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this city, which was named after cars, has returned to the public eye in the name of tennis.

"in the past, we could just schedule an appointment. the coach was always available. but this year, he is always busy."

li yun is a tennis fan. she played tennis for a while in the sixth grade of elementary school, but she accidentally got injured at that time, and she gave up tennis because she was preparing to go to school. unexpectedly, she became addicted to tennis again after she became an adult, and "i feel uncomfortable if i don't play for a day."

she works in france, but every year when she returns to shiyan, she always makes an appointment with the same coach to practice tennis and keep her hand feeling. her most intuitive feeling is that this year, there are obviously more people learning tennis, and it has become difficult to make an appointment with a coach.

on the day zheng qinwen won the olympic championship, shiyan olympic sports center organized a viewing event, and thousands of shiyan citizens gathered to witness this historic moment. many videos shot at the olympic sports center that night circulated on the internet, leaving the outside world with the impression that the entire city was proud of zheng qinwen - this city that produced an olympic champion must have a strong tennis atmosphere.

the small city of shiyan finally returned to people's attention in the name of tennis 20 years after "second automobile works" (china second automobile works, later renamed dongfeng motor group co., ltd.) withdrew.

△zheng qinwen serves in the women's singles match of the french open. (photo/visual china)

01

a lively corner of the mountain

one morning in early august, there were few faces other than the elderly and children on the roadside in shiyan city. the streets returned to silence after the hustle and bustle of the morning rush hour. however, on the back mountain of shiyan sports center, bursts of "click, click" sounds were heard.

to get to shiyan sports center, you need to walk along the right side of the track and field, then go uphill, pass the small football field and badminton hall, and continue to climb the steeper slope upward.

as we entered the gentle slope of the mountainside, we could hear the rising and falling sound of human voices.

hidden between the leaves and the fence, there is an inconspicuous small door that can be easily missed. after entering the small door, there are two connected indoor tennis courts on the left. the walls and roof are made of simple steel, and there are several cracks on the ground.

the sunlight slanted down to the ground through the arched ceiling, dividing the tennis court on the right into half sunny and half cloudy.

in a field protected from the sun, a coach was teaching a few students, all of whom were lower grade elementary school students.

△schoolchildren and parents in the tennis court. (photo by zhang weiting)

a study in 2013 showed that most people playing tennis in shiyan at that time were college students and social workers aged 36 to 55.

at that time, tennis was not popular in china, and even fewer people knew about it in the small city of shiyan. to this day, there are only three or four tennis courts open to the public in the city, and there are even fewer teaching sites and coaches, most of which are in the children's palace and the municipal sports center. a tennis coach born in the 1990s said that he first came into contact with tennis when he went to college in wuhan, and he never thought about learning it when he was chasing the anime "prince of tennis" as a child.

△ (photo/the prince of tennis)

in the other fields exposed to direct sunlight, there were also people practicing, but they were mainly adults.

similar to the above study, tennis enthusiasts are still the group with higher incomes.

one parent said that the cost of playing tennis is not low. from the ball itself to the court and the coach, it is much more expensive than basketball and other common ball sports. however, his friends are all playing tennis, so he also sent his two children here to learn tennis. while accompanying his children to class, he also plays with other parents. "i'm not going for the olympic champion, i just want to exercise."

compared with 10 years ago, a more obvious trend is that the group of people playing tennis in shiyan now is getting younger.

most of the caddies on the field are still in the second or third grade of elementary school. they told me that their average playing experience is more than two years, and many of them have been coming to classes since the last year of kindergarten.

△the age of people playing tennis is getting younger and younger. (photo/ic photo)

at the net, the coach was talking to the students. there was a small figure near my side of the court. he squatted down, picked up a ball, and ran to my basket, put it down, looked at his brother who was in class not far away, and turned to run in the direction of another forgotten ball. his father said that he was three and a half years old this year, too young, and planned to register him next year, but now "just picking up the ball is very happy."

another parent told me that the innermost outdoor field was undergoing a training camp. they were preparing for the competition next week.

02

the habit of playing games

shiyan's tennis team has always had the habit of participating in a large number of competitions. as early as 2012, they participated in the newly launched hubei youth tennis tour. shiyan was one of the few cities that participated in this event from 2012 to 2015.

