Xinhua News Agency, Chengdu, March 8th Topic: From 4-player to 226-player football helps Daliangshan “Cloud Elementary School” to bloom its dream
Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Qianwei Chen Di
At the turn of winter and spring, in the depths of Daliang Mountain at an altitude of 2,700 meters, among the khaki-colored mountains, a brand-new green field comes into view. Blue sky, white clouds, loess, green grass…the four colors meet here to form a unique picture. On the court, a group of girls are galloping and training hard. In the middle of the court, a white rose quietly “blooms”.
This is the second Chinese women’s football-themed stadium in the country, the “Rose Dream Stadium”, which was donated by the Chinese Football Association, Alipay and the women’s national football team at the end of December last year.
“In the past, our training conditions may have been the worst, but now I think our conditions are the best in the country!” The men of the Yi nationality who love football did not expect that football would bring such a huge change to this rural primary school in Daliangshan.
Ji Niuwu’s football dream
Wawu Elementary School is named “Cloud Elementary School” because of its remote location and clouds and fog all year round.
13-year-old Ji Niu Wusaku is a sixth-grade student of Wawu Primary School and the main force of the school’s women’s football team. When she was in the third grade, the scene of male students chasing and running around the football in the school made her have a strong interest in football. After selection, Ji Niu Wusaku joined the school’s women’s football team.
But an accident two years ago almost made her bid farewell to her football dream. Before the completion of the “Rose Dream Stadium”, the children of Wawu Primary School trained on a “handmade” clay court. This stadium was dug out by Qubi Shigu with teachers, parents and children. The ground of the stadium is uneven, dusty in summer, and muddy when it rains.
During a training session, Wu Zuo’s arm was broken. Her mother loved her dearly and refused to let her play football once more. However, following recovering from the injury, Wu Zuo continued training behind her back. In the end, my mother mightn’t resist Wu Zuo’s persistence and Principal Qubi Shigu’s door-to-door persuasion. Now, following three years of hard training, Wu Zuo has grown into the main force of the women’s team. He can easily juggle the ball five or six hundred times and has become the idol of many boys in the school.
After the completion of the new stadium, Wu Zuo trained even harder. She said: “This stadium is very soft, and it can be played in rain or snow. When it was just repaired, I didn’t want to sleep and played until dawn.”
“When the stadium was first built, the children happily rolled on it.” Principal Qubi Shigu showed reporters a video of the stadium just following it was built. In the video, the new stadium was covered with a thin layer of snow. Wu Zuo and his teammates They wore short-sleeved jerseys and ran with all their strength.
20 years of perseverance by the principal of the village primary school
20 years ago, when Qubi Shigu, who had just graduated from university, came to teach at the teaching site of Wawu Society, he did not expect that this is a teaching site that may disappear at any time. There is no water, electricity, and roads. The only four students in the school even I can’t even write my own name.
Qubi Shigu felt very troubled, but he did not choose to leave. He used wooden boards to form blackboards and cowsheds to form “temporary classrooms”, and went door-to-door to persuade parents to let their children go to school. At the end of the first semester, the number of students finally increased to more than 20.
In 2008, the school building became dilapidated. Qubi Shigu secretly took out the 50,000 yuan he had saved for several years from his home, bought the materials and transported them to the mountain, and built bricks and stones and paste cement with his parents. classroom. Because of this, the father and wife chased and beat Qubi Shigu for a long time.
Gradually, several other teaching sites were incorporated one following another, and the parents of the three surrounding villages all sent their children to go to school here. Seeing the children running all over the mountains in their spare time, Qubi Shigu, who has always loved football, thought, why not play football like schools in the city?
“Children have to walk two or three hours on the mountain road to and from school every day. They have good physical fitness and can endure hardships.” Qubi Shigu said that the development of football can first strengthen the body, and the second is to cultivate a sports specialty, which can enable children It is easier to be admitted to better secondary schools following primary school.
Therefore, in 2015, Wawu Primary School formed its first football team, and in 2018, a girls’ football team was formed. There is no plastic playground, and the mountain road is the runway; there is no equipment, and waste tires are used for weight training; even in wind, frost, rain and snow, the training is not easily interrupted… Now more than half of the students in the school are playing football, and there are already 38 women’s football players .
Different from the gradual decline of many remote villages, the number of students in Wawu Primary School has been increasing in recent years. The new campus built with the support of the government and caring enterprises has been put into use for 6 years, and the school currently has 226 students.
In the past 20 years, the number of students has grown from 4 to 226. Qubi Shigu is very emotional: “When I first came here 20 years ago, the villagers felt that ‘study is not as good as herding cattle and sheep’. Now, whenever there are some things in the school, such as They will take the initiative to help when building new stadiums and repairing classrooms, and they also have great respect for teachers.”
“The Quiet Great Change of “Cloud”
In August 2022, Wawu Primary School was selected into the “Chasing the Wind Project”, a rural school women’s football support project. The plan hopes to support 100 rural campus women’s football teams in remote areas within five years through funds, equipment, and coach training. At present, the “Chasing the Wind Project” has helped 70 primary schools.
On March 3, 2023, Wan Jiayao, a “post-00s” teenager and women’s national football player, came to Wawu Primary School as a member of the “Chasing Wind Visiting Group” to cheer for the football girls here.
Watching the dark-skinned girls put in the training on the court, Wan Jiayao was very emotional: “Today I came here to encourage the children to cheer up and persevere, but now I find that their spirit is encouraging me even more.”
In January of this year, the women’s football players of Wawu Primary School walked out of the mountains for the first time and went to Xichang to participate in an exchange game. This was also their first official match with other teams. A few months later, they will also participate in the “Chasing Wind Project” league and fight in a bigger arena.
Football is becoming a bridge for these children to the world outside the mountains. In 2020, seven members of the football team of Wawu Primary School were selected into the Liangshan Football Project of the Real Madrid Foundation for a one-year training. In the same year, they formed a county team with another elementary school and won the “Craftsmanship Cup” competition in Sichuan Province.
In the past five years, more than 50 boys from the school have been admitted to better middle schools in the county because of their football skills, including Ji Niu Wuzuo’s brother. Recently, several key middle schools in the county have been connected with principal Qubi Shigu. Ji Niu Wuzuo and her women’s football partners are very hopeful that these middle schools will give priority to admission.
There was only one teacher, Qubi Shigu, in this village school 10 years ago, but now it has 20 teaching staff.
Supporting teacher Cui Hongming originally planned to support teaching for one year, but has persisted for five years. In the past five years, the great changes in the school and the children made him bluntly say that “the five years of my youth are worth it”. In addition to teaching the children to read and write, Liu Hongxia, a supporting teacher, also took the children to tidy up the school library.
Outside the school gate, teachers and children recently sowed potato seeds on the 40-acre Happy Farm; next to the “Rose Dream Stadium”, a dozen magpies stood on the branches, and several cows were grazing leisurely; on the roof of the classroom, a The red lettering “Let the village school become a place with dreams” is very eye-catching; at the gate of the school, there is a sign from the Organizing Committee of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou – “Asian Football Dream School”.
Because of targeted poverty alleviation, the children’s road down the mountain has become smoother. From here, not only football teenagers, but also five college students have emerged. One of the college students, like Qubi Shigu, has become a rural teacher.
“Even if the children don’t play football in the future, I hope that the spirit of sports can accompany them throughout their lives.” Qubi Shigu said.
