WHEN Wang Fa crowned another national champion on the tennis court in late August, the 14-year-old boy would not expect his name to start trending on social media for his unconventional backpack: a beautiful handmade bamboo basket normally used by local villagers in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, his hometown.

At the 2022 National Youth Tennis Tour in Guangzhou, the Wa ethnic minority up-and-comer won the U14 men’s singles championship. The photo of Wang carrying a big basket on the court was posted on China’s Twitter-like Weibo by the photographer and grabbed the public’s attention for the amusing contrast it created.

“It reminds me of my home and calms me down when it accompanies me by my side,” said Wang. “And of course it was fun,” he joked, adding that he accepted the bag as a gift from a hometown fellow and decided to wear it as his new backpack.

The young athlete has apparently become a frequent guest on the tennis court across the country after years of competitions. An adolescent, as his coach said, “is on his way to a determined professional after breaking away from a boy coming from a mountainous area six years ago.”

“Not only Wang Fa, when many other children like him came to our tennis club for the first time, they didn’t even know how to take care of themselves, so I had to be a nanny first, and then the coach,” Zhang Xiaohong laughed recalling the time when he first saw those children coming from then poverty-hit mountainous areas 10 years ago.

The place Wang has lived in for the last six years is called Wild Elephant Tennis Club located near the Dianchi Lake in Kunming. Zhang built this semi-public welfare club 10 years ago, with four tennis courts rented by Zhang at a cost of over 100,000 yuan (US$13,899) a year.

On the other side of the court across the road is a simple but lively living area for them: a dormitory, a canteen and Zhang’s office.

Zhang found this group of children in 2014 when he had a tour in Cangyuan County, a Wa autonomous county located in China’s southwest border. Before the government’s poverty alleviation mission was completed, the county used to be listed as one of the main poverty-stricken areas where local officials spent years in improving their infrastructure.

In Zhang’s view, those children’s extremely physical fitness was “quite beyond the imagination, and some of them were born to be professional athletes.”

On the other hand, such techniques may bring those children a completely new way of life: At that time, the average annual salary of a tennis coach was enough to lift a mountainous family out of extreme poverty, and “in either way it would be a chance for the children and their families.”

It all started by finding 10 potential children. However, the coach found it was even harder to persuade the first 10 families into this sport than to find potential children.

“Almost every family I visited turned me down. They saw tennis as some ‘rich people’s game’ that they would never spend a penny on,” Zhang recalled.

Zhang started his persuasion, saying an annual training fee was 1,000 yuan, but it was far more than a family could afford; then he waived all the fees and decided to teach them completely for free.

Next step was to develop their passion. “I told them stories of Roger Federer and Li Na, and the two have become their idols now,” said Zhang.

The number of those children has reached 30, where 14 of them are able to participate in the national competitions. In addition to the championship, Wang won at the Youth Tennis Tournament in Guangzhou. He also crowned as national champion at the 2020 National Youth Tennis Tour when he was 12.

Not long ago when the club signed an agreement with the Langfang Tennis Association in Hebei Province, the children were able to train at a more standard venue with better equipment.

The coach again paid a visit to Wang Fa’s family in Cangyuan, and brought his brother Wang Yi into the group for training.

“Our next goal is to hit the international stage,” Zhang added. (Global Times)