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“To Make the Four Hundred Million Move”: The Late Qing Dynasty Origins of Modern Chinese Sport and Physical Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 December 2000

Andrew Morris
Andrew Morris*
Affiliation:
California Polytechnic State University
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Extract

There is no athletic movement in China... Caspar Whitney, in Harper's Weekly, 1898” and “Just as our women [swimmers] dominate... Zhou Ming, Head Coach, PRC National Swim Team, 1997.

There is little doubt that, after a century's exposure, Chinese have absorbed and understand quite clearly the greater meanings of the realm of sport—the connections between competitive athletic endeavor, imperialist bluster, and economic standing in the world community. This article is an exploration of the late Qing Dynasty origins of this modern global culture of physical culture and sport.

Type
Body Cultures
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , October 2000 , pp. 876 - 906
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 2000

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References

Notes

1. Caspar Whitney, “Non-Athletic China,” Harper's Weekly 42, No. 2148 (19 February 1898), 189.

2. Phillip Whitten, “Strong-Arm Tactic,” The New Republic, 17 November 1997, 12.

3. Ouyang Liqiang, “Jiaguwen Zhong de Tiyu Huodong” [Physical Culture Activities as Seen in Oracle Bones], Tiyu Wenshi [Sport History] 57 (20 September 1992), 33–34, 40.

4. The study of what is called “ancient physical culture” (gudai tiyu) took off in China in the early 1980s and is a thriving industry today. I personally find it hard to use this term to describe a single identifiable “ancient tiyu,” since the premodern period offers no analog to the totalizing modern physical culture introduced to China in the late nineteenth century as part of the modern world system of nation-states.

Still, the dozens of scholars—almost exclusively based in the PRC and trained in physical education and ancient Chinese literature or history—working in the “ancient physical culture” field have uncovered wonderful histories of these physical forms. Particularly useful are the following works: Lin Boyuan, Zhongguo Wushu Shi [The History of Chinese Martial Arts] (Taibei: Wuzhou Chubanshe, 1996); Ren Hai, Zhongguo Gudai Tiyu [Ancient Chinese Physical Culture] (Taibei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1994); Guojia Tiwei Tiyu Wenshi Gongzuo Weiyuanhui [National Physical Culture Commission, Committee on Sports History Research] and Zhongguo Tiyushi Xuehui [Chinese Sports History Association], eds., Zhongguo Gudai Tiyushi [The History of Ancient Chinese Physical Culture] (Beijing: Beijing Tiyu Xueyuan Chubanshe, 1990); Sheng Qi and Ding Zhiming, Zhongguo Chuantong Tiyu Fengsu [Forms and Practices of Traditional Chinese Physical Culture] (Taibei: Baiguan Chubanshe, 1994); and several works by Weng Shixun on the history of soccer and polo in China, such as “‘Lian pian ji ju rang’ Shuo de Shi Maqiu” [What the References to “swiftly hitting the ball into earthen mounds” Refer to is Polo], Tiyu Wenshi 18 (1986), 19–20; and “Shilun Handai Zuqiu—jian Da Liu Bingguo Laoshi” [A Discussion of Han Dynasty Soccer—and an Answer to Professor Liu Bingguo], Tiyu Wenshi 35 (January 1989), 44–55.

5. Allen Guttmann, Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 6–11, 184–88.

In the China field, Fan Hong's work is one example of the modernist “liberatory” perspective that Guttmann proposes. For Fan, who studies women's physical culture, the “essential point [is] that the pursuit of physical freedom was an integral part of women’s emancipation in China.” Fan Hong, Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom: The Liberation of Women's Bodies in Modern China (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1997), 137. This line is similar to that formulated by an official state history of Chinese sports and physical culture, which describes the process of Chinese women “gallantly ascending the stage of history” via their participation in team sports. Guojia Tiwei Tiyu Wenshi Gongzuo Weiyuanhui and Zhongguo Tiyushi Xuehui, eds., Zhongguo Jindai Tiyushi [The History of Modern Chinese Sport] (Beijing: Beijing Tiyu Xueyuan Chubanshe, 1989), 176.

6. For example, see Li Ning, “Wan Qing Jundui Bianlian yu Jindai Tiyu Chuanbo” [Late Qing Military Training and the Spread of Modern Physical Culture], Tiyu Wenshi [Sport History] 7 (June 1984), 7; Guojia Tiwei Tiyu Wenshi Gongzuo Weiyuanhui and Zhongguo Tiyushi Xuehui, eds., Zhongguo Jindai Tiyushi, 53–55.

