CHINA> Center
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CHINA> Center
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Better taste for Chinese farmers in sports
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-11-01 21:50 QUANZHOU - The sixth Chinese National Farmers' Games, the world's only regular sports festival for farmers, witnessed the huge change of Chinese farmer's ways of life in a seven-day journey as it closed here on Saturday evening.
"When I was young, I have no time to do any sports, because at that time, we were poor and needed to work in the fields every day to make the ends meet. But now, things changed," said 72-year-old Song Zhaodi, who took her grandson to watch the Chinese style wrestling at the Qiaoxiang Gymnasium. The just-concluding Farmers' Games, which made its debut in 1988, saw about 3,500 athletes from China's 32 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalites, including Taiwan. Hong Kong and Macao also sent delegations to observe the quadrennial get-together. The athletes entered the games through internet. The government of Luquan, Hebei Province, put an advertisement on local TV to select players and even opened an official website for farmers to sign up. "My son signed me up in that website and it's lucky for me to be here," said Xin Jinyi from Luquan, who competed in the 60-meter seedling-planting race. "It is really a spectacular display to see farmers from all over China to plant seedlings." "Our server almost blew up for there were so many people trying to sign up," said Wang Xiangkun, general secretary of Hebei delegation. "Some farmers even directly found our address and came to our office. They want to be in the Farmers' games." Some farmers even spent money to travel a long away to cheer for the athletes. After the first dragon-boat gold went to the host Fujian delegation, the cheering squad was as happy as the champion. "More than 100 villagers came to cheer up for our Dragon-boat team. We paid all the cost by ourselves," the leader of the cheering squad told press. "We have followed the dragon-boat to Guangdong, Sichuan and Jiangxi provinces. We saw them taking part in the matches and it was good chances for us to travel around. We are rich now and do not have to worry about the basic life any more." |
