Beikou Tarikebei, also called Daur hockey, means stick with curved root in the Daur language. While the sport is similar to field or street hockey, Beikou has been played for over 1000 years. The Daur people are the descendants of the Khitan nomads who founded the Liao Dynasty. Like the Mongols, they were excellent at horse riding and archery and had a particular affinity for wrestling and beikou. The Daurs, one of China’s smallest ethnic minorities with about 100,000 people, is located in Inner Mongolia, China. They speak and read Mandarin but also speak their own unwritten language. While the game is very popular with the Daur people, the rest of China does not play it. As a result, Beikou gives the Daur people a sense of identity separate from the rest of the country. Children are trained early on, and some become valuable members of the Chinese national field hockey team. However, the game is primarily recreational for adults, and people will play it at festivals or celebrations.

The game involves two teams using long sticks (about a meter long) or branches to hit a pulie ball back and forth to score a goal. The sticks are called tarikebei, and modern games use carved wooden sticks with a curve at the end that closely resembles a field hockey stick. Older versions of the sticks would have been made of branches that preferably had a curve to allow for better control. The pulie, about the size of a baseball, can be made of different materials. Still, the most common is the knob of an apricot root, but it can also be a hand-carved ball made of Mongolian Oak. A hairball made from cattle hair (or wild animal hair) can be a quick substitute when neither is readily available. There are even accounts that the ball could be made of bone.

When the game is played at night, the ball can is covered with felt and set on fire! Soaked in flammable liquid (like pine resin), other fabric balls are used since they last longer. Another way to create the Beikou fireball is to compact hardened white mushrooms into a sphere. Still, the center is left hollow, and then it is filled with flammable pine resin. Interestingly, there is a rich history of people playing with fire, whether in the game pelota Purepecha from Mesoamerica or Sepak Bola Api (Fireball) from Indonesia.

A Beikou game is two periods of roughly 15 minutes each. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins. Beikou is a recreational game, so the number of players, rule sets, and field size may differ depending on what is agreed upon before the game. The standard field length is about 50 meters, and the teams should have an equal number of players. In some renditions, the game is said to have a goal net at each end of the playing area. Most accounts mention that one simply needs to pass the ball over the opposing team’s back boundary line to score a point. Both versions have a goalie, the only player who can make contact with the ball with their hands and feet.

The Molidawa Daur Cultural Association continues the practice of playing Beikou with traditional clothing from long ago. Their traditional uniforms consist of “boots, silk pantaloons, long silk robes belted with a sash, and a Daur hat that looks a little like a bishop’s miter.” The game tends to be more physical than traditional field hockey, and since the game is played mainly for fun, games are filled with shouting and laughter. You will not see any players wearing protective gear when they play with the fireball. I wonder if this discourages the goalie from stopping the ball with their hands or feet.

Some believe the Daur term boikoo may have come from a Chinese game
called bu da qui, which was popular during northern China’s Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). There were also similarities to another sport called Jiju, an ancient polo-like game. Bu da qui changed enough over time that a new name emerged, and this sport would be called beikou. It was primarily the Daur people who continued to play this game as it fell out of favor with the rest of the country. Another popular theory is that Daur boikoo could have originated from Khitan hockey.

When the British version of field hockey came to China, the Daurs immediately became some of the best players in China due to their similarities with their games. They had been playing for centuries, so it was no wonder they quickly became so good. Molidawa is where the best players in the area are sent for hockey development programs. The local Molidawa team has won five of the last ten national championships. The national team used to consist of only players from Molidawa. In the 2008 Olympics, five players, or almost a third of the team, come from Molidawa, with two from the same elementary school. Proportionally this is unbelievable since there are only 100,000 Daur people in a country of 1.4 billion! The Daur people represent only .00007 percent of the country’s population and are a third of the national team! The Daur people are incredibly proud of their players who make it to international competition, representing their small part of China to the whole world.

Materials: 

·      A large play area (gym or outside)

·      A soft dodgeball

·      Hockey sticks

·      Cones, rubber disc dots, or long jump ropes to make the boundary lines

·      Hockey nets

o   Depends on which version you will play, but this material is not required.

Minimum Number of Students Needed: This game could be played with as few as four students but would be much more fun with an entire class.

Age: All ages with specific accommodations