By Wang Shanshan (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-09 07:05

Many of the sports at which China now excels were unknown in the country until the 19th century when they were introduced by Westerners.

Take table tennis, for example, a game first played by Boy Scouts at the YMCA in Shanghai in 1916.

Two years later, the first club was founded in the city, but it was not until 1927 that China sent a team to the Fast East Games, and it never once won a medal there.

The country's first football team was set up in Hong Kong in 1904 by students at an English-language high school, after watching their British peers playing the game.

The team was called the Chinese Football Team and it soon attracted players from other schools on the island. As the number of players grew, the team organized the South China Football Club in 1910, which was open to all Chinese football fans and players across the region.

At the first All-China Sports Meeting, held by missionaries in Nanjing in 1911, the team strolled to victory, before going on to defeat several visiting foreign teams later in the year.

Between 1913 and 1934, 10 Far East Games were held and China lifted the soccer title on eight occasions.

The club was renamed the South China Athletic Association in 1920, and it is today one of the largest sports club in Hong Kong.

China's first track and field stars hailed from the South China Martial Arts School in Guangzhou.

After discovering the athletic talents of Chen Yan, Qiu Jixiang and Xu Minhui, He Jianhao, the school's president coached them in the broad (long) jump and track events.

At the Far East Games in Manila in 1913, Chen took gold in the broad jump and his teammates each won bronze on the track.

Although Chen later went on to become a doctor, Qiu and Xu stayed with sport.

In 1915, Qiu set up China's first volleyball association in Guangzhou, while 20 years later, Xu founded the country's first sports school in the city.

Partially because of their efforts, volleyball became one of the most popular sports in Guangdong Province and by the 1960s its teams were able to compete with some of the best in the world, including Japan, the Philippines and the United States, Wu Wen-Chung, professor at Taipei University, said in his book Chinese Sports Development History.

(China Daily 08/09/2007 page5)