Qingchuan: Teenager makes it to global arena

As a child, there was nothing Tang Xuemei wanted more than to walk out of her remote village locked in the mountains of Southwest China. She longed to see what was in the cities and towns.

It took an earthquake to help her achieve her dream, but it was at a great cost.

"I am both fortunate and unfortunate," says Tang, 18. "The unfortunate part is that I became disabled. The lucky part is that following this turn of life, I can have even bigger dreams."

Tang Xuemei lost her left leg in the earthquake and has since become a member of the national women's sitting volleyball squad. [Photo by Jiang Hongjing/ For China daily]

She is now invited often to cities like Beijing and Shanghai to share her success story and she has ventured far beyond the borders of her wildest dreams. She represented China in sitting volleyball at the 2012 Paralympics in London.

The young survivor of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake paid for that honor with her left leg, which had to be amputated after she was trapped under concrete slabs for 28 hours when her school collapsed and crumbled in the tremors.

She was rescued and sent to a hospital in Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi province, where doctors decided her leg had to go. She had also lost her home.

Born into a poor rural family in Qingchuan county in Sichuan province, Tang had never left the place she was born, and she was working toward leaving it when she was old enough for college.

"The earthquake was so powerful that it jolted almost everything into pieces," she recalls. "When I came back to my village from Xi'an, I could hardly find my way home."

But assistance rendered by warm-hearted people, especially a couple who met her on a bus and adopted her as goddaughter, helped the girl leave the shadows behind.

Her talent in sports was first discovered at a disabled people's association in Sichuan where she was trained to swim and play tennis.

Her destiny as a volleyball player was sealed in 2009, when she was spotted in Shanghai by Zhang Chaoqun, deputy director of the Shanghai Disabled Persons' Sport Training Center.

"She has a tall stature and long arms," Zhang said in an interview in 2011. The tough, undefeated spirit of the teenager also touched the official.

But training as a volleyball player was a lot more physically challenging than the girl expected. She trained five to six hours a day, six days a week.

But the teenager persevered and became the youngest player on the national squad at the Guangzhou Asian Para Games in 2010 and 2012 London Paralympics.

Zhang Jun, the coach of the national squad of women's sitting volleyball, says Tang is a hopeful for the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Tang is the team's setter, a very important position in sitting volleyball because it requires agility.

"She is young and packs a punch," the coach says. "She is also very sanguine and always a team player. The 2008 disaster has left few shadows on her mind."

Like any young woman, Tang enjoys shopping, surfing the Internet and lying about during weekends. But she appreciates the care given to her by teammates and coaches which makes her life as an athlete less tedious.

Having only visited home three times since she left Sichuan in 2009, the young woman says she misses her parents and younger brother. She especially misses a childhood friend who died in the 2008 earthquake with whom she had shared a lot of laughter and sweet memories.

"Her parents still greet me warmly when I go back home," Tang says.

Looking forward, Tang says she will focus on sports for now, but will probably find a job as an office worker after she retires.

Following the earthquake, transportation in Qingchuan county has improved considerably, and villages are now connected by asphalt roads, according to Tang.

The journey between the school and home, which was by a dirt track and took about four hours, has now been shortened to a 45-minute car ride, she says.

But there are still many, old and young, whom Tang hopes will get to see more of the outside world.

"There are still many elderly people who have never left the mountains," she says. "I hope there can be a government program to take them out and help them visit other parts of China."