YINCHUAN, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- A regional basketball tournament is making a big difference in the lives of farmers in Chinas' rural northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
"I started playing basketball 36 years ago. I made the trip to Yinchuan City with 1,000 yuan for food and accommodation and won't get back home until the final finishes on the 28th," said Xing Shigui, a 56-year-old farmer from a rural town in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Northwest China.
Xing and five other basketball fans in his village took the long journey to Yinchuan, Ningxia's capital city, where Ningxia's first "farmer basketball tournament" finals opened on the 26th.
"I was 20 years old when I started playing basketball, and it has helped me get stronger and make more friends. Watching matches might delay my work. But nothing compares to my enthusiasm for basketball," said Xing.
Zhang Zhiguo, a 27-year-old villager from Zhongning County in Ningxia, had never imagined himself playing in a basketball match on the regional scale representing his own town, even though he has played the game since elementary schoool.
A total of 120 players divided into 10 teams will compete in the finals in Yinchuan. They were picked up from 274 teams containing nearly 3,800 players who participated in the preliminaries.
Farmers in Ningxia are known for a tradition of playing basketball during the Spring Festival, a "winter leisure period" when the local farmers have less work to do as they wait for the next spring season to arrive. More leisure time fuels local people's enthusiasm for playing and watching basketball matches. Farmers in Haiyuan County even invited a foreign player to join the community match.
More and more basketball stands are being installed in rural communities in Ningxia, displacing social ills like alcoholism and gambling away, and enhancing community cohesion. "For us, basketball is not just a sport, but a love that we can feel in our bones," said one local villager.
The Autonomous Region-level farmers' basketball tournament is an incentive for local farmers to improve their physical fitness and enrich their lives, said Zhang Mei, deputy director of the Ningxia Administration of Sport. "Ningxia will continue improving sports facilities and promoting popular sports such as basketball in rural areas, while introducing chess and other sports into the countryside, so that all sports can flourish there," Zhang Mei promised.
