por­tray­al of A‑Jia and the edi­tor… Paint­ing these details prob­a­bly demand­ed even more com­pre­hen­sive skill from the artist than paint­ing the details in *I Am Mulan*.

 

When pre­sent­ing the inside pages of a match, pay spe­cial atten­tion to the spec­ta­tors on the side­lines.

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A moth­er from Luoyang said: “The title of this book is what the father says to his daugh­ter: ‘Be a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self.’ I think it’s won­der­ful, and I’m always deeply moved when I read it. But I still have some doubts: Did Li Na’s father real­ly say those words to her?”

A‑Jia: That’s an excel­lent ques­tion! The book was orig­i­nal­ly titled *Real­iz­ing a Dream: Li Na’s Growth Sto­ry*, but after much dis­cus­sion and delib­er­a­tion, it was changed to *Li Na: Becom­ing a Bet­ter Self* (anoth­er alter­na­tive was *Li Na: Being the Best Ver­sion of Your­self*, which was final­ized for the 2025 reprint).Ten­nis Dream—The Sto­ry of Cham­pi­on Li Na The phrase “Be a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self” does­n’t appear in Li Na’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, but it does appear in a 7‑minute inspi­ra­tional short film she co-direct­ed with Peter Chan (star­ring Li Na her­self), which also serves as the pre­lude to the sports block­buster “Li Na.” Clear­ly, the cred­i­bil­i­ty of this phrase comes from Li Na her­self. But return­ing to the ques­tion: did her father real­ly say that phrase ver­ba­tim? Frankly, I can’t be 100% cer­tain, but I’m sure he used sim­i­lar moti­va­tion­al meth­ods in many ways, hop­ing his daugh­ter would do bet­ter and demand­ing more of her­self, which Li Na con­sis­tent­ly prac­ticed. There­fore, I’ve also includ­ed this phrase. It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to note that Li Na her­self is the author of this book; every event and every phrase used in the book has been repeat­ed­ly reviewed and approved by her, and these sto­ries all orig­i­nate from her own expe­ri­ence.

The book men­tions her words dur­ing a TV inter­view when she was 16 years old: “My biggest dream is to reach the top ten in the pro­fes­sion­al rank­ings.” This quote is tak­en ver­ba­tim from her inter­view video, and you can still find the video of her inter­view with Bei­jing TV at that time.

 

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Appen­dix 1: Read­er Com­ments on Dangdang.com

 

Excerpts from Dangdang.com read­er com­ments

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Appen­dix 2: Excerpts from Read­ers’ Read­ing Records in the Youbei Chil­dren’s Book App

 

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Cov­er and back cov­er of the first edi­tion of “Li Na: Becom­ing a Bet­ter Self” in 2020