A Study on Sports Ideas in the Northern Song Dynasty in China

Abstract

This study examine the impacts of sports thoughts in the Northern Song Dynasty on physical education and sports of present China, Specifically, it investigated sports cultures and thoughts in the Northern Song Dynasty. This study concludes the Northern Song Dynasty has sports cultures of Cuju, horse ball, water swing, and martial arts. Recently, Kaifeng City, Henan Province reproduced and revived the splendid cultures and thoughts of the Northern Song Dynasty as they were to become the representative tourist site of China. In sports culture, too, elementary, middle, and high schools accepted sports played in the Northern Song Dynasty as sports events, which brought about a positive effect that revived sports in the present combined with traditions in the past. The sport thought of the Northern Song Dynasty is the discourse of cultivation. Northern Song five wise men argued that mental self-cultivation and spiritual self-cultivation would be most important for man. The impacts of the sport thought of the Northern Song Dynasty, the ‘ discourse of cultivation ’ on modern sports are as follows. Meditation, yoga, mindfulness practice, qi practice, mind control, and image training can be said to be the modern discourse of self-cultivation.