Hong Kong loves China's diving divas
By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - What is it about China's Olympic diving divas that some of the
richest and most influential men of this city cannot resist? It looked like a
one-off thing in 2002 when then financial secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung,
nearly 50 at the time, married 25-year-old Fu Mingxia, winner of five Olympic
medals, four of them gold.
What was then an oddity, however, has since turned into something of an Olympic
motif. Now Hong Kong is watching Kenneth Fok Kai-kong, the playboy grandson of
legendary Hong Kong tycoon Henry Fok Ying-tung, pursue Guo Jingjing, who this
week in Beijing surpassed Fu as the greatest female diver of all time when she
won her second gold medal, the fourth of her
career and her sixth Olympic medal overall. While the debate goes on in
Internet chat rooms about which of the two divers is the most attractive, a new
diving queen has been crowned.
But will Guo, like Fu - and like former Olympic gymnast Li Ning and
international piano sensation Lang Lang - also abandon the mainland for a new
life in Hong Kong?
The 26-year-old Guo, also known as the Britney Spears of the Chinese Olympic
team for her egocentric clashes with the Chinese media, has kept everyone
guessing, including the growing band of paparazzi who follow her every word and
deed. Will it be the grind of another four years of training for the London
Games in 2012 or the soft life with Kenneth Fok in cosmopolitan Hong Kong?
The question seemed to be answered prior to the Asian Games in Doha in 2006,
where reports of her dalliances with Fok - who showed up at the Games to watch
her stunning dives - overshadowed stories of her dominance of the diving pool.
"I will retire after the Beijing Olympics," Guo said before wowing Fok and
lesser spectators in Doha. "After 20 years in this sport, it is very difficult.
It's time to leave, no matter how much you love it."
Guo began competitive diving at age seven, won a spot on the national team when
she was 11 and has competed in three Olympic Games. Now it appeared she was
ready to give up her passion for diving for passion of another kind.
The paparazzi rumor mill went into overdrive. To win Guo's affections, had Fok
purchased a posh apartment for her in Beijing? What was suggested by that photo
of the couple sharing a drink with a single straw at a restaurant in Hong
Kong's upscale Repulse Bay area and by their brazen nightclub-hopping in
Shanghai? Were they engaged? Indeed, was she pregnant?
And this is not the first high-profile public romance in which the
temperamental diver has been involved. In fact, Fok may receive only a silver
medal for this relationship after Guo's one-time boyfriend, fellow diver Tian
Liang, 28, married another woman last year. The two divers, stars of the 2004
Games in Athens, became known as the "prince and princess of diving" and were
so intimately linked in the public mind that they were called Liang Jingjing.
But that was before sparks reportedly flew between Guo and Fok on the Hong Kong
leg of her post-Athens victory tour.
If you believe the Hong Kong and mainland media, their relationship continues
to smolder today - too hot sometimes, with seething arguments and threatened
break-ups. And the big, unanswered question continues to tantalize and to
titillate: Did Tian jilt Guo, driving her into the arms of Fok? Or,
alternatively, did Fok use his charms - and money - to steal her away?
Gossip-lovers may never know the answer, which is why they love the question.
And, by the way, was there also a brief post-Tian liaison for Guo with Hong
Kong pop icon Edison Chen Koon-hei? Chen has since withdrawn from public life
after a series of photos he took of himself and a number of Hong Kong starlets
having sex made their way onto the Internet. There was certainly no
photographic evidence of any intimate Chen-Guo connection.
And now, after Guo's brilliant performance on the three-meter springboard this
week made her the first diver to win a gold medal in both the individual and
synchronized events in two consecutive Olympics, what are we to make of her
surprise announcement that she has decided not to retire after all? Especially
after a beaming Timothy Fok Tsun-ting - Kenneth's father, an international
Olympic Committee member and Hong Kong's Olympic chief - had arranged to be the
dignitary who hung the gold medal for her three-meter springboard triumph
around her neck.
"I have never thought of retiring because I love diving," Guo said. "I like the
feeling when I stand on the springboard. I just can't give it up."
Predictably, that statement got the gossip mill churning again: What about
Kenneth?
Guo will be 30 by the time the London Olympics roll around. That's a long time
for a Hong Kong playboy-tycoon to wait, even if he is waiting for a mainland
diving diva. Is it over? Will she change her mind? What's next?
Let the paparazzi frenzy begin anew. After all, in the new China that is
hosting these successful Olympic Games while developing its own vibrant
celebrity culture, this is the perfect symbiotic relationship. Over the years,
the media's attitude toward Guo has run the gamut - from adulation to damnation
and back to adulation again - and both parties have benefited immensely from
the wild fluctuations. While gold medals are a great media sell, so are
(barely) undercover romances and the same kind of cupidity and eccentric
tetchiness and arrogance that Westerners are accustomed to associating with
their most interesting celebrities.
While this trend has been developing for some time in China - with its diving
divas often at the center - Guo has brought it to a new level. At one moment,
she is standing on a podium receiving yet another gold medal; at another she is
a bon vivant in Shanghai with a rich playboy boyfriend; at still another she is
carping to the press about her disappointing second-place finish in the World
Cup and referring to a Canadian diving rival as "fatty".
In 2006, Guo felt compelled to go on national television to apologize for
cashing in on her fame by signing lucrative endorsement deals with companies
such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Budweiser. She was briefly banned from
China's national team for her over-the-top commercial activities.
But this week Guo is back on top of the sporting world and not content to fade
away into domesticity like Fu, who now has three children and lives a quiet
life in Hong Kong. Apparently, there are a lot of beautiful dives left in Guo -
and, or so the paparazzi hope, a few scandals, too.
Kent Ewing is a teacher and writer at Hong Kong International School. He
can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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