Cuju: an Ancient Chinese Competitive Game

Let’s embark on a journey of discovering artisans in China.

Today, we’ll introduce a man called Liu Waite Jozef and his story about playing football. Jozef learns that Chinese ancients play cuju. So, what’s Cuju? So how did they play it?

To help Jozef find out the answers, his mother took the curious boy to Zibo, Shandong Province where cuju originated. They came to Linzi Football Museum and met a librian, whose name is Ma Guoqing. He is the vice curator of Qi Culture Museum and also the inheritor of cuju. He welcomed them, toured them around in the museum and introduced the history of Cuju.

Cuju is an ancient Chinese competitive game involving kicking a ball through an opening into a net. Cu means kicking, while ju is a leather ball. In the very beginning, light things were put inside ju, like cotton, and then people patted to inflate it. Before the Tang Dynasty, ju was solid, and it could only roll on the surface of the ground. Later,with animals’ bladders put inside and cowhide as its covering, the ball could bounce up high into the air.

And then Ma Guoqing begins to explain the rules of cuju: In the Song Dynasty in China, only the team leader had the right to kick the ball through the opening. White powder would be applied on the faces of the losing team and they couldn’t have meat during that meal. The player had to kick the ball through the opening of the goal to score a point.

Besides, there are some skills in this game, one called fodingzhu’skill, meaning pushing the ball up with the head. Harvesting the peach (juggling), shouldering the moon (back dribbling), shooting-star turning (knee controlling) all are famous tricks recorded in ancient books. There are also other skills like yanguichao (Homing Swallow), xiechahua (Oblique Flower Planting) and fengbaihe (Locus in the Wind), and they’re all good shows.

Through the journey to Zibo, Shandong, Jozef learnt something about the ancient cuju of China. Ma Guoqing hopes that Jozef can introduce cuju culture to Britain and other parts of the world.

Copyright: MY STORY ABOUT LEARNING CULTURE IN CHINA, China Pictorial Press

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