Eastern promise

SMILING broadly, Tan Jai En recalls that when he was young he was, as he puts it, "a bit of a naughty child". Then again, perhaps "naughty" is too strong. "I had lots of energy," he clarifies, still smiling, as he will continue to do, more or less, for the next couple of hours.

A lot of energy? "I was a bit of a handful," he adds, shrugging apologetically. "My father was in the army and he was often away. It was a lot for my mum to cope with. Maybe it was easier for her when I went away."

Tan was eight years old and at school near his home in Yunnan in the south of China when some talent-spotters paid a visit. They were searching for recruits for their martial-arts school, and in the trials that followed, Tan and a girl in his class excelled. They both showed natural strength, agility, athleticism – skills perfectly suited to traditional Chinese martial arts.

The talent-spotters watched approvingly; before he knew it, Tan and his classmate were packing a small bag each and leaving home to start a new life elsewhere.

"Of course – the school was residential," says Tan when asked whether it was necessary to move away at such a young age. "It was 500km away. In China, everything is far away."

Thirty-six years later, he is discussing this early upheaval in the place he now calls home – Alloa. Tonight, dressed in a Scotland team tracksuit, he awaits his young charges at the Speirs Centre, named after Tommy Speirs, a local boxing hero.

In the echoing foyer of the Victorian building, Tan's voice, still heavily accented, is occasionally submerged as his young gymnasts pour in chaotically and noisily. Coincidentally, most of these boys are around eight years old. And they, like their coach, possess an abundance of energy, with Tan's job being to channel it into gymnastics.

Their coach watches them, smiles and nods as he resumes the story of his journey from Yunnan to Clackmannanshire, via the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which led to a knock on his door one night, and a hastily arranged departure. It is, it hardly needs to be stated, a remarkable tale.

"I WAS IN MY third year at school," says Tan, "when someone came from a sports school, a martial-arts school, looking for talent. Basically, they had trials and said to me, 'Do you fancy coming to our school to do some training and try out the martial arts?' I was very excited. It was traditional Chinese martial arts, kung-fu and everything. So I went. But after about a month, I noticed there was a gymnasium in the building next door. I was curious; I had a look, and someone said, 'Do you fancy having a go?' I said yes, and I did, and I liked it. Then I said, 'I'll just tell my coach from martial arts that I'm switching.'

"The girl," he adds, smiling at the memory of his old classmate, "she stayed in martial arts. She became national champion and later on became an international film star."

Tan, though, became a gymnastics prodigy, one of many in China as the country emerged from its Cultural Revolution with a new regard for education and sport. "Schools had been shut down, universities had been closed, sports centres were shut for years," says Tan. "They had just begun to reopen things when I went to gymnastics school."

That was in 1971, just two years after the Cultural Revolution officially ended. Had Tan stayed in Yunnan – which despite a population of 44 million today is still one of China's most undeveloped and poverty-stricken provinces – who knows what he would be doing now or where he would be. It is fair to say it wouldn't be Alloa. Sport provided his passport and changed his life.

The decade before Tan started school had been very different. The Cultural Revolution was under way. Schools and universities stood empty. Students and intellectuals – in truth, anyone with a university education – were sent to work in factories or on the land. The Communist Party wanted to rid China of its 'liberal bourgeoisie', who were accused of trying to corrupt the masses. Mao's Red Guards rounded up his enemies – authors, artists and religious figures. In the violence that followed, from 1966 to 1969, anywhere between 500,000 and three million people are believed to have been killed.

Tan was lucky, then, to have had the opportunity to go to school. "Everyone was in the countryside working in factories or labour camps. When the universities reopened there was a huge hunger for education, but only the best students got in."

For Tan, the 1970s were all about gymnastics. The sport was, and still is, enormously popular in China (gymnastic exercises are said to have originated there and in India). The standard is so high that even a world-class athlete can struggle to make the Olympic team. That was the case with Tan. He was in the national team for three years but he never had the chance to represent China in a major championship.

"I was in the top 20," he shrugs, "but in China there were too many gymnasts, and the competition to represent your country was so tough. So I started coaching instead." In 1984, when he was 21, two of his charges were crowned Chinese national champions, on the vault and high bar.

"Then, in 1985, the policy was changed," he recalls. "To be a professional coach you had to have a college qualification. I was made to go on a three-year course in Beijing."

There, at university, he met a Scottish girl named Lesley, whom he went on to marry. It was also while he was there that the Tiananmen Square demonstrations began, coming to a head between April 15 and June 5, 1989. The demonstrators might have lacked a single cause (there were generalised calls for democratic reform), but the mass protests they generated hadn't been seen on such a scale in China since Mao's Red Guards 23 years earlier.

Tan was there, yet even he wasn't always sure exactly what was going on. "I remember one evening when the student demonstrations were just starting," he says. "It was the first time there had been a university walk-out; they weren't happy about certain things and there was a lot of shouting. But then things happened; things got nasty."

Before they got nasty, he says, "I went to the square every day just to see what was going on. I wasn't taking part in the demonstrations, I was just interested. It was an exciting time. People were making speeches. It was a fascinating time to be there, to be in a situation like that."

He was curious – just as he had been as an eight-year-old, sneaking into the school gymnasium to see what was going on. "But every day the secret police were there filming, collecting evidence. One night, a secret police guy – someone I knew – came to see me. 'Tan, you'd better prepare to leave,' he said.

I told him I was not involved, but he said, 'You have been to the square every day?' I said yes. He said, 'We know – we have photos which show your face. We have orders to arrest people.'

"That included everyone involved in the demonstration, even if they were just standing there. Everyone. And in China, we know the government can arrest everyone – if they want to arrest half a million people, they will.

"So it was better that I left. We heard the borders were going to be shut. But I didn't plan to leave. I had to go in a hurry and never saw my family

and friends."

