Qian Hongyan is known as China’s ‘Basketball Girl’. She looks like your average 18-year-old girl who lives in China but she actually has a pretty unique and inspirational backstory.
When she was just four years old, she lost both her legs in a car accident. Her family had to improvise to let her ‘walk’ on her own since they live in a rural Luliang county, southwestern China’s Yunnan province. She had to learn to walk on her hands, using a basketball cut in half and attached to the lower part of her body, to steady herself. Since then, she was called ‘Basketball Girl’ by the locals.
In 2005, she caught the attention of the Chinese press and received free artificial limbs where she had to travel to Beijing for treatment. It was held at the China Rehabilitation Research Center, a center that has been helping the disabled people of China for over 20 years.
This photo is from 2007 where she received a larger set of limbs after she outgrew the earlier one.
Qian was reported to come from an impoverished family and when her medical treatment ended in 2007, she had to accept that she would not be able to continue her education with her peers. At that time, she was 11 years old. However, Qian found other opportunities where she would join a local swimming club for disabled kids. It is the first of its kind in the country and it was sponsored by the Yunnan Provincial Federation of the Disabled.
She found it difficult when she first started the lesson.
“I had to give much more than other kids when I learned to swim,” Qian told China Daily in 2011. “It seemed there was no way I could float in the water. I was choked.”
However, after training for four hours every day, she is now a successful athlete. She hopes to win medals for her country in the Paralympic Games.
Qian soon returned to Beijing for her adult prosthetics. The so-called “basketball girl” is now widely known in China. Even reports of the progress of her artificial limbs made national headlines. Qian’s success story may be the start of China’s disabled glories.
“In the past, people despised the disabled. They thought they were all beggars, just asking for money. But now, when they see disabled swimmers like these, they can see how hard they’re driving themselves. And that’s a start,” her coach, Li Ke-qiang, told the BBC in 2008.
Sources: Insider, Girl Museum, China Underground