Tired of popular sports like football, basketball or tennis? Tired of the competitiveness of these highly demanding sports in which professionals are pushed to challenge the limits of human capability?

No problem. There are a wide range of other choices for people in China -- including even some of their childhood pastimes.

Dragon boat racing

People get a lot of fun from these forms of fun exercise, which bring them the same kind of benefits as other, more demanding, sports. They can also vie with one another for regional, national and even international top prizes!

This is a result of the work of the State General Administration of Sports -- the national governing office for sports in the country.

The administration has listed in its development agenda a wide range of activities that are deeply rooted in the nation's rich and varied culture to encourage more people to exercise to improve their overall health.

The list includes such pastimes as fishing, gateball, roller-skating, dragon boat racing, kicking shuttlecocks, the tug-of-war, yangko dancing and even kite flying -- and a good many more.

Compared with the much more familiar names on the agenda, these light-hearted pastimes, each with its own considerable following, appear to be receiving renewed favour among the Chinese people because of their relatively low energy levels and their deep cultural roots. It is not in the least bit surprising that the administration has included such activities in its "National Fitness Programme,'' with its overall guidelines for mass sports.

"You do not have to be muscular or extremely fast to enjoy yourself in these light pastimes, and they do not demand that you be in top physical condition,'' said Lei Jun, the vice-head of the Sports-for-All Administrative Centre, the guiding division of the fitness programme.

"These light sports are not too challenging and fit easily into people's everyday routines, and the numbers of people engaged in them has been growing very fast over the past few years.''

Lei and his colleagues have been working hard to further popularize these activities, which, though well-known in China, have not yet been as widely adopted as the State General Administration of Sports would like to see.

Some standard rules are badly needed, especially for holding local or national competitions, because there are so many different playing methods around the country, even in one single sport, according to Lei.

"We have to study these sports and set rules for them so that outsiders who are interested in them will have a better understanding of how to play such games.''

He takes yangko, a traditional street dance with strong folk rhythms and often accompanied by song as an example.

"There are four main famous sets of steps, and we have to unify and standardize them and work out routines, as has been done in sports like gymnastics,'' he said.

"Then the dancers can be judged on their performance of certain steps and awarded points. This will make the sport easier to learn and thus attractive to more people.''

Costs are something else Lei has to take into consideration, because unlike heavily-funded popular sports, these new sports get little in the way of outside help, with most of their money coming from the participants themselves and local communities.

"We do not get money from the national sports office so we need to find ways to draw funds into these community-centred sports.''

Lei's work also includes raising special funds for the fitness programme and raising money for and organizing large-scale mass sporting activities.

However, not all of the pastimes can be included in the agenda as the centre has set criteria for their inclusion, Lei said.

"Feasibility, following, and market potential are all factors we must take into consideration.''

Dragon boat racing

Dragon boat racing, one of China's oldest traditional sports, dates back more than 2,000 years ago. The sport, with a huge following of both spectators and participants, is widely popular in southern China, especially in Guangdong and Fujian provinces.

Last year, over 8,000 people and 200 boats participated in a dragon boat regatta organized by Nanhai County in Guangdong Province.

Now the sport has spread to Guangdong's neighbour, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and Central China's Hunan and Hubei provinces as well as to North China's Tianjin and Beijing and even to Jilin Province in Northeast China.

The sport has also been taken up in more than 40 countries and regions beyond China, and the International Dragon Boat Federation and the Asian Dragon Boat Federation were set in 1991 and 1992 respectively.

China Dragon Boat Association was established in 1985.

There are hundreds of different dragon boat competitions in China and the world every year. The annual World Dragon Boat Championships have been held annually since 1995.

International competition standards require 28 people per boat and they race over courses of 250, 500 and 800 metres.

But within China, the rules vary, with the number of paddlers in a boat, for example, ranging from two to 100 or more.

Dragon and lion dances

These dances are not only a popular part of traditional festivals held throughout China, but are also a competitive sport.

Originating in China over 2,000 years ago, the dances have developed into two main styles -- the southern and the northern forms.

In southern China, the dancers mainly perform on top of wooden posts or large wooden frame while in north, the dancing is usually done on the ground.

In competition, the dancers are required to perform set martial-arts-style technical movements. On the frame, the dancers compete in climbing the frame and trying to win honour by seizing an object at the top.

The International Dragon and Lion Dance Association was founded in Hong Kong in 1995 and its headquarters was moved to Beijing two years later. It now has 16 members.

There are dozens of dance competitions in China and around the world every year.

Shuttlecock kicking

This sport has a relatively long history in China as it was classed as an official sport in 1984.

It is divided into shuttlecock kicking and artistic shuttlecocking.

In the first form, players kick, pass and block the shuttlecock over a net, rather like the game of volleyball, while technical difficulty and continuity are the main points on which players are judged in the latter form.

The China Shuttlecock Association was established in 1987, and the International Shuttlecock Federation was set up in 1999, headquartered in Beijing.

The sport is also an official event in China's National Ethnic Games.

Kite flying

Kite flying.

Kite flying is a traditional Chinese pastime, with literally millions of followers across the nation. As a sport, it became an official event in 1991. At present, Weifang, a city in Shandong Province that has acquired the nickname "Kite City''; Beijing; Guiyang, in Guizhou Province; and Dalian, in Liaoning Province, all frequently host kite flying competitions.

The Weifang International Kite Festival is one of the most famous competitions, with tens of thousands of participants, many of them from foreign countries.

The China Kite Association, set up in 1987, also organizes national competitions and hosts up to five international events every year.

The International Kite Federation was set up in 1989.

Yangko

Formerly a kind of recreational dance enjoyed by farmers after their daily work, yangko has become a traditional street dance with strong folk rhythms or singing, with the dancers dressed in costumes and holding fans or handkerchiefs in their hands.

There are four main sets of steps, which originated in different parts of the country -- the Northeast, Hebei, Shandong and in eastern Shaanxi Province.

In 2000, the State General Administration of Sports worked out a set of steps that blends the four routines together.

The administration has choreographed a second routine and a third routine is now in the works.

The routines provide criteria for judges to award marks in competitions but the traditional forms of yangko have been kept on the national competition list.

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