Manchu Zhenzhuqiu
01 · Historical Records
It originated in the ancient Manchu pearl-harvesting production activities of the early 17th century and spread rapidly during the 18th and 19th centuries.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Manchu pearl ball is a Manchu folk sports and recreation activity. Yitong Manchu pearl ball was at first a game played by Manchu tribute collectors in their leisure after pearl harvesting. They used embroidered balls as pearls and clam shells as rackets, batting and passing them to one another. Later the rules of the game changed: one player carried a basket on his back, another threw the embroidered balls — standing in for pearls — into the basket, and a third man in between used clam shells to intercept them. It gradually developed into a folk competitive sport combining offense and defense. Each match is contested by two teams of seven players each. Today Manchu pearl ball has become a competitive event at the National Traditional Ethnic Minority Sports Games, and a fairly complete and standardized set of competition rules has taken shape. The above measures have achieved remarkable results: pearl ball has spread to all 15 townships of Yitong and to a number of primary and secondary schools, and it is praised as 'the number one folk sport of the Yitong Manchu'. Its distinctive techniques and competition rules offer a certain reference value for inheriting and promoting traditional ethnic sports and for advancing the development of modern competitive sports.
Basket, embroidered ball and shell
From divers' play with an embroidered ball and shell paddles grew the basket-and-interceptor game that became the sport.
Seven players a side
Two teams of seven play under a fairly complete modern rulebook as part of the national minority games.
Fifteen townships and the schools
Listed in the county's school curriculum, the game has reached fifteen townships and many schools, earning the name of Yitong's first folk sport.
Two thousand coaches and players
With associations, upgraded venues and training bases, the county has produced some two thousand coaches, referees and players.
Born of pearl gathering
The game arose from early seventeenth-century pearl gathering and spread rapidly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The divers' working life
The sport recalls the hard labour and leisure of the Manchu ancestors of south-eastern Jilin, a record of local and ethnic history.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The sport is now distributed mainly in the eastern and southern parts of Jilin Province; Yitong Manchu Autonomous County in Siping City is one of the core areas of its contemporary spread. It is strongly competitive, enjoyable, and entertaining to watch, and is a sports pastime beloved by local people. It helps improve the physical fitness of young people and fosters a spirit of vigor, enterprise, and teamwork.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Manchu Zhenzhuqiu.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Group-based transmission is the main mode of transmission for Yitong Manchu pearl ball. Physical education teachers in Yitong's primary and secondary schools form its core inheritor group, bearing the important responsibility of teaching the sport and popularizing it; students in school are the main participants and practitioners in its transmission. To promote its conservation and transmission, the government has adopted a series of measures: establishing sports associations, renovating and upgrading sports venues, and strengthening hardware support; setting up training bases, listing the sport in the physical education curriculum of primary and secondary schools across the county, and expanding and cultivating inheritors by bringing it into schools and communities; and organically integrating pearl ball culture into urban cultural development while exploring paths for the integration of culture and tourism. The county has trained nearly 2,000 pearl ball coaches, referees, and athletes, along with more than one hundred public sports instructors for pearl ball. The inheritor group has become younger and more professional, with a sound and rational tiered structure, forming a new-generation force for transmission. Yitong Manchu pearl ball is an iconic sport of the Manchu people. It recreates the scenes of the arduous labor and leisure cultural life of Manchu ancestors in southeastern Jilin, accumulating the folk cultural memory and local attachment of the Manchu people. It is an important resource for the study of regional history in Northeast China and of ethnic development history, and carries important historical and cultural value.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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