Boikoo tarkbei or Daur hockey is a game similar to

field hockey Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting c ...

street hockey Street hockey (also known as shinny, dek hockey, ball hockey, road hockey) is a collection of team sport variants played outdoors either on foot or with wheeled skates, using a either a ball or puck designed for play on flat, dry surfaces. The o ...

. It has been played for about 1,000 years by the Daur people, an ethnic group from Inner Mongolia, China. The game involves teams of men playing a ball-like knob of

apricot An apricot (, ) is a fruit, or the tree that bears the fruit, of several species in the genus ''Prunus''. Usually, an apricot is from the species '' P. armeniaca'', but the fruits of the other species in ''Prunus'' sect. ''Armeniaca'' are also ...

root (''in lieu'' of a ball) with long wooden branches (''in lieu'' of sticks). At night, the game is played with a

felt Felt is a textile material that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing fibers together. Felt can be made of natural fibers such as wool or animal fur, or from synthetic fibers such as petroleum-based acrylic or acrylonitrile or wood ...

-covered ball that is set alight. A game is reported to last for two periods of roughly 15 minutes. Poolie tarkbei is the Daur version of

polo Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small ha ...

. Boikoo and poolie are two popular game among Daurs. Some Daurs believe the Daur term ''boikoo'' and ''poolie'' was originated from Chinese term ''buqiu'' ( budaqiu or buqiu was a popular game in

Tang China The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdom ...

) and Tibetan term ''polon'', and deny the Khitan origin of Daurs. Others believe the Daur boikoo was originated from the Khitan hockey.http://www.dawoer.com/bbs/dispbbs.asp?BoardID=15&ID=48835 When Western field hockey was introduced to China, it was taken up enthusiastically by the Daurs, whose affinity for the game has helped China to improve its global standing in field hockey. At the

2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and also known as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 Nat ...

, a third of the Chinese men's field hockey team was from Morin Dawa, a city in the Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner in Inner Mongolia.

References

Ball games Variations of hockey Sports originating in China {{Mongolia-stub