The story of Taiwanese shuttleball

Because most of the popular sports played in the international games were all invented by foreigners, Ms. Li has started the idea of invention of a Taiwanese sport when she studied in university.

The reason why she chose shuttlecock as the basic form for her new sports was that she found the students were lack of physical balance and playing shuttlecock can increase body flexibility as well as physical balance. However it would be boring to play shuttlecock alone, so she invented a new games for kicking shuttlecock with a group of people.

Ms. Li started the new sports with her class in school. It was a special class consisting of students with low academic achievement. In order to provide more culture learning and physical activities, she asked students to play shuttlecock in the badminton court, kicking the shuttlecock back and forth with each other after school. However, soon she found that it was not easy to play shuttlecock within a group, because it was too small. So she tried to revise the form and it gradually turned into the one we saw now— a round ball on the bottom and feathers on top.

Ms. Li mentioned that because Taiwanese government did not pay attention to the development of the sports in the country, they didn’t have much resource. She even spent her own salary on making shuttleball more popular. She wished that the government would realize the importance of sports and help them more in the future.

The changing of shuttleball

Taiwan is one of the founders of the international shuttleball organization. The shuttleballs played in China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Cambodia is very similar in appearance. They all look like shuttlecock but still have difference in some ways. The feathers of Chinese shuttleball are made of goose feathers. It is more expensive; The Hong Kong shuttleball is more durable; the Japanese shuttleball is leather ball with ostrich feathers, and the size is the same with a tennis ball. The German one on the other side is smaller. In order to make shuttleball more popular, Ms. Li used to suggest to make some revision. For example, it should be bigger in size, so that it can be easily seen during the games. However, it she didn’t make it. And it is one of the reasons why fewer and fewer people play it now.

Conclusion

Lian Lin, the teacher who also accompanied us had the interview with Ms. Li, said she was touched after knowing the story of the shuttleball. It was the passion and concern toward the country and the students that made Ms. Li invent this sport and invest a lot of money and time to make it popular. The teacher suggested us to finish the project as soon as possible and help make shuttleball well known in the world. Actually, we also thought of make it popular by publishing a book. Ms. Li herself suggested that the better way to promote it was to introduce it through cartoon, since many students love watching it. However, it needs money and support to do either a book or a cartoon and that is always the biggest problem of all.

Reflection

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Ms. Li talked about Taiwan and China, Asia and Europe, shuttleball and takraw in this interview. We did learn a lot from her. Besides shuttleball, she also encouraged us to be a righteous person-- always insists on doing the right things and things you believe, and never give up.

Reference:

1: Itsports News (93.3.30)

http://www.ltsports.com.tw/main/newsec.asp?no=42976

2. shuttlecock-world organization

http://www.shuttlecock-world.org/