SPORTS, China: How They Watched It
By Freda Wang
The day when the Rockets and the Kings began their China Games in Shanghai, I was at the school dining hall having dinner with a friend. Students here can’t watch TV in their dorms, so the TV set supplied in there became especially precious to basketball fans. It was 10 P.M., but the dining hall was not empty. A bunch of boys gathered around a table and watched eagerly with their heads rising. When the players on TV played with all their efforts, the boys shouted with all their efforts. They were holding each other tightly, screaming and applauding.
The climax appeared when Webber nailed a three-point shot from almost the other end of the court. The crowd gave out a loud exclamation of admiration. Joy could be seen clearly on their faces. I understood the feeling, and I couldn’t help myself from laughing and applauding with them in such an atmosphere. The feeling those youngsters shared bound them together, no matter whether they knew each other or not. Two boys yelled out “Great!” simultaneously and burst into laughter just after looking at each other in surprise for several seconds. Another two fellows threw themselves into each other’s arms and murmured words continuously that nobody could understand. Although sometimes these behaviors looked childish, no one could deny that they were lovely.
That was what we saw that night in one of the thousand-plus universities in China. Looking at those young people, one was met with a sudden inspiration why so many people find basketball attractive. It can, like most sports, make both the players and audience feel pure and whole. At that very moment, people around the world were together thinking, looking and caring about the same thing, in spite of their nationalities, religious beliefs or anything else. This attraction flew across the ocean and took root in young hearts in many countries.
The day when the Rockets and the Kings began their China Games in Shanghai, I was at the school dining hall having dinner with a friend. Students here can’t watch TV in their dorms, so the TV set supplied in there became especially precious to basketball fans. It was 10 P.M., but the dining hall was not empty. A bunch of boys gathered around a table and watched eagerly with their heads rising. When the players on TV played with all their efforts, the boys shouted with all their efforts. They were holding each other tightly, screaming and applauding.
The climax appeared when Webber nailed a three-point shot from almost the other end of the court. The crowd gave out a loud exclamation of admiration. Joy could be seen clearly on their faces. I understood the feeling, and I couldn’t help myself from laughing and applauding with them in such an atmosphere. The feeling those youngsters shared bound them together, no matter whether they knew each other or not. Two boys yelled out “Great!” simultaneously and burst into laughter just after looking at each other in surprise for several seconds. Another two fellows threw themselves into each other’s arms and murmured words continuously that nobody could understand. Although sometimes these behaviors looked childish, no one could deny that they were lovely.
That was what we saw that night in one of the thousand-plus universities in China. Looking at those young people, one was met with a sudden inspiration why so many people find basketball attractive. It can, like most sports, make both the players and audience feel pure and whole. At that very moment, people around the world were together thinking, looking and caring about the same thing, in spite of their nationalities, religious beliefs or anything else. This attraction flew across the ocean and took root in young hearts in many countries.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home