I've been writing about baseball in China since I first arrived here in
1998. My first story can be found in chapter five.
Over the years I added some small bits about baseball in these pages. You
can find some of them here and
here. Since then, baseball has become an important
part of my life in China. It's about time I devoted some chapters to
baseball in China.
The Baseball Chapters of
Chuck@China continue....
And so in July of 2005, the ZJU Baseball
Team - now an official organ of Zhejiang University - headed west to
Zhengzhou in Henan Province for the China University National Baseball
Tournament having played, in three years, exactly
one game and numerous scrimmages
against a High School Team and Foreign students.
The tournament was large. Very large. At
least 20 teams from colleges and universities across China converged on the
new campus of Zhengzhou Teachers College built on farmland about 10 miles
outside the city of Zhengzhou. The teams would be housed and fed in the
dormitories and campus of this campus. Outside the gates of the campus was
nothing but a few countryside shops and miles and miles of farmland.
The campus had a softball field, where the 6
women's teams would play their games, and a football (soccer) field with
stands where the opening ceremonies would be held. The men's teams' games
would be held at the Henan Province Sports Center - a brand new sports
complex that featured a football (soccer) stadium from the Star Wars drawing
board, with a REAL baseball field on the fringe of the complex. The complex
was 10 minutes away by the buses which would ferry the school teams to and
fro. And like the school, the complex had been built way out in the
cornfields of outer Zhengzhou. But any resemblance between it and "Field of
Dreams" ended there.
Field of Dreams
Henan Sports Center
TO BE CONTINUED
