The village that provided the basis for the first China national side
This piece was written by Jo Araf for Issue 44
It was not a successful squad. Actually it was, but only at national and continental level, and it’s precisely because of this it has never reaped great popularity. However, the China national team between the early 20th century and the years preceding World War Two was in many ways unique: a selection almost entirely composed of players born and raised in a small village, Tai Hang.
Tai Hang overlooks the eastern side of the island of Hong Kong and began to become populated around 1840, almost coinciding with the beginning of British rule over the region and the spread of football in the country. The village’s full name was Thai Hang Lo Wai, as Lo Wai is the stream that flows between North and East Point. This is where five Hakka families, a Han people rooted in southern China, settled. One of the many coincidences of this story is that it was the Han, 2300 years before, who had played the earliest known form of football. They called it cuju, a term composed of cu – foot – and ju – ball – and, as documented by contemporary texts, the discipline shared lots of similarities with football as we know it today: the use of hands was forbidden and the team who scored the higher number of goals won.
The families that arrived in Tai Hang were the Cheung, the Chu, the Wong, the Ip and the Lee. These were families of farmers, fishermen and launderers, as evidenced by the name of a particular street in the town, Wun Sha, which translates as ‘washing cloth’. Apart from their homes, there was very little around the village: little more than a Lin Fa temple – a Lotus Temple – dedicated to the goddess of piety, Kuwn Yam, built in 1864. About 15 years later, the town endured plague which led to the birth of the Dance of the Dragon, which exhorted the Buddha to alleviate the effects of the disease. Four years later a dam and a canal were erected to channel water to the harbour, which led to reclamation works. Tai Hang became an inland town and vast lands sprang up between the village and the bay, and in Tai Hang, later renamed ‘the cradle of Hong Kong football’, the first football games were organised.
In 1896, when the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, China snubbed the competition: Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing dynasty did not even respond to the invitation from the International Olympic Committee, despite Chinese students massively supporting the country’s participation. But in 1912 the scenario would change drastically: China had become a Republic and the following year the Far Eastern Olympic Games would be initiated. China took part in all 10 editions held between 1913 and 1934.
Football first appeared as a discipline at the third edition of the Olympic games, that of 1904, but in the Far Eastern Olympic Games it was included from the outset. In 1913 the Olympic gold medal went to the Philippines, who beat China. However, from that moment to 1934, the year in which the competition was held for the tenth and last time, it was always China – which hosted the Games three times – that triumphed.
During all this time the Chinese national team was represented by a local squad, the South China AA, which was founded – with the initial name of the Chinese Football Team – in 1904 in So Kon Po, a valley a stone’s throw from Tai Hang. The squad played its first games against British sides such as the Royal Engineers, the Buffs and the Royal Garrison Artillery, and although the Artillery had dominated the first Hong Kong championships the South China AA managed to beat them on a few occasions.
One of the founding members of the South China AA, and perhaps the most influential, was Tong Fuk Cheung. Cheung would become the first captain of the China national team and their first international scorer, netting in the sole game played in the 1913 Far Eastern Olympic Games, against the Philippines.
During the years when the Far Eastern Olympic Games were held the interest in sport increased considerably in China, as evidenced by one of the most influential writings on the subject published nationwide. It was titled A Study of Physical Culture and was published in 1917 by the magazine New Youth, founded by the Chinese Communist Party co-creator Chen Duxiu. It bore an important signature: that of a 24-year- old Mao Zedong. Mao took up a concept previously expressed by Duxiu, that of shouxing zhuyi, the closest translation of which is ‘the bestial nature of man’. Mao denounced the low propensity of the Chinese people to sport, making specific reference to martial arts and stressed the importance of physical activity as the strength and health of the army would benefit from it. Many measures aimed at promoting sport would be put into place under Mao’s government in the decades that followed. In 1929, China passed the first sport-related law in its history declaring that “boys and girls must take part in sports activities”. The goal was to develop young people’s bodies for the good of the nation.
In the meantime, South China AA had won several titles: they had won five local championships and five Senior Shields, the knockout cup that took place between the Hong Kong teams. These successes, along with those obtained in the Far East Olympic Games, led the Chinese Football Association to call up almost the entirety of South China AA in view of the Olympic Games to be held in Berlin.
Nobody had any doubt about the captain: with Tong Fuk Cheung out of action – he had retired a few years before – the choice fell on the rising star of Chinese football: Lee Wai Tong, another boy who had grown up in Tai Hang.
Besides being considered one of the best Chinese footballers of all time, Tong had an impact that went far beyond the pitch as at the age of 10 he had attended the Queen’s College, the institute where several local intellectuals such as Sun Yat- sen, philosopher and first President of the Republic of China, had graduated years earlier. It was precisely in this context that the boy developed his objective, that is, ‘to serve the country through dedication’. An English teacher, William Kay, who had worked at the school between 1915 and 1929, talking about the football matches that were held between boys had pointed out the talent of five boys and Lee was one of them.
