Locking horns with tradition

BULL WRESTLING: MASTERS, STUDENTS STRUGGLE TO CONTINUE WITH 600-YEAR-OLD ‘GUANNIU’

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In a half-covered amphitheatre in eastern China, 20-year-old Wang Shuangshuang locked his shoulder against the neck of a bull, grappling with its horns to force it to its knees.

Chinese bull wrestling, or ‘guanniu’, dates back over 600 years but remains a little-known sport domestically, let alone internationally.

Students like Wang sporadically sign up for competitions, but a lack of funding and exposure means few adopt it as a full-time career, leaving it facing an existential struggle.

‘Our heritage right now is neither dead nor alive,’ said 72-year-old master Han Haihua in Jiaxing, a city just south of Shanghai.

‘To bring in talent, you need money... I’m not bragging - give me 30 or 50 kids, train them here for three years and I’ll make the whole world know about guanniu.’

Guanniu was brought to Jiaxing by Hui Muslim migrants and evolved from a herding skill into a folk competition.

Unlike Spanish bullfighting, Chinese wrestlers use no weapons and do not kill the animal at the end of the bout.

Instead, they seize the bull’s horns and try to bring it to the ground, and win extra points if they can jump onto its back or crawl underneath its belly.