Dreaming of football and Neymar on the Qinghai highlands
Alipay’s Wind Rider Project has been supporting girls’ football teams in rural regions, to help these young girls pursue dreams of a better life. This is one of their stories.

Gonghe County in Qinghai Province is a long way from the football stadiums of Europe, and not just in distance.
Instead of Camp Nou in Barcelona or Parc des Princes in Paris, cathedrals to the Beautiful Game, here on the Qinghai highlands you have rolling grassland punctuated by steep, jagged mountain peaks.
Before the county approved a new football field, children came away from playing on the hard, sun-baked dirt field with bloody shins.

Not that 13-year-old Ka Maoyou minds.
Her dream is to someday don a proper pair of boots and play football with her hero, Neymar Jr, the Brazilian international and former Barcelona star who now plies his trade at Paris St Germain.
Football to Ka Maoyou is much more than just a game. It represents a ticket out of a life of limited possibilities here on the grasslands, where centuries of isolation meant the only sports her kinsmen cared about were horse-riding, archery and wrestling.
But those are sports reserved for boys and men. Girls were expected to study quietly, learn how to do housework, and once they reach suitable age, to marry and settle down.
But Ka Maoyou aspires to more than that. Inspired by tales of others before her who have gone to university on sporting scholarships, Ka Maoyou too hopes that one day she can use her footballing skills to see the world beyond.

To ensure she has enough time for both school and daily football practice, Kamaoyou would wake at 5:40 am every day to revise her schoolwork.
Most of the local community is too poor to afford the equipment needed for football. They make a living herding cattle and sheep, and through agriculture. There is little money to spare.

The coach of the local football team, Duo Jie, had to dip into his own savings to buy footballs and other gear.
Duo Jie too has made sacrifices to pursue his dream, leaving a well-paying coaching job in a big city to become the small-town coach in Gonghe County, where temperatures plunge well beyond freezing in winter and the biting cold seems to seep into the bones.

The children treasure the boots that their coach bought for them with his own money, and they would only put them on during training.

The old footballs that they train with are worn and tattered, stuffed with paper to keep their shape, held together by duct tape.
Still that does not deter Ka Maoyou. Her efforts paid off when her all-girls team placed second in the local county competition, three years after the team was started.
Her father had asked her to quit the football team, and for the first time in her life the soft-spoken and normally shy teenager said no. She would keep to her dream and work hard at achieving her goal of one day playing with Neymar.

Ka Maoyou’s school and football team are now being supported by Alipay’s “Wind Rider” project, which aims to help girls’ football teams from disadvantaged communities. For Ka Maoyou, this means she can continue playing with the team, and have a chance to go to university through football.
Football has changed the lives of these daughters of these highland nomadic tribes. Ka Mayou sticks to her dream of one day being to play ball with Neymar.
Parc des Princes, anyone?
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