Winter sports, gymnastics and competition

To ski is 滑雪 huáxuě, literally “to glide on snow”, and to skate 滑冰 huábīng, “to glide on ice”. The character 滑, “slippery”, combines water, for the meaning, and 骨, bone, which is only there for the sound. This page closes the series on sport, after Martial arts and water sports; it goes from the ski slopes to the podium.

Winter sports long seemed remote in China. That is no longer the case since Beijing hosted the 冬奥会 Dōng'àohuì in 2022 (sentence 3): it is the only city to have organised both the Summer and the Winter Games. But the tradition is older than you might think. The Qing court amused itself with 冰嬉 bīngxī, “games on the ice”, which a large 18th-century painting shows in detail. And the Chinese claim that skiing was born in the Altai, in Xinjiang, on the strength of rock paintings dated to ten thousand years ago. I will leave the archaeologists to argue about that.

The names of the events are easy to understand. Figure skating is 花样滑冰 huāyàng huábīng, “patterned skating”, snowboarding 单板滑雪 dānbǎn huáxuě, “single-board skiing”, and curling 冰壶 bīnghú, “an ice jar”, which describes the stone rather well. China shines above all at 短道速滑 duǎndào sùhuá, short-track speed skating.

Gymnastics is 体操 tǐcāo, “exercising the body”. A whole generation did 广播体操 guǎngbō tǐcāo, radio gymnastics, launched in 1951, every morning: the whole school in the playground, in rows, to the rhythm of the loudspeaker (sentence 15). It is still done in schools. The apparatus, for their part, have vivid names: the beam is a 平衡木 pínghéngmù, “the wood of balance”, and the trampoline a 蹦床 bèngchuáng, “the bed that makes you jump”. The gymnast Li Ning, triple Olympic champion in 1984, gave his name to a sportswear brand that every Chinese person knows.

Fitness has imported its words. Yoga is 瑜伽 yújiā and Pilates 普拉提 pǔlātí, two transcriptions. The dumbbell, on the other hand, is a 哑铃 yǎlíng, “a mute bell”: it is a word-for-word translation of the English dumbbell, which once meant a bell without a clapper used for exercise. Finally, note 撸铁 lū tiě, “rubbing iron”, for pumping iron. Warming up and ball sports are on the page Team sports and athletics.

Competition has a military vocabulary. The champion is a 冠军 guànjūn, literally “the first of all the armies”: under the Han, Emperor Wudi made the young general Huo Qubing “Marquis Guanjun”. The runner-up is a 亚军 yàjūn, “the army that follows”, and third place a 季军 jìjūn. Now 季 is the youngest in the series of brothers 伯仲叔季: you might therefore have expected “fourth”. Usage, once again.

The Olympic Games are shortened to 奥运会 Àoyùnhuì, for 奥林匹克运动会. China sent its first athlete in 1932, the sprinter Liu Changchun, alone and almost penniless. The first gold medal came in 1984, in shooting, with Xu Haifeng. Then came the 2008 Beijing Games, their opening ceremony in the 鸟巢 Niǎocháo, the Bird’s Nest (sentence 19), and the torch carried to the summit of Everest. The historical Olympic motto, 更快、更高、更强, is sentence 24; since 2021, it has been extended with a “together”, 更团结.

Victory and defeat have produced many expressions. An upset is 爆冷 bàolěng, “to make the cold explode”: in gambling, the “cold door” was the bet nobody backed, and the “hot door” the favourite’s, hence 夺冠热门 duóguàn rèmén. 功亏一篑 gōng kuī yí kuì comes from the Book of Documents: you build a mountain nine fathoms high, and one single basket of earth is missing. For consolation, there is still 胜败乃兵家常事 (sentence 23) and the very Olympic 重在参与 zhòng zài cānyù, “the important thing is to take part”.

Confucius does not talk about winter sports, but he does talk about winter: it is when the great cold comes that you see the pine and the cypress keep their leaves longer than the other trees (sentence 25, see the Chapter 9 of the Analects of Confucius). The cold, says the commentary, stands for hard times. It is in defeat that you recognise the true sportsman. The fans too, for that matter.

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