Rural girl pursues footballing dream in city

YINCHUAN - On the playground on a hot summer's day, Ma Fenhua, 15, was playing in a football match, running hard and cheering every time her team scored.

"I had never imagined this in my first eight years living in the mountains, and I even had no idea what a football was back then," Ma said.

Ma was born in Jingyuan county, a formerly impoverished mountainous area in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, and moved 480 kilometers away to live in Lingwu city with her family in 2012.