7. Angela Zito, “Silk and Skin: Significant Boundaries,” in Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow, eds., Body, Subject & Power in China (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 105, 117.

8. Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1984), 236–41; Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 6–8.

9. Mary C. Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung-Chih Restoration, 1862–1874 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), 2–8, 43–67.

10. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power, 12–17.

11. James Pusey makes the point that although 1860s self-strengtheners like Feng Guifen did not need Darwin to understand Western intentions and the source of these nations’ strength, it was Darwin, as “translated” by Spencer, that allowed Yan Fu to bring in biology and physical strength, and to proclaim that (in Pusey's words) “they who make themselves fit survive.” James Reeve Pusey, China and Charles Darwin (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1983), 6, 50–79.

12. Hsu I-hsiung, “Zhongguo Jindai Minzu Zhuyi Tiyu Sixiang zhi Tezhi” [Special Characteristics of Modern Chinese Nationalistic Philosophies of Physical Culture], Tiyu Xuebao (Bulletin of Physical Education) 12 (December 1990), 15.

13. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power, 54–59.

14. Private conversation with Munakata Tatsuya, Taipei, Taiwan, 21 December 1995; Private conversation with Inoue Akio and Abe Ikuo, Shunde, Guangdong Province, China, 21 September 1996.

15. Yan Fu, “Yuan Qiang Xiudinggao” [On Strength: ARevised Draft], in Wang Shi, ed., Yan Fu Ji, Di Yi Ce [Yan Fu's Writings, Volume 1] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1986), 27.

16. Hao Chang, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890–1911) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 92–7.

17. Tan Sitong, “Renxue, Juan Shang” [A Study of Humanity, Part 1], in Tan Sitong Quanji [Complete Collection of Tan Sitong's Writings] (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 1954), 37.

18. Liang Qichao, “Xinmin Shuo, Di Shiqi Jie: Lun Shangwu” [On the New Citizen, Chapter 17: On Martial Spirit], in Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi Heji, Zhuanji Di San Ce [A Collection from the Ice-drinker's Studio: Commentaries, Volume 3] (Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju), 108–9.

19. Liang Qichao, “Xinmin Shuo Shi” [On the New Citizen, Part 10], Xinmin Congbao [New Citizen] 2 (1902), 47.

20. Liang Qichao, “Xinmin Shuo, Di Shiqi Jie: Lun Shangwu,” 117.

21. Fenhesheng (Cai E's pen name, meaning “Student Raising his Wings”), “Jun Guomin Pian (xu Di Yi Hao)” [On Militarized Citizenship, continued from Issue 1], Xinmin Congbao [New Citizen] 3 (1/2/Guangxu Year 28, or 10 March 1902), 68.

22. Fenhesheng, “Jun Guomin Pian” [On Militarized Citizenship], Xinmin Congbao [New Citizen] 1 (1/1/Guangxu Year 28, or 8 February 1902), 83.

23. Fenhesheng, “Jun Guomin Pian (xu Di Yi Hao),” 69.

24. (Jiang) Baili, “Jun Guomin zhi Jiaoyu” [Militarized Citizenship Education], Xinmin Congbao [New Citizen] 22 (15/11/Guangxu Year 28, or 14 December 1902), 34–5.

25. (Jiang) Baili, “Jun Guomin zhi Jiaoyu,” 41–4.

26. Hsu I-hsiung, “Qingmo Minchu Junguomin Jiaoyu Tiyu Sixiang de Xingcheng (Xia)” [The Formation of Late Qing-Early Republican Militarized Citizenship Physical Education Thought, Part 2], Guomin Tiyu Jikan [Physical Education Quarterly] 20 (December 1991), 68–9.

27. Wang Gungwu and Aihwa Ong use similar translations for minzu, but without significant explanation. Wang discusses the “nation-race” with regard to Sun Yat-sen’s use of the term. Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1991), 200–1. Ong, in her theorizing of contemporary nationalism, writes on “the racial and cultural exclusivity of the minzu (race/nation) that cuts across class differences.” Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 56.

28. Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 108–9.

