The CBA playoffs have begun, but there is a more moving story on the court than the competition on the field.
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Text / Liu Jintao
Edited / Li Luyuan
On the evening of April 5, the Liaoning team, sitting at home, welcomed a special fan, Wu Zhonghua, a brain injury patient from Anshan, Liaoning.
During the game, the cheers and cheers of the fans allowed him to find the passion he should have. And when he walked into the stadium between half-time to receive encouragement from all the fans, he said: "When I lose faith in life, seeing the support of so many people gives me the strength to live."
Wu Zhonghua has always had a dream to watch a match of his hometown team as a Liaoning native and take a photo with his favorite player, Guo Allen. This time, with the help of Mengduo, he got his wish.
Especially after the game, when all the members of the Liaoning team, including coach Yang Ming, hugged him and gave him encouragement, not only Wu Zhonghua, but also everyone who paid attention to this incident deeply felt the power of sports.
Recalling this story, Meng Duo told Krypton: "After retiring, I felt that I had the responsibility to contribute to the cultural construction of the CBA, and I also said a long time ago that I would take a fan to see the CBA, and Zhonghua found me."
At the same time, Meng Duo also revealed that he communicated with the Liaoning team through his old teammate Li Xiaoxu, and the team paid enough attention to it, "in terms of timing, personnel arrangement and ceremony, he gave Wu Zhonghua a stage to realize his dream very carefully." At this point, I should also give the Liaoning team a thumbs up.
And looking back at the whole incident, when so many people gave Wu Zhonghua encouragement, why didn't Wu Zhonghua use his spirit to bring strength to others?
Meng Duo and Wu Zhonghua went to the Liaoning team
Wu Zhonghua, a man whose fate cannot be defeated
If there were no accidents, Wu Zhonghua's story should have been a Chinese inspirational model of "flying out of the chicken nest".
This 188-year-tall sunny boy was born in a small mountain village in Anshan, Liaoning. In 2013, he was admitted to Beijing Sport University as he wished, and during his freshman year, he was admitted as a national first-class athlete, a national senior fitness coach, a national nutritionist, and a national basketball referee... While many freshmen are still immersed in enjoying the freshness of campus, Wu Zhonghua has even begun to earn money to support himself.
However, the trajectory of fate is never a straight line. In November 2014, Wu Zhonghua's body underwent tremendous changes, and he had to undergo craniotomy after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Wu Zhonghua's mental state was a little weak, but seeing that his elderly parents were still running around to raise money for his own treatment, he still cheered up and returned to school three months after the operation.
A twenty-year-old child has experienced such a great change, and he is already very human. But the disease did not seem to think of letting him go easily - two years after recovery, Wu Zhonghua's illness recurred.
He broke down and thought about taking his own life, but under the persuasion of his parents and teachers, he finally cheered up again, for himself, for his parents, and even more for the yearning for a new life in the future.
After the second operation, despite many sequelae, Wu Zhonghua showed strong mental strength. He reworked his eight-pack abs, completed school, and landed a job as a fitness instructor. With his outstanding height and appearance, he even often makes guest appearances as a model, becoming a high-quality slash youth that many people envy.
As the saying goes, two again and again, no more. This time, it looks like he really survived. But fate never cares about mortal truths.
Wu Zhonghua's disease recurred again.
He never understood what he had done wrong, to bear such a blow of fate. The repeated craniotomy and rehabilitation in several years, as well as the more than 500,000 debts owed by his family to treat him, made Wu Zhonghua miserable. He locked himself in his home for two years, eventually necessitating a third craniotomy as his condition worsened. And this time, the sequelae also came more violently.
The disease distorted his facial features and made his daily movements no longer smooth, perhaps how good everything was in the past, how cruel the reality is now. No one can imagine what kind of unwillingness and pain he endured in his heart, especially what is more frustrating than enduring illness and repeated surgery is to accept the reality - to accept this self that is very different from what he once was.
Fate never gives people a choice, and such a life cannot be accepted. But how to face all this divides people into different forms.
How to be strong, this is a lesson Wu Zhonghua taught us
According to Meng Duo, Wu Zhonghua's recurring brain tumor is rare in the world, "This is a terminal illness, and there is no template in the world."
But this helplessness gradually became Wu Zhonghua's struggle for life. In order not to become a burden to the family, Wu Zhonghua endured the pain and stumbled to complete the daily rehabilitation, and now it seems that the effect is quite good. He can walk on his own, eat crookedly, feed chickens, wash mops, and ride a short difficult upside-down donkey.
He began to strive to become sunny. Facial paralysis took away his smile, and he poked his cheek with his finger to squeeze out an upward arc; For fear of scaring children, he will wear a big blindfold and want to be cute; He also calls himself a performance artist, seeing the slow and incongruous eating process as his own talent show... Indeed, he is working very hard to accomplish something with a degree of difficulty that ordinary people can hardly imagine, how can it not be considered a "talent"?
Source: Weibo @我一画画的
"I played the male number one in my own movie, although my body is not very strong and adaptable now, but my mind has not slipped, a great man said, as long as the mind does not slip, there must be a small flat slope ahead, I am a person with the aura of a protagonist." In his videos, there are many, many such slogans.
Meng Duo, who has experienced a big injury, knows the pain of injury, but when he saw Wu Zhonghua, Meng Duo was also moved by his spirit, "He is a child from the countryside, strong physical fitness is trained over the years, if he has not suffered so much, without the experience brought by sports, in the face of such ups and downs in life, it is likely that he will not be able to get up, Zhonghua's strong mentality and willpower is the most true portrayal of sports power in ordinary people."
