IN the bleak winter of 2013, Zhang Qiongqiong, then 26, arrived in the village of Liangting’ao in Hunan Province to take up a job as a teacher. Despite some advance research into his new home, he was taken aback by the poverty that greeted him.

Zhang is part of a national education initiative to provide teachers to impoverished areas of rural China. His chosen job was to teach physical education at Liangting’ao Primary School.

The village, with a population of 22,000, is about 30 kilometers from the city of Huaihua.

It is a pocket of poverty, where farmers and their wives have left the inhospitable soil to seek employment and better fortune in big cities.

In their wake are some 369 “left-behind children” relegated to the care of grandparents or to no care at all.

There are about 9 million “left-behind children” in China’s rural areas, according to a 2016 report from the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Of that number, 670,000 are under no proper guardianship. Children aged 6-13 comprise the largest segment of the de factor parentless.

Due to lack of parental care and love, many of these children suffer psychological problems of withdrawal and insecurity. Antisocial behavior can lead to juvenile delinquency. In some cases, premature deaths of “left-behind children” have been reported in the national media.

It was a startling situation for Zhang to find himself in. About 70 of pupils at Liangting’ao Primary School had been “left behind” by migrant parents. Girls are especially vulnerable because they aren’t expected to get good education, leaving them bleak futures.

Undaunted, Zhang decided to tackle the situation proactively. He decided to teach the girls how to play basketball to engage their attention, improve their sense of self-worth and teach them team spirit.

Zhang graduated from Jishou University in Hunan with a major in basketball. After college, he worked in Beijing for two years as a basketball coach at a training camp founded by Wang Fei, a former player on the Chinese men’s national basketball team.

Then his application for the education initiative was approved, and he landed in Liangting’ao.

He started by forming a girls’ basketball team with seven fifth-graders who had never touched a basketball before.

The children’s grandparents couldn’t afford any sports gear, so Zhang spent 2,000 yuan (US$290) of his own money on basic supplies. That was the equivalent of almost five weeks’ salary for him.

“We trained four days a week, two hours a day, even during summer and winter breaks,” Zhang says. “Many young players suffered serious skin abrasions when they fell on the hard concrete court, especially in the bitter cold of winter.”

A year of hard work paid off. In the autumn of 2014, the team competed in the District Schools’ Basketball Tournament in Huaihua. In their very first match, the Liangting’ao Girls’ Basketball Team trounced their opponents by a score of 76–0.

“I told them to take it easy during the second half — that it was okay to let the other team score a bit,” Zhang recalls. “But they told me that they had overheard the other team mocking their poor rural backgrounds and were determined to teach them a lesson.”

In ensuing matches, the team won by margins of more than 30 points.

Less than a year later, the Liangting’ao girls took eighth place in the 27th CPBA Miaomiao Cup National Mini-Basketball Tournament, stunning the audience.

This “dark horse” team was suddenly the toast of Hunan Province. Success bred success. Zhang Liyun, the best performing player on the team, was accepted for enrollment at one of the best secondary schools in the province. Her teammates left the village to attend good middle schools in Huaihua.

However, the Cinderella story didn’t extend to all girls in the village.

One girl, whom Zhang identified by the alias Bao Qing, showed even more talent than Zhang Liyun. The coach told her parents by phone that her sports prowess would guarantee her a spot in the top schools in Hunan.

However, her mother wasn’t impressed.

“Her father and I didn’t go to school at all, and we are doing just fine here, earning five to six grand a month,” the mother told Zhang. “You went to university, but how much do you earn as a teacher?”

Zhang did not have a reply. Bao Qing never finished school, he says.

“Her parents took her away, and last I heard, she was working at a textile factory, making 2,000-3,000 yuan a month,” he says. “Kids like her usually marry young and have children. Then they send the kids back to the village to be raised by the elderly.”

As any coach knows: You win some, you lose some. But Bao Qing’s sudden departure came as a shock to Zhang, making him realize that there were limits to how much he could help the village.

“Sometimes I feel like a nanny,” he confides. “I spend far less time coaching than I do helping students solve the problems of day-to-day life.”

Problems certainly abound in the village.

A new player this year, Zhang Liping, is the younger sister of the former star player Zhang Lijun.

Zhang Liping was born with a genetic disease that impaired her vision. Two years ago, she underwent surgery in a hospital in Huaihua, but her eyes still tend to tear up and everyone calls her “Squinty.”

Now in her fourth year in school, Zhang Liping lives with her paternal grandparents, while a younger sister lives with the maternal grandparents.

The girls’ father is deeply in debt and rarely sends money home for the upkeep of his daughters. The paternal grandfather tends a small store in the village, earning a few hundred yuan a month. He also has to care for an ailing wife.

“Sometimes I just don’t have time to spare for Liping,” her grandfather said. “She doesn’t study much, nor does she play basketball as well as her elder sister.”

Coach Zhang agrees that her playing isn’t good enough to open major doors for the girl, but he consoles himself with the fact that basketball has helped her make friends and tone down her often unruly behavior.

Liangting’ao is a village marked by estrangement.

Jiang Huixia, the basketball team’s current captain, has lived with her grandparents since she was seven. Her mother left the village more than 20 years ago to find work in a city.

Jiang’s mother watched a basketball practice session when she was home last year for Spring Festival. She took photos of her daughter, but during her whole time there, mother and daughter didn’t exchange one word, coach Zhang says.

“Huixia said that she doesn’t really feel attached to her mom,” he explains. “To these kids, parents are simply people who come home once a year — every Spring Festival — bearing gifts.”

It has been more than three years since coach Zhang first trod the crooked, hilly path to Liangting’ao Village.

The school now has better facilities, he says, thanks to funds allocated by the government. A photo of the founding members of the girls’ basketball team hangs on a wall beside the school gate.

Coach Zhang’s fame has risen along with his team’s. He has been approached by employers from elsewhere.

“I am not sure for how much longer I will stay,” he says. “Better opportunities await outside the village, where I would have better players to coach. But I don’t know if I can leave these children behind.”

Zhang is still trying to get more students to be involved in sport — appealing to grandparents, one at a time. Children without particular flair for basketball are encouraged to take up track and field. Excellence in sport can be a ticket to a better life in a wider world.

Since coming to the village, Zhang has kept a journal documenting each of his players — their family backgrounds, game records and future opportunities.

In the journal, he once wrote: “One cannot know the hardships of a life he has never lived, nor the happiness those hardships can conduce.”