The ancestral martial arts (here in front of a temple in Beijing) were not subject to competition, unlike modern sports. © Keystone
Cuju players had to juggle with their feet and thighs to pass the ball through a hole in a net. © DR
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Published on 04.02.2022
Introduced at the turn of the 20th century, Western disciplines took time to establish themselves
Pascal Fleury
Physical culture » In the land of martial arts, tai chi, bamboo dancing and dragon boat racing, Western sports have been slow to take hold. Often considered uncivilized, even barbaric, they were perceived as cultural imperialism until the 1920s. As the Olympic Games opened in Beijing today, sports sociologist Aurélien Boucher, a teacher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) and author of several studies on the subject¹, looks back on this pivotal period, when tradition and modernity clashed.
When was the birth of modern sport in China?
Aurélien Boucher: The first traces come from the foreign enclaves created in
