Catch exciting sports action in Chinese bars
Competitive ping pong captures Chinese sports fans’ attention in Beijing.
Walk into a Chinese bar and chances are you’ll join other sports fan watching a popular, compelling, competitive sport - like ping pong or badminton.
China takes its sports seriously, and ever since the US Ping Pong team went to China in the early 1970s, the West has seen just how deeply Chinese care about their teams. Go into any bar in Beijing that doesn’t cater to foreigners and you’re likely to see ping pong, and that other perennial favorite, badminton, on the big screen.
That is, unless you go into a bar that’s also popular with foreigners. Then soccer, or as they call it, football, and rugby take center stage. These sports lure untold numbers of British, Irish, Australian, South African and Kiwi expats to cheer for their teams.
In winter, hockey draws expats from the Northern Hemisphere to watch games, particularly Canadians, Swedes and Russians. During the Winter Olympics, expect the bars to be packed, especially during the quarter and semi-finals and the final game for the gold and silver medals.
A foreigner in Buddy’s bar watches the screen as New Zealand’s All Blacks rugby team decimates Canada 63-0.
During American football season, big games, like the Superbowl, will draw big foreigner crowds and a number of bars will open in the early morning hours and offer breakfast - after all, a night game on the East Coast or Midwest will start in the early morning in Beijing.
The same goes for college games, and occasionally Alabama’s Crimson Tide shows up on a bar’s big screens.
Until this week, after Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey tweeted his support for protesters in Hong Kong and ignited a firestorm against the Rockets and the NBA, professional basketball was all the rage in China. NBA games were popular during hoops season and many Chinese young people sported NBA gear.
Now broadcasts of NBA games are suspended in China and online retailers have pulled NBA merchandise off virtual shelves. We’ll have to see how this situation plays out.
