Chapter 22 Section 8 Children's Sports Games

Childhood is the most amazing time in a person's life.In the eyes of children, the whole world is a big playground, and they play games all the time.It is in the bouncing game that children complete their preparations for future life.They not only imitate the physical activities of adults, such as swinging and playing football, but also create various games with their own special imagination.As early as the Tang Dynasty, children's sports games have been dizzying, such as riding bamboo horses, throwing fruit, hiding hooks, catching spiders, sticking butterflies, climbing trees, digging out bird nests, playing mud bombs, flying kites, kicking balls, and building blocks. , Leishi, etc. (Lu Deyan's "Fifty Rhymes of Children's Poems"), and the number of games has continued to increase in subsequent dynasties. No one knows how many games were invented and how they were spread.But they do pass down from generation to generation.Even many games for adults are processed and improved on the basis of children's games.Children's games generally have a clear timeliness and seasonality, and there are established rules for what to do when and what to do, as sung in a nursery rhyme in Beijing in the Qing Dynasty, "Yangliuqing, let go of the empty bell (diabolo);扜尜〔gaga〕 (when playing a game, first use the wooden stick in your hand to hit the spindle-shaped wooden block placed on the ground, and hit it in the air to a distant target); when the willow dies, kick the shuttlecock" Ji Sheng").The following briefly introduces several kinds: riding a bamboo horse, playing a spinning top, kicking a shuttlecock, and skipping rope.

Holding one end of a bamboo pole or a wooden stick in one hand, and swinging a whip or a wooden knife in the other, the bamboo pole under the crotch moves forward along with the children's bouncing horse steps.The emergence of this kind of game of riding bamboo horses, which is loved by boys, is probably directly related to the cavalry that began to rise in the Western Han Dynasty.The galloping heroic posture of the cavalrymen, with their gold and iron horses, has become an example for the boys to imitate. "Book of Later Han Guo Ji Biography" writes that when Guo Ji (ji ji) became an official of Bingzhou and went to take office, when he walked to Meiji County on the north side of the Yellow River, hundreds of children rode bamboo horses to greet him by the side of the road.During the Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties, children aged seven or eight also liked this game very much (Zhang Hua's "Natural History").Li Bai in the Tang Dynasty also wrote in his poem "Long Gan Xing" that a boy rode a bamboo horse to find a little girl to play with green plums. Later, people often used "childhood sweethearts" to describe the pure feelings cultivated by young men and women.

A spinning top, made of solid wood in the shape of a small bell, is played with a whip to make it spin rapidly, a favorite winter and early spring physical game for children.As early as 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, a small pottery spinning top was unearthed in the Yangshao Cultural Site. This was probably a kind of toy used by people at that time. It is not clear whether it was also whipped with a whip.Spinning top, this ancient game has accompanied many generations of people through their childhood. In the Ming Dynasty, there was a nursery rhyme "Wild willows, pumping tops" in Beijing. "Emperor Beijing Scenery" records in detail the shape, equipment, and game methods of this game during the Chongzhen period.There are various types of spinning tops.There is a kind that can make a sound, called "singing top".This spinning top was spread to Japan and Korea before 931 AD.It has been recorded in "Waming Lei Juchao" published during the Taiping period of Japan (931-938 A.D.).In Japan, it was originally translated as "Beneficial Color Licheng", and later translated as "Tang Dule". "Tang" refers to China, and the pronunciation of "dule" and "gyro" are similar.Japanese scholars have verified that Tang Dule was introduced to Japan from China via Korea. This game was the most popular before the Heian Dynasty to the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and it is still popular today.

In ancient China, there were many kinds of sports activities played by kicking with feet, and shuttlecock kicking was one of them.As early as 1,500 years ago in the Northern Wei Dynasty, the first abbot of Shaolin Temple, the eminent monk Buddha from India, was traveling in Luoyang. He saw a 12-year-old boy standing on a high well rail and kicking a shuttlecock very deftly. 500 times.The Buddha was very surprised, so he accepted the boy as his disciple. This is the later famous Shaolin eminent monk Huiguang ("Continued Biography of Eminent Monks").However, what Huiguang kicked at that time was different from the shuttlecock made of chicken feathers and copper coins later, which can be regarded as the prototype of the shuttlecock.Since the Song Dynasty, chicken feather shuttlecock became popular.There have been handicraft workshops specializing in making shuttlecocks in the city ("Old Stories of Wulin").The children walked and kicked in groups of three and five.In the Song Dynasty, personal skill football reached a very high level, and various kicking methods appeared, which had a great influence on shuttlecock kicking.The technique of kicking the shuttlecock is becoming more and more complicated, and there are more and more tricks, not only using the feet, but also using the knees, belly, and even the top of the head.According to different body parts and different kicking methods, various tricks have appeared, such as inside and outside, dragging guns, shrugging knees, protruding belly, Buddha top beads, scissors, kidnappers and so on.These kicks are similar to the kicks in the ancient Chinese football "Bai Da Chang Hu". Therefore, Gao Cheng, a man of the Song Dynasty, pointed out that there is a close relationship between kicking shuttlecock and kicking football ("Shi Ji Yuan").

