The journey of a star from NHL to Beijing
As China ice hockey captain Brandon Yip led his historymaking Beijing Winter Olympics team out the National Indoor Stadium last month, his two biggest fans were cheering from their television at the crack of dawn some 8,500km away.
Based in the “little old” city of Maple Ridge, Vancouver, Wayne and Gale Yip watched their son pay tribute to his Chinese heritage while paving the way for a new generation of mainland hockey enthusiasts.
Three of Brandon’s grandparents were born in China. He is considered a fourth generation Canadian-Chinese, born and raised in Canada before coming “full circle” in Beijing – where he is better known as Ye Jinguang.
“It was surreal when we saw him walk into the Bird’s Nest at the opening ceremony – ‘that’s our little boy’,” said father Wayne, born to Chinese and Irish parents.
“My hockey buddies all watched him and congratulated us. They are proud of Brandon, too.”
Gale said the pair was “still trying to catch up on sleep”.
“It was hard to imagine that he was doing all this in real time so many miles away,” she said. “The whole family should have been there but for the [Covid-19] travel restrictions. It was still great to share the moment from afar.”
Brandon’s great-grandparents emigrated from China in the late 1800s, with Gale’s mother born in Vancouver. Her father had emigrated from then-called Canton in 1909, paying a government-imposed head tax to be allowed into Canada.
Wayne’s father was also from Canton and subject to a similar taxation in the 1920s, before China-to-Canada immigration was banned for more than two decades from 1923. He eventually married an Irish woman – Wayne’s mixed-heritage is considered “rare” in the region.
Wayne and Gale said they regretted not learning more about their ancestors before they died, but had been rediscovering tales ever since.
Beijing was certainly not Yip’s first rodeo. The 36-year-old winger had already boasted a decorated hockey career which first peaked when he was drafted into the National Hockey League (NHL) by the Colorado Avalanche in 2004.
Yip played 174 NHL games over five seasons, before plying his trade in surrounding top leagues in North America and Europe.
In 2017, he moved to Russia, and later joined the Kontinental Hockey League’s (KHL) only Chinese team, HC Kunlun Red Star. He returned as team captain of the Chinese national proxy team after Covid-19 cancelled the 2020-21 season.
As part of the first batch of Kunlun’s so-called “heritage players”, Yip went on to be the club’s first centurion point-scorer and featured in the 2020 All-Star team.
But of all his achievements, it was Yip’s contribution to helping China hold their own in the Olympic group qualifiers against Canada, the US and Germany that mattered most to the family.
Though the team lost to the powerhouse trio, world No 32 China’s performances exceeded expectations. They were ridiculed in the lead up, with speculation that the hosts would be pulled by organisers to avoid embarrassment.
Instead, they left with the country’s first Olympic ice hockey goal, thanks to Parker Foo or Fu Shuai, in a narrow loss to world No 5 Germany. Meanwhile, the women’s team stunned higher-ranked Denmark and Japan in their group games, while the young Para Ice hockey teams start their Beijing Paralympics campaigns this week.
“We’ve seen Brandon on TV before, but the Olympics was something special,” Wayne said. “They were going in as great underdogs and there was a lot of talk that they shouldn’t have been there – that they should have put Norway because they were the next highest-ranked team.
“But they performed very well. Even the play-by-play broadcasters that do NHL games said China had Canada on its heels in the first period, and could have actually had a lead if they had scored.”
Gale added: “China gave the other teams a great workout and it looked like they belonged there. To go up and hold their own against top countries … was just really amazing to watch.”
Brandon regularly communicates with his more than 250,000 fans on Weibo, discussing whether his lack of Chinese fluency confuses locals, his intentions to advance local ice hockey, and his recently created nickname “Master Yip”.
As for affiliations, Gale said it was family first no matter the circumstances.
“We’re cheering for our son, always,” she said.
“When he played in the NHL with the Colorado Avalanche against the Vancouver Canucks, people would say, ‘well, who are you going to cheer for?’ We’re going to cheer for Colorado – that is the team he plays for, that’s his job so of course we’re going to support any job our son does.”
The pair said friends from all over their lower mainland Vancouver area – where Brandon went to school and played his first minor league games – sent congratulations throughout.
But the attention spanned far beyond British Columbia, as national broadcasters near and far scrambled to get in contact.
“We’re just a regular, quiet, unassuming family, who all of a sudden with Brandon had to kind of push ourselves out of our comfort zone,” Gale said.
“A lot of our close friends were very supportive, but a lot of people associated through work or from everyday life had no idea this was going on in the background.”
Wayne said the couple were “just humbled by it” and had no desire to be interviewed. “Now people get excited and say ‘oh, you’re Brandon Yip’s parents’.”
“Really, it’s not a big deal. Brandon will tell you that. Our other son [Matthew] will tell you that, too,” Gale said.
Reflecting on the Olympics, Brandon told local media with a glint in his eyes: “Success in our presence would be a six-year-old boy or girl that’s watching Team China play against Canada and the US, and he or she going to their parents and saying ‘wow, I want to do that some day’, and they actually pursue the dream.
“And we see that player on the TV representing China in hockey at the Olympics in 20 years’ time.”