Memory lane

She remembered little besides the sense she had been an actor in a great play that unfolded before an audience she knew was there but did not see.

But when Wu Jiani walked into Pauley Pavilion on Saturday, the first time she had seen it filled with light and noise and movement since her tumbling and twisting on that floor lifted the Chinese team to a gymnastics bronze medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, moments she thought were lost came flooding back.

“It’s all the same, the blue,” she said, her eyes alighting on the stands. “And the podium, it was higher.”

One of the faces on the medals stand after UCLA’s season-opening gymnastics meet was familiar, too.

It belonged to Anna Li, oldest daughter of Wu and Li Yuejiu, a member of the silver medal-winning Chinese men’s team at the Los Angeles Olympics.

Blessed with her mother’s sweet smile but more muscular in build, 18-year-old Anna won the all-around competition in her Bruins debut at the same age Wu was when she earned her Olympic medal. It was one of many happy coincidences Saturday for Wu and Li, who moved to the U.S. to coach and raise a family not long after the Olympics.

“I look up to the way my parents competed in the past, and all that stuff,” Anna said. “To win tonight wasn’t anything I was expecting. I just came out to have fun.”

After working in Las Vegas, where Anna was born, the family moved to Downers Grove, Ill., near Chicago. Wu coaches there but Li has spent most of the past two years in China, whose sports officials asked him to manage and coach the country’s gymnastics teams for the 2008 Beijing Games. He flew to Los Angeles to watch Anna compete on Saturday, making it a family event by bringing their youngest daughter, 5-year-old Andrea, another budding gymnast.

“My husband was just saying that when we were here in 1984 it was the 23rd Olympic Games, and now it is 23 years later we are here,” said Wu, whose command of English is stronger than her husband’s. “We were walking around the campus today and just feeling the excitement.

“I am really happy to see my daughter here to have the same opportunity to compete in this building. She loves the sport and we are excited to see her first meet. It brought many memories back of myself and competing in the gym.”

Wu, a five-time Chinese national champion, and Li, a tumbling virtuoso for whom a move is named, met in the gym of the Chinese National Training Center in Beijing and have been married 20 years. Li became China’s first floor exercise world champion in 1981 and helped the Chinese men win a team bronze medal.

Wu and her teammates won a silver medal at the 1981 World Championships, where she earned a bronze medal on the balance beam. On the website Youtube, a clip of Wu from a 1981 U.S.-China meet in Hawaii shows a tiny 15-year-old, her hair bunched in pigtails, performing a masterful routine on the uneven parallel bars. Only afterward, when the crowd roared its approval, did she smile.

The concentration that carried her to such success as a competitor made her oblivious to her surroundings during the Games.

“It’s a funny thing. I don’t remember that much,” Wu said. “You’re so focused to just follow the group, walk to the bus and just train. We really didn’t see that much. That’s why we walked around today.”

Li also said he recalled few specifics about Pauley Pavilion other than feeling thousands of eyes upon him.

“There were so many people, but you don’t really think about it,” he said.

Anna seems to have inherited her parents’ focus.

Despite being only two months removed from hip surgery, she gave a fearless and powerful performance on the uneven bars Saturday, drawing gasps when she soared from bar to bar with swift sureness. She earned floor-pounding applause when she returned to earth without a hop, and, like her mother, permitted herself a small smile then for a job well done.

Her score was a meet-best 9.85 out of 10. She also ranked fifth on vault with a 9.775, sixth on balance beam with a 9.575, and third on floor exercise with a 9.80 for a routine that featured remarkable dance moves and flexibility. She and 2000 U.S. Olympian Tasha Schwikert boosted the fifth-ranked Bruins past Washington, 194 to 188.175.

“It was a lot of fun, and a new experience for me,” she said.

She saw her parents when she marched in, as well as friends and former teammates from Las Vegas. Saturday’s meet was the first in which her mother wasn’t on the floor to guide her, which she acknowledged was “a little strange.”

But she is enjoying college life and competing for a team.

“It’s a different experience,” she said, “but I love my new coaches and it’s just been great.”

She has paid a price in bruises and pain, most recently the surgery on her left hip that had hampered her training. Wu can identify with that all too well.

“I just want her to enjoy herself,” Wu said.

“It’s a tough sport, with many injuries. It’s hard. But she just loves it.”

Because the NCAA limits practice time, college gymnastics skills are a step below the elite level. Anna, 23rd in the all-around at the 2004 U.S. championships and 16th in 2005, said she might try to step up again if her body allows.

If she doesn’t follow her parents to a place on an Olympic medals stand, the family legacy might still continue. Li and Wu have the podium from the 1984 Games in their garage, and Andrea has already noticed it. “The other day I was out there and she stood there,” Wu said, laughing.

In which spot?

“Of course,” Wu said, “first place.”

helene.elliott@latimes.com