He began to try to become a self-media, using short videos to record his daily life, encouraging those in desperate situations to live strong and optimistic. On the show, he said bluntly: "I think I should send my life out and let them see, I am trying to live like this, why don't you good people?"
Yes, even though Wu Zhonghua himself is still a patient, he cares very much about those "fallen" lives. Meng Duo told Krypton that when Wu Zhonghua saw that many children committed suicide because of depression, chose to jump off the building because of emotional collapse, etc., he was very sad, so he wanted them to see their own stories and tell more people the thickness and breadth of life.
Now, Wu Zhonghua's life has more goals, not only to pass on his sportsmanship, but also to give his parents a better life. He does not need sympathy and pity, he has to rely on his own money to pay off debts, and he wants to regain the value and dignity of life.
Meng Duo and Wu Zhonghua's family
There are tens of millions of illnesses in the world, Wu Zhonghua's story may not be the cruelest, but it is the closest to us, he is like one of our big boys next door, real and alive as if he is around us, under his social media comments, some fans mentioned Kobe's unexpected death, legendary F1 driver Senna accidentally died and Liu Xiang's unexpected withdrawal... Yes, when Wu Zhonghua's story shines into the lives of more people, perhaps in many late nights, we will unconsciously remember his story, the accidents and difficulties in life are unpredictable, cherish the current life and make it more, perhaps far more important than pursuing the future.
This lesson Wu Zhonghua taught us profoundly.
In the context of CBA, more humanistic stories are needed
Wu Zhonghua's story made many fans feel the inspiration of sports, and also invisibly deepened the cultural foundation of Liaoning team and CBA league.
In fact, as a social and cultural product, the league has the social responsibility of carrying warm stories, and how to do such social events well and transmit the power of sports and the brilliance of human nature is also an important part of testing the construction of a league.
In October 2014, a 5-year-old Jazz fan, JP Gibson, was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia two years ago, and in order to fulfill his basketball dream, the team gave him a tryout and signed a one-day contract to give him a jersey of his own.
On top of that, JP also played for the Jazz in a preseason game, where Gobert picked him up and completed what may be the only dunk of his life.
JP Gibson signed for the Utah Jazz
This story was a sensation at the time, and the brand effect of the NBA was transmitted to millions of households - although we can't see such public welfare events with utilitarian eyes, as early as the mid-90s, the NBA was committed to giving back to the community, and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the NBA Care Initiative was established, and with globalization to cover more and more places.
Looking back at the CBA, although the league has always made efforts at the public welfare level, the league still needs more touching stories.
During the epidemic, before the opening of the Guangdong men's basketball and Shanxi men's basketball matches in the Dongguan Division, the league specially invited Zhang Jiacheng, a "one-armed boy" with high online attention, to play for the game, but the results were not good.
Mainly because the kick-off of Xiaojiacheng was full of awkward atmosphere - he entered the court with a blank face under the guidance of the referee, then took the ball and threw it into the sky, and then turned around and left the field in a hurry, almost no domestic player coach had any communication with him, only foreign aid Weems gently touched his head when he exited, so that many fans complained that the CBA used him as a tool man.
Zhang Jiacheng kicked off the match
To this day, we can still see criticism of Zhang Jiacheng's jumping ball story. But in fact, before jumping the ball, Zhang Jiacheng, a Cantonese national, was invited to visit the basketball base of the Guangdong team, not only took a photo with the entire Guangdong team, received jerseys signed by all the Guangdong team players, but also played one-on-one heads-up with Xu Jie, which can be said to be the ultimate public welfare activity - especially considering the restrictions during the epidemic.
How to do public welfare is a science, and from the comparison of these two things, the brand construction of our league should be "both face and inside".
Looking back, there are many such warm stories in the CBA league.
In 2015, a Shanxi boy named Xuanxuan was diagnosed with medulloblastoma and had already undergone two craniotomy surgeries and 16th chemotherapy at the age of 8. But Xuan Xuan is a loyal basketball enthusiast, and even during his illness, he made a wish to watch a game at every 20 home courts in the CBA.
In January 2017, the Liaoning men's basketball team invited Xuan Xuan to watch the game and held a small event: Xuan Xuan gave the portrait of the Liaoning basketball player he drew to the captain Yang Ming, and Yang Ming gave the team's signed uniform to Xuan Xuan as a gift, and said that he and the whole team greatly appreciated Xuan Xuan's courage and optimism in the face of the disease, and hoped that Xuan Xuan could overcome the disease and recover as soon as possible.
That time, after introducing Xuan Xuan's background, the on-site host also led the audience to shout "Xuan Xuan come on" in unison to encourage the boy.
Xuan Xuan and Yang Ming
Source: Osports All Sports Media
From Wu Zhonghua to Zhang Jiacheng to Xuan Xuan, such stories continue to appear in the league, in fact, it is the embodiment of the league's social responsibility, perhaps there is still room for improvement in the CBA in details, but we can see more warm side displayed on the field, the ever-expanding boundaries of the league, and let us have a deeper feeling for the power of sports and the brilliance of human nature.
There is never a shortage of injuries on the playing field, and even more so in life.
The story of Meng Duo taking Wu Zhonghua to realize his dream is a contrast with the previous events, proving that our league and club are capable of doing this kind of thing, and bringing an inspirational and warm case to the humanistic care of the CBA.
As Mondo encouraged him, "Even though life has left me broken, I still fight it without reservation." Live, be born, live!"
"Come on, Big Sunshine Boy!"