Sports grounds help unify relocated residents in SW China's Guizhou

Liu Yue, a 38-year-old relocated woman from the Miao ethnic group, has found friendship and a sense of belonging through square dancing, largely aided by the completion of the community sports ground in 2019.

"I was not familiar with the community residents, even my neighbors, when I moved here in 2018 until the completion of the community sports ground," Liu said.

Liu lives in the Donghuan Yangguang relocation community in Rongjiang county, in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong autonomous prefecture, Southwest China's Guizhou province. The community is home to a population of 8,458 residents, most of them having been relocated from the county's remote and barren areas, thanks to China's poverty relief relocation efforts.

Before the relocation, Liu used to live in a small mountainous village about an hour drive away from the county.

"It was difficult to make a living in my village a few years ago, so I had to be a migrant worker and did not have much time to do square dancing, which I learned from TV shows," Liu said.

Liu set up a stall in the community selling meat and had more time to dance at nights in the community sports ground with other residents. The ground covers an area of around 1,000 square meters, including two basketball courts, where the residents can do a variety of exercises.

"I made a lot of friends through square dancing and I have never felt alone again," Liu said, adding that she participated in a series of fitness activities the community held in February, which attracted about 1,000 participants and more than 10,000 spectators from four different relocation communities.

"All the residents had stable relations with their villagers before the relocation. But they had to build new relations after they moved to the communities and mixed with other relocated residents from different areas," said Wu Guoyi, secretary of Donghuan Yangguang relocation community party branch.

"The sports grounds meet the need of the relocated residents for daily workout and entertainment and also provide a platform for them to know one another through dance and sports activities," said Lin Tao, director of the county's sports training center.

Lin added that over the past years, the county has relocated more than 20,000 villagers, most of whom are from ethnic groups and are born dancers and singers.

"As the relocated residents live a better life in the relocation communities, they need space to work out, so the local governments have been building sports facilities to satisfy their needs," Lin added.

According to statistics provided by the provincial government, from the end of 2015 to the end of 2019, Guizhou had relocated 1,880,000 people from its impoverished areas to its developed areas, such as the towns, counties and cities and had built 946 relocation communities for them to settle in.

Jing Qiwei, director of the office of the provincial sports bureau for mass sports, said that over the past three years, the bureau has built 164 multifunctional sports grounds for the relocation communities and will continue the work.

"All the grounds play an important role in helping build a bright future for the relocated residents," he added.