Selection and Athletic Prowess

Abstract

The recent national athletic meet held in Hangchow has demonstrated beyond the peradventure of doubt some of the benign aspects of the effect of natural selection among the Chinese. The result of the meet showed that practically all championships went to athletes coming from marginal areas of the country. The leading position taken by the Cantonese has long been an established fact and the success they achieved this time is no cause for surprise. But in addition to the southerners, we had during the recent meet delegates from Mukden and Harbin whose extremely high attainment was entirely unexpected. The men athletes from the Liaoning province easily took the lead in the field and tract meets; and so did the women athletes from Harbin; and the single fastest running man and woman were found in these two groups respectively. The two fastest long distance runners were again members of the Mukden delegation. Could these be mere happy coincidences? Of course not. One common explanation is that as northerners they are longer-legged, which is evidently true. But not all or even most long-limbed people are swift. Another explanation is that they have undergone more practice, which is not true. For in this matter of physical education as in other things, Mukden and Harbin, both being newly developed centers, cannot be expected to have as much experience as in most large centers inside of Shanhaikwan; and, besides, no amount of practice will make the lame walk. The true explanation is to be found in selection. The Three Eastern Provinces have been for the last few hundred years, at least, the receiving station of active colonization chiefly from the provinces of Shantung and Hopei, where war, pestilence, famine, and the general pressure of population have all along compelled the more energetic, the more farsighted and the more enduring to move out. The descendants of these emigrants or colonists constitute now over 90 % of the population of Manchuria, and it is from these that the athletes represented in the recent meet were picked. When it is remembered that thousands of Shantung colonists reached Harbin or other centers in the extreme north on foot, formerly following the river courses, but now alongside of the railway tracks, and when it is further remembered that they had been for this habit of long-distance hiking invariably nick named pao-tuei (跑腿) or “running legs”, is it any wonder that both the fastest and the most enduring runners should be now found among their progeny? The same general explanation applies to the Cantonese whose migration southward occurred earlier in Chinese history. Many successful candidates in the recent meet, while geographical grouped otherwise, will be found upon inquiry to be Cantonese or northerners in the vicinity of Pei** and Tientsin where richer and more varied life has attracted large numbers from the surrounding countries who would otherwise perhaps have moved farther north beyond the Great Wall just like some of their kinsmen did.

(Originally published in The China Critic, Vol. III, No. 16, April 17, 1930, unsigned; see also “Manchuria as China’s ‘Life Line,’” published in The China Critic Vol. V, No. 32, August 11, 1932)