29. Yan glossed jin-meng-na-zhi-an as “physical training facility” (lianshenyuan). Yan Fu, “Yuan Qiang Xiudinggao,” 132.

30. Liang Qichao, “Xinmin Shuo, Di Shiqi Jie: Lun Shangwu,” 108–9; Pusey, China and Charles Darwin, 263–5.

31. Liang Qichao, “Xinmin Shuo, Di Shiqi Jie: Lun Shangwu,” 117.

32. Dorothy Ko, “The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth- Century China,” Journal of Women's History 8 (Winter 1997), 9.

33. Dorothy Ko, “Footbinding as Female Inscription,” unpublished paper presented at the Conference on Women in Confucian Cultures in Pre-modern China, Korea, and Japan, 28 June–1 July 1996, La Jolla, California, 3.

34. Zhu Zhuang, “Lun Zhongguo Nüxue Buxing zhi Hai” [On the Harm Done by Stagnancy in Women's Education], Nüzi Shijie [Women's World] 3, reprinted in Li Yuning and Chang Yü-fa, eds., Jindai Zhongguo Nüquan Yundong Shiliao, 1842–1911, Shang Ce [Documents on the Feminist Movement in Modern China, 1842–1911, Volume 1] (Taibei: Zhuanji Wenxue She, 1975), 639.

35. Lianshi (pen name, meaning “Tempered Stone”), “Benbao Wu Da Zhuyi Yanshuo” [Discourse on the Five Guiding Principles of Our Publication], Zhongguo Xin Nüjie Zazhi [New Chinese Woman] 2–4 (1907), reprinted in Li Yu-ning and Chang Yüfa, eds., Jindai Zhongguo Nüquan Yundong Shiliao, 1842–1911, Xia Ce [Documents on the Feminist Movement in Modern China, 1842-1911, Volume 2] (Taibei: Zhuanji Wenxue She, 1975), 783–4.

One scholar identifies a Japanese columnist named Kikui, writing in 1901, as the first to use this humiliating term “Sick Man of the Orient,” although Yan Fu and Kang Youwei both used terms like “afflicted” (bingzhe) or “affliction” (bingzheng) to describe China’s weak populace. Tan Huawen, “‘Dongya Bingfu’ Xiaoshi” [A Brief History of the Term “Sick Man of the Orient”], Tiyu Wenshi [Sport History] 17 (April 1986), 48.

36. Yuan Shikai, “Nüzi Wei Guomin zhi Mu” [Women are the Mothers of Citizens], Shuntian Shibao [Shuntian Prefecture Times], 17/6/Guangxu Year 31 (19 July 1905), reprinted in Li and Chang, eds., Nüquan Yundong Shiliao, Shang Ce, 606–8.

Asimilar and perhaps related Meiji-era Japanese formulation praised responsible, national- minded women as gunkoku no haha, or “mothers of the military nation.”

37. “Zhi Fu Yundonghui Shi” [Record of My Attendance at the Athletic Meet], Minxu Ribao [Sigh of the People], 1 November 1909, reprinted in Li and Chang, eds., Nüquan Yundong Shiliao, Xia Ce, 1206–8.

38. Julie Broadwin has explained that boundfoot women came to be seen as perhaps China's worst enemies, since their condition could be blamed for a Chinese lack of production and military strength, as well as for an abundance of laziness and irrational eroticism. Julie Broadwin, “Walking Contradictions: Chinese Women Unbound at the Turn of the Century,” Journal of Historical Sociology 10 (December 1997), 427.

39. “Youxi zhi Weisheng shang Jiazhi” [The Value of Games with Regard to Hygiene], Jiaoyu Zazhi [The Chinese Educational Review] 2 (10/7/Xuantong Year 2, or 14 August 1910), 46.

40. Tani E. Barlow, “Theorizing Woman: Funü, Guojia, Jiating [Chinese Woman, Chinese State, Chinese Family],” in Zito and Barlow, eds., Body, Subject & Power in China, 253.

41. “Xuanze Ticao Youxi Jiaocai zhi Fangzhen” [Directions to Consider When Designing a Curriculum of Calisthenics and Games], Jiaoyu Zazhi [The Chinese Educational Review] 2 (10/10/Xuantong Year 2, or 11 November 1910), 123.

42. Itô Yonejirô, translated by Cai Wensen, “Xiaoxuexiao Nannü Ertong Xinshen zhi Chabie” [The Psychological and Physical Differences between Elementary Boy and Girl Students], Jiaoyu Zazhi [The Chinese Educational Review] 2 (10/11/Xuantong Year 2, or 11 December 1910), 152.

