When you think of football stars, you may immediately think of Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar; when it comes to the World Cup, you may also think of Brazil, Germany, Italy. As a national event once every four years, every World Cup will attract many fanatical fans to go crazy. On a hot midsummer day, everyone stayed up all night, strung on strings, drinking cold night beers while cheering for every goal.
However, this kind of fan behavior is not exclusive to this era, as early as when football was still called "Keju", there were a large number of ancestors who were "obsessed" with it!
At the beginning of 2004, FIFA confirmed through various examinations that the origin of football was China, and its predecessor was "Keju".
In May 2006, Keju was officially inscribed on the List of National Intangible Cultural Heritage. The earliest record of it can be found in the "History of Su Qin Lie", in the historical event of Su Qin lobbying King Xuan of Qi. When Su Qin described the local scenery of Linzi, he once mentioned Keju: "Linzi is very rich and practical, and its people are all blowing, drumming, and bowing."
In the "Taiping Preview", there is also a record of the origin of Keju: "Keju, it is rumored that the Yellow Emperor made ... If the military is left alone, it must be bowed. It can be seen that as early as the Yellow Emperor period or the Warring States period, Keju has existed. Initially, it was not entirely used for entertainment, but for training the physical fitness and skills of soldiers.
In the Han Dynasty, as a "super fan", Gaozu Liu Bang gave full play to his privileges as an emperor, vigorously promoted Keju, and developed his hobby into a professional and mature sport.
He built a professional keju field inside the imperial palace, surrounded by walls and stands, and called it "Ju castle". During the game, it is divided into two teams, each team has 12 players, and the winner is determined by the number of starters from both sides.
At that time, the ball used was still solid, and when dribbling, it was not light and flexible enough because of its heavy weight, but at this time, it basically had the prototype of modern football. After Liu Bang, there were also many emperors in the Han Dynasty who liked to play football, such as Liu Che, the Emperor of Han Dynasty, and Liu Xiao, the Emperor of Hancheng, who often made literary attendants improvise "Keju Fu" to help entertain.
Because of the popularity of Keju, the Han Dynasty also specially compiled the book "Twenty-five Articles of Keju", which is also the earliest professional book on sports in China. When Ban Gu compiled the Book of Han and Yiwenzhi, he listed it as a military book, which belonged to the military book for training soldiers' skills, but in the end, it was lost.
With the development of the times, the progress of social productivity and technology, the production of the ball used in Keju is also constantly improving. It was not until the Tang Dynasty that craftsmen began to replace the previous materials with animal bladders. The bladder is filled with gas, and then, using eight pieces of leather, it is finely stitched. At this time, the balls made not only became lighter, but also bouncy, more similar to modern footballs.
Because of the improvement of the ball, the rules and methods of Keju have also undergone some changes, making Keju more entertaining.
The ball can be played higher, so the goal is set on two bamboo poles with more than three feet. In terms of rules, during the Han Dynasty, the members of the two sides were directly opposed, but physical contact was inevitably rough.
In the Tang Dynasty, there was a goal in the center of the field, and the two teams were on one side, not directly opposed, and the winner was the one with the largest number of shots. At that time, Tang Taizong and Tang Xuanzong were very fond of watching keju competitions, not to mention the upward and downward effects, as far as keju itself was concerned, few people could resist its charm. Therefore, the tang dynasty officials and officials were addicted to it for a while. At the same time, Keju was no longer the exclusive domain of the nobility and the army, and after this movement spread, people often took pleasure in it. For example, Du Fu described in "Qingming" - "Ten years of keju will be far away, and the customs of swinging are the same."
It can be seen that keju was common in society at that time.
However, it is worth mentioning that at this time, women's keju also began to appear, but they did not aim at shooting, but with the high kick, the trick, and the beautiful kick. After the Yuan Dynasty, keju became an outdoor sport loved by the whole people, and women's keju became more common. The Ming Dynasty painter Du Yan's "Lady Keju Diagram" depicts the scene of the lady playing with the bow in the garden.
However, unlike modern women's football, at that time, women's keju was mainly performing, so the requirements for women's body, appearance, and skills were relatively high, so that women's keju was also called "beauty keju".
