{"id":14198,"date":"2019-05-06T13:19:04","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T05:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=14198"},"modified":"2021-10-15T12:12:10","modified_gmt":"2021-10-15T04:12:10","slug":"catch-me-if-you-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2019\/05\/catch-me-if-you-can\/","title":{"rendered":"Catch Me if You Can"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kabaddi – a sport that brings Hongkongers of different ethnicities together<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Bonita Wong<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKabaddi is in the blood of everybody,\u201d says Jazz, former\nprofessional Kabaddi player from Punjab in India. He simply cannot hide his\nlove for the competitive contact sports. He loves it so much that he is trying\nto form a professional team in Hong Kong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Kabaddi? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jazz says the rules of Kabaddi are so simple that a\nfive-year-old child can easily learn how to play. Originated from ancient India\nand South Asian countries, such as Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Kabaddi is\nan easy-to-learn and crowd-pleasing contact sport, but it remains unknown to\nmany people in Hong Kong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kabaddi has been an official event in the Asian Games since\n1990. The World Cup Kabaddi 2019 will be held in Melaka in Malaysia from July\n27 to August 4 this year. A total of 32 men\u2019s teams and 24 women\u2019s teams,\nincluding representatives from Hong Kong, will participate in the tournament. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To play Kabaddi, all you need is a flat and rectangular\narea. Similar to a badminton court, a Kabaddi court is surrounded by boundary\nlines, with a middle line to indicate the area two teams occupy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dimension of a Kabaddi court<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The match is divided into two halves and each session lasts\nfor 20 minutes. Each team can send seven players onto the field and the two\nteams alternate between raiding and defending. To attack, one player from the\nraiding team runs across the midline to the defending side of the court and tag\nas many opponents as possible to score. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The raider must keep yelling \u201cKabaddi\u201d from the moment he\ncrosses the mid-line until he returns to his own team\u2019s side. If the raider\nfails to do it in one breath, his team scores no points. The more defending\nteam members the raider tags, the more points he scores. But if the defending\nteam can prevent the raider from returning to their original side, the raider\nalso scores no point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Players are sent off when they are tagged, captured, or break a rule, and can be \u201crevived\u201d by eliminating an opposing player. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins. \u201cThe difference of Kabaddi [with other sports] is its high flexibility,\u201d says Ho Yan-yee, a Kabaddi coach. She believes Kabaddi requires both speed and strength. \u201cComparing with basketball or football which have fixed strategies, it is a blend of all sports,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonding the society <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kabaddi United Hong Kong, founded in 2014, aims to promote\nsocial inclusion by introducing Kabaddi. Lo Yuk-kwong, one of the cofounders,\nsays the sport is an active and concrete way to empower ethnic minorities (EM)\nin Hong Kong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lo explains why Kabaddi has been used to help solve the\nsocial inclusion problem. \u201cThere are people who want to help EM, unfortunately\nthey only advocate policy changes, which turns out to be empty talks since it\ncould not help explain why we should not discriminate them,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kabaddi United Hong Kong aims to foster social integration\nand encourage the public to learn more about cultural diversity through the\ngame. Since its inauguration, the group has collaborated with 42 organisations\nand arranged more than 150 Kabaddi workshops with a turnout of over 2,000\nparticipants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has also organised Kabaddi fun days and beginners\u2019\nclasses in the community with the help of its intercultural ambassadors. After\nplaying Kabaddi, participants of different nationalities and ethnicities are\nencouraged to join a sharing session, in which they introduce their beliefs,\nculture, and languages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Promoting culture through sports is not common in Hong Kong.\n\u201cThe major purpose is to integrate Chinese with other ethnic groups. Also, EM\nThey can get very delighted when people in Hong Kong are actually interested in\ntheir sport and culture Lo Yuk-kwong Ho Yan-yee members can also be given job\nopportunities related to Kabaddi,\u201d says Lo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Lo believes career support is not the ultimate\nsolution for EM to integrate into the society. \u201cYou may still get labelled with\nlow-paid or simple jobs,\u201d Lo explains. As the EM are not able to find their\nvalues, they have low satisfaction in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, there are seven to eight EM intercultural\nambassadors working in Kabaddi United Hong Kong. \u201cThey can get very delighted\nwhen people in Hong Kong are actually interested in their sport and culture,\u201d\nhe says. Lo added that there is a change in their identities. \u201cThey can gain\nsatisfaction when they share their culture with Hong Kong people,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kabaddi as a language <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Language is always a barrier when it comes to communication with people from different countries, but Kabaddi is a sport that requires no verbal language at all. It enables people to communicate easily with physical touch. \u201cIf you are [only] learning the fundamentals, it\u2019s very easy to communicate with everyone, whether we have a language barrier or not,\u201d says Royal Sunar, a Nepali intercultural ambassador.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you belong to minority, whether others show it or not,\nyou\u2019re gonna feel you are left out,\u201d he says. Even though he was born and raised\nin Hong Kong, Sunar always reminds himself to stay positive when trying to\ninteract with people of different ethnicities. \u201cWhether I\u2019m understanding them\nor not, I just stay with them and then get to know them,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mutual effort <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Language barriers can only be overcome with collective\nefforts. Wyman Tang Wai-man, adjunct assistant professor of the Department of\nAnthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is grateful that the Hong\nKong Kabaddi Team members have the awareness to translate messages for each\nother in their WhatsApp group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey got the idea that it won\u2019t feel good when you try to\nleave somebody out, and they start to have this kind of sense and take further\nactions,\u201d Tang says. He hopes others can do the same. \u201cNowadays, the biggest\nproblem for Hong Kong Chinese is not to have this kind of awareness. They take\nit for granted,\u201d he adds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tang believes having fun is the key to arouse others\u2019\ninterest in enthic minorties and help them intergrate into Hong Kong mainstream\nsociety. He adds: \u201cBut if we think: \u2018We\u2019re going to play, you\u2019re going to have\nfun,\u2019 then we can create something that is intercultural.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Kabaddi can be played anywhere, anytime.
Photo courtesy of Kabaddi United Hong Kong<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Kabaddi is not just a notch on the belt of social integration. \u201cIt is actually mutual empowerment. It is mutually beneficial,\u201d Tang adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Erica Li<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kabaddi – a relatively unknown sport in Hong Kong – aims to break the barriers between ethnic minorities and local citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1805,836],"tags":[52,1272,1273,338],"class_list":["post-14198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-152","category-lifestyle","tag-ethnic-minorities","tag-kabaddi","tag-social-integration","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14198"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14304,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14198\/revisions\/14304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}