43. Yuanhu Tongding Nüshi, (pen name, meaning “Pained Woman from Yuanhu”), “Chanzu Lun” [On Footbinding], Wanguo Gongbao [A Review of the Times], 26 (1896), 16219.

44. Xiaomei Chen, Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 5.

45. Chen, Occidentalism, 8.

46. Yuanhu Tongding Nüshi, “Chanzu Lun,” 16219.

47. Chen Xiefen, “Lun Nüzi Yi Jiang Tiyu” [Physical Fitness Is Appropriate to Any Discussion of Women], Nüxuebao [Women Studies] 2 (1903), reprinted in Li and Chang, eds., Nüquan Yundong Shiliao, Shang Ce, 574.

48. This line of argument can be seen most strongly in the writings of the revolutionary martyr Qiu Jin. Qiu, a martial arts aficionado and founder of the Shaoxing Women's Physical Education Association, also wrote very forcefully on the connections between strong, liberated women and a viable nation. Qiu used a similar line on the primacy of mothers and education in home education, and also bitterly condemned “corrupt women” who did not make contributions to, or even understand the concept of, the nation. Qiu Jin, “Jinggao Wo Nüguomin Tongbao” [AWarning to My Fellow Female Citizens], Shuntian Shibao [Shuntian Prefecture Times], 10/4/Guangxu Year 32 (3 May 1906), reprinted in Li and Chang, eds., Nüquan Yundong Shiliao, Shang Ce, 425.

49. “Ji Shanghai Ge Xiao Yundonghui” [Records of Meets at Several Shanghai Schools], Jiaoyu Zazhi [The Chinese Educational Review] 3 (10/5/Xuantong Year 3, or 6 June 1911), 41.

50. “Athletics,” Tientsin Young Men 5 (23 March 1906), 1. The several misspellings and missed punctuation are the original author’s.

51. Wu Wenzhong, Zhongguo Tiyu Fazhan Shi [The History of the Development of Chinese Sport] (Taibei: Guoli Jiaoyu Ziliaoguan, 1981), 71; Chen Xianming, Liang Youde and Du Kehe, Zhongguo Bangqiu Yundongshi [The History of Baseball in China] (Wuhan: Wuhan Chubanshe, 1990), 7; Gao Zhengyuan, Dongsheng de Xuri: Zhonghua Bangqiu Fazhan Shi [Rising Sun in the East: The History of the Development of Chinese Baseball] (Taibei, 1994), 19–21; Zhan Deji, “Woguo Bangqiu Yundong de Fawei yu Zhanwang” [The Humble Beginnings and Future Hopes for Our Nation’s Baseball Movement], Jiaoyu Ziliao Jikan [Education Materials Quarterly] 10 (June 1985), 434.

52. “The Athletes of China,” China's Young Men 11 (15 June 1916), 524.

53. Li Cimin, “Meixian Zuqiu Yundong Shihua” [Stories from the History of the Soccer Movement in Meixian County], in Guangzhou Wenshi Ziliao Xuanji, Di Ershisi Ji [Selected Materials on the History of Guangzhou, Volume 24] (Guangzhou: Wenshi Ziliao Yanjiu Weiyuanhui, 1981), 164–5.

54. Wu Wenzhong, Zhongguo Tiyu Fazhan Shi, 69.

55. Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), especially 287–9 on the mission to expand to Asia and China in particular. Jun Xing has characterized this mission in the more familiar terms of spreading the “social gospel.” Jun Xing, Baptized in the Fire of Revolution: The American Social Gospel and the YMCA in China: 1919–1937 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1996), 13–15.

56. Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 90.

57. Shirley S. Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China: The Chinese Y.M.C.A., 1895–1926 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 102.

58. Jiang Zhenhua and Wang Qionghua, “Jindai Tiyu zai Yunnan Zaoqi de Chuanbo” [The Early Spread of Modern Physical Culture in Yunnan], Yunnan Tiyu Wenshi [Yunnan Province Sports History] 14 (October 1992), 60.

59. Fujian Sheng Difangzhi Bianzuan Weiyuanhui, ed., Fujian Shengzhi: Tiyu Zhi [Fujian Provincial Gazetteer: Chronicle of Physical Culture] (Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin Chubanshe, 1993), 36, 147.

