Beijing attractions

National Sports Museum of China

The National Sports Museum of China is located at the southeast of the National Olympic Center in the Asian Games Village. It was built in September 1990. It has a collection of 4,700 exhibition items that all about China's sports history and more than 5,000 old photographs. It is a miniature of the history of sports development in China thousands of years before present.

For ancient people, sports games were mostly developed from their daily productive work. Stone ball dance has been a sports activity about 100,000 years ago. It was belonged to the Old Stone Age. At first the ball was very big and coarse, and around 4800 BC the ball had become much smaller and lighter. The dance activity was to be performed during festival celebrations or sacrificial rituals. 

In the Qin and Han Dynasties, China had developed many kinds of magnificent sports activities for public appreciations, such as "jumping pellets", "flying sword", "equestrianism" and so on. In Shandong Province, there were some stone tablets that carved the images of ancient sports activities which were accompanied by local acrobatic actions and flamboyant music of that era.

In the Western Han Dynasty, Chinese Martial Arts had begun to develop. This has been testified by a diagram called "Introduction" that depicts the whole set of boxing exercise movements. Sumo wrestling was an important festive activity in the Tang Dynasty. It can be seen in ink stone carvings and the ancient murals in Mogao Grottoes. The go game had already been flourished in the Sui Dynasty. The excavated magnetic chessboards are the obvious evidence.

Since mid-nineteenth century, Westernized sports activities have been introduced to China. Basketball and volleyball had something to do with introduction of the Christianity to China. The historically famous football association, the South China in Hong Kong, had represented China to match against foreign teams before the World War II.

After China's Liberation, the sports scene has been developed fast, especially in gymnastics, table tennis, and later volleyball and weight lifting. The great successes done by Chinese athletes in recent Olympic Games have made China to become a strong sports power in the world.

Address : Anding Road (安定路), Beijing, China.

Transportation : bus route 108, 18, 803 or 328, alight at the Eastern Gate of the National Olympic Center or Xiaoguan (小关).

Opening hours : 8:30am – 4:30pm daily

Admission : 10 RMB.