Basketball has become a part of people's daily life in Dongguan City of south China's Guangdong Province, a host city for basketball matches of China's 15th National Games.
The Games, co-hosted by Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao, will officially open on Sunday evening.
Inside the Dongguan Basketball Center, basketball competitions for the Games are in full swing in Dongguan, with players battling it out on the court as fans cheer passionately from the stands.
The excitement is felt not just in the professional courts but across local neighborhoods.
In Bajiaowo Community of the city's Wanjiang Subdistrict, a friendly basketball match organized by residents drew excited crowds of spectators, including a young mother with her five-month-old baby in her arms, watching her husband taking an active part in the game.
From the professional courts of the National Games to the brightly lit village playgrounds, basketball in Dongguan is more than a sport but a lifestyle. The city now boasts nearly 6,000 basketball courts, enabling residents to find a place to play within a 15-minute walk.
Well-developed sports facilities and a thriving basketball culture have laid a strong foundation for Dongguan to host the National Games.
Many students begin systematic training from a young age.
"The games I watched when I was younger inspired me to play basketball myself," said Chen Feng, a member of a basketball team from Dongguan Guangming Middle School.
"Here we have games every month or even every day. Parents are happy to see their children put what they learn in training into more competitive and formal competitions," said Zhang Jianqiang, an official with the Dongguan Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism, and Sports.
Basketball craze spreads in Dongguan hosting15th National Games' basketball match
The ongoing China-ASEAN Expo serves as a bridge for China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to boost trade flows, helping both sides reap shared development dividends.
Scheduled to run from Sept 17 to 21 in Nanning City of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the event draws more than 3,400 exhibitors from over 70 countries and regions.
This year, Timor-Leste is participating for the first time as a full ASEAN member and a co-host of the expo, with participants noting results have exceeded expectations, bolstered by China's vast market.
"I brought 60 packages of 250-gram coffee, which would be sold out in one day. Now I'm thinking that China market is open for everybody and it's very huge," said an exhibitor from Timor-Leste.
Participants also hailed the construction of China's Pinglu Canal, which officially opened to traffic on Wednesday.
The 134.2-km-long canal runs from Hengzhou, a county-level city in Guangxi, to the Beibu Gulf, the closest maritime outlet for much of southwest China.
The canal becomes a cost-competitive river-sea intermodal shortcut connecting ASEAN producers with the vast consumer market in southwest China, said the participants.
"In the past, shipments into the southwest China usually went by sea to Guangzhou and then overlands. Too many handover made it hard to keep products fresh. Losses were high and transit time was unreliable. Now that the canal is open, we can enter [the] Guangxi [Zhuang Autonomous Region] directly from the Beibu Gulf and move on to Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan restaurants, faster onto the supermarket shelves and tables in the southeast [part of China]," said an exhibitor from Vietnam.
With the formal signing of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (FTA) 3.0 Upgrade Protocol in Oct 2025, bilateral cooperation has expanded beyond economic and trade areas to emerging fields such as the digital economy and the green economy.
"I am looking for an investor to develop agriculture and integrated tourism with us in Malaysia," said an exhibitor from Malaysia.
Economic ties between China and ASEAN have continued to deepen. Bilateral trade topped 1 trillion U.S. dollars for the first time in 2025, totaling 1.05 trillion dollars, up 7.4 percent year on year. In the first seven months of 2026, trade between the two sides reached 744.41 billion dollars, an increase of 24.7 percent year on year and accounting for 21.8 percent of China's total foreign trade.
China has remained ASEAN's largest trading partner for 17 consecutive years, while ASEAN has been China's largest trading partner for six successive years.
China-ASEAN Expo boosts bilateral cooperation, delivers shared dividends
