Passion, pride and live pigs: inside China’s booming local basketball league
Zhejiang’s new league – dubbed the ‘ZheBA’ – is part of a wave of Chinese sports leagues going viral by tapping into local pride and culture
In China’s hottest new basketball league, the players are all amateurs, the mascots are a pair of live chickens riding a remote control Jeep, and the winning teams are presented with plastic bags full of fish.
Welcome to the “ZheBA” – an intercity competition in China’s eastern Zhejiang province that has become a national sensation by tapping into the region’s fierce local pride and diverse culture.
The contest, officially named the Zhejiang Provincial City Basketball League, features dozens of local teams from across the region of more than 66 million people, which compete in a series of divisions leading to a final playoff to crown the eventual champion.
It is a world away from the polished world of the CBA, China’s answer to the NBA. The standard of play is uneven. Matches often take place in small local gymnasiums. On one occasion, a game was interrupted by a defecating goat.
But for its legions of fans, that is all part of its charm. “The ZheBA might not understand basketball, but it understands Zhejiang”, one user wrote on the social platform RedNote, in a post that received thousands of likes.
The ZheBA is part of a broader movement in China towards embracing grass roots amateur sports, after years of growing frustration with the dysfunctional state of the nation’s professional leagues.