As Ming Qianfu described in keju:
"Keju was on the spot in February, and the fairy wind blew down the two Chan Juan.
Sweat stained flour face flowers with dew, dust moth eyebrow willow with smoke.
The green sleeves are low hanging from the jade shoots, and the red skirt is obliquely trailing the golden lotus.
Several times, he was powerless and hated to kill the beautiful teenager of Chang'an. ”
It can be seen that the sense of strength displayed by women's keju and men's keju is completely different, and there is another beautiful style. It's just a pity that after five generations, women's foot binding began to prevail, and women's keju gradually declined.
In the Song Dynasty, the production process of Keju ball was once again broken, forming a standardized production process, the surface of the ball changed from eight pieces in the Tang Dynasty to twelve pieces, the raw materials were cooked nitrate yellow leather, and the solid materials were lightly cut; the process was densely stitched, and the corners of the line were never exposed. When each ball is completed, it weighs exactly twelve or twelve, and the shape must be "broken and rounded.".
Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty, was an avid fan, and his ball skills were also famous, especially good at "white play", which can be described as flexible and changeable, "the ball moves at will", and even, can "not fall all day". The Northern Song Dynasty painter Su Hanchen once painted the scene of Zhao Kuangyin's Keju, and finally, he achieved the "Song Taizu Keju Diagram", the original of which is stored in the Shanghai Museum.
The Beijing Museum also has a copy of this painting, the overall color of the picture is light and elegant, in the picture Zhao Kuangyin and his brother Zhao Guangyi Keju, Shi Shouxin, Zhao Pu, Dang Jin, Chu Zhaofu and other four founding ministers, watching from the side, the lively scene atmosphere is vivid. During the Northern Song Dynasty, in addition to Zhao Kuangyin, Zhao Yao, the Emperor huizong of the Song Dynasty, was also a lover of Keju.
However, compared with himself, gao qi, the official who accompanied him to Keju, was more famous, not only because of his superb skills, but also because he won the favor of the emperor in one fell swoop with the "strange skill" of Keju. Jumping from a small people in the city to becoming the commander of the temple in front of the temple, it can be said that the carp jumped the dragon gate, and once the momentum was gained, the scenery was unique. At the same time, whether it was in the Northern Song Dynasty or Lin'an in the Later Southern Song Dynasty, there were a group of professional Keju personnel gathered in the city, who would regularly perform kicking performances at the Keju banquets in the palace, and make a living from this, and count them as high-status personnel.
Whether it is the legendary deeds of civilian counterattacks or the birth of professional Keju performers, these are invisibly improving the status of Keju in people's hearts, stimulating the development of Keju, coupled with the progress of Keju production technology, all of which has caused the second climax of football development.
By the time of the Southern Song Dynasty, the rules and regulations of Keju were more sound.
At that time, the players formed the Bona Health Cup (equivalent to today's Chinese Super League), and the player team named it "Qi Yun She". This professional Keju team is the earliest single sports association in China. At the same time, the "Qiyun Society" also formulated ten important rules of the field, such as humility, sincerity, respect, and gentleness, and ten player prohibitions such as alcohol, excessive speech, rampant madness, and gambling.
Not only that, at this time, the position of each player also has a clear division of labor. In "Past Events of Wulin", there is a list of the earliest "first starts" in history. The positions of the thirty-two men who will participate in the construction of the ball are indicated one by one:
Sixteen people in the left army: Zhang Jun, The Head of the Ball, Wang Pi of the Stilt Ball, Zhu Xuan, Shi Ze of the Head, Ding Yi of the Left Pole Net, Zhang Lin of the Right Pole Net, Hu Chun of Sanli, etc.;
Sixteen people in the right army: Li Zheng, the head of the ball, Zhu Zhen of the stilt ball, Zhu Xuan, Zhang Ning, the deputy zhang ning, Xu Bin of the left pole net, Wang Yong of the right pole net, and Chen Jun of Sanli.
At this point, the earliest team charter in our country has begun to take shape.
Resources:
["History of Su Qinlie", "Taiping Qing Dialect", "The Origin of Football: Keju"]