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Two months after China's elite athletes dazzled the world at the Beijing Olympics, the sporting prowess of its 900 million peasant farmers is getting its turn in the spotlight this week at China's 6th National Peasant Games. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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Fresh from hosting the biggest ever Olympics, China also is putting on its largest 'Peasant Olympics', a quadrennial event held this year in Quanzhou city in the southeastern coastal province of Fujian. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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Games contestants must hold a residence permit from a farming community and are selected via a combination of tryouts and invitations, organisers said. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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Events included the tyre-pushing race and the 'water carrying contest to protect the seedlings amid drought', to go along with more common sports such as basketball. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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The special attention accorded China's farmers has its roots in Mao Zedong's veneration of the peasant class, a political tradition that the Communist Party keeps up even as farmers are largely left behind in China's economic boom. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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Other events included the '60-metre snatch the grain and get it into storage', in which contestants had to load a 'harvest' of sandbags onto three-wheeled bikes and sprint for the tape. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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'Although we were not able to attend the Beijing Olympics, this is our dream, our farmer's olympics', said Ms Xie Hong, 22, whose experience on the family's rice farm in southwestern China's Chongqing region helped her win her rice-transplanting heat. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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With baskets full of fake rice seedlings dangling from either side of the pole, contestants sprinted down a track, then halted to 'plant' each one in a simulated paddy field in one of the more bizarre races ever held in a large stadium. -- PHOTO: AGENE FRANCE-PRESSE
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