If it's good enough for Prince Charles, it's good enough for China's nouveau riche, who regard polo as a more challenging, dangerous and exclusive pastime than golf, writes CLIFFORD COONANin Beijing
IT’S PROBABLY NOT what Karl Marx and Mao Zedong had in mind when they were imagining the great socialist revolution, but polo is experiencing a burst of popularity among China’s second-generation nouveau riche. While the first generation of rich Chinese is sticking to its golf clubs, the children are on the chase for something more exclusive that better suits their needs.
Enter polo. For many years it was the despised pastime of the capitalist running dogs, but now it is the sport of choice for rich young people who want something more physically challenging than 18 holes of golf.
“We call polo a gentleman’s sport,” says Xia Yang, the founder of Beijing Sunny Times Polo Club, one of dozens of such places to spring up around the country in the past few years. “Since we don’t have a nobility in China, we can train ourselves to become gentlemen.”
These gentlemen and ladies are enjoying the vanity factor of playing a rich man’s sport in a society where wealth is becoming increasingly important.
Local spectators readily embrace the sport’s traditions, such as treading in the divots at half-time, which involves stamping back into the ground displaced pieces of turf, though they need some instruction.
Introducing this kind of sport does not happen overnight. The polo shirt has caused a sensation in the Chinese fashion world as a sign of affluence and influence, but for those eager to wield power, playing the game itself is a badge of having arrived.
Chinese fans are quick to point out that polo is the real sport of kings, not horse racing. They are distant cousins, however, thanks to breeding and stable issues.
Xia started a horse-racing business, but a ban on gambling in the country meant that was going nowhere. While watching television he came up with the idea of turning his business around by starting a polo club.
“I saw on CCTV [the state broadcaster] that Prince Charles plays polo, and this inspired me,” says Xia. “Polo would be a perfect way to grow my business.
“Polo is not an unattainable sport. It is a kind of health and fashion sport. It needs you to be brave enough, and needs you to have a very good personality. In Sunny Polo club there are around 30 members, and almost all of them are successful.”
There are many theories about where polo was invented. The Chinese say the game first came to China 1,800 years ago from Iran initially before also entering through Turfan, in Xinjiang. They say the word polo comes from pulu, the Tibetan word for ball.
Despite its eastern origins the sport died out during the Cultural Revolution, though it was probably on the wane before that.
Now Polo is reeling in those with cash to spend again. Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club and Hotel, which opened last month, has two international-sized polo fields and stable facilities for 150 horses. It is the country’s largest club.
The opening game brought professional players from England, Australia and New Zealand to Tianjin, as well as polo fans from across the country and abroad.
“Chinese people thrive on novelty and relish the intensity of competition and the thrill of intense sports,” says Paul Stevens, the Englishman who runs the club. “Golf has been around for quite a while now and has become somewhat passe. Polo is poised to become the new and improved golf.”
He says the two most important things to Chinese people are family and money, and polo is tied in with both of those concepts.
Tianjin is 150km northeast of Beijing, just half an hour away by bullet train. The club is hoping to capitalise on this proximity to lure Beijing’s elite to a city increasingly part of the capital’s metropolitan area.
“An equestrian sport fits with a new generation of Chinese seeking to appear global around the planet,” says Stevens.
Only those with plenty of spare cash can get involved in playing the sport. At the Tianjin club, for example, membership is reportedly priced from 380,000 yuan (€42,500) for social members to 10 million yuan (€1.1 million) for patrons who own teams.
Polo is the main focus of the club but as well as taking members out on horseback the Metropolitan Club offers a lot of other things to do, such as fine dining at one of its 10 restaurants, or spa treatments.
Liu Shilai, one of China’s few internationally recognised polo players, set up Tangren Polo and Equestrian Club in Beijing earlier this month. “Polo attracts me because it is one of the most difficult sports, with its combination of wisdom, courage, team co-operation and trust,” he says.
He is aiming to sign up 20 members in the next three years, who will each pay a fee of a million yuan (€110,000) for the privilege.
