Talk:Chinese jump rope

Compare with Gummitwist

I assume these are both the same games. Please check this and put them perhaps together. Greetings --Nfu-peng 17:48, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Alternative name: Elastics

This article seems to describe what we, in New Zealand, called Elastics.

61.81.18.1 05:19, 20 October 2005 (UTC) Bruno.

Merge?

This article and Jumpsies seem to be about the same thing. By the way, the game is also played in Romania, and is called "elastic" (hurray for original research :-p) --Urzică (talk) 20:29, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Chinese garter

The name I've heard for this is "Chinese garter". Never heard of "Chinese jump rope". Gronky (talk) 00:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

It's called "Chinese Jump Rope" in California where I grew up, so I'm sure it is in other places as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.13.5.124 (talk) 05:46, 17 April 2015

History, origin?

Came here to learn where this game originated, and was disappointed. Encyclopedic knowledge includes origin stories. Xaxafrad (talk) 21:48, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Well, never mind my previous comment above. I finally came back and read the lead more thoroughly. I must've skipped over the history paragraph because it's indented and looks like a block of quoted text. Xaxafrad (talk) 00:42, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, having checked the source which makes claims about the origin, I find it likely too weak to make a strong claim about the origin. The book is called International games: building skills through multicultural play which is authored by Gayle L. Horowitz (she describes herself as a Health and Physical education teacher for grades 6-12 in a New York School and a teacher who works specifically with children who are immigrants; hence the focus on games from many countries) and published by Human Kinetics a publisher which focuses on resources for teaching physical activities.

While recent versions of the book seem to have a bibliography, it is clearly not intended to be a high rigour academic source (i.e. one that we could reasonably trust about exact origins of all of the games given the broad scope of "67 games from 38 countries." and in fact most of the citations are general research websites.

The only source for the "Chinese Jump Rope" entry is in fact this very Wikipedia page from December 24, 2005 (though it also claims to be current up to 2008). Despite this I found no mention of the origin of the game in either of these versions.

I am currently trying to find the oldest version that makes a claim about the origin using WikiBlame but that has not worked.

The only source that was cited around 2008 is a book:

Sheree S. Marty. "Chinese Jump Rope". Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., NY, NY. c1994.

This this book (again the purpose of the book is clearly to show how to do the game, not to do deep research in the history) claims (without any source) that the game is from 7th-centruy China and then was rediscovered in the 60's by English kids.

While there may be no actual high quality sources that exist that document the origin of this, and thus I cannot include this in the article, I propose that the actual origin of this game was more likely in a nation that industrialized earlier and thus would be more likely to have rubber available and good enough economic conditions for the children living there to be able to get ahold of it widely. Assuming that it did indeed come from East Asia, which I have no reason to doubt, I find it much more likely to have originally come from Japan or an under control of the Japanese Empire. As mentioned by a much more well researched Wikipedia article, Industrialization only really began in China in the 50s. Given this, there were probably far fewer children in China who would have had access to rubber to invent the game and allow for its spread.

Again while this cannot be proven true, the only historical sources I have found for this all come from Japan and Korea (both would have been controlled by or recently controlled by the Japanese empire).

Examples:

YouTube video featuring historical images of the game: ゴムとび 昔あそび uploaded by omurogosho (6.6K views Date published: Nov 02 2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBU52AywH4I

Features what appear to be some of the oldest pictures of this game I've been able to find (you can find some similar stuff, none of it properly dated or from historical archives if you search for "ゴムとび 歴史 写真" (most seem to be on social media sites unfortunately).

There is also some video evidence (again the old stuff does not seem to be from China). see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hao-EP1XJc. Commentary from this video has a similar sentiment to mine:

I leave this here because it has further links to related primary sources. Anyone who wishes to further improve origin information can hopefully find this a good starting point.

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The game Chinese jump rope was made after 20 Century because  after 20 Century.. elastic rubber band was popularized enough for children to get and play with it. and I guess .. It was from industialized country  (Chemical Industry..) I think it is originated from Japan or Korea. This is the oldest movie of my searcings that took a Chinese jump rope playing. In 1950's, during  Korean War or After, Korean girls played the Chinese jump rope in a home for orphans.. and taken by USA GI Korea was colonized for 35 years before The Second World War.

Japan alse can be a candidate origin of the Chines jump rope.. We should call it not Chines jump rope but  Asian jump rope.. I think..The Western's have a habit  of naming 'Chinese'  when they meet something which they do not know the origin... ( especially  ..On East Asian culture phenomena)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRRc_p2XdPA

줄넘기 놀이에 대한 기록은 1890년대 선교사의 기록이 나오네요.  고무줄이 아니었다는 것 뿐.

고무줄은 1920년대에 놀이에 동원되었다고..

from japan...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reCODZZH4gc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuG7CP2KMvQ&feature=related

from Philipines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4as5iDxVW18

from Korea .. They are adults for demonstrations

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7OxpgEBiFo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m83OgzmD11k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYQUgSZ0Ets&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbN3DP4XYtA&feature=related

nowdays. The girls in Korea do not play this game. and. only moms know how to play..

The only source for the "Chinese Jump Rope" entry is in fact this very Wikipedia page from December 24, 2005 Williamspete001 (talk) 04:32, 29 June 2026 (UTC)