Businessman to mentor
However, 12 years ago, Bai faced a disheartening truth — Baoding, once a cradle of Chinese wrestling, had no active gyms teaching its iconic type of wrestling.
Upon discovering this, Bai, after evaluating his own circumstances — already retired, his children settled in their own lives, and the burden on his family reduced — opted to open a wrestling gym.
At 57 in 2013, he took a gamble. "My family thought I was crazy. But wrestling is in my bones. I walked past the empty workshops and thought, this can't be the end," he recalls.
Bai, affectionately called "Wrestling Grandpa", transformed his neglected factory into a training gym — a 4,000-square-meter earth sports field as an outdoor training ground, and a 300-square-meter tin house serving as an indoor training facility. Youngsters can train on the sports ground, running, leapfrogging, overturning tires and swinging barbell discs.