In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, shuttlecock became more popular, not only kicked by children, but also became a favorite sports activity for women.They put on light short clothes and often kicked tirelessly until the sun went down ("Beijing Zhuzhi Ci in Qing Dynasty Baixi Zhuzhi Ci").The little shuttlecock even entered the imperial palace and became a pastime for the court ladies. Emperor Guangxu's concubine Jin was very good at kicking shuttlecock. In the Qing Dynasty, Jianghu entertainers who made a living by kicking shuttlecock also appeared. These people's skills were very clever, and they danced and danced coherently and smoothly. The parts are circling and dancing, like clusters of flowers, which is wonderful ("Ji Sheng at the age of Emperor Jing").

Girls of the Dong nationality living in Guangxi, my country also have the custom of playing shuttlecocks, which has a history of more than 1,000 years.However, they do not kick the shuttlecock with their feet, but beat it with their hands, which is called duoshuttlecock, which means clapping the shuttlecock with their hands.It is said that this activity was developed from the action of throwing rice seedlings one by one in rice planting.At the end of the Song Dynasty, people had thrown small balls made of straw to catch each other, and it developed into a shuttlecock in the Yuan Dynasty.There are many kinds of shuttlecocks of the Dong nationality, such as green grass shuttlecock, straw shuttlecock, reed shuttlecock and chicken feather shuttlecock.In the competition, it is better to hit high, far, catch steadily, and land less.There are various styles of play, including men's singles, women's singles, and collective play of ten or twenty players.

Shuttlecock has been passed down to this day and has developed into a very formal sports event - shuttlecock. There is a set of strict competition rules. Athletes kick the shuttlecock across the net and often perform very difficult technical moves. Practitioners' coordination and flexibility have a good exercise effect.Due to the small space required and simple equipment, this sport has become very popular in many primary and secondary schools in our country. Rope skipping is a kind of recreational activity for children in the first lunar month of the lunar calendar. Because the rope skipping game looks like a white light wheel from a distance, it looks like hundreds of ropes going up and down. In ancient China, people called rope skipping "jumping white rope" or "jumping white rope". Jump Baisuo".Shen Bang described the children's rope skipping during the Lantern Festival in the Ming Dynasty as follows: two children were holding a long rope that was more than ten feet long, and the swing was erratic, making it difficult to see clearly, as if there were a hundred ropes.A group of children ride the swing of the rope and jump in by turns. Those who can jump over are the winners, and those who can’t jump over or get caught by the rope have to be punished by the person in charge of the rope. It's called Tiaobaisuo ("Miscellaneous Notes of Wanshu").Children often sing songs while dancing various tricks.Especially on the first day of the first lunar month and the Lantern Festival, children wear brightly colored clothes and skip rope, which adds a lot of vitality to the festival, just like a poem described in "Taiping drum, sound Dongdong, eyes like dancing rope children. A child Wusuo and a child sing, and a child jumps into the light wheel" ("Songfengge Poems").Rope skipping is a very good fitness activity, which not only helps to improve people's sensitivity, coordination and jumping ability, but also has a good effect on promoting internal organ function.

Another jumping exercise that is very similar to skipping rope is bamboo pole jumping.Bamboo pole jumping is a traditional sports and entertainment item that is very popular among young men and women of the Li nationality in Hainan.During festivals and slack seasons, bamboo pole arrays are set up on the village field, that is, eight bamboo poles are placed horizontally on two thick and long bamboos placed in parallel, keeping a certain distance between the poles.The players in the game are divided into two groups: those who swing the pole and those who jump the pole.There are eight pole swingers, facing each other in pairs, kneeling on the ground, holding a pole in each of their left and right hands. In the rhythm of gongs, drums and musical instruments, they swing the two bamboo poles in their hands to make them open and close.The pole jumpers danced lightly and nimbly among the opening and closing bamboo poles, spinning and dancing.The villagers watching on the side kept applauding and cheering for the pole jumpers.As the rhythm of the drums became faster and faster, the rhythm of the bamboo poles swinging and opening and closing became faster and faster. Those with weak legs and slow reactions were pinched by the ankles of the bamboo poles, and were thrown out of the field and eliminated.Those who can jump to the end and successfully pass are all young men and women with agility and outstanding skills.As a result, the winners of the bamboo pole dance often become the admired objects of boys and girls.