With Help of N.F.L., Flag Football Grows in China
He Jiaqi huddled with his five-man flag football team. The 14-year-old Jiaqi, a 110-pound Chinese quarterback, diagrammed a play with his fingers on his center’s chest as the other three players bunched around.
In a near-whisper, he ordered, “Zhong jian jiao cha — liang bian zhi xian,” then flicked both index fingers to show how his wide receivers should streak for the end zone.
He wanted the center and the guard to run crossing patterns, with the two wideouts going long — heading straight for the power-plant smokestack that loomed just beyond the schoolyard on the northeastern rim of Beijing.
This is sandlot football, Chinese style. The lingo is different, but the play is an old favorite.
“Last season we had 46 plays in the book, but this year I’ve reduced it to six,” said Tang Haiyan, the coach who supervised practice on a green-painted asphalt playground, the team’s home field at Shoushi Shiyan school, where 2,300 students attend the elementary grades through high school.
He added, “I believe in technique, fundamentals.”
This is not just any flag football team. Shoushi Shiyan has won the Chinese school flag championship three of the last four years, and will be favored again when the brief season begins in May. There are 1,400 students who play flag football in China, scattered on teams in eight cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Flag football in China is being promoted by the N.F.L., which has persuaded the Chinese government’s education bureau to introduce light forms of football to a few schools.
The N.F.L.’s big pitch to China comes Aug. 9 in Beijing when the New England Patriots face the Seattle Seahawks in the China Bowl, a preseason game that is expected to draw 40,000 fans at Workers Stadium.
The N.F.L. has been training four Chinese athletes to be kickers, hoping they can play in the game, which takes place the day after Beijing reaches the year-to-go mark for the 2008 Olympics.
But football is a tough sell in Beijing.
Unlike basketball, which has been played for 100 years in China, or Formula One racing or baseball — popular in Chinese-speaking Taiwan — football has virtually no presence, except for a few converts like the coach Tang. He attended an Oakland Raiders camp last summer, and his coaching outfit is head-to-toe Raiders — black sweats with a silver shield on his chest.
But he knows football clashes with his culture.
“It will be difficult for football to become popular, because Chinese still prefer solving problems with their mind rather than physical strength,” he said. “Chinese will think the physical contact is too brutal.
“This is because they don’t understand the sport, the tactics. If more Chinese get to know the sport, they will become fans.”
Felix Wong, the N.F.L.’s spokesman in Beijing, said the league recognized the problem. Wong grew up in Oakland, Calif., the son of Chinese immigrants.
“We are careful here; we are mindful that parents would not like to see hard tackling,” he said. “We have to understand the cultural acceptability of this.
“The flag game has no contact, so it’s not perceived as physically tough. The purpose is to show off the rules of the game in China, starting at the grass roots. You’ve got to start somewhere. This is the first time for the Olympics in China, so why not American football?”
Growing up, Wong said he taught his father, James, to understand an N.F.L. game.
Wong said: “It’s like Chinese chess, I told my dad. You’re encroaching on enemy territory and your goal is to try to capture the commander and chief.”
In Chinese, the game is known as “Mei shi gan lan qiu,” which can mean “American-style rugby,” or “American-style olive-shaped ball,” depending on the translation.
A touchdown is a “da zhen.” A wobbly pass is a “chou qiu” — literally a bad performance. An interception is a “qiang duan.”
The quarterback is the “si fen wei” — the one-fourth position.
Instead of shouting “hut, hut” on the snap, the quarterback chants “qiu, qiu” — ball, ball.
“In a country of 1.3 billion, we figure there must be some good quarterbacks,” Tang said. “I’d say Chinese make good quarterbacks, because we are intelligent people.”
Bai Yuxin, another quarterback on the team, figures the game can meld Confucian and American values.
“This sport is full of passion, and it uses the combination of strength and intelligence,” Bai said.
“I’ve changed since I started playing American football. I used to be very weak, but now my mentality is more solid. I use what I have learned in American football to improve my study. And I want to let the American football spirit guide my life.”
Even Lui Yandi, the 50-year-old principal at Shoushi Shiyan school, has taken quickly to the foreign game, seeing it as a possible remedy for social ills.
“It’s very competitive and physical, and the kids need to be strong,” she said. “In my day, I played Ping-Pong. Now China has a one-child policy, you know, so there is the chance we are spoiling children. This game will toughen them up.”
Even if it’s only flag football.
