One GIANT Project

If you ever come visit Southwest China, you'll probably go into sensory overload for a few days because of the tsunami of noise flooding into every public space, the neon lights that light up skyscrapers like Christmas trees, and the chili pepper that is dumped onto everything you eat.  As you adjust to such levels of hyper-stimulation, everything becomes less overwhelming and you find the time to establish certain bubbles in which time moves more slowly, people don't talk as loudly, and the food is spiced more conservatively.  Luckily enough, one of my personal bubbles in China has been the basketball court.  I say, "Luckily enough," because you can't go a quarter mile in the province of Guizhou without walking past a public basketball court with a game of 4-on-4 in progress.  As a friend here once said quite accurately, "Guizhou is basically one giant project.  And just like in all other projects, basketball is the most popular sport.  You just need a ball, a hoop, and some people who want to play."  At least where I play, you don't even need to have athletic shoes, shorts, or even experience with basketball.  In fact, the most common basketball player is probably a 30 year old man who takes smoking breaks between games played in a pair of loosely-tied dress shoes, some blue jeans, and a sweater with the sleeves rolled up.  I'm the weird one for wearing basketball shoes, shorts, and a t-shirt… as if I didn't stand out already. 

The other day, another Peace Corps Volunteer in my city named Sandor invited me to come visit a nearby town with some of his students.  As many 'planned' excursions go in China, there was no plan at all, and after about an hour and a half of switching buses, walking down dirt roads, and climbing up some mountains, we turned the corner to a wide-open valley with nothing more than some rice paddies, a tiny village of 50+ wooden homes, a circle pavilion for local festivals, and, you guessed it, a basketball court. However, this was no ordinary basketball court.  This particular court was bordered on one side by a creek, on the next side by a Miao festival featuring dance and song, on the third side by a steeply terraced rice paddy, and on the last side by a bull roaming for food in the mud next to the creek.  You may have seen a similar setting before while playing Mortal Kombat, except instead of two ninja's duking it out in 1-on-1 combat, this arena was hosting an open entry 5-on-5 tournament.  So Sandor and I rounded up 3 willing locals to join our international squad registered under the teamname "美中友好"(Americhina Friendship).  While waiting for our game to start, we decided to check out the song and dance party taking place only a hop and skip away (jump and you're in the creek).  Naturally, being that we were probably the only white people to ever stumble upon this village (which no Chinese person I talked to even knew the name of) we were invited/forced to drink 3 lucky bowls of rice wine to celebrate the occasion.  After getting a solid buzz going and taking the obligatory peacesign photos, we were called over to begin our game.  Long story medium, I dropped 14 of my team's 31 points with Sandor scoring 9 of the other 17.  Unfortunately, the team we played against had more than only two athletes, and they ended up winning 42-31.

By the time we finished playing, the sun had set, the crowds had dispersed, and the bull had wandered away from his post at the Eastern sideline.  In some misguided ploy to give me free dinner and drink, the locals assured me that the bus I took to the village was some phenomanomaly (phenomenal anomaly), and the only way to get back home involved eating dinner at their house and then flagging down random motorists heading to Kaili.  Much to my surprise, the no-plan-plan worked out yet again, and I made it to home with enough time to get a good night's sleep before my 8 a.m. class the next day.