[VOL III] Playing At Shuttlecock With The Feet

Playing At Shuttlecock With The Feet

Cover Image: Playing at Shuttlecock with the Feet / China / Drawn by T. Allom Engraved by A.Willmore – ALAMY Image ID:2X55N4C

*Shuttlecock with the Feet（”Ti jiànzi” ）is a traditional Chinese game where the objective is to keep a weighted shuttlecock, known as a “jianzi,” in the air using your feet, legs, knees, and other parts of the body except for the hands. Players form a circle and take turns kicking the jianzi to prevent it from falling to the ground. It requires balance, coordination, and skill to keep the jianzi airborne for as long as possible. This game has a long history in China and is still popular today as a recreational activity and sport. / From a Drawing in the possession of Sir Geo. Staunton, Bart.

With dice, with cards, with hazards far unfit,
With shuttlecocks mis-seeming manly wit.

HUBBARD’S TALE

NEAR to the afflux of the Tchang-ho with the Cha-ho, river of flood-gates, or imperial canal, is a splendid octagonal pagoda: it consists of nine stories, adorned with projecting eves, and it tapers with a remarkably gradual and graceful convergence. From its basement to the edge of the waters, the grounds slope gently, and this pleasant area being reserved for the recreation of the citizens of Lin-tsing-choo, generally presents a scene of mirth, although not always of morality. Here jugglers display their unrivalled dexterity in the arts of deception; tumblers, vaults, and merry-andrews, exhibit feats in which the strength and ductility of the human body are conspicuously shown, and old pulcinello, the long-admired of civilized Europeans, asserts his claims to a pre-eminence. All this would be well and unobjectionable if the kingdom of mirth were not extended further, nor its powers of pleasing distorted by dishonest and vicious votaries of chance. Building, with a certainty but too secure, upon the evil propensities of our nature, quail and cricket fighters, mora players, and gamblers of every description known in this wide empire, here congregate, to exercise their demoralizing callings, and accelerate the ruin of thousands who become the easy dupes of their villany.

Around the groups engaged with absorbing earnestness in games of chance, the more cautious, but not less interested, are seated, relieving their anxiety upon the pending bet, by the pleasures of the chibouque. There are, however, other, and these rather numerous assemblages, more innocently occupied with either feats of activity or childish sports, which though probably little suited to their multiplied years, are exercises of virtue in comparison with the grave occupations in which their fellows are engaged on the greensward all around them. Kite-flying constitutes a favourite amusement, and few nations have ever succeeded, possibly none have ever aspired, to elevate these simple structures to such an height as the Chinese. Their delicate, light, yet durable bamboo, their pliant and fissible bamboo, invite experimentalists in this kind of aerostation, from the peculiar applicability of the material to the manufacture. In this sport there is much emulation, and not boys only, but adults, put forth their best energies in flying kites to the greatest height, and in endeavouring to bring down their antagonist’s by dividing the strings.

Puerile taste is not confined, however, to this innocent amusement; the sport of shuttlecock, certainly a healthy recreation, is pursued with a degree of enthusiasm which it is seldom known to excite in the western world. There it is strictly limited to the youth of both sexes, and in some resigned to the gentler exclusively; but in China, the most muscular men amongst the labouring classes seem to feel inexpressible delight in the sensation it produces. No battle-doors are employed, nor are the hands generally of any service in the game, save to balance the player’s body during its rapid movements: the shuttlecock is struck with the soles of the feet, sometimes unprotected by any covering; at others, however, wooden shoes are permitted, and the noise which these cumbersome accompaniments contribute, is considered an accession to the mirth. Five, frequently six persons, form themselves into a circle, for the purpose of playing at this active game; and whether shoes be permitted, or hands occasionally allowed, to aid the feet in preventing the shuttlecock from coming to the ground, the least successful players fall out of the ring in turn, until the number is gradually reduced to one; this one is, of course, declared to be the winner of the stakes, or the pool, or the object played for, whatever it may happen to have been.

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