The history of the Olympic Movement may be divided into the
ancient and modern periods. The ancient period covered at least 12
centuries from 776 BC when the first Olympic Games was held in
Greece to AD 339 when the Roman emperor Theodosius the Great
prohibited the Olympic Games as a pagan activity. Then came a lull
of some 15 centuries in which no Olympic Games were held, though the
ancient Olympic ideals had not perished from the mind of many a
great thinker. The modern period has covered less than one century,
starting from 1896 when the first modern Olympic Games was held
---on an international rather than national scale.
Chronologically, the ancient period of the Olympic Movement
corresponded in Chinese history to the period from the Eastern Zhou
Dynasty (770-256 BC) to the Jin Dynasty (265-240 AD), while the
modern period corresponded to the period from the latter part of the
region of Guang Xu (1875-1909) of the Qing Dynasty to the
present-day People's Republic of China. In the ancient period,China
had no relations with Greece in the field of sport, although there
was the Silk Road serving as a channel of trade and cultural
exchanges between the East and West from the second century BC. In
the modern period, however, China has been associated very early
with the Olympic Movement. Such a relationship is more or less
rooted in the common origin and features shared by ancient China and
Greece in the field of sport, which forms part of national culture
and is inseparable from socio-political life---for all social
communities at all times.
The ancient Olympic Games were a four-yearly event with sporting
activities as its main content and the cessation of hostilities
among the city states in Greece as its main characteristic. In those
days, China also experienced divisions from time to time. There were
the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) and the Period of Warring
States (475-221 BC) during the Zhou Dynasty before the First Emperor
of Qin (259-210 BC) unified the whole Chinese empire. Following the
Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220), the main part of China was divided again
during the Period of Three Kingdoms (220-280), to be reunified under
the Jin court. As in ancient Greece, there were of course intervals
of peace between wars among the states or kingdoms---not as a result
of the proclamation of truce during the Olympic Games which were
non-existent in ancient China, but as a result of diplomatic
manoeuvres or military deterrent forces. After all, there is the
universal law of "split after long unity and unity after long
split," as Chinese philosophers put it.
However, the non-existence of Games does not necessarily mean
non-existence of sports. As a matter of face, there are sports
whenever and wherever there are human activities. Man must take up
sports to keep fit for survival and amuse themselves after work. In
order to gather food , hunters in the palaeolithic times not only
invented tools, such as stone axes, balls, hooks, spearheads and
nets, but also learned how to use them more efficiently, knowing
that only with a stronger physique and the ability to run and swim
faster, jump higher and throw a projectile farther and with greater
precision could they catch more game and fish. This was the origin
of the running, jumping, throwing and swimming events which figure
so largely in the Olympic Games today, and whose origin can only be
attributed to human instincts rather than to a particular race or
individual at a particular time. The stone balls excavated in
Gaoyang County in China's Shanxi Province date back to 100,000 years
and are supposed to have been used not only in hunting, but also in
throwing contests as athletes do in shot putting today. Archery,
another Olympic event, has appeared in the mythology of many
nations. Odyssey was said to have slain his wife's suitors with his
bow and arrows. A Chinese legend has it that during the Yao times
many thousand years ago, a marksman named Hou Yi shot down nine of
the 10suns in the sky which had scorched all plants on the earth.
Even today, bows and arrows are still used among many ethnic groups
in China as a weapon to kill animals and in archery as a popular
sporting event.
In ancient times men engaged themselves not only in flight with
nature, but also in flight among themselves. Therefore sport has yet
another aim: to improve the ability to beat the enemy, with or
without weapons. During the rule of the Yellow Emperor, who has been
held as the first ancestor of the Chinese nation, a rebel tribe
headed by Chiyou trained his warriors in fighting with cow horns
fastened to the head, which was included in the "one hundred
amusements" and developed into various forms of wrestling in later
generations. Military training in ancient China included all kinds
of martial arts, such as wrestling, pugilism, fencing,
tripodlifting, horse-racing, stone-throwing, hunting and swimming.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, a high-ranking official in Qi
state named Guan Zhong (?-645 BC) ordered the building of swimming
pools by conducting the water of three rivers and awarded heavy
prizes to good swimmers among his "water troops." A copper pot
excavated in Chengdu in Sichuan Province is inscribed with a battle
on water in those days. Among the Greeks there is note of occasional
swimming races, and a famous boxer swam as a part of his
training.
Sports also served military purposes in a ancient Greece,
especially in Sparta where all citizens received stoic military
training from early childhood, in almost the same sports as in
ancient China. According to historical records written during the
Period of Warring States, the Chinese kings and emperors ordered
their officers to teach archery, charioteering and wrestling in
winter and "required the populace to spend six hours farming and two
hours practicing martial arts every day."
The ancient Chinese and Greek civilizations shared another thing
in common in sporting activities, that is, they were often combined
with dancing. A pot in the Neolithic Age excavated in Qinghai
Province's Datong County shows on the inside surface three groups of
dancers. It is said that in those times China was hit by frequent
torrential rains and floods and people suffered a lot from unbroken
spells of wet weather. In order to relax their stiffened bones and
muscles and dispel their gloomy moods, they would dance a kind of
dance that "could conduct the flow of blood and vital energy in the
body." The military training in Sparta also included dances and
there were choreographic competitions at the ancient Olympic Games.
Actually there was little or no difference between physical
exercises and dances as is the case with such modern sports as
figure skating and artistic and rhythmic gymnastics.
What should be emphasized here is that sports were included in
the educational system both in ancient China and Greece. During the
Zhou Dynasty and the previous Xia (21st---16th century BC) and Shang
(16th---11th century BC) dynasties, all seats of learning were at
the same time places for teaching martial arts. The great Chinese
philosopher and Educationist Confucius (551-479 BC) was also a good
athlete in archery and charioteering and took an active part in
fishing, hunting, excursions and hill-climbing. Paying equal
attention to moral, intellectual and physical development of his
3,000 pupils, he carried out an educational system of "Six Arts,"
namely, rituals, music, archery, charioteering, writing and
mathematics, which were supplementary to each other. In archery, for
instance, he insisted on proper conduct, or what we call
"sportsmanship" today, pointing out that an archer should do his
best to win and what's more important, "be modest and observe
rituals." Besides, he advised people to keep a good eating habit, to
abstain from stale dish and meat and not to talk when taking a meal.
Such guiding principles were similar to those of the great Greek
philosopher Plato (428-348 BC) who held that physical training and
sanitation should become an important part of education and that one
should train his physique through sports and mould his temperament
through music. The curricula at his time included gymnastics, which
was broadened to embrace hygiene and dietetics. The Greek gymnasium
also taught philosophy, literature and music, and public libraries
were nearby.
It is interesting to note that both Chinese and Greek
educationists in ancient times emphasized that physical training
should suit different ages. According to the Chinese classic work Li
Ji (Book of Rites), children should learn "civilian dances" at 13,
"martial dances" at 15, and archery and charioteering at older ages.
Plato also advocated different sports for different age
groups---music and singing for 7-12, dancing, wrestling, archery and
horsemanship for 12-17 and more physical training for 17-20.
Whether out of historical necessity or contingency, sports in
both ancient China and Greece were closely combined with productive
labour, military training, dancing and the whole educational system,
thus providing an ideological foundation for China's ready
acceptance of the modern Olympic ideals, which were deeply rooted in
the ancient Greek society, in spite of the cessation of Olympic
Games for15
centuries.
