Back to a time when sports was not ruled by Mammon

Editor's note: The annual basketball event, dubbed as Cun BA — Cun meaning village in Chinese, is held in Taipan Village in Guizhou province. The event has been held for decades where the basketball competition is part of a traditional Miao ethnic harvest festival, writes a veteran journalist with China Daily.

The telecast of English Premier League and US National Basketball Association games for the past about 20 years not only allowed the Chinese people to watch live sports competitions and tournaments of the highest level but also cultivated millions of fans in China.

So popular are the foreign basketball and soccer leagues that when villages in remote mountainous areas in Guizhou province planned their annual basketball and soccer competitions, they named the former "Cun-BA" and the latter "Cun-Chao".