Stories of the youth from Wa villages

During the 2022 ASICS Youth Tennis Tour, a 14-year-old boy named Wang Fa from Cangyuan, beyond all expectations, won the U14 men’s singles championship. One picture of him with a rustic bamboo basket on his back even went viral on China’s social media. His bronzed skin, confident smile, along with the two tennis rackets in his basket, have been remembered by tens of thousands of net users. 

Wang Fa, however, is not the only one who has developed a keen interest in tennis. In fact, a number of boys and girls from Wa villages have started practicing this sport since 2016 when they became the members of Yunnan Wild Elephant Tennis Club. It’s not exaggerated to say that tennis has helped them step out of the mountains and kick of a brand new life.

Over the past 7 years, they have been running, practicing and seizing every opportunity they can acquire to improve tennis skills.

Fruitful results only come after non-stop efforts. So far, the 7 teenagers from Wa villages have won a total of 16 tournaments of different age groups and at different levels, including the national ones. Among them, Li Jiao, Li Ting and Peng Shiya ranked the top three in the national Nike Cup junior tennis rankings of 2020, and were eventually selected to play for China’s national junior tennis reserve team.

Speaking of the future, they all have the same goal: Be a tennis professional.

At the "Kadi Cup" Youth Football Invitational Tournament held in Kunming’s Jinning in 2022, people saw a group of 8 and 9-year-old children from Lincang playing on the pitches and soon won the championship and runner-up trophies of U8 and U9. These children came from the Wa Junior Football Team in Cangyuan’s Mengdong town. This was the first that they had ever been involved in formal football match.  

Running up and down on the pitches, these young players devoted all their energy and passion to football. As a result, one after another opportunities for scoring were created during the match. Their outstanding performance genuinely stunned every spectator.

The story of Wa Junior Football Team began in 2020, when Lincang initiated a project to popularize football among children and teenagers. The Mengdong Town Primary School, for instance, has already enrolled 3 batches of students with a specific interest in football. Apart from day-to-day curriculums, they involve themselves in football trainings 2 hours a day, and 6 times a week.

Although the trainings are hard, children have never lost their passion and love for football. Through this sport, they better understand what “never giving up” means to every individual. Meanwhile, football trophies they’ve won keep encouraging them to succeed in their studies.

If you ask them what their biggest dream is, the answer must be: “studying harder, playing football harder, and stepping onto a greater stage.”

"The river is flowing by my home, the herds are mooing on the slope, the birds are flying out of the nest, chirping, and the national anthem is going on my mind, resounding." This is taken from an ethnic song “The Wa Juniors”. At the annual award ceremony of the 9th Asia Microfilm Art Festival in September 2022, the song was performed by the Wa Youth Choir, and it impressed the international guests at the very beginning.

Dressed in Wa costumes, the choir’s 100 members impressed the audience with their clear voices, singing skills, expressive agility and natural emotion. The melodies led listeners to the secluded Lincang areas, allowing them to see the wonderful Wa childhood and the lively Wa mountains in the new era. The song gives off a sense of infinite beauty and hope.

The Wa Youth Choir consists of 100 children from the Cangyuan Border-gate Primary School and the Mengdong Town Primary School. A local saying goes like this: “The Wa people learn to sing in their talks, and they learn to dance in they walks". The choir’s inception has given full play to the gifts of Wa children in singing and dancing, while raising their awareness in teamwork and cooperation. They grow happily in rehearsals and performances.

"I like singing, for it makes me happy!" said Zhao Chun, a choir member. “My hometown is beautiful and we live a happy life. By singing, I’d to make our happiness known to more people.

In Lincang’s Cangyuan county that borders Myanmar, there grows a group of young computer programmer.

China has a yearly network originality competition for primary and secondary students across the county. In the 2022 event, the Cangyuan contestants contributed  340 programs, of which 204 won the preliminary contest. 45 contestants were shortlisted for the semi-finals in Yunnan province, and 6 won the first and second prizes in the national finals.

In 2018, the National Center for Educational Technology under the Ministry of Education paired with Cangyuan in the poverty fight, aiding the county’s children in programming education. At present, programming classes are available in 11 middle schools and 13 primary schools in Cangyuan, benefiting over 5,000 pupils yearly.

Guided by a teacher, the children creatively programmed the robots in making idiom cartoons, poetic games or even racing cars. From simple instructions to advanced programs, they learned to understand programming in games, with their computational thinking cultivated and innovative ability stimulated.

Programming has grown to be a favorite class among Cangyuan children, thanks to the efforts of the educational departments and others. In the past five years, an increasing number of Wa juniors have shown up in scientific innovation, awarded in provincial and national competitions. Every year, Cangyuan sends outstanding young programmers to Shenzhen for the Tencent Youth AI Dream-making Camp, allowing them to exchange and compete with their peers nationwide.