By Park Gayoung

South Korea has long been a cultural exporter. From hunky pop singer Rain to racy soap operas, Chinese people are enthralled with the small peninsular nation. But of all the South Korean delights China has absorbed few are as unlikely as cheerleading.

Cho Soo-jin, 36, first introduced cheerleading to China a little less than a decade ago, but by 2008, the resilient and diligent dancer had already formed a professional troupe and was the captain of the Chinese cheerleading team for the Beijing Olympics. How she got there is an unusual tale of perseverance and impulsiveness.

Not all fun and games

Formerly a dancer, Cho had taught dance and aerobics after her move to China in 1994. Her switch to cheerleading came in 2002, when China was preparing for the Korea-Japan FIFA World Cup. She accompanied the nation's team and then formed a company, Soojin Dance, which ran cheerleading for the Chinese Basketball Association until 2004.

Cho was later tapped to be the "cheerleader of cheerleaders" and head the Olympic team. She loved the position and was happy to make a contribution to China, but the Olympics wasn't all fun and games.

Only three months away from the Olympics, some of the best dancers on the volunteer team demanded to be paid 3,000 yuan ($448) a month. Not wanting to lose the best dancers, she paid them out of her own pocket, causing her to take on 300,000 yuan in debt. The Olympic organizers never gave her a cent toward this amount.

She felt let down by her dancers, who had originally agreed to work for free. She felt like leaving Beijing.

But the Olympics brought her an unexpected surprise - an American named Nicolas Krippendorf, an independent consultant who helped introduce NFL into China and who she is still dating. They decided to stay in Beijing together and work on charity projects. 

One of the projects and what she values most is a cheerleader-training program for kids.

"Children learn discipline from sports - swimming, dancing, Taekwondo, etc. Why not cheerleading?" Cho says. 

"I hope girls can learn how to express themselves and be more confident. I have to travel to many cities to teach kids. Last week I went to Shenyang but I would go further to train children on how to cheerlead." 

Cho Soo-jin and Yang Lan on Her Village. Photos: Courtesy of Cho Soo-jin

Unhappy childhood

Cho's impulses to help young people come from her own difficult experiences as a child. Most people who make it to the top of their field are goal-oriented, but Cho doesn't operate that way. "I'm impulsive, direct, and stubborn and have a loud voice," Cho says.

Coming to China initially was a spur-of-the-moment decision to escape her unhappy life in Incheon in South Korea.

Cho's first stepmother was a menace. When her father left the house, she often beat Cho. 

Her father was no better. Although he didn't abuse her physically, he never nurtured the feisty Cho and always upbraided her for being "unladylike."

When her father told her he was marrying for the third time, Cho decided she had had enough, and off to China she went. Beijing was to become her refuge and the unlikely place where her talents would come to be appreciated.

As a girl, Cho escaped the pain of her family life through dancing. Dancing made her happy and she was good at it. But her family was too poor to afford to dance classes.

Her gym teacher didn't want her to waste her enthusiasm or talent, so he recommended aerobics lessons, which were much cheaper than dancing in the early 1990s.

Dancing in a class filled with middle-aged women who joined to get rid of the their belly fat, she thought aerobics was not as elegant as ballet. Not long after, however, the 14-year-old found aerobics suited her extrovert personality. Aerobics not only gave her physical relief from home pressures, it later became her means of survival.

When she was 21, she began studying Chinese at Beijing Language and Culture University, but she needed a job to support herself. With only rudimentary language skills at that point, she struggled to find any work. She visited gyms and dance studios with a video tape of her dancing until one small gym hired her as an aerobic coach.

Cho had always been loud and vocal - unrefined her father would say - but being an aerobics teacher suddenly gave her an outlet for her energy. She made her classes as exciting as possible and soon her students would come a couple of hours earlier and wait to get a good spot in her class.   

Path to fame

A TV producer noticed the devotion of her students and gave Cho an opportunity that took her on the path to nationwide fame.

After an appearance on Beijing TV in 1999, Cho launched China's aerobics fad - one that continues to fill up dance studios across the country.

"With aerobics, you get to shout out loud and move a lot," Cho says, "It's great for stress relief." 

Her conviction in the power of athletics to change lives comes not only from her rough upbringing. Cho sees it in many of the girls she's trying to help.

"I hope my cheerleading team can provide some opportunities to girls in need so that they can get their confidence back and never let go of the dreams in their lives."

Although more and more TV programs include cheerleaders' performances and competitions, Cho believes cheerleading in China is still in its infancy, making the training of the younger generation crucial to the next stage of cheerleading.

Cho also has another surprising gig. After growing up being punished for her personality, she's finally coming into her own as a no-holds-barred host on one of China's most popular talk shows, Her Village from Hunan TV.

She sits alongside Yang Lan, a millionaire business woman/talk show host and Li Ai, a famous supermodel.

She adds an original flavor to the show, throwing out her opinion unfiltered in unaccented Chinese.

"She is very fiery and asks many provocative questions. After Soo-jin asks those questions, people do get angry," Yang says, describing her in a TV program. "But they know she's a foreigner and can't be taken seriously, so it's OK. The truth is she knows that, too."

Cho thinks it's her function, saying "I really enjoy playing this role."

It seems life couldn't get much better for the one-time pauper, who still has no plans.

"I want to write a book, something about China that Chinese people don't want to hear," Cho says. "But other than that, who knows what the future will bring?"

gayoungpark@globaltimes.com.cn