Oral History and Sport Historians in China

Abstract

It was only in the last decade that oral history began to be practised by Chinese scholars of sport history. Only tens of peer-reviewed journal articles and a couple of monographs have been published so far. Most oral sport history projects were concerned with the heirs of endangered traditional martial arts. This limited focus is a result of the fact that studies of the social and cultural aspects of sport history in which oral methods are more heavily relied upon have gained little momentum in China, coupled with a growing emphasis on preserving indigenous Chinese sports as one of the principal tasks of Chinese sport historians under the current State policies of ‘Cultural Renaissance’. The application of oral history methods is potentially beneficial for both the historical study and development of the inheritance of Chinese martial arts. However, it has been found that the advantages of using oral testimonies have not been significantly demonstrated when compared to studies using archive sources and that the politicized sporting environment is challenging the authenticity of oral sports history. Nonetheless, oral history is still a useful and promising methodological tool, as is now recognized by a growing number of sport historians, and many domains of sport history in China have the potential to engage with oral history.