Hubei's healthy investment pays off

With the nation's mass fitness push going from strength to strength, improving the accessibility of local sports facilities is proving key to encouraging people to get active.

That's why Hubei sports bureau is investing heavily in its fitness services, allowing residents in both urban and rural communities to enjoy a better quality of life.

Thanks to an investment of 4 million yuan ($620,000) from the province's sports lottery public welfare fund, the Hubei city of Yichang now boasts a new sports park, which is home to three five-a-side soccer pitches and three basketball courts.

"Yichang Sports Park is free to everyone and it is in the middle of the downtown area. It's very convenient for residents to come to exercise. There are lights at night allowing people to play basketball and soccer after work," said Yuan Hongbing, deputy director of Yichang sports center.

"In the future, we will finish the construction of more venues and facilities such as a BMX track, tennis courts, sport climbing facilities and running tracks, so we can meet the fitness demands of more people of different age groups."

Local residents can also enjoy quality indoor venues such as Yichang Olympics Center, which opened in 2019. The center's daily operational costs are funded by annual contributions of 5 million yuan from the sports lottery.

Most of the center's facilities－including courts for tennis, volleyball, badminton, table tennis and a swimming pool－are free to the public when it is not hosting any professional competitions.

"The water quality here is really good and we can experience the same standard of pool as the professional swimmers. It's really good that they open the professional venues to the public. We are really happy to swim here," pool regular Xu Faxi told China Sports Daily. "If you want to exercise here, you just need to make a reservation.

"It's really convenient if you want to exercise here with your friends. When I was younger, I swam in the Yangtze River. Now we have more and more swimming pools and venues. We have much more options now."

Hubei is also improving facilities in rural areas. Wujiaxiang town in Yichang boasts a 3,000-square-meter multifunctional sports and recreation center, featuring facilities for soccer, basketball, table tennis, tai chi and gateball, a mallet-based team sport similar to croquet.

"Many people in our village like to play gateball. At first we just built a very simple gateball field ourselves," said 62-year-old Chen Dazhen. "I would never have expected that now we can have such a good field in the sports center. We would find it hard to go back and play on our old self-built field."

Over the past three years, Yichang has built 30 town-level and 53 village-level sports and recreational centers.

"In towns, now we have many more sports fields. And we have fitness classes and grassroots sports competitions. Rural residents now enjoy a wonderful standard of living. And all these venues and facilities meet their various fitness demands," Tang Xin, who is in charge of Wujiaxiang's sports center, told China Sports Daily.

In total, Yichang boasts 11,059 sports fields and venues of all levels, working out at 2.34 sq m per resident. Yichang has invested over 66 million yuan over the past three years to build 90 new mass fitness projects, with Hubei's sports lottery investing over 200 million yuan annually in public sports.

"To facilitate the growth of mass fitness, we first need to ensure local residents have convenient places to exercise. After comprehensive research to collect people's opinions, we started a four-year plan to boost the growth of Hubei's mass fitness," said Hu Gongmin, the director of Hubei sports bureau.

"By the end of 2020, we had invested 560 million yuan in three years, which attracted a further investment of 3 billion yuan from different sectors, to build over a thousand new projects in the fitness sector in our province.

"Now the number of people in the province who regularly participate in sports has grown from 16 million to 19 million over the past five years. And we have about 2,100 sports associations."

Smartening up

Hubei is also keeping pace with smart sports technology.

The province's sports lottery spent 20 million yuan last year to complete the reconstruction of Zhangzhidong Sports Park, which boasts the largest allocation of advanced smart fitness facilities and services in Wuhan, Hubei's capital.

Highlights of the park include heartbeat monitors accessible by simply scanning a QR code, a real-time info on how visitors are using the facilities, and interactive smart screens that provide data on users' fitness levels.

"The park is very different now. The old park had nothing but mosquitoes before. We would rather take a detour than take a walk in the park," local resident Song Yanli told Xinhua.

"Now the park is really well-built. We can not only exercise here, we can also monitor our physical condition through the smart facilities here. The technology grows really fast and we all benefit from its development."