Basket full of dreams
装满梦想的篮子
A set of photos of a boy carrying his tennis rackets in a bamboo basket has gone viral
一个男孩把网球拍放在竹篮里的一组照片在网上走红。
The boy, Wang Fa, 14, is a member of the Va ethnic group from Yunnan. After wining the under-14 title in the Guangzhou stop of the 2022 ASICS Tennis Junior Tour, an audience member from Yunnan gave him the bamboo basket as a gift and the photos were taken.
这个男孩名叫王发，14岁，来自云南的佤族。在2022年亚洲网球青年巡回赛广州站赢得14岁以下冠军后，一位来自云南的观众将竹篮作为礼物送给了他，并拍摄了照片。
“We always carry bamboo baskets when we work in the field. This is a typical farming tool of the Va ethnic group. I carried my rackets in this basket to honor my hometown,” Wang said after the match.
王发赛后说：“我们在田里干活的时候总是带着竹篮。这是佤族典型的农具。我把球拍放在篮子里是为了纪念我的家乡。”
Before tennis, Wang was just an ordinary boy from a village. But in 2016, he was chosen by a local club as one of the first 10 local children to learn to play professional tennis, “I was nervous 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.
在打网球之前，王发只是一个来自农村的普通男孩。但在2016年，他被当地一家俱乐部选为最早学习职业网球的10名当地儿童之一，“一开始我很紧张，因为外面的世界和我家太不一样了，”他补充说网球帮助他交到了更多的朋友，获得了更好的教育。
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 a.m, and practice for more than six hours a day, Every day, they need to swing a racket more than 7,000 times and run 9 kilometers.
在过去的六年里，王发和云南野象网球俱乐部的其他球员一起努力训练，以提高自己的技能和体力。孩子们早上6:30起床，每天练习6个多小时，每天需要挥动球拍7000多次，跑9公里。
“If it were not for tennis, I would still be helping out my family with farmwork back home,” Wang said.
王发说：“如果不是因为网球，我仍然会在家里帮家人做农活。”
Wang’s parents didn’t want him to learn tennis at first because they couldn’t afford it. But the tennis club offered to teach him for free. Wang’s hometown, the mountainous Cangyuan Va autceomous county, was just lifted out of poverty in 2019, reported China Daily. For Wang, winning the ASICS Tennis Junior Tour title was the beginning of a hopeful future. “I will aim for the top spots on the professional stage,” he said.
王发的父母起初不想让他学网球，因为他们负担不起。但网球俱乐部主动提出免费教他。据《中国日报》报道，王发的家乡，多山的沧源县，在2019年刚刚脱贫。对于王来说，赢得亚洲网球青年巡回赛冠军是一个充满希望的未来的开始。他说：“我的目标是职业舞台上的顶级位置。”
