Thart thien choo or capteh

Thien choo that is available locally: Made in China

The Malays call it capteh; Penang Hokkiens, thart thien choo.  I have only recently discovered it is a very old game and is still being played seriously in many countries. In 2003, when Vietnam hosted the SEA Games, for example, it was one of the official competitive sports. A blogger on traditional pastimes has given a detailed description of the game going back over 2,500 years (read here):

The earliest reference to a game of kicking a feathered object dates back to the 5th century BC in China. Later known as ti jian zu or “kick little shuttlecock”, the game was used to train military men. Shaolin monks in Henan during the Tang Dynasty were also known to have practised the game to strengthen their martial arts skills. It remained popular for about two millennia, from the Han (206 BC-200) until after the Sui and Tang dynasties. During the Song Dynasty (960-1278), chien tsu (jianqiu) meaning “arrow” became the game’s more popular name. The name is still used to refer to the “shuttlecock” used in badminton.

The writer also places the game in the modern context where it continues to have a big following:

In Vietnam, the game is known as da cau. In the 2003 SEA Games held in Vietnam, capteh was included as a competitive sport. Internationally, the game is also known as shuttlecock kicking. Featherball Associations in Europe, USA and Turkey also show how international the game has become. In Singapore and Malaysia, the game is known as capteh. The name is thought to be either Malay or Hokkien in origin. Variants of the name include chapteh, chaptek and chatek. The game is still very much alive in Singapore. As recently as March 2009, a capteh competition was organised in Singapore.[Some 16 countries have their own versions of the game with their respective names, as shown in a table in the story.]

 The following are some videos that give an idea of what’s happening now in the world of capteh:

• A group of boys at SMK Cheras Perdana, Hulu Langat, Selangor, having an informal game of capteh. Quite skilful, I might add. View here. 
• Singapore’s “oldest” player at 84 (2017). Inspiring. View here. 
• One version of the game: Kick and add up the number of times. The first person to reach 100 wins. View here. 

How we played it

Capteh, as I recall, was not very popular among us although it was part of the games-children-play annual calendar of Penang. Like the versions above, we tried to outplay each other by seeing who could maintain it in the air as long as possible. The problem was that it took a lot of skills to do that. Moreover, it was an informal game with no tournament that would put aspiring players on the ladder to some level of fame or measure of achievement. In the school setting, we used to string rubber bands across the corridor and played an improvised sepak raga.

Frangipani: An unforgettable experience with the capteh was the use of the frangipani flower as a substitute. If we bunched, say, 15, together, and tied them with a rubber band at the pedicil (the part that connects to a stem, I think), they form a fluffy kicking toy. Upon further use, they turned brown and pliable and, surprisingly durable. Some of us used the top of the forefoot to kick while others used the arch – sepak raga style.

© Lim Siang Jin