△ (photo/"strive, young man!")

tennis was introduced to shiyan earlier. as one of the earliest tennis coaches in shiyan, chen hongming said that thanks to second automobile works, many immigrants from northeast china and other places came to shiyan and brought this sport with them. however, at that time, tennis was limited to the internal staff of second automobile works, and there was no idea of ​​promoting and training it to the general public.

in 2009, hubei province decided to step up efforts to develop tennis. chen hongming, who originally focused on track and field, was selected by the municipal sports bureau to go to chengdu sports school. after a period of training, he "brought" tennis education back to shiyan.

according to the age grouping of domestic tennis competitions, the hubei provincial team favors athletes aged 10-14, corresponding to the u12-u14 age group. tennis learning takes four years as a cycle and cannot be interrupted. therefore, the municipal team can only choose children under 10 years old to start training.

most of the students who come to the class are between 6 and 12 years old. if they are not going to be special students or career-oriented, after entering junior high school at the age of 12, due to the heavy academic pressure, few people will spend time learning new things. if they have learned tennis since childhood, they will play once a week to keep their hand feeling.

△the picture shows the championship battle of the u14 group of the 2023 utr suzhou youth tennis rating tournament. (photo/ic photo)

after returning from chengdu, chen hongming began to select students. he set his sights on students from kindergarten to second grade. at that time, he was the only coach at the sports center. in this small city, many people probably didn't know what tennis was. chen hongming went around various schools every day. once he saw a "good seedling" on the other side of the railing, he would squat at the school gate and wait for parents to pick up their children after school. then he would go up and grab the person and invite him to bring his child to a trial class.

that’s how jiang xinyao was chosen. she was in physical education class at the time, and chen hongming noticed that she had good coordination and was worth a try. he went to talk to her after class. there were several other students in the class who were also chosen, and they suspected that chen hongming was a liar. chen hongming wrote his contact information on a piece of paper and asked them to take it home to show their parents.

jiang xinyao still remembers that her family thought it was unreliable, but after looking at the note carefully, they thought the handwriting was very beautiful and they thought it was not a scam, so they decided to give it a try. a few days later, on the weekend, jiang xinyao followed her grandmother to the sports center.

the first class was nothing special. the coach asked the children to use the racket to hit the ball downwards and upwards like playing basketball to feel the weight of the ball. jiang xinyao thought it was fun and quickly asked her parents to sign up. this tennis class lasted for 10 years.

△ (photo/"tennis girl")

when li na won the french open in 2011, 7-year-old jiang xinyao watched the final at home. although she didn't know what tennis was and had never played it, for a child, the gold medal was a symbol of victory, and she thought it was amazing.

unexpectedly, a few years later, she would have the opportunity to pick up a racket and become zheng qinwen's junior. every afternoon after school, jiang xinyao ran from school to the court and trained from 4 pm to 8 pm, rain or shine.

the first time she participated in a competition with the team was in 2013. at that time, she had just started learning tennis and teamed up with zheng qinwen to win the u10 women's doubles championship in the hubei youth tennis tour jingmen station. in the following years, jiang xinyao also won medals in national and provincial women's doubles and singles competitions many times.

△in the women's singles semi-finals of the paris olympics, zheng qinwen defeated swiatek 2-0 to advance to the finals, making history. (photo/visual china)

like her senior zheng qinwen, jiang xinyao later joined the wuhan provincial team. recalling that experience, she "wanted to die every day."

when they were at the wuhan sports school, they did morning exercises and jogging at 5 a.m. every day, went directly to the cafeteria to eat after running, had cultural classes in the morning, and started high-intensity training at 2 p.m., each time starting with a 4-kilometer endurance run.

"when others are playing, you can only be on the court and give up playing time." this seems to be the standard path for every player who aspires to be a professional athlete. the training intensity was too high. one day when he was 14 years old, jiang xinyao was accidentally injured and could not continue on the professional path. like many people who have played basketball since childhood but did not choose the professional path, jiang xinyao changed his career path to a sports specialty student and stayed away from his former dream.

△the animated picture of zheng qinwen wiping away sweat and tears after a hard-fought victory moved many people. (photo/cctv screenshot)

in september 2018, tennis began to enter the campus of shiyan. the second-year students of yunyang middle school, which is closest to the sports center, became the first group of students to learn tennis led by the school. later, tennis clubs and students with special talents also entered the campus of shiyan one after another. now even primary schools have tennis specialty classes.

as more and more children in shiyan have access to tennis, a deeper question arises: what happens after they learn it?

