variations in the Anglosphere

[asakiyume]

The ninja girl has been teaching English in Japanese public schools for ten years now. She's got an American mother (me) and an English father (Wakanomori), and she's lived in both places, though primarily in the United States. It means she's familiar with words and songs and games from both England and the United States... but native English-speaking English teachers in the Japanese schools come from other parts of the Anglosphere as well, and it can make for interesting conversations when they get together, as when a teacher from Jamaica was talking about a playground game called, in Jamaica, "Chinese skip." A teacher from South Africa recognized the game, but said they called it "Chinese elastic."

"I didn't know what they were talking about," said the ninja girl.

"I think I do," I said. "We had a game we used to play with a large loop of elasticized cord. Two people would stand inside the loop, about three or four feet apart so the loop was pulled taut at their ankles, making a little elastic rectangle. Then a third person would stand in between them and do a jumping pattern, landing inside, outside, and on the elastic. We called it 'Chinese jump-rope.'"¹

But neither in her years of school in Massachusetts, nor in her year at a school in Dorset had the ninja girl encountered the game. Maybe it fell out of fashion in the United States and was never a thing in England? Or maybe it's just chance of where she happened to live?

On the other hand, both the Jamaican English teacher and the ninja girl knew the song "I'm a Little Teapot," but the South African English teacher didn't.

All of them--including a Filipino English teacher--knew "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," but they had different hand motions to go with it.

¹ We both acknowledged how all these names are examples of that naming convention where you stick some faraway/other/foreign group-name on a thing to show that it's different from another, common, this-is-how-WE-do-it version of it, or something like it.

Comments

[raven]

Ahh I played that! In the north of England in the early nineties, we just called it "playing elastics".

[asakiyume]

Aha! I missed your comment when I answered cmcmck below. And you're more my kids' age than my age, so this means it was present at least in the recent past. So maybe in England it was/is a northern thing.

ETA: Also, I like your non-racialized name for it.

[athenais]

Wowwwwww I haven't thought of Chinese jumprope in decades and decades! But yes, I remember playing it. It's always fun to find out what games other countries' kids played and what they call it if it's one we know.

[asakiyume]

See, you played it, but osprey_archer, who's my kids' age, didn't. And you're more or less my age--and grew up on the other side of the country! So maybe it was something that faded out after our generation.

[mallorys_camera]

Do kids even jump rope anymore? Admittedly, I don't spend a great deal of time watching pre-teens playing outside, but I don't think I've seen jump ropes in many decades.

[asakiyume]

I wonder! When I was in middle school, we did actual jumping-rope games, too, during recess, including a complicated one where you had two kids swinging the rope and then someone jumped, called another person, and then they chased each other in a figure-eighth pattern across the rope and around the twirlers.

One of the girls next door jumps rope; she's very good! But that's not the same as doing it as a group thing, where you have people twirling and others jumping...

[sovay]

"I think I do," I said. "We had a game we used to play with a large loop of elasticized cord. Two people would stand inside the loop, about three or four feet apart so the loop was pulled taut at their ankles, making a little elastic rectangle. Then a third person would stand in between them and do a jumping pattern, landing inside, outside, and on the elastic. We called it 'Chinese jump-rope.'"

I know this game, but I don't think it was called Chinese anything! I saw it in elementary school. It is familiar enough that I may have played it, although if so not often: I know I also read about it. That's so interesting.

[asakiyume]

Huh, so it didn't have a particular name, that you recall?

[cmcmck]

I don't think I saw it growing up in the south of England.

[asakiyume]

So maybe it just wasn't a thing in England, at least not in the south.

[osprey_archer]

I don't think I've ever heard of the elastic rope jumping game under any name! Fascinating.

I'd love to know all the different hand motions for "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider." These little variations are so interesting.

[asakiyume]

So maybe it's something my generation did and then faded out! Maybe the name didn't help ;-)

[asakiyume]

Oh, and re: hand motions, the way the ninja girl learned them, you connect your thumb of one hand to your forefinger of your other hand, and then alternate them going up for the spider going up, but the way the teacher from Jamaica did it, you made two interlocking loops of your thumb and forefinger of one hand and your thumb and forefinger of the other hand and then took them apart and put them back together again, twisting your hands, to show the spider going up.

[minoanmiss]

I haven't heard of Chinese Skip in DECADES and I only heard of it in Jamaica!

[asakiyume]

CONFRIMATION!!

[gingicat]

Neat!

Apropos of nothing, there's a version of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" that can be sung to the tune of "The Mary Ellen Carter."

[asakiyume]

Hahaha, that's great! I love that kind of thing, like singing "Amazing Grace" to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun"

[sartorias]

Oh, yes, Chinese jump rope! It had gone totally out of fashion when I was a teacher, but we used to play it as kids.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, that's the sense I'm getting! (Though sovay, who's between my kids and me in age, did know it, so maybe she's a boundary case.)

[threemeninaboat]

Yup. Chinese jump rope, Denver, 1980s.

[asakiyume]

I feel like the phase-out (if it's actually been a phase-out) must have happened late 90s, early 2000s--because you played it in the 1980s, and Sovay probably in the early 1990s, but my daughter, who would have been of an age to play it in the late 90s or aughts, didn't.

I need to find some Gen Zs and ask!

[teenybuffalo]

Currently 43 years old, read about "Chinese jumprope" somewhere in my early childhood (possibly in one of those "fun games that children play" anthologies that were about ten years out of date at that point) but never played it or met anyone who did it. I remember being envious of people with access to an enormous elastic band or elastic-made-of-other-elastics -- it sounded like fun.

[asakiyume]

I think of you and sovay as being very close to the same age, so it's seeming like right around you guys's childhood was when it began to fade/was fading: you never saw anyone playing it, but she did.

It was a lot fun! I still do the jumping pattern from time to time if I'm somewhere with pavement/flooring that features parallel lines the right distance apart.

[kayre]

We played Chinese Jump Rope in my childhood in Ohio, late 1960s. My daughter is 40 and never heard of it until now.

[asakiyume]

You're slightly older than I am, about in line with sartorias and athenais, and all of us know the game, but our kids don't--but people slightly older than our kids do--in the US. In England, the game appears to have been present in the north more than the south and was played by people our kids' age. And in Jamaica and South Africa too (assuming the English teachers my daughter was talking with are about her age).

[lokifan]

I'm English and have never heard of this game - 90s kid who grew up near London.

It's one of the fun things about teaching abroad, the different native Englishes :D When I taught in Vietnam we got competitive about it, too, and tried to get the kids to pronounce zebra our own preferred ways!

[asakiyume]

Ahahaha, that's hilarious! When I went to Timor-Leste, I stayed with teachers of English hailing from Australia--but one was native Australian and the other had grown up in Scotland. And I was from the United States. So while I was there, the students got some good variety in how things can be pronounced ;-)

A 90s kid and in London--my extremely comprehensive research (LOL) would lead me to guess exactly what you tell me--that you wouldn't have had exposure to the game. It seems (1) to be something older people played and (2) in England, not to have extended south of the Midlands.

[smokingboot]

Big thing in the South West of England when I was a kid, we called it "Cats Cradle.' That was also the name we gave to the equivalent with your hands.

[asakiyume]

Whoa! Just shot my theory of it not being present in the south right out of the water! Well then! It *was* there but disappeared. Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

I saw this on a friend's page. Since you're collecting anecdata, I'm 40 and played Chinese jump rope as an elementary schooler in California.

[asakiyume]

Thank you! Much appreciated!

[amaