A set of photos of a boy carrying his tennis rackets in a bamboo basket has gone popular.
The boy, Wang Fa, 14, is a member of the Va ethnic group(佤族) from Yunnan. After winning the under-14 gold medal at the ASICS Tennis Junior Tour in Guangzhou, a fan 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 usual farming tool of the Va ethnic group. I carried my rackets in this basket to remember my hometown," Wang said after the match.
Before tennis, Wang was just a common boy from a village. But in 2016, a local club chose him as one of the first 10 local children to learn to play tennis. "I was worried 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. The children would get up at 6:30 am and practice for more than six hours a day. Every day, they needed to swing(挥动)a racket more than 7,000 times and run 9 kilometers.
"If it were not for tennis, I would still be helping out my family with farm work back home," Wang said.
Wang's parents didn't want him to learn tennis at first because they didn't have enough money. But the tennis club offered to teach him for free. For Wang, winning theASICS Tennis Junior Tour was the beginning of a hopeful future. "I believe I will be the top on the professional stage," he said.