Zhang Bentianjie, formerly known as Zhang Tianjie, was born in Shenyang, Liaoning Province in 1992 and was born in a sports family. His grandfather was the head coach of the Liaoning Provincial Fencing Team, his uncle was a player in the Provincial Badminton Team, and his father Zhang Jian was originally a player in the Provincial Basketball Team, but was forced to end his basketball career due to a comminuted fracture.
Her mother, Qiang Shuping, was a former volleyball player who went to Japan to study after retiring.
Soon after her mother gave birth to Zhang Tianjie, she returned to Japan. He inherited his family's sports genes and had a soft spot for basketball since he was a child. In 2003, Zhang Jian traveled to Japan with his son, who is in the sixth grade of elementary school, to reunite with his mother, and the family runs a Chinese restaurant for a living.
After entering junior high school, the family moved to Aichi Prefecture, and Zhang Tianjie transferred to the local junior high school and began his basketball career. In addition to his normal studies, his life revolves almost entirely around basketball.
He has participated in many training and competitions and has achieved some honors. However, his goal was to get into the Japanese national basketball team, but it was not easy to achieve because of nationality issues.
If you want to join the Japanese national team, in addition to having a certain strength, you also need to have Japanese nationality. This is undoubtedly a big problem for the family.
Zhang Jian and his wife resolutely decided to join the Japanese nationality for their son's basketball career and named him Zhang Bentianjie. Since then, Zhang Bentianjie has been successfully selected for the national youth team as a Japanese player and has received professional training.
In 2008, Zhang Bentianjie, as the first naturalized Chinese men's basketball player of the Japanese national team, represented Japan for the first time in the Asian Youth Championship. Four years later, he enrolled at Aoyama Gakuin University, a prestigious basketball school in Japan, and was convinced that he would one day step onto the stage and become a real protagonist.
Later, Zhang Bentianjie was favored by the coach because of his talent, became the main force of the basketball team, and won the respect of his teammates at the same time. As he represented Japan in competitions many times, Chinese netizens also learned about him, including the fact that he was once Chinese.
China's assessment of him was not kind. At the Asian Games, the Japanese team played a fierce repechage match with the Chinese team in the quarterfinals, and the Chinese team lost. In an interview after the game, Zhang Bentianjie said: "The Chinese team is what I want to win the most. ”
In the opinion of the Chinese, this sentence is regarded as a provocation, and many people call him a "traitor" and a "thief". However, Zhang explained that he just wanted to prove his strength and prove that playing in Japan was the right choice, so he lost his words.
He added that it is common for athletes to change their nationality in the world of sports, citing some examples to support his views. Since then, the Chinese crowd has been largely contemptuous of his game.
An athlete's career is short and challenging, like a carnival of youth, which is replaced by a new generation of talented athletes once they grow old. Zhang Bentianjie, the former basketball star, was no exception, and as the peak of his career gradually passed, he began to appear on the basketball court as a substitute.
However, he has his own plans and expectations for the future. He said that once he retires, he hopes to return to China for development, because China's sports industry is developing rapidly and the treatment will be better.
However, despite the desire to return to China, Zhang Bentianjie still chose to develop in Japan. He served as a vice-captain of the Dolphins team in Nagoya and tied the knot with a Japanese woman.
In the meantime, his parents are still running the restaurant, and the family is still living in Japan. Despite the change in his career, his family and life are still full of happiness and fulfillment.