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China
Information
Study of
Chinese Sport History |
By
Fang Hong
Dr Fan Hong is a Reader at De Montfort
University, England and a former editor of the Journal
of Sports Culture and History published in Beijing.
E-mail: fanhong@dmu.ac.uk
Over
five thousand years of written history has left China with a large
number of history books. Yet, apart from some articles on Cuju (ancient
Chinese football), in the Han Dynasty (221 BC to AD 24), and the Jiaoli
ji (the Records of Wrestling), in AD 960, there are very few documents
about the history of sport – until, that is, the end of feudal China in
1911.
The
beginnings of modern sports history studies can be dated back to the
semi-capitalist China that existed after 1911. There then were twelve
sports newspapers and nine sports journals and magazines, which
occasionally published articles on the history of sport, most of which
were introductions to, or descriptions of, the Olympic games.
The first book, the History of Sport in China, was published in 1919 by
Ge Shaoyu, a young student of physical education.
While the period between 1911 and 1949 observed a steadily increasing
interest in sports history, the period after 1949
witnessed an unprecedented growth in the study as part of a wider
strategy of both historical investigation and promotion of sport under
the early Communist regime.
In 1956, the Sports Ministry
established the Sports Technology Committee in Beijing which was to
research Chinese sports history. From 1957 to 1961, the Committee
edited nine volumes of Chinese Sports History Research Material, which
was published by the People’s Sports Press – a profound achievement at
the time.
Due to the failure of the Great Leap Forward, however,
the budget was cut in 1960
and the Committee eventually dismantled.
As a
result, research on sports history became a responsibility of the
various physical education institutes around the country.
The
first sports history research center was established at Chengdu
Physical Education Institute in 1962. After four years of concentrated
work, Cover of the Sports History of the People’s Republic of China
1949-1998, edited by Wu Shaozu et al., published in 1999 by the
Chinese Book Publishers [Zhongguo shuji chubanshe] in Beijing.
Wu
Shaozu was Sports Minster of the PR China from 1990 to 2001.
The
Research Center published three volumes of The Ancient Chinese Sports
Material (3 volumes), drafted Modern Chinese Sports History, and
translated four books on world sports history from English and
Japanese.
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The 1966 Cultural Revolution disrupted the progress
of the study of sports history; the Historical Research Center in
Chengdu, then considered a nest of elite intellectuals producing feudal
and bourgeois rubbish, was disbanded, and it would not be until the
1980s that interest in the study of sports history would officially
return to China.
In
1982 the Ministry of Sport established the Sports History Working
Committee. It soon formed a large umbrella network, with more than
thirty physical education departments and institutes, and offices in
thirty-one provincial and sixty-four local sports commissions. The aim
of the Committee was to promote the systematic study of both sports
history in general, and Chinese sports history in particular.
An
annual working conference has been held since 1982 to examine the
Committee’s progress. The distinguished Research Center of Sports
History in Chengdu was restored in 1980 and expanded in 1986, and now
offers both MA and PhD degrees.
At
the beginning of the 1990s three new research centers were established
in China, all offering MA degrees in sports history: the Beijing
Physical Education University, the South China Normal University in
Guangzhou, and the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. By 1995, sports
history was being taught at fifteen physical education institutes, and
in 159 physical education departments of various universities and
colleges.
From 1982 to 2001, more than one hundred books on
sports history were published, including thirty-one books on general
sports history, twenty-two books on major sports events, twenty-six
books on regional and local sports history, twenty-four volumes of
sports history material, and three sports history text books which are
now used in the universities and colleges.
A
new bi-monthly, academic publication, the Journal of Sports Culture and
History, was launched in 1983, and has since become essential reading
for academics, coaches and sports administrators in China. Meanwhile,
twenty-seven local and regional sports history journals have also
appeared between 1984 and 2000.
In
1984, the Chinese Society for the History of Physical Education and
Sport was established, and as of the end of 2001 it claims more than
six hundred. The Society, in cooperation with the Sports History
Working Committee, organizes annual conferences and supervises various
research projects on sports culture and history in China.
Meanwhile,
since 1984, regional and local sports commissions have organized more
than one hundred conferences, the major themes of which have been the
regional and local sports history, the lives of local sports heroes and
heroines, and the experiences of ordinary people.
An innovative
intellectual movement has since grown out of the resurgent interest in
the history of sport in the 1980s and 1990s. As its growth paralleled
the major ideological, political, economic, social, and cultural
transformations in modern Chinese society, it attracted a large number
of able, energetic intellectuals from the fields of history,
literature, arts, and sports studies, into its domain.
Not
satisfied with being mere bookkeepers of athletic records, these
individuals decided to take different aspects of sports history with
them to their areas of expertise, to join the exciting social and
cultural movement.Though their respective fields are different, the
fundamental approach has been the same: to document large structural
changes between society and sport; to explain the evolution of
culture and sport; to construct a coherent analysis of social
relationships in and through sport; to reconstruct the sporting
experiences of both athletes and non-athletes alike; and to establish a
unique empire in the field of social science.
In doing so they
have not only inherited traditional historical methods and subjects,
but also created a new field, which has profoundly affected the
historical consciousness by broadening both the subject matter and
methods of history.
In the spirit of change, however, sports
historians should begin to free themselves from historical tradition,
and use the vast accumulation of social science description to generate
their own theories and build sound explanatory frameworks. Sports
history should not come to dominate history, but should have a much
stronger impact on all aspects of history.
E-mail:
fanhong@dmu.ac.uk
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