Life and sport in China: Second EditionReady, Oliver George
History
Life and sport in China: Second Edition
Ready, Oliver George
China -- Social life and customs; Sports -- China
The reason for this lack of watermanship is partly due to the
difficulty in coaching otherwise than from the stern of a boat, there
being no towing path on which the coach can ride or run alongside his
men, as is done at Oxford or Cambridge, while the hire of launches is
too expensive. Also, part of the reason is due to beginners being
seldom taken out and coached in tubs by expert senior men who have
had the benefit of a professional or scientific training, but are put
into a bad four and left to develop themselves as best they may. It
would well repay the club to have a path made alongside the creek and
to get a professional out from home for a year or two to initiate a
high-class style, after which the traditions, once firmly established,
would pass down naturally to succeeding generations of oarsmen.
The coxing is on a par with the rowing. I have seen a length lost at a
corner, the rate of striking reduced by ten a minute and the crew
badly pulled to pieces, through the rudder being hard on when the oars
were in the water.
After all, skill in rowing is but a question of degree and of no vital
importance in a place so isolated from other rowing centres as is
Shanghai, while the club is certainly one of the best to get into on
arriving there, especially for youths, as plenty of good, open-air
exercise can thus be obtained in the society of strong, healthy-minded
men.
If hills or mountains be within easy distance bungalows are there
built, to which most ladies and children retire for the hot weather,
the men snatching hasty visits when business allows them to leave the
settlement. At one place down south such bungalows are built on a tiny
island four or five miles out at sea, and there it is never very hot,
while in the evenings it is delightful to bathe, stroll along the
sands, or sit with the pilot on watch up by the old ruined fort, where
you can see rays from the lighthouses flashing far, far across the
waves, watch the lights of steamers as they pass beneath and listen to
the cadenced throbbing of their screws. For those residing in Central
China a sanatorium has lately sprung up near Kiukiang, at Kuling, a
valley some 4,000 feet above sea-level in the Lushan mountains, which
overlook the Yangtse on one side and the Poyang lake on the other.
This valley was unknown to Europeans a few years ago, but has now the
appearance of a country town, there being probably a hundred and fifty
well-appointed bungalows strongly built of stone quarried on the spot,
a church, shops, laundry and a network of roads and paths.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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