This process was not entirely smooth, however. During the late Qing period, Cora Coole, superintendent of Christian schools in Gutian, Fujian Province, made a presentation to classically-trained Chinese scholars on the benefits of physical education and recreation. Shocked, the teachers explained to Coole that “If this foreign Superintendent wants to see human beings run around the yard in shorts they would take up a collection and hire some chair coolies to run around for her amusement, but students—NO!” Arthur Braddan Coole, A Troubleshooter For God in China (Mission, KS: Inter-Collegiate Press, Inc., 1976), 28–9. The classical scholar's opposition to healthy sports is an old and common trope, but should be understood as more than just resistance to this particular form of modern physical culture. I read examples like this as signs of resistance to the homogenizing forces of the world system of nation-states, part of which these classical scholars correctly understood modern sport to be.

60. For a longer discussion of this topic, see Andrew Morris, Cultivating the National Body: A History of Physical Culture in Republican China (Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego, 1998), Chapter 1.

61. On an important origin of this model of modern sports, see Michael Oriard's brilliant description of Walter Camp, “the King of American Football,” and his “master metaphor for football … the hierarchically structured, efficiently run industrial corporation.” Michael Oriard, Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 37, 43–6, 168–9.

62. M. J. Exner, “Physical Training for the Chinese,” Tientsin Young Men 8 (1 May 1909), 2.

63. Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1910 to September 30, 1911 (New York: International Committee of the YMCA, 1911).

64. Gael Graham has written on the implications of this missionary emphasis on “Christian manhood” and its effect on missionary education (and physical education in particular) for Chinese girls in the late Qing and the Republican period. Gael Graham, “Exercising Control: Sports and Physical Education in American Protestant Mission Schools in China, 1880–1930,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20 (Autumn 1994), 23–48.

65. Exner, “Physical Training for the Chinese,” 2.

66. “The Time for Recreation,” Tientsin Young Men 2 (27 June 1903), 2.

67. Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1913 to September 30, 1914 (New York: International Committee of the YMCA, 1914), 74.

68. Hugh A. Moran, “Right Ideals in Athletics,” China's Young Men 4 (May 1909), 41–2.

69. Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1915 to September 30, 1916 (New York: International Committee of the YMCA, 1916), 43.

70. Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1909 to September 30, 1910 (New York: International Committee of the YMCA, 1910), 192; Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1907 to September 30, 1908 (New York: International Committee of the YMCA, 1908), 163. David Treadup, protagonist of John Hersey's novel The Call, mentions in his report to the International YMCA Committee in New York his use of these very same questions to motivate his students in the “Peikai Middle School” in Tianjin. Indeed, Robertson's strong physique, love of sports, scientific curiosity, and showmanship, as demonstrated in his series of scientific lectures in China, seem to have been the basis for Treadup's character. John Hersey, The Call (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 190. Zhang Boling, founder of the Nankai Middle School, great tiyu enthusiast and a close friend of Robertson, also wrote in 1907–8 in the YMCApublication Tientsin Young Men on his dream of a Chinese Olympic team. Chih-Kang Wu, The Influence of the YMCA on the Development of Physical Education in China (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1956), 106.

71. “The Sixth Annual Athletic Contest,” Tientsin Young Men 7 (24 October 1908), 3–4.

72. Twelfth Annual Report of the Tientsin Young Men's Christian Association (Tianjin, 1908), 9; Thirteenth Annual Report of the Tientsin Young Men's Christian Association (Tianjin, 1910), 5; Annual Report of the Tientsin Young Men's Christian Association (Tianjin, 1911), 2.

73. The TIBA included five school teams, and the TIFL nine. Tianjin Tongzhi: Tiyu Zhi [Overall Annals of Tianjin: Sports Volume] (Tianjin: Tianjin Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, 1994), 303-305; Tientsin Young Men 8 (20 February 1909), 3-4; Tientsin Young Men 8 (30 October 1909), 3–4.

74. Tientsin Young Men 2 (19 December 1903), 4.

75. Tientsin Young Men 2 (26 December 1903), 4.

76. Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1908 to September 30, 1909 (New York: International Committee of the YMCA, 1909), 439.

77. Although the meet was mostly managed by YMCA personnel, YMCA and Exposition organizers did combine to form a sixteen-man national committee, “equally divided between Chinese and foreign members,” to make all final decisions. Also, five regional subcommittees were established, each with “a good, live Young Men's Christian Association officer as chairman” to do publicity work and attract participants. H. A. Moran, “The Nanking Meet: The First National Athletic Sports in China,” personal report, 24 December 1910; Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1909 to September 30, 1910, 173.

