Muay Thai boxer fights his way to better life

Visitors to the Muay Thai gym opened by Ye Xiaofei in South China's city of Nanning are always greeted by the smell of sweat mixed with the shouts and grunts of exertion. Of medium height and tightly muscled, 36-year-old Ye is the commander and center of the tiny gym. Born and raised in the mountains of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Ye struggled to make a living until Muay Thai came and changed his life.

"I had been long trapped by the feeling of powerlessness brought by poverty," says Ye. Locals in Ye's hometown Qibainong once deemed the area to be "cursed by devils". Lacking water and fertile soil, the township was identified as one of the most inhospitable places on Earth by UN officials in the 1990s.

At the age of 16, he left for the city of Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to earn a living.

During his stay in Urumqi, Ye was enchanted by combat sports and found himself a job at a taekwondo gym. "I practiced taekwondo during the day and worked at night. I only slept about four hours a day, yet I was quite happy," he recalls.

Later, Ye learned martial arts, boxing, and Sanda, a combat sport originating from Chinese kung fu that combines punching, kicking and wrestling."While I was studying Sanda, I learned that the rules of Muay Thai were the most open by far. Known as 'Thai boxing', Muay Thai allows participants to attack with fists, legs, elbows and knees. It is rather practical for actual combat, so I totally fell in love with Muay Thai," Ye says.

In 2008, Ye went to Guangzhou to study Muay Thai and headed for Thailand to further his study three years later."I can't speak English or Thai, but I knew that if I wanted to reach new heights, visiting Thailand was a must."

If the coach asked him to kick sandbags 300 times, he recalls, he would kick them more than 400 times. "If we were asked to run 10 kilometers, I would finish when others were just at half way," he says, adding that he trained for up to seven hours every day during his stay in Thailand.

Ye then kept refining his skills through constant competition and training and won several awards and Muay Thai matches, which greatly improved his life.

"Muay Thai has not only improved my living conditions but also made me confident. I want to do what I can to promote the sport," says Ye, who returned to Guangxi and opened two gyms in Nanning and Yulin.

It has been 10 years since he started promoting Thai boxing in China and he has taught it to thousands of people. In the past few years, he has witnessed the boom of Thai boxing in China. "More and more Chinese have gone to Thailand to study Thai boxing, and many of China's boxing clubs now have Thai instructors," says Ye, adding that he believes the ever closer cooperation and exchanges on Muay Thai between China and Thailand are brought about by the friendly relationship between the two countries.

When Ye started to promote Thai boxing a decade ago, most of the participants were adults. Today, more teenagers are interested in the sport. Instead of competing in the arena, Ye now puts more energy in passing on his experience to his students, to help them fight their way to a better future.