TRADITIONAL HORSE RACING IN ETHNIC CHINA: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY STUDIES AND THE NEW CHALLENGES

Abstract

This article aims to present a critical review of one hundred years of academic writings on the traditional horse racing of China’s ethnic minorities. In today’s China, besides its majority group, namely the Han Chinese, there are 55 ethnic minorities long inhabited in the country’s hinterland and frontiers, all of whom have their own equestrian tradition. Accordingly, while the horse racing in China has a history of longue durée that could be traced back to times as early as some Stone Age settlements as evidenced by archaeological excavations, it is not altogether homogenous but rather an enormously complex phenomenon full of cultural-ethnic diversity. Based on the data retrieved from the CNKI and VIP databases, this paper explicates that modern scientific studies of Chinese ethnic horse racing started with the Mongolian and the Tibetan groups in the 1920s when anthropology and sport science were first introduced to China; and ethnographic writings and other publications of various forms have ever since been continuously brought out, with multiple disciplines involved. Drawing on bibliometric methods along with the techniques of citation analysis and content analysis, this paper conducts a thorough study of pertinent monographs and edited volumes, journal articles and book chapters, and degree theses, through which research hotspots, research fronts and main themes are identified, crucial arguments and critical viewpoints are highlighted; while the centurial progress and its discontent are recognized, new challenges that current and future research may face are also discussed with some tentative recommendations to be put forward.