Chinese Chicken

This game is played with small blocks of wood or bean bags. Stones, or, at the seashore, bathing slippers, may be used instead. These are placed in straight rows of five to fifteen each, with intervals of about ten inches between them. The players are divided into groups numbering from five to ten each, and line up as for a relay race, each before one row of blocks or bags.

The game is played in the same way by each row of players, and while the game may be competitive between the different groups, in its original form it is for one group only. The first player in a group represents a “lame chicken,” and hops on one foot over each bag until the end of the line of bags has been reached. The last bag is then kicked away by the “lame” (lifted) foot, after which it must be picked up and carried back over the same route to the first end of the line, when the same player hops back on the opposite foot, kicks away a second bag, picks it up and returns, and so on until he fails. Only one foot may touch the ground at a time, and may touch it but once in each space between the bags. No bag may be touched except the one at the end of the line, which is afterward picked up, and this must be secured without putting the lame foot upon the ground.

When the “chicken” infringes any of these rules, he must at once give place to another. The winner is the player who has at the end of the game the greatest number of bags.

This is a Chinese game, taken by kind permission of the author from Miss Adale Fielde’s _A Corner of Cathay_. The Chinese children play it with their shoes in place of the bean bag or block of wood.

Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium by Jessie Hubbell Bancroft

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