A decade ago, when sporting interests in Beijing gravitated toward the coming 2008 Summer Olympics, a small group of boys began China’s hockey revolution by happenstance.
Misha Song started playing hockey because a doctor thought the cold air would cure a nagging cough. Tora Liu was a chubby child looking for ways to exercise indoors, away from the summer heat.
They played on small rinks, like the one inside the China World Mall or a crude sheet built in a decommissioned war bunker. The boys used discounted hockey gear that their parents had collected during business trips abroad. With no one to teach them how to suit up, the boys at first wore their hockey socks inside kneepads to keep their legs warm.
Those boys have graduated from their curious beginnings to New England preparatory schools and top junior programs in North America, getting ready for the chance to display the evolution of Chinese hockey at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
“It’s kind of absurd thinking — eight years ago, we would have never imagined we’d still be playing hockey, let alone playing in the U.S.,” said Song, who attends Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, with Liu. “It definitely makes us closer. It’s a special bond that we share.”
Song, 19, is a major force in driving hockey interest in China. In June, he became the first Chinese-born player drafted by an NHL team when the Islanders selected him in the sixth round.
“When Misha Song got drafted, it just blew up,” said Wei Zhong, a senior at Hinsdale Central High School in Illinois, who plays for the Chicago Mission, a top youth club. “He inspired all these kids to start playing, and some of my friends who were with hockey before to dust off their skates and start playing again.”
Song first picked up a stick at age 6, when his father returned with hockey equipment after a business trip to Russia. Four years later, his family moved to Toronto to advance his playing career, and Song relocated to the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey at 15. He began a postgraduate year at Phillips in September.
Amid the celebrated brick facades and snow-covered lawns of Phillips, one of the oldest high schools in the United States, Song has reunited with Liu almost a decade after they first skated together with the Beijing Cubs youth team.
Their friends also pursuing hockey dreams in North America include Zhong; Rudi Ying, who plays for the Toronto Patriots of the Ontario Junior Hockey League; Simon Chen, a senior at South Kent School in Connecticut; and Ou Li, a senior at Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Massachusetts.
During the offseason, members of the group have trained at camps throughout the continent, played overseas for China’s under-18 national team, and taken trips back to Beijing. When separated, they frequently converse through group messages on WeChat, a popular Chinese communication app, as they relay their struggles in the United States and share their hopes for expanding interest in hockey back home.
“I think it definitely helped me tremendously, knowing other kids who literally had the same situation as me, going through the same struggles and who are excelling at their own level,” Li said. “It’s comforting to me. If I don’t have them by my side, this situation could get incredibly difficult; I could feel very lonesome. I’d have no one to relate to.”
Often, the boys joke, exchange photos from their youth or organize trips to New York. But they have also shared the plight of being anomalous figures in the hockey culture.
Ying was one of the first Chinese youth players to compete in North America. His father, Da Ying, a famous Chinese actor and director, sent faxes to coaches in the Northeast, searching for opportunities for his son. Chris Masters, who coached the Boston Junior Bruins, invited Rudi Ying to play in a tournament in Canada.
Photographs taken at the time show Ying proudly clutching a gold trophy. He moved to the Chicago area when he was 10.
“I was very shy, an inward, awkward kid,” Ying said. “Hockey forces you to talk to kids, learn how to be socially more open, and I think that’s important.”
Although the players were enamored of quality hockey environments, they had problems making the transition. For some, language barriers were troublesome. In China, Liu had not studied English since kindergarten, and he said it took him about four years to become fluent.
Playing hockey helped expedite their English and made them feel less shy in social situations. But the games occasionally became hostile. Liu said he had been called racial slurs. In the fall, after Song was drafted, opponents mistakenly directed taunts intended for him at Liu.
“There are prices you have to pay since we are the first wave; we are the pioneers,” Chen said. “Personally, I like the adversity.”
The players often lived with only one parent while the other split time between North America and China for business. Liu said he did not regularly speak Chinese anymore and had lost contact with most of his friends from his youth in Beijing. Zhong lamented living so far from his grandparents.
When the players go back to China, mostly during school vacations, they have noticed a changing hockey landscape. No longer do children have to skate on makeshift rinks with adults in beer leagues — many new facilities have been built in major cities in recent years.
In an International Ice Hockey Federation survey from 2015, China had 1,225 registered players. The country also had 48 indoor rinks, more than Austria, the Czech Republic and Japan.
The Islanders’ owner, Charles B. Wang, who was born in Shanghai, has helped support 28 rinks in China. Five NHL games per week are broadcast on local Chinese television, a league representative said, and in December, the Russia-based Kontinental Hockey League announced an expansion into Beijing next season.
While there are signs of steady growth in China, a large financial disparity remains. Much of the hockey activity is centered in major cities. The players now in North America come from families with successful business backgrounds.
“Gear is even more expensive in China, and I think that’s one part that’s holding people who are less wealthy back from playing,” Liu said.
Hockey will be a showcase event at the 2022 Olympics, so stronger support is expected from the Chinese government, which could help spread the game.
The success of Song and other top Chinese youth players could have an even larger influence. Paul Tortorella, the coach at Phillips, said he had received inquiries this season from Chinese players wanting to follow in Song and Liu’s footsteps.
During the 1947-48 season, Larry Kwong became the first player of Chinese descent to play in an NHL game. He said in a recent telephone interview that he was proud of this generation of Chinese hockey players.
Song recently met Yao Ming, who was almost single-handedly responsible for China’s transformation into a basketball hotbed. Yao told him not to lose focus and urged him to ignore what outsiders said about him.
If Song or another player reaches the NHL, an impact like Yao’s is possible. Song said he embraced his role as an ambassador.
Ying said it was “very inspirational” when Song was drafted.
“Before that,” Ying said, “the NHL was really like this light in the distance. After seeing him get drafted, it became a reality and gave me something to work for.”
Along with motivating one another, the players have begun to mentor the next wave of potential Chinese stars. At South Kent, Chen is helping two younger Chinese players in the program, passing along the experiences he and his friends have encountered over the years.
“Hockey involves a lot of politics; sometimes you don’t get ice time you earn,” Chen said, adding that some coaches gave more chances to U.S. players than to Asians.
“But at end of the day,” he said, “we reached a consensus that we have to bear down, pay the price, because we’re working our butts off for Chinese hockey, for our country. A little adversity is nothing.”
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