03

the space is limited and there are not many people.

after all, shiyan is still a small city.

many people have heard of wudang mountain, but few know that it is located in shiyan - it was also the city where the once famous "second automobile" settled.

people who specialize in a certain ball game always hope to go to a bigger city with more resources. so most of them leave and go to wuhan, to a farther and bigger place.

many interviewees told me that people who leave shiyan want to try their luck out there. more importantly, there are many tennis clubs and training institutions in wuhan, but there are no dedicated tennis clubs in shiyan. people who learn tennis can become small coaches in training classes in wuhan, but they have almost nowhere to go when they return to shiyan.

△ wuhan greenland center. (photo/visual china)

however, with insufficient manpower and limited venues, how can the club survive? in shiyan, tennis seems to have entered a vicious circle.

building a court is too expensive. an amateur tennis coach told me that a standard tennis court costs at least 400,000 yuan, and finding a suitable piece of land is a problem.

this former car city surrounded by mountains has mostly slopes. it is not easy to find a flat area to turn it into a tennis court.

chen hongming still remembers that at the beginning, there was no area large enough near the sports center to be used as a tennis court. after much thought, the only concrete basketball court on the mountain was a wide flat area suitable for renovation, so he painted it and hung a net to turn it into a tennis court.

to this day, there are still not many tennis courts in shiyan, only more than 20. only the municipal sports center and the olympic sports center are open to the public. the rest are in schools, communities, government agencies or dongqi gymnasium. there are not many venues available for public use.

△ on the outer wall of shiyan sports center, zheng qinwen's poster has faded a little. (photo by zhang weiting)

there are even fewer places to take classes. according to many interviewees, there are only two or three places in the entire city where classes can be taken. "the number of tennis courts in jingshan is more than three or four times that of shiyan alone," lamented an amateur tennis coach.

relevant training institutions are hard to find. i tried to contact a youth night school on a social platform, and the quote was about 120 yuan per class, with a small class, but after further inquiry, i found that their teachers and venues were still from the city sports center.

the coach of the municipal sports center said that similar night schools also rely on them. after receiving the students, they entrust them with the classes. the night school itself does not have independent venues and teachers.

there are less than 10 coaches teaching tennis at the city sports center. take li yun's coach as an example. recently, there are more students. generally, two classes in the morning, two to three classes in the afternoon, and one class in the evening are already fully booked.

△there are few coaches and many students. insufficient manpower is an important reason hindering the development of tennis in shiyan. (photo/"just love")

insufficient manpower and limited resources may be the reason why tennis has not changed much in shiyan over the years. li yun also feels that the current tennis resources in shiyan have not changed much compared to 10 years ago when she first started learning tennis.

perhaps a more realistic reason is that when second automobile works withdrew from shiyan, this former "car city" seemed to have lost its pillars, and the city suffered severe damage that will take a long time to heal.

in the 1980s, shiyan was one of the first cities in china to achieve moderate prosperity. thirty years later, shiyan has lost its former glory. the salary level here is between 3,000 and 4,000 yuan, but the daily expenses are not much different from those in wuhan. the average price per person in the restaurants on the food rankings is between 50 and 156 yuan.

several restaurant employees, online taxi drivers, and factory workers i met said that they did not watch the live broadcast on the day zheng qinwen won the championship. everyone was busy making a living and had no time and energy to pay attention to things that were far away from their lives.

△september 2, 2024, shiyan, hubei. swimmers swim under the danjiangkou dam. (photo/visual china)

some of them read the news afterwards, while others had not even heard that an olympic champion had emerged from their hometown. some described it as “noisy outside, but cold inside.”

a ride-hailing driver said that his son was about to enter primary school and had to take two basketball classes a week, which cost 3,000 yuan a year, "which was outrageous." if he participated in small group competitions, he would have to pay several hundred yuan more for two or three classes a week.

as for tennis, the average price of a lesson is over a hundred yuan, which they "dare not even think about."

shiyan, which has returned to the public opinion field due to tennis, is not as lively as the outside world imagines. the grand event that happened thousands of kilometers away did not seem to cross the mountains and reach this small city hidden in the folds.

there seemed to be an invisible net inside the city. the square stadium was bustling with activity, but on the other side, people outside the stadium did not stop to glance or turn their heads back as they continued with their busy lives.

this is the story of shiyan, and it is also a story that is happening in every city.