By Maureen Fan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
KUNMING, China -- When Liu Huana was 5 or 6 years old, she learned to help her older sister put goats out to pasture. By the time she was 7, she could take care of 20 goats by herself, often stopping to sneak fresh watermelon from another farmer's fields.
Liu's village lay at the end of a dirt road not far from the city of Jining, in southwestern Shandong province. Her father, a former soldier, could afford to give her a few cents each morning to buy a steamed bun or flour pancake on the way to school.
Today, Liu is a member of China's national women's soccer team, training day and night and hoping to play in the Women's World Cup that China is hosting this fall. Her journey out of poverty has been marked by single-mindedness and luck.
Not many rural children get a chance to work their way up to a place on a professional team in China, especially in sports popular among urbanites, such as soccer. In fact, Liu is one of the few members of the national team from the countryside. Most of the other women, whose ages range from 19 to 27, are from prosperous cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Dalian.
"I had never heard of soccer until I was 13, when I moved to the county for my fifth-grade studies," Liu recalled. "One day people from the local athletic school came to our school to select new members. The teacher recommended me because I was the fastest runner in the class. I wore a skirt and saddle shoes that day, and I just took off my shoes and ran."
It was her first time on a soccer field, she recalled, and when she was asked to join a group of boys who were already playing, she picked up the ball with both hands and ran for the goal. That blunder aside, she quickly won admirers.
"What impressed me most is her persistence and desire for improvement," said Lin Mo, 46, coach of the Shaanxi provincial soccer team. Lin visited in 1995 and selected nine candidates from the county athletic school, including Liu, then only 14.
At first, Liu was often benched in favor of older, more experienced players. Discouraged, she practiced harder.
"She practiced on weekends when other teammates were out shopping," Lin said. "She played soccer with her brain. She was the only one who kept asking questions until she got the answer and knew how to fix her problems."
Three years ago, Liu was asked to join the national team. Her provincial team had been training in Guangdong province when former national coach Zhang Haitao asked her what she could do.
"I can keep on running," Liu recalled saying, pausing because she was embarrassed about her technique and didn't know what else to say.
"Then it's enough, as long as I have your word," Zhang replied.
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.
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