The surging popularity of China's CunBA, a nickname like the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), or Village Basketball Association, which brings together amateur players in front of huge and passionate crowds in remote areas of China, is turning heads and underlining how modernization in China is making new cultural phenomena like this possible.

Tens of thousands of spectators sat courtside to watch a day-long marathon of basketball games in southwest China's Guizhou Province, while hundreds of thousands more watched the games online.