Home > History of China
From
Hocky to Golf
13 August 2011
What do you think these
odd-shaped clubs and balls are? Hockey sticks and
balls? Yes, they are. But why they look a bit
different from the standard ones sold in sports
stores? Because they were not purchased from any
stores anywhere in today's world but unearthed
from ancient
Chinese tombs.
This is an ancient
Chinese painting depicting rich ladies' daily
life. What do you think they were doing here?
Yep, make no mistake, they were playing Chinese
golf.
Chinese golf was evolved from
Chinese hockey which first appeared during Tang
Dynasty (618-907). By then it was called
步打球 (it roughly means "using one's
feet to hit the ball"), and was played as a
contest game. Later, in the era of the Song
Dynasty (960–1279), the game gained a
meditative feature: the goal in the field was
replaced by the hole on the ground, and the
objective was not about to compete against others
to obtain the prize but to test one's own
strength on reaching the designed target.
Accordingly, its name was changed from 步打球
to 捶丸 ("swing one's arms to hit the
ball")
Entering the Ming Dynasty
(1368-1644), the heyday of Chinese
martial arts, the relatively simple sports
games like hockey and golf became less popular,
but not entirely. When an ancient classic The
Theory and Practice of Ball Games (《丸经》)
was republished during Wanli's reign (万历),
the publisher Zhou Lujing (周履靖) noted in
postscript how he often witnessed people playing
this ball hitting game in various parts of China.
("予壮游都邑间，好事者多好捶丸。"考诸传记无闻焉，以为世俗博弈之余技耳。").
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