Rural areas get bounce from basketball

Sports competitions prove a runaway success, scoring for local economies

One of herdsman Juramt's two biggest accomplishments this weekend was that he and his basketball team won a pair of sheep after coming out on top in a rural amateur competition.

"We brought the sheep back and gave them to our township government to thank it for supporting us before the match," said the 35-year-old herdsman from Ulaanmod town in Horqin Right Wing Front Banner, Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Normally, his daily job is to take care of cow herds and flocks of sheep.

With eight other basketball players from the town, he led his team to neighboring Devs town from Saturday to Sunday to compete in a Village Basketball Association competition, which are gaining popularity in China's rural areas.

"The other accomplishment for me was that I gained many friends from the event," he said.

The competition attracted some 400 basketball players in 40 teams from around the banner who are herdsmen like Juramt, or business operators or migrant workers, according to the local government.

"I'm very glad to meet players from other teams and I'm also looking forward to playing with them in the future," he said.

According to Juramt, basketball competitions like this are held in the banner from time to time.

"More and more herdsmen or villagers are falling in love with playing basketball," he said, adding that the average age on his team is 27 and all are children of herdsmen.

In Hebei province, the first provincial-level VBA matches kicked off in Xiong'an New Area on Saturday.

On the first day of the competition in Huangwan village, Qijianfang town's team defeated Huangwan village's team 54 to 50.

The VBA will be held across the province, and 16 teams will be selected to participate in the provincial finals at the end of August.

The winner and runner-up team will represent Hebei in the regional finals, according to local news portal iHebei, which is one of the competition's co-hosts.

Eight teams will play in the country's grand finals in October in Taijiang county, Guizhou province, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the General Administration of Sport.

At the matches' opening ceremony in Huangwan village, activities promoting local agricultural products were held.

"The integrated development of industries in agriculture, culture, tourism and sports in rural areas will help promote rural vitalization, as industrial vitalization is the basis and key to rural vitalization," said Wang Yuexiang, an official with the Hebei Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

During a recent eight-day VBA event in Anhua town, Zhuji city in Zhejiang province, about 30,000 visits were made daily to the town's night market.

"The market's business was much better than usual," Chen Yulan, the town's deputy head, was quoted as saying by Zhejiang Daily.

"The emergence of the VBA has encouraged more people to go to the countryside and thus further promote the economic and social development in rural areas," Wang Zhigang, vice-president and secretary-general of Zhejiang Basketball Association, was quoted by Zhejiang Daily.