'Green opium' wins over the comrades as China embraces golf

[T_i_B]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1222589.ece

It may once have been seen as a decadent distraction for capitalists, but these days golf is the sport of choice for even the most ideologically driven of cadres. Now, a prestigious Chinese university is planning to put golf on the curriculum.

Golfers can tee off as part of their physical education programme at Peking University, one of China's leading academic addresses where Chairman Mao Zedong once worked in the library, according to the Beijing News. The college is looking for permission to build a driving range on campus in the north-western part of the city.

Golf has long baffled the Communist Party and has been officially viewed as a profoundly bourgeois way of spending time. As a competition it is seen as too gentle and lacking in the vital group dynamic of traditional socialist sports such as gymnastics or volleyball. The dictatorship of the proletariat has no room for brightly coloured polo shirts or fake tans.

But there has always been a sneaking regard for the game. The sport is now an acceptable way for Chinese Communists to spend their time and since the first golf course was opened in China 22 years ago - part of the Open Door Policy largely orchestrated by Zhao - golf has become extremely popular among the new rich.

[davepc]

1. Unfortunately the course doesn't offer a study abroad in Venezuela

[Union Thug]

2. Golf still represents bourgeois classism to me

Whether capitalist or "Communist" elite, golf still represents the pasttime of the rich, arrogant and elitist in my book. I wouldn't be caught dead on a golf course.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

3. Piss off

I play golf -- in fact most of my family does, including dairy farmers, truck drivers, firemen and all sorts of other blue collar workers -- and I'm hardly rich or elitist.

Don't rain on someone else's enjoyment of life just because you're completely ignorant about it.

I'm sick of constantly seeing posts on this board about what an "entitled", "rich man's game" golf is.

It seems to me that posts like yours are far more "arrogant" and "elitist" than going to play a sport.

[htuttle]

4. Yeah! I mean what's so hard about it?

The ball isn't even moving!

[Hosnon]

5. Pasttime of the rich? All you need is two clubs and a ball to play. It's

not an expensive hobby.

[htuttle]

6. That's only true if you have a municipal course nearby

I learned to play golf on a 9-hole (free) course in a city park -- many cities are not so fortunate to have something like that, and you have to pay some hefty fees to play unless you confine yourself to putting in the back yard.

[AngryAmish]

7. Golf is not classist

I often tell my driver and gardener that it is the greatest game.

[noonwitch]

9. I know a whole lot of people who are not rich, but play golf

My sister and her husband.
Coworkers in a social service agency.
Neighbors in a working-class neighborhood.

I never learned how to play. The only kind of golf I've ever played was mini-golf. I always liked playing that on an old-fashioned mini-golf course, with the little buildings and all.

[Wilber_Stool]

8. Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Mark Twain.