Following a tour in Australia, Lee became an icon of Chinese football at 18. Just two years later he accepted an offer from Shanghai, motivated by the possibility of spreading football also in mainland China which at that time did not yet boast a first-division championship. That same year he netted a hat-trick in the decisive match against the Philippines at the Far Eastern Olympic Games. He would become the competition’s top scorer and in 1931 he returned to play for South China AA.
The same day that China’s participation in the German Olympics was made official a problem arose: who was going to fund the expedition? In an era when investments in sport were not comparable to those of today, one had to make do somehow. The China football team gave a significant contribution: a continental tour with games in China, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and India was organised. 27 matches were played in 62 days, a struggle that bore the desired fruits both from an economic – HK$20,000 were collected – and a sporting point of view, since that series of matches which recorded 26 victories, one draw and zero defeats had increased the popularity of some national team stars: Lee Wai Tong, of course, who ended up scoring 18 goals and Tam Kong-pak, nicknamed Ironhead for his aerial skills, who scored as many.
The tour ended in Mumbai, where the Chinese players waited for the Italian ocean liner Conte Verde, on board of which they would meet the members of their delegation.
The journey – exhausting, as the sprinter Cheng Jinguan would later recall, pointing out several cases of seasickness – lasted a total of 20 days after which the delegation arrived in Venice. Two days later they reached the Olympic village of Elstal, “a wonder for the eyes”, as a US athlete described it. Several journalists and experts echoed him, providing more details such as the presence of a huge gym, Turkish baths, swimming pools, a theatre, a lake with swans and a remarkable diversity of wild animals. Policemen could be seen everywhere, emphasising the magnitude of an event broadcast in various Berlin halls and for which 4.5 million tickets would be sold for a total of 129 events.
Three stadiums were chosen to host the football matches: the Post Stadium, the Hertha-BSC stadium and the Mommsen, which was where the China national team would have played in the round of 16. However, Lee and his teammates were out of luck: their opponents were Great Britain, the favourites for the title despite, as their captain Bernard Joy would later remember, arriving poorly prepared. It had only been on July 14, three weeks before the Games began, the British federation had decided to accept the invitation. There had been few training sessions and the fitness of the British players was questionable.
The game took place on August 6 at 5.30 pm local time and 0.30 am Chinese time. The starting line-up, in addition to Lee Wai Tong, included eight other Hong Kong players: four traffic cops, a bank clerk, an insurance policy seller, an assistant lawyer and the owner of a fleet of trucks. The weather conditions were ideal: dry, 15°C with a light breeze. From the beginning the spectators marvelled at the performance of the Asian team, their ball possession and aerial abilities. Someone claimed to have caught some glimpses of the cuju: precise passages and aerial exchanges in close spaces. It was the result of hours and hours spent playing football on the Tai Hang grounds.
The game proved to be unexpectedly even and in the first part both goalkeepers made decisive saves. Then Suen took advantage of a scrum and knocked the ball into the net, but the referee saw a foul by Ip – another player from Tai Hang – and disallowed the goal much to the frustration of Chinese players and journalists who in the following days expressed their disappointment. Things suddenly got complicated when Chui Ah-pei was forced to leave the field due to an injury: the player could not be replaced – substitutions were introduced in football 29 years later – and despite coming back onto the pitch he was no longer in a condition to continue. China kept attacking and the British goalkeeper Haydn Hill deflected a 30-metre free kick by Fung King-Cheong. The first half ended 0-0.
At the end of the game Bernard Joy congratulated China and suggested that his opponents had been superior in terms of ball possession and aerial skills. But the initial 20 minutes of the second half had proven fatal to the Chinese: Great Britain had scored twice with Dodds and Finch and by virtue of those two goals the Chinese national team’s adventure ended. A 90-minute dream versus a two-way trip that had lasted 40 days.
Following that experience, however, the Chinese side undertook a European tour with games in Frankfurt, Vienna, Geneva, Paris, Le Havre, Amsterdam and London. They won only one game, against Servette, but made a great impression in a 2-2 draw against Red Star of Paris, at the end of which Lee Wai Tong was offered a contract by the French team. He refused. If he had accepted, he would have become the first Chinese player to sign a professional contract with a European club. Bit he did later become vice-president of Fifa.
Jo Araf owns a translation agency and is also co-founder of the online sports magazine Game of Goals. In 2019, he released Generazione Wunderteam – which was eventually translated for the UK market – and two years later his second work, La Coppa Dimenticata was published.
