Basket full of dreams

A set of photos of a boy carrying his tennis rackets in a bamboo basket has been widely spread on the Internet. The boy,Wang Fa,14, is a member of the Va ethnic group (佤族) in Yunnan. After winning the under-14 title at the ASICS Tennis Junior Tour in Guangzhou, an audience member from Yunnan gave him the bamboo basket as a gift and the photos were taken.

"We always carry bamboo baskets when we work in the field. This is a typical farming tool of the Va ethnic group. I carried my rackets in this basket to honour ( 表达敬意) my hometown, " Wang said after the match.

Before tennis, Wang was only an ordinary boy from a village. But in 2016, he was chosen by a local club as one of the first 10 local children to learn to play professional tennis. "I was nervous at the beginning because the outside world was so different from my home," he said, adding that tennis has helped him make more friends and get a better education.

Over the past six years, Wang, along with other players at the Yunnan Wild Elephants Tennis Club, has trained hard to improve his skills and physical strength. Every day, they must swing a racket more than 7,000 times and run 9 kilometers.

"If I weren't chosen as a tennis player, I would still be helping out my family with farmwork back home," Wang said. Wang's parents didn't want him to learn tennis at first because they couldn't afford it. But the tennis club offered to teach him for free. Wang's hometown, the mountainous Cangyuan Va autonomous county (沧源佤族自治县), was lifted out of

poverty (贫穷) in 2019, reported China Daily.

For Wang, winning the ASICS Tennis Junior Tour title was the beginning of a hopeful future. "I will aim for the top spots on the professional stage," he said.