78. Hao Gengsheng, Hao Gengsheng Huiyi Lu [Memoirs of Hao Gengsheng] (Taibei: Zhuanji Wenxue Chubanshe, 1969), 21; Wu Wenzhong, Zhongguo Tiyu Fazhan Shi, 77.

79. “The Autumn and Spring Athletic Program,” Tientsin Young Men 9 (8 October 1910), 3.

80. “Farewell to the North China Team,” Tientsin Young Men 9 (15 October 1910), 3–4.

81. H. A. Moran, “The Nanking Meet.”

82. Norbert Elias, “Introduction,” in Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning, Quest For Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 28–34.

83. North China sent twenty athletes, South China twenty-eight, Wuhan twenty-one, Nanjing-Suzhou thirty-one, and Shanghai forty.

84. Shenbao [Shanghai Times], 15 October 1910, section 1, p. 4; “Quanguo Da Yundonghui zhi Xiansheng” [Announcement of the National Games], Shenbao, 16 October 1910, section 2, p. 3; Shenbao, 19 October 1910, section 1, p. 3.

85. “China is Getting Athletic,” Association Men 36 (March 1911), 243.

86. Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1909 to September 30, 1910, 174–7.

87. Fong F. Sec, “The First National Athletic Meet,” China's Young Men 6 (January 1911), 30.

88. Fong F. Sec, “The First National Athletic Meet,” 32.

89. Oriard, Reading Football, 247–57.

90. Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1909 to September 30, 1910, 176; Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1908 to September 30, 1909,437. The queue is also significant in Chinese recollections of the meet. Xu Shaowu, who traveled with his parents from Huangmei in eastern Hubei Province to the Nanjing meet, described a soccer game between Soochow and Jinling Universities, with the players’ queues swinging to and fro. Xu Shaowu, “Wo de Huiyi” [My Memoirs], in Zhongguo Tiyu Wenshi Ziliao Bianshen Weiyuanhui, eds. Tiyu Shiliao, Di Shi Ji [Materials on the History of Physical Culture, Volume 10] (Beijing: Renmin Tiyu Chubanshe, 1984), 79. It is also important to note that the game of soccer was still new enough that people were not quite sure exactly what to call it. In one Shenbao article on the meet, it was referred to twice as cuqiu (“kick-ball”, this cu coming from cuju, an ancient Chinese game resembling soccer), and once as tiqiu (also “kick-ball”). Clearly, there is identification here of the new Western-style soccer as being at least somewhat related to the ancient cuju. “Quanguo Da Yundonghui zhi Xiansheng,” section 2, p. 3.

91. Sun held North China records in the hundred-yard dash (10V\b seconds), twelvepound shotput (34 feet 10 inches), sixteen-pound shotput (18 feet Z\x inch), discus (74 feet 8 inches), high jump (5 feet 5 inches), and broad jump (18 feet 9Z\x inches). Tientsin Young Men 9 (2 July 1910), 4; “North China Interscholastic Athletic Records,” Tientsin Young Men 9 (2 July 1910), 4; “The Autumn and Spring Athletic Program,” 2.

92. H. A. Moran, “The Nanking Meet: The First National Athletic Sports in China;” Annual Reports of the Foreign Secretaries of the International Committee, October 1, 1909 to September 30, 1910, 176; Wang Zhenya, Jiu Zhongguo Tiyu Jianwen [Glimpses of Physical Culture in the Old China] (Beijing: Renmin Tiyu Chubanshe, 1987), 136.

93. Two rounds of the competition used the region (North China, etc.) as the team unit, and one round divided competitors by their schools. Liang Tian, Zhongguo Tianjing Fazhan Jianshi [A Concise History of the Development of Track and Field in China] (Guangdong Tiyu Kexue Yanjiusuo and Guangdong Tiyu Wenshi Weiyuanhui, 1982), 12–4.

94. Xie Hong, dir., Jingdu Qiuxia [Soccer Heroes] (Emei Dianying Zhipianchang, 1987).

This narrative is another perfect instance of the appropriateness of Xiaomei Chen’s Occidentalism model, as the red-blooded Han Dragons’success is in their dissident challenge to the Manchu Qing regime via this Western form of soccer.