Tan got out at the beginning of June. He was just in time – June 4 was the day the Chinese government cracked down, with violent force, on the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. The enduring image of the protests – and one of the most iconic images of the 20th century – is of the 'unknown rebel' defying four approaching tanks on June 5.

For Tan, escape wasn't as simple as catching the first flight out of the country, though. "I didn't have a visa," he says, "so my wife went to Hong Kong, got me a visa, came straight back, and we left."

Yet nowadays, Tan returns regularly to China – he is going to Beijing next month for the Olympic Games. "Oh, it's not a problem," he laughs. "China is like the wind – the wind blows, it passes through. Maybe it lasts ten days. They made a lot of arrests, and executed many people, but then it was over. Maybe after the Tiananmen Square protests it lasted a bit longer – a few months. That was a big wind – a storm blowing through. Then it goes, it settles down."

He doesn't criticise the government's response. "No, I didn't criticise them and I wasn't worried when I went back. Last year, I visited with my family (the couple have two daughters, aged 14 and 17]. I didn't see my parents that time, because China is so huge, and they were a couple of thousand miles away. But I will see them in August."

Back in 1989, when he and Lesley fled China, they tried to settle in St Andrews. "But then we went to London, because Lesley got a teaching job there. I spoke no English. It was a shock. I got lost on the Underground – I got lost all the time, and people don't talk to you.

"The Chinese talk to strangers; but people in London, if you talk to them, they think you're weird. I thought London would be an opportunity to join in, but…" he shakes his hands dismissively.

"Lesley wrote to British Gymnastics (the sport's governing body] and told them I was a Chinese gymnast looking for a job. I got three or four replies and one interview. But there were few foreign coaches in this country, and few opportunities; the level of coaching was really low."

The first job he was offered happened to be in Falkirk, as a gymnastics coach with the council. So he and Lesley moved north again. She got a job at St Andrews University. "She is responsible for students from Asia," says Tan, adding, a little forlornly, "and she visits China more than I do."

THE SCOTLAND TRACKSUIT Tan is wearing tonight in Alloa is now his uniform. He is employed by the governing body Scottish Gymnastics as men's artistic coach, and he also looks after the boys in the Central Academy. At national level, he has had an astonishing impact, first seen in 2002 at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, where Steve Frew won a gold medal on the rings and Barry Collie claimed bronze in the vault – the first artistic medals ever won by Scottish gymnasts. Two years later, another of Tan's protégés, Adam Cox, won gold in the Commonwealth Youth Games, and followed that with a bronze at the senior games in Melbourne in 2006. This summer, Tan returns to Beijing with European champion Daniel Keatings, whom he fancies to win an Olympic medal.

Frew is the best judge of Tan's impact. He was 29 when he won his Commonwealth title and was competing at his fourth Games; on paper, he was past his sell-by date. "I wish I had met Tan when I was younger," is all he can say.

"When he first saw me, he told me he wanted to coach me, but he just used to watch," says Frew. "When he told me how he wanted to work he had completely new ideas and methods. And he taught me to train hard."

Yet, asked what makes Tan such a good coach, Frew replies, "Patience. He'll sit in the corner of a gym for five hours, just watching. I trained with him in Alloa for years, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and all day Saturday and Sunday, and he never missed a single session."

In 2006, before the Commonwealth Games, Tan took the Scottish team to his old gymnastics school in Yunnan. "It was incredible," says Frew, "so professional, and so much talent. For these kids, it's a full-time job. They clock in at 7am and clock out at 6pm."

There have been claims – notably by Matthew Pinsent, on a visit to China for the BBC in 2006 – that the treatment of young gymnasts by some coaches crosses the line; Pinsent claimed he witnessed one coach beating a young boy. "I saw no evidence of that," says Frew, and Tan becomes particularly animated when the allegation is put to him. It is clear that such an approach is a million miles away from his methods, though he doesn't say how he was treated as a young gymnast. Rather, he observes that, "Gymnastics is a very hard sport. Sometimes you have to push people."

The culture – sporting as well as in other respects – is certainly different in Scotland. Tan talks about some of his talented young charges, but he is resigned to the fact they won't be clocking in for full days, but turning up for a few hours a couple of evenings a week. "Some don't want to make even that commitment," he says, shaking his head. "I have one boy, Shane Curry, who started two years ago, and he is fourth in Britain. He is very talented, but he can do much better."

Later, I watch Tan work with nine-year-old Curry – tiny, mop-haired, unfeasibly flexible, astonishingly strong – and four other young pupils. He leads them through a warm-up routine – sitting on their backs to help them stretch – and then strolling between them as they go through their routines, watching intently. He doesn't offer praise easily; he isn't exuberant; he just watches, as Frew had said. When he speaks, he speaks quietly.

He is looking forward to the Olympics, he says, though he is irritated by the media criticism of China over Tibet – which borders Yunnan – and on alleged human-rights abuses. "All of a sudden everyone thinks they know China very well," he says, his voice rising. "I'm sorry, but why not talk to Chinese people and ask them what they think?

"You hear people saying, 'The Chinese have been brainwashed. They don't have information in China, the internet's blocked…' Come on. Do you think the Chinese don't know what's happening in the world? We know about Tibet. But people still feel pride in their country. I am not a Chinese national now, but I still feel Chinese. I love my country, and my brain hasn't been washed.

"I've heard so many people here say, 'I don't want to pay for the London Olympics; it's nothing to do with me; why do we have to have it? I don't want to pay.' But when something big, something major, comes to your country, you should be bloody proud. I'm proud of the Olympics coming to China. We think differently about things. Ask any Chinese if they want the Olympics – everyone will say yes.

"It will be," he says confidently, smiling broadly again, "the best Olympics ever."