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Whether you measure it in miles or kilometres, it’s a long way from China to Park Extension, and the cultural gap separating the two is probably even wider. So by the time George Sourligas, a proud Park Exer, had been teaching English as a second language for a few years to Chinese university students, it dawned on him there was something from back home that might prove useful as a teaching aid, and it was a quintessentially Canadian sport. In short, that’s how George ended up bringing hockey to southern China.
As he has done for the past few years, George came back to his old neighbourhood in Montreal this past summer on vacation from his job at the Sino-Canadian International College in Nanning, China. With seven million inhabitants, Nanning is still just a medium-sized city by Chinese standards. Since the average temperature in Nanning is much higher than in Canada, the concept of an indoor rink covered with ice is completely foreign. That was one of the first obstacles George faced as he tried to organize a hockey team that would familiarize his students with Canadian mores and further strengthen relations between Canada and China.
Cultural exchange
“I just wanted to bring some Canadian culture to my students,” he said in an interview with NPEN, before returning to China for the fall semester. But while the NBA, professional American basketball’s top league, generates a lot of attention in China, according to George it’s more difficult getting them interested in a sport that normally is played on a frozen surface, when most people there have never seen and would probably marvel if they saw an entire rink covered in ice. That’s when he decided to propose to another teacher from Canada that they start preaching the gospel of hockey to their students in China.
One of the first challenges they faced was that hockey sticks simply don’t exist in southern China. So they had to locate and then hire an artisan who’d be able to create a prototype from which enough hockey sticks to outfit an entire team could be made. While the model wasn’t at first exactly what they wanted, they took it to another craftsman who was nonetheless able to use it to produce the sticks. In the spring last year, George posted notices at the university, calling on any students interested in learning about hockey to sign up. From about 50 male and female applicants, about 20 made the grade and they each received a hockey stick.
Getting the hang of it
“At first they didn’t know what hockey was all about,” says George. “As soon as they saw the hockey sticks, to them they were like a new toy. It took a while for them to understand what the game of hockey is all about and understanding all the rules and regulations.” But at the same time, he had brought with him to China a copy of the high-grossing 2005 Quebec-made film The Rocket: The Maurice Richard Story to show his students graphically what the game is all about. “Then they got a real representation of what hockey is,” George says. “The students over there learn very quickly.”
All this being said, George’s students still had to do without without the one thing considered essential to real hockey in this part of the world — ice. While they learned the sport chasing a genuine hard rubber hockey puck, their playing surface was asphalt. If they ever get to play on ice, they’ll have the added challenge of learning to skate. So the way things ended up, George’s students got the hang of another great Canadian institution — street hockey. While he’s back in China now for the new school year, his students will be facing off in two teams against each other over the coming winter.
Park Ex News in China
The world being a smaller place than ever since the advent of the Internet, George reads the Park Extension News online back in China. While we hear a lot about the censorship enforced by the Chinese government, he maintains it’s not quite as bad as it might seem and most outside media with portals on the World Wide Web remain accessible over there. “If anything dealing with the politics of China has been reported by the western media and they think it goes against what the Chinese government is preaching, then they will censor it,” he says. “If they believe it is open-minded enough with two points of view, they will leave it alone.”