China Archery

Beijing TopSpeed Archery Club & Beijing Archery Studio

Beijing Archery Studio is in the business of marketing archery equipment. Founded in 1996, the Archery Studio has been a retailer for many foreign brands of archery equipment in China. With a full-size bow press,shooting machine, automatic speed measurement device and other specialized equipment, it is the largest professional archery equipment vendors in China.

The Top Speed Archery club was established this year under majority shareholder Mr. Yin Lee (Pinyin: Li-yin). The 850 sq. meter club facilities include 29 shooting lanes, as well as lane monitors, security monitoring system, shooting lane dividers and other safety equipment. The club also maintains a special facility on the outskirts of Beijing (nearly 2 sq. km area) for outdoor field archery and 3D shooting. The club’s management team consists of national team members, the national champion, professional coaches and other professional staff. Mr. Xu Kaicai, former coach of China’s national team and long-time promoter of archery in China, is the club’s honorary advisor. Meng Fan’ai (former national team leader) and other archery veterans have also given generous support to the club. In terms of scale and technological sophistication, the Top Speed Archery Club is currently the largest and the most advanced archery club in China.
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Source: Global Times
Photos: Courtesy of Ju’an Horseback Archery Club
By Gao Fumao

It’s the last thing you expect, out among the truck fixers, the bathroom tile stores and the excavators for hire. This is Daxing, Beijing’s industrial southern backside. Not pretty, so where the hell are the archers, the men on horseback we’ve come to see?

Down a dusty side road we went, past yards of steel and car scrap. Still no horses, no arrows flying, though suddenly there are sandpits and some scrubland, which could conceivably hide bowmen, I’m thinking.

And then our car is waved into a yard, into the little-known world of Chinese horseback archery. Welcome to the Ju’an Horseback Archery Club. On the east bank of the faded Yongding River, a businessman turned equestrian Chen Liang is helping lead a revival of Chinese archery tradition around his small riding club, where locals learn to ride for 120 yuan ($17) a 40-minute class.

Chinese empires have depended on the skill of the legions that defended the national territory from the backs of ponies. Today instead of infantrymen defending the frontiers, local bowmen are a small but dedicated core inspired by the ancient Chinese arching tradition.

Ju’an, founded in August 2009, is as much about reviving horseback archery in Beijing, but it’s also a code “a living attitude,” explained Chen, tanned and wiry but with steel-gray hair making him look older than his 37 years. Horseback archery promotes in Ju’an members a “natural way of living…because people spend too much time and money on houses.”

Opposite the small prefabricated clubhouse, two horses move around a ring-shaped arena. If you’re good enough, as you canter around you shoot arrows inside the iron railings at circular target boards of concentric yellow and red discs. As he canters in circles, bow in one hand, Chen is clearly in care and awe of his steed, Long Fei, a dark five-year-old gelding and one of 10 horses kept in stables on the site.
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BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhuanet) — China’s first folk Tibetan teenager archery team was set up Monday in Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, according to tibet.cn.

Designed to protect and carry forward the Tibetan archery culture, the team consists of 14 girls and 36 boys at and above grade four in primary schools.

It is also the first time for girls in China’s Tibetan-inhabited areas to be included in this sport and encouraged to master archery skills and take part in related traditional activities.

Meanwhile, the Qinghai Provincial Sports Federation has financed the team with specified equipment as required by the International Archery Association, in a bid to help this local sport be integrated with modern athletics better.

By Zhang Mingyu