‘Save the national squad or go get educated?’: a narrative inquiry into the viral media story and lived experiences of the ‘creek football star’ in China

Sport is often deemed a desirable pathway for marginalized youth to make better futures, which has consolidated the well-beloved narrative of sport as a ‘way out’ for the disadvantaged, drawing substantial attention from academic fields such as sport for development and peace (SDP). Although this narrative is relevant to modern China, it also intersects with a long-standing disdain for physical labor, placing grassroots sports professionals in a unique space between highly esteemed intellectual workers and undervalued manual laborers. Aiming to deepen understanding of this narrative in the context of China, this narrative inquiry examines the popular story of ‘the creek football star’ in China, whose viral media portrayals sparked broad public interest in and imaginings of the way-out narrative and the legitimacy of underprivileged individuals pursuing athletic careers. Informed by the principles of a co-production design, the protagonist is involved throughout the research process and coauthored this paper. Assuming the position of a story reconstructor, two threads of his storylines were reflexively reconstructed based on data gathered from news outlets, cyberspace comments, ethnographic fieldwork, added with recollections from and interviews with the protagonist. Subsequently, a structural narrative analysis is applied to analyze the storied data aimed at identifying the dominant narrative templates suffused in mainstream culture that informed such storytelling. The paper concludes with a critical reflection on the three identified context-situated master narratives and their implications for dominant imaginations versus more relatable routes for disadvantaged individuals to pursue better livelihoods through sport in China.