Football
China is the birthplace of football, the most popular game in the world, though the Chinese football team has time and again disappointed football fans in international competitions. Football was called cu ju (kick ball) in ancient China. In the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty, there were the characters for cu ju and descriptions of such a game. The sport was quite popular in the Warring States Period. Historian Sima Qian writes in the Biography of Su Qin in the Historical Records that residents of Linzi, the capital of Qi state, loved playing musical instruments and chess games, and kicking balls. Ge Hong (c.281-341), a noted doctor of the Jin Dynasty, writes in his Miscellanea of the West Capital a story about football: When Liu Bang
(c.256 BC or c.247 BC-195 BC) became the first emperor of the Hart Dynasty, he brought his father to the capital and treated him with all kinds of luxuries. But his father was not happy, for he missed the life in the hometown, where he could buy wine, enjoy cockfighting, and play football. To make his father happy, Liu Bang had a new Fengcheng town built after his hometown Fengyi, and moved all the people from Fengyi to Fengcheng, so that his father could play football with his old playmates.
The first book on football was also published in the Han Dynasty. The ball of that time was made of leather and hair: several pieces of leather were sewn together into a cover, and filled with a mass of hair. The first inflated football was made in the late Tang Dynasty, with an animal's bladder inside the leather cover. In the Song Dynasty, the cover of the football increased from 8 to 12 pieces of leather.
With the improvements of the football, the field and goal for the game also changed. In the Tang Dynasty, the field became formal, and the goals were raised in the air. In the Song Dynasty, a single goal was set instead of six goals, and the players were divided into two opposing teams, each with 12 to 16 persons. Playing on either side of the goal, the players passed the ball between them and finally to the head (similar to the center), and the head kicked the ball through the goal. The ball was not allowed to touch the ground. A hit of the goal would win a chip, and three or five chips would end the game.
Numerous historical records show that cu ju in ancient China is the origin of modern football, and China is the birthplace of the game. Joseph S. Blatter, president of FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association), noted in April 1980 when he served as FIFA's technical director that football originated in China, and spread to the West due to wars. |
