[Track]Andy appeals to support disabled athlete

The song, “Everyone Is No.1” that Andy wrote for Olympics will touch people’s heart again and encourage more disabled athletes, to be full of confidence to greet 2008 Paralympics. For this reason, China Disabled Persons’ Federation（abbreviation is CDPF）invited Andy again to play this song for background to shoot a public welfare advertisement for Paralympics, with a hope that Andy’s healthy image to appeal for more people to join, support and respect disabled athletes. Indoor track field inside the China Disabled Olympics Training Base in Shun Yi, Beijing was chosen as the shooting location of this Paralympics public welfare advertisement.

On the shooting day, the director introduced to Andy a disabled athlete who plays a role with him. His name is Song Chen-tao. His career as an athlete is not negligible. Actually he holds the record for the 200 meter dash at 25.3 seconds in 1996-2004 National Paralympics Game. He retired last year. As to retiring from his beloved athletic field, Song Chen-tao says “Originally I felt very sorry that I could not join Beijing Paralympics Game this time, but having chance to shoot public welfare advertisement for Paralympics with Andy Lau, and be able to assist for Paralympics again, to let more people to understand disabled people’s spirit of hard struggle, I am very gratified.” During chatting, Andy says “I run 100 meter in 11.3 seconds” Then, everybody said with one voice “Wow! That’s really not bad at all.” Then Andy added immediately. “That was 20 years ago, at present, about 13 seconds” Andy didn’t forget to turn toward Song Chen-tao and said jokingly “later at the field, you should not run too fast.” Song Chen-tao lost his right leg in a railroad accident, and threw himself into Paralympics for 13 years. He recalls that he usually trained till night and when he take off his artificial leg, the inside was filled with blood, it caused sleeplessness with pain, at that time, there was not enough expenses to purchase professional athletics artificial leg, and he could only use common artificial leg for training. During the training for competition, artificial leg cracked again and again.

The most dangerous time was when the artificial leg suddenly broke in a match. He fell down on the track, there was not enough time for the other athletes behind him to step aside, so they stepped on his body and run away, the spiked shoes left scars on his body and the scars are there since then. For the purpose of letting people from all over the world to respect disabled athletes, the director used various races of people such as, White, Black and Mongoloid to play roles, although there were interpreters, sometimes they could not understand the acting way that the director wants, because they were not professional actors, at that time, as a rather experienced actor, Andy immediately became a interpreter to tell them what the director wants. And also in order to create indoor lighting effect, they had to wait until it gets dark before start shooting, although it was beginning of March in springtime, the minimum temperature of Beijing was about 0 to minus two degrees, so when shooting continued until night, it was getting colder as night falls, even though they had run around in the athletic field many times for the shooting, they had sleeveless shirts and short pants on, as soon as finish shooting each scene, Andy and other main casts put on down jacket hastily. The shooting continued until past 2 am midnight and it was completed, all the staff and actors wish to take photos with Andy, but with a chill wind blowing round there, everybody changed their cloths to overcoat, it created a strong contrast with the shooting scene that actors had short-sleeved shirts and shorts on. This time in the advertisement, Andy didn’t play the part of a disabled person any more, and run a race with disabled athletes on a ground, to express that disabled person and physically able person are the same, Olympics and Paralympics are both great. More than 10 years ago, when Andy start having chance to contact with Hong Kong disabled athletes, he start giving financial aid to Hong Kong disabled athletes delegation to go to Olympics, only if time allows, Andy surely went to see match to cheer team members, when Andy talks about those match scenes, he is always inexplicably moved and excited like a child. Andy is regarded as an idol by thousands of people, but he has heroes in his heart, these heroes are those hard-working disabled athlete, especially a swimmer from mainland, the king of the breaststroke without arms –He Jun-quan left deep impression in Andy’s mind. Andy says “I can’t forget the match scene in Athens Paralympics. At that Paralympics game, in the beginning, I didn’t pay attention to him at all. But when he made a final burst, everybody looked at him shocked, and then, people forgot about other athletes, narrators were introducing He Jun-quan all the times. It is because he is so great, in order to win without arms he need to swim much faster than others, he always hit his head on the wall of swimming pool to reverse the direction to continue swimming. I really worship him. He won 4 Gold Medals for himself after all. ” Every time Andy expounds the hard working process of disabled athletes, his staff sees tears in his eyes. Being invited for shooting the public welfare advertisement with the song, Andy says “This time I could do a public welfare event for Paralympics, and also became their caring ambassador, I hope I can do more various things for them. I wrote song “Everyone Is No.1” for them, shot a MV, and played a role of a disabled person previously, this time I run with them.

During chat with all the staff a while ago, we discovered a very strange thing. It happened when the director looks for a suitable athlete for the advertisement in the traffic field. It was very difficult to find one because they were training for the coming great event, Paralympics. He searched for a long time but could not find a right person who runs with me. When everybody gets nervous, he suddenly appeared. I felt that when you do some charity work, do some good things, things go smoothly. Just like today, we shot for a long time, in order to have a good lighting effect we had to wait until it gets dark. The day time was particularly long today, and we had to wait 1 more hour until it gets dark, but nobody was unhappy, not even one extra actor, everybody was dedicated to the work. ” Andy said with laugh “I think person who help others will be quite good looking and beautiful.” After completing the public welfare advertisement, Andy will go on to movie shooting first. He hopes to bring his fans club members to Beijing to support Paralympics athletes in September.