One Chinese Woman's Path From Hinterlands To Top-Tier Athletics

Liu was shocked. Ever since then, she has been trying not to let her supporters down.

"I will exert my best effort. I cannot let the Chinese women's soccer team lose face on our land," she said of the upcoming World Cup tournament. Though she is a well-regarded member of the national team and a team leader in Shaanxi, she is not guaranteed a playing position.

"If I am not selected, I will not feel discouraged," Liu said. "As long as I have tried my best, I won't have regrets. Actually, I am under a lot of pressure at the moment. Before, I took part in every match. But now sometimes I am just a substitute. This makes me work even harder. After daily practice, I don't want to leave the field. I want to work on what I don't do well, even though I am really tired."

She talked about what motivated her in a recent interview in the lobby of the Kunming Sports Training Center hotel, just steps away from two manicured soccer fields.

"I don't want to go back to the countryside," she said. "Each time I am too tired to go on, I think of my family, and I work harder. I don't want to live the way I used to live. I want a better life."

Liu saves a third of her salary each month to support her brother, who is 19. It is expected that she will buy him an apartment and raise the thousands of dollars needed to host a decent wedding when he finds a fiancee.

Top players on a national team can earn more than $25,000 a year, according to soccer commentator Li Chengpeng. Average players such as Liu can make about $9,300.

Liu thinks her rural background makes her tougher than her city teammates. "If I am kicked by someone on the field, I don't mind it," she said.

When she returns to her home village, neighbors are curious. "Some villagers will come up and kick me," she said. "They want to find out why I don't hurt when I am kicked on the field, when they watch me on TV. I tell them, 'Well, I wear shin pads on the field, so it doesn't hurt. But now you really hurt me.' "

But such visits are rare. For now, Liu's world is circumscribed by the rigid schedule of the training center. She rises at 7:30 a.m. and eats two slices of bread and butter and an egg. Sometimes she has a little beef and some vegetables for breakfast.

After a morning briefing, practice starts at 10 a.m. and breaks just before noon. After a bath and quick nap, lunch is at 12:30, followed by another briefing. Then it's back to practice from 4 to 6 p.m.

A row of red regulation tracksuits were airing out on the hotel railings one recent evening. It was 8:30 p.m., after dinner and a session with a massage therapist, and Liu was allowed just one hour to talk to a reporter. Cellphones and computers are also banned, except for a short period each evening.

Recalling the practice earlier that day, Liu said she had concentrated on whether to pass, when to give up the ball and why she hadn't cut off an opponent before the woman had a chance to turn the ball around.

"The pressure and competition among the teammates doesn't allow me to concentrate on anything else," she said. "If I'm distracted and the others aren't, then I will fall behind."

For retired national athletes, there are football associations and coaching jobs. Some start their own businesses, selling sports clothing or promoting athletic centers. But many former provincial athletes make do selling vegetables, singing in bars, laboring in factories or mines or working as security guards.

Liu said she had a sleepless night when she was not on the field for the first two matches of the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, in December.

"I cried at night," Liu said. "I didn't want to let the others know, or expose my fragile feelings in front of the others. I don't really think about failure. If I stopped playing football, I really don't know what else I would do."

Researcher Li Jie contributed to this report.