Team sports and athletics

Sport is 体育 tǐyù, literally “shaping the body”: 体 the body, 育 to raise, to educate ⟶ physical education, sport. The word came from Japanese at the end of the 19th century, like many modern words. For the activity itself, people tend to say 运动 yùndòng, “to set in motion”, already met on the page Health and illness. This page opens the category of leisure, the arts and sport; it goes from the round ball to the pole vault.

The names of ball games are almost all built on the same pattern: a character that says how you play, then 球 qiú, “the ball”. 足球 zúqiú is the ball of the foot; 篮球 lánqiú, the ball of the basket; 网球 wǎngqiú, the ball of the net; 羽毛球 yǔmáoqiú, the ball of feathers. Rugby is a 橄榄球 gǎnlǎnqiú, “an olive ball”, which is well observed. For 排球 páiqiú, volleyball, 排 is usually explained by the players lined up in rows. That is the common explanation, but I have not found a reliable source for it.

The verb changes with the sport, and it is a classic trap. In football, you 踢 tī, you strike with the foot (the movement is on the page Gestures and postures); in basketball, ping-pong or tennis, you 打 dǎ, you strike with the hand or the racket. On the other hand, 打 has ended up spreading to almost every ball game, so that people also say 打排球 and even 打橄榄球. Nobody ever says 打足球. Usage, once again.

Football vocabulary is a string of images. The goal is a “gate”, 球门 qiúmén, and the goalkeeper “the one who guards the gate”, 守门员 shǒuményuán; shooting at goal is 射门 shèmén, “shooting at the gate”, the way you shoot an arrow. A penalty is a 点球 diǎnqiú, “the ball from the spot”, because it is taken from the penalty spot. An own goal is a 乌龙球 wūlóngqiú, “the black dragon ball”: the word is said to come from Hong Kong Cantonese, where 乌龙 already meant “muddled” and sounded like the English “own goal”. Today, 乌龙 is said of any blunder.

China even claims to have invented football. 蹴鞠 cùjū, “kicking the leather ball”, was played as early as the Warring States period, and under the Han the army used it to train its soldiers. In 2004, FIFA recognised China as the birthplace of football, and more precisely Linzi, in Shandong (or so you read everywhere in China). The present is less glorious: the national team, 国足 guózú, is an endless source of mockery for the Chinese themselves (I will say no more). But the women’s volleyball team, 女排 nǚpái, is a legend. Winners of the World Cup in 1981 (sentence 22), they gave their name to a state of mind, 女排精神, that of players who never give up.

The national sport, for its part, is not football. Ping-pong is the 国球 guóqiú, “the national ball”, and its name, 乒乓 pīngpāng, simply imitates the sound of the ball. It has even done diplomacy. In 1971, at the world championships in Nagoya, a chance encounter between an American player and a Chinese player earned the American team an invitation to China; Nixon followed the year after. This is 乒乓外交 Pīngpāng wàijiāo (sentence 20). The slogan of the time, 友谊第一，比赛第二, “friendship first, competition second”, has stuck (sentence 24). Today it is quoted mostly with a smile, when you have just lost.

Athletics is 田径 tiánjìng, literally “the fields and the paths”: 田 the field events, jumps and throws, 径 the races on the track ⟶ athletics. The names of the events are transparent: 跳高 tiàogāo “jump high”, 跳远 tiàoyuǎn “jump far”, 短跑 duǎnpǎo “run short”, 长跑 chángpǎo “run long”. The shot put is a 铅球 qiānqiú, “a lead ball”. The marathon, 马拉松 mǎlāsōng, is a mere transcription: “horse, pull, pine”. It means nothing, but everyone remembers it.

Sport has given a lot to everyday language. When two government offices pass a file back and forth, they 踢皮球 tī píqiú, they “kick the ball around” (sentence 21). Someone who skirts the rule without breaking it 打擦边球 dǎ cābiānqiú, they “play the ball that clips the edge of the table”, an expression that comes, once again, from ping-pong. Final-year pupils a month away from the gaokao are in the middle of their 冲刺 chōngcì, the final sprint (sentence 23). And the 接力棒 jiēlìbàng, the relay baton, is handed on from one generation to the next.

Confucius did not like competition, except for one kind: archery. The wise man, he says, never contends for anything, except perhaps in archery, and even then he bows to his opponents before going up, and if he loses, he drinks the cup imposed on the losers (sentence 25, see the Chapter 3 of the Analects of Confucius). Archery, 射 shè, was one of the six arts, 六艺 liùyì, in the education of a gentleman. It is probably the oldest physical education class in China. More serious than basketball, certainly. More fun, I am not so sure.

Click on any character on the page: its stroke order appears stroke by stroke, with the arrow showing the direction of the line.