They should probably be given at least partial credit for field hockey£¬ in addition to everything else the Chinese invented ¡ª ink, paper, movable type, gunpowder and the rest ¡ª ?The Olympic version of the game began to be codified in the late 19th century by the British, who exported it to their colonies. It is not an accident that many of the modern field hockey powers, like India, Pakistan and Australia, were all part of the empire.
But for 1,000 years, the Daur people of Inner Mongolia have been playing a game called beikou, which entails whacking around a more-or-less-ball-like knob of apricot root with long wooden branches. For night games, there is an ignitable ball covered in felt.
Much later, when the British version of field hockey came to China, the Daurs took it up instinctively and enthusiastically. Molidawa, a county seat, and the surrounding area is a seedbed of Chinese hockey talent. The local team has won five of the last 10 national championships, and the national team used to be, in effect, an all-Molidawa squad. Five of the players on the current Chinese Olympic men¡¯s team, or almost a third of the roster, come from around here, two of them from the same elementary school. Na Yubo, arguably the best player on the team, comes from the northwestern province of Gansu and is of Man ethnicity, but he learned the game in Inner Mongolia, where he grew up. ¡°I¡¯m amazed that so many good players could come from such a small place,¡± the coach of the Olympic team, Kim Sang-ryul, said recently. ¡°I¡¯m very lucky to have them.¡±
Molidawa is a small city in the middle of grasslands and farm fields that stretch to the horizon under a dome of sky that is often shockingly blue. The nearest airport is three hours away, in Heilongjiang Province, over roads, if you don¡¯t want to pay the tolls, that are often potholed and washed out. In the countryside, people live in single-story brick houses with tin or tile roofs. A few have satellite dishes.
In town, as in every Chinese city, concrete apartment blocks go up practically overnight, but men in Molidawa still squat on the sidewalk and play Chinese chess. Cars and trucks, horns bleating, have to veer around rickshaws and donkey carts. And some of the elders here still play the ancestral game, in a mostly grassless hockey stadium at the end of an alley called Beikou Street.
At the end of two periods of roughly 15 minutes, they came off the field barely puffing, even though it was a warm evening, and instead of looking for water, a number of them had a smoke. The oldest, Sudori Tumure, who is 82 and a retired party boss from the nearby town of Nierji, said: ¡°I do this to keep healthy, and because I think it is the best part of Daur culture. We play fairly often ¡ª at all the festivals and whenever we are happy.¡± He smiled. ¡°Or because we are old, whenever we remember to.¡±
referrence:www.seterlingtiffany.com
