HISTORY OF GUANGZHOU: ARTICLE

The act of building friendly relations between nations and peoples from nations comes in many forms. Going back decades before the Flying Tigers, US-China history is filled with examples of mutual assistance and friendship. This friendship has come in many forms and countless citizens of both countries have been quiet beneficiaries of this friendship between the United States and People’s Republic of China.

 

Some American baseball fans call this sport “the greatest game in this whole land.”  It was a quintessential American sport and an inexorable part of American culture. But not so much in China. Sure, 19th century American expats in China, after the game was supposedly invented in 1839, partook in early version of baseball.  But that aside, baseball quite never took off in in the Middle Kingdom. Henry William Boone, in 1863, formed the Shanghai Baseball Club. And turn of the century Chinese students who later went on to study in American came back to their homeland with a knowledge of and an appreciation of the game.

 

During the Cultural Revolution, baseball’s advance in popularity was temporarily halted.  But as the 1980’s dawned, it was a time of endless possibility in China. After Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening began to gather momentum, it opened up opportunities for all kinds of cultural exchanges with China’s friends from around the world.  Longtime Los Angeles-Guangzhou Sister City Association director and former Dodgers owner Mr. Peter O’Malley, saw an opening in China to help bring this slice of American culture to China in the name of friendship and international competition.

 

In 1986 Mr. O’Malley helped finance the construction of China’s first baseball stadium in the historic city of Tianjin. In appreciation of his generosity, the stadium was named Dodger Stadium. It was in Tianjin that the first American born in China to play in the MLB, Harry Kingman, was raised. Interest in baseball gradually advanced in China. In 1913 China finished third in the Far East Games, the first international baseball tournament. The sport remained a novelty in China but was closely followed by the American expats.

 

In July of 1990, in our sister city of Guangzhou, with the efforts of Peter O’Malley and our friends in Guangzhou, the Tianhe Baseball Field was opened. Through this athletic field thousands and thousands of young athletes have participated in the sport and have come to embrace all that is great about this game called “America’s Pastime.”

 

Thanks to other baseball legends such as Bowie Kuhn and Creighton Hale, Peter O’Malley has been able to transform the growth and interest of baseball in China. Baseball organizations inside China have worked with their American counterparts to cultivate a new generation of baseball fans not only in China, but regionally as well, across Asia.

 

In 1988 China hosted the first international baseball; tournament for eleven and twelve year old little leaguers. And throughout the 1980’s Mr. Peter O’Malley worked tirelessly with friends in the Major Leagues and in the baseball-loving country of Japan to collaborate with their China counterparts to popularize the sport in China.

 

Since the opening of the Tianhe Baseball Field in our Sister City of Guangzhou, athletes from countless local, national and intra-Asian teams have competed. And through the game of baseball that Peter O’Malley did so much to bring back to China, the Tianhe Field acts as a bridge of friendship between, Los Angeles, America, all baseball loving nations and our friends in Guangzhou, China.

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