Mighty Mouse the Mermaid

14 書香人物 P E R S O N A L I T Y & B O O K S SUNDAY, APRIL 26, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES [ HARDCOVER: US ] SUNDAY PROFILE China’s other he first time that Sara Campbell blacked out T in the water, she was minority, in transported to a lush green field. It was summer, she says, and she was surrounded by gorgeous men whispering to her. “The their own eyes interesting physiological aspect of a blackout,” she says, “is that your Rebiya Kadeer’s book, �Dragon�� Fighter,’ senses return one by one. Your gives an insider’s view on the plight hearing comes back first, and your sight last. So, in my meadow, I of the Uighurs could hear people whispering to me, and as my sight came back, I BY HOWARD FRENCH was looking up at a blue sky; then NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK suddenly I saw a boat, and water, and people around me, and I had It is the awkward fate of China, a moment of complete disconnect. more than any other country, to I was gone.” Seconds later she be arriving late to any number of heard, “You’re safe, you can parties where most other revelers breathe.” The gorgeous men were are either long gone or leaving, her safety divers. having declared the celebrations This isn’t the only time declasse. Such is the case with Campbell has been unconscious “ I realized you don’t China’s booming smokestack in the water. As one of the economy and with its ardent new world’s best, most fearless, free have to go through fling with the automobile, with its divers, hazard comes with the desire for a deep-water navy built job. It happened again earlier therapy, or weeks of around aircraft carriers, and with this month, as she attempted her its ambition for a space program most ambitious dive yet. feeling crappy — I that will land on the Moon. Competing at the Vertical China is also just beginning Blue competition in the Bahamas, could just jump in to grapple with the creation of Campbell set a world record in what most in the developed world the women’s constant weight the water and feel would recognize as a modern legal discipline, diving down 96m brilliant. system, and it is in much the same DRAGON FIGHTER: ONE WOMAN’s EPIC with no oxygen and nothing to position with its cobbling efforts STRUGGLE FOR PEACE WITH CHINA propel her except a mermaid-like to reinvent the welfare state. monofin. The film of that dive is — Sara Campbell, world Most anachronistic of all, BY REBIYA KADEER, WITH mesmeric: a tiny figure descending champion free diver though, is the country’s treatment ALEXANDRA CAVELIUS along a dropped rope, her safety of its two largest minorities, the 423 PAGES divers dangling in the water Tibetans and Uighurs, both old, above her as she moves through although doctors have established KALES PRESS non-Han indigenous civilizations the green murk, plummeting that she has a lung capacity 25 that claim meaningful autonomy into silence. Just watching her is percent bigger than most people in China’s vast, resource-rich and enough to make you frantically her size, this doesn’t account for sparsely populated west. Our about the many humiliations draw breath — Campbell was her incredible aptitude. Many of Western legacy may give us little imposed by Beijing on the underwater, altogether, for three the world’s best free divers spend to cluck about, but in today’s Uighurs, including routine busi- minutes 36 seconds. hours every day in training, but world the rights and interests of ness harassment and forced That dive was celebrated when I ask Campbell whether she native peoples have rightly won abortions, massacres and barriers with a punch of the air, but the indulges in any of the more bizarre greater recognition. to trade and contact with other next one, five days later, wasn’t practices, she just laughs. “I don’t In this memoir, Dragon central Asian neighbors. so successful. Campbell was do technique training, strength Fighter, part defiant political On one level, Kadeer’s book determined to push herself to training, I don’t do lactic-acid tell-all, part engrossing personal is a routine account of recent the round figure of 100m, and tolerance … For me, the sport is saga, Rebiya Kadeer paints a Chinese history. Much more managed it, but as she reached the about the love of discovery. The vivid picture of her life as a interesting is its core autobio- surface she lost consciousness. numbers, the records themselves, mother of 11 and a business- graphical story: the remarkable The result was disqualification, Mighty Mouse the are incidental.” woman who spent nearly six rise from modest roots to a life as, and a level of exhaustion she’d A group of physicians at a years in prison on her way to the author claims, the wealthiest never experienced before. “I university in Italy have been becoming the Uighur people’s woman in China and a politically wasn’t even able to string a studying Campbell among a most prominent dissident. prominent member of the National sentence together. I got cold sores group of free divers, and have Even Westerners who pay People’s Congress. around my mouth and I thought, mermaid established that “people are relatively little attention to China Here, though, the book is my body is run down now. It’s not excelling in these areas as they will be at least vaguely familiar marred by language that betrays wise to put it through that again.” Four years ago she was a yoga teacher who had never even get older. It’s not like tennis or with the plight of Tibetans. limited modesty and perhaps even It’s not easy to fathom why free heard of free diving. Now Sara Campbell, aka Mighty Mouse, is football, where you have teenagers Such is not the case with the limited self-knowledge. divers put their bodies through and people in their early 20s Uighur, a central Asian people Through sheer force of such stress. Their sport involves the world champion in one of the world’s most dangerous sports being the superstars. It’s people who are distant relatives of personality Kadeer overcomes doing something counter-intuitive in their 30s. What the physicians the Turks and native to what a bad marriage to an abusive — diving far away from any BY Kira Cochrane are interested in is how our more China calls the Xinjiang Uighur husband, then seeks out and oxygen source. And the physical THE GUARDIAN, LONDON advanced mental development and Autonomous Region, or the New marries a former political prisoner changes are significant. As soon self-belief — and ability to control Frontier, an area three and half and poet. as your face is immersed in water, squeeze”, when someone dives too to pay the bills,” and her sister had She hadn’t even heard of free stress and set goals — affects us.” times as large as California, whose Years later, having built a your heart rate slows. Then comes deep for their lungs to sustain the just had a baby. “I was incredibly diving, but Dahab is a center for Campbell’s next goal is to indigenous people look all but set fortune (and a big reputation) in peripheral vasoconstriction, in compression. “It might lead to a unhappy about that. I think deep the sport, and soon some of her reach the 100m mark — without to join the ranks of history’s great, department stores and real estate, which blood is drawn from your slight cough with a spot of blood, down I knew that she was very ful- yoga clients, noticing how long blacking out. At 37, she has gone overrun losers. Kadeer begins to attract the arms and legs towards your body’s to handfuls of blood coming out of filled in her life, and that I wasn’t.” she was able to hold her breath from an unhappy life in London One thing the Uighur, spelled wooing calls of the party. Her big core organs. As you descend your lungs. It happened to a girl in Campbell went on holiday to during meditation, suggested she to making her living from the Uyghur in this book, have never moment comes in a speech before further, your lungs contract to the the Bahamas, and she was diving Dahab, in Egypt, “and the only way try it. Her talent was immediately sport. “My initial motivation in had is a leader with great recogni- the Congress in Beijing, in which size of lemons, and on the ascent again in three or four days.” I can describe it is that someone obvious. Less than a year after free diving was just that it made tion outside China, like the Dalai she boldly switches the approved “the compression in the lungs is Although there have been opened a lid in my head and put a she started, she broke three world me so happy. I realized you don’t Lama, who has contributed a brief text to ask: “Is it our fault that the reversing. In the final stages of the deaths among people practicing note inside, saying: ‘This is where records in a single weekend. Then have to go through therapy, or introduction for this memoir. Chinese have occupied our land? dive, from 10m to the surface, the “no limits” free diving (which you’re going to live.’” She had been she won gold in the constant weeks of feeling crappy — I Kadeer writes: “Politicians and That we live under such horrible size of your lungs doubles.” involves being propelled much teaching yoga and meditation for weight category at the world could just jump in the water and human rights organizations from conditions?” Forbes magazine once named it further underwater on a weighted a year alongside her PR business, championships in Egypt.

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