Classic bloodline: Australian badminton star Gronya Somerville descended from a famous Chinese scholar
The 22-year-old from Melbourne with the distinct Chinese features is directly related to Kang Youwei, a noted calligraphy and thinker from the Qing Dynasty
Australia is not known for producing badminton stars, but an exception could be in the making.
For Gronya Somerville and her women’s doubles partner, Setyana Mapasa, being ranked 32nd in the world is not going to grab many headlines, even if they are the top pair from the Oceania region – but the 22-year-old’s family history makes an interesting story.
Born in Melbourne, Somerville looks like any Australian athlete at first glance, but if you take a deeper look into the face, she has some distinctly Chinese features. Her great-great grandfather, Kang Youwei, was a prominent Chinese scholar from Guangdong who led the movements to establish a constitutional monarchy in the late Qing Dynasty and was an ardent Chinese nationalist and internationalist.
“I am half Chinese and half Australian,” said Somerville, who has been competing in the Hong Kong Open with her playing partner. She used some simple Mandarin to introduce herself. “My father was born in Guangzhou before moving to Hong Kong and then Melbourne where I was born,” she said. “I know my great-great grand father was a famous person though he passed away long time ago. He is a pretty inspiring person because of the kind of things he did in China.”
Somerville was told her family history by her mother when she was young but also learned more through numerous interviews with mainland media when she was playing in China.