From feminine leisure to urban craze: the popularization of badminton in Republican Shanghai

This paper investigates the gendered popularization of badminton in semi-colonial and wartime Shanghai between 1912 and 1949, focusing on how the sport moved from expatriate enclaves into local society, how women entered and were represented within this process, and how its inherited gender meanings were reworked in China. This article is a historical study based on newspapers and other primary archival sources. By situating badminton's development in Shanghai within its Republican-era social and institutional context, it reconstructs how the sport expanded from expatriate enclaves into local society. A decisive moment came with the Flying Shuttles, a university-based Chinese team whose victories in the late 1930s generated media recognition, institutional support, and the transformation of badminton into a mass urban sport. From the outset, women were visible participants, and badminton's distinctive format as a mixed sport made male-female co-presence in competition both thinkable and practicable. However, this integration was limited: while mixed doubles and co-educational classes symbolized modern equality, internal routines and public conventions reinforced auxiliary roles for women. In comparative perspective, Shanghai diverged from both British club traditions and settler-colonial adaptations by embedding badminton within civic reform and nationalist narratives, producing a paradoxical sporting space that appeared inclusive and progressive yet preserved subtle hierarchies. This study illuminates how modern Chinese sport became a site where gender, propriety, and modernity were constantly renegotiated.