Thousands of raucous Chinese basketball fans pack tightly into a floodlit stadium filled with swirling fog, eager to spur on the teams battling in the tournament final.

It's almost midnight in Taipan — a remote village in southwest Guizhou province — but the championship game is only just getting underway after a weekend of action.

Clanging pots and pans punctuate the hum of the crowd in the steep main stands, while millions of online viewers and social media users hold their breath as the jump ball is tossed.

This is China's village basketball, a grassroots phenomenon that has spiraled in recent years from a humble local tradition into a viral hit and staple of Beijing's propaganda machine.

Basketball is hugely popular in the country, but widespread corruption and recent investigations into match-fixing within the CBA, China's top domestic league, have discouraged many fans and diverted their attention elsewhere.

Athletes in the "CunBA" — with "cun" meaning village in Chinese — are all amateurs, and the prizes are simple platters of roast meat. But it's the pure electricity of the games that keep fans and players hooked.

"As soon as I arrived in Taipan village, the first thing I sensed was a feeling of enthusiasm and excitement," Xia Wenxian told AFP.

Xia, 30, has come as part of a team proudly representing his home village of Gaoding, tucked away in the rugged hills of Guizhou over 100 kilometers away.

"Our CunBA has the same competitive sporting spirit as the CBA and NBA," Xia said, as he prepared for his team's crucial semifinal match later that evening.

Local custom gone viral

The tradition of holding annual basketball competitions goes back decades in Taipan, a village in minority-dominated Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, but only in the past few years has the concept caught on beyond the local area.

It's an unlikely site for a national tourist attraction, but the roaring success of the CunBA on Chinese social media and glowing praise by the official press has brought throngs of visitors this summer.