Ancient Chinese football.

• Author: Cohen, Bram

The very first sources that refer to kicking against a ball come to us from the Chinese. At the time of the Western Han dynasty (206 BC-24 AD), Liu Xiang wrote his Analects of Tactics, in which he described zu-gu (1), the football of the Chinese people. For a long time, it was thought that zu-gu (zu means 'shooting with the foot'; gu means 'ball') was played from around 500 BC on. But archaeologists have not remained idle. Numerous historical writings, inscriptions and remains have been found from the period predating the fifth century BC. These sources show that the Chinese were playing football nearly 5000 years ago.

Part of these writings and inscriptions contain legends that attribute the introduction of football to the mythical Yellow Emperor Huang Di, who ruled around 2690 BC. One legend describes how the Yellow Emperor cut off his own head and ordered his subjects to play football with it. Huang Di introduced his subjects to writing, music, bows and arrows, carts, boats, earthenware and the breeding of silkworms. We might as well add football to that list of accomplishments. In the city of Xi'an in the northwest of China, one can find stone balls, as works of art and as burial artefacts, that are just under 3000 years old.

We know next to nothing of the rules of the very earliest form of Chinese football. What we do know is that football had a certain significance as a cult activity.

During the Zhou Dynasty, which came to power in the eleventh century BC and lasted roughly 700 years, it was no longer just the notables who played football, but also the common people. They must have played the game with considerable fanaticism, because the rules were tightened up to prevent it from degenerating. The players used a ball made from eight pieces of leather that were sewn together. The ball itself was filled with feathers and hair. The air-filled ball was invented later on.

It definitely wasn't waywardness that inspired the Chinese to play football: during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), soldiers were ordered to play football to improve their physical strength and enhance their discipline and military enthusiasm. Such measures were taken in response to the incursions by northern peoples.

The same period saw the development of a football idiom, as well as books written about zu-gu. Jucheng meant pitch, jushi goal, li or chang the rules of the game, zhang the referee and ping the linesman. These are all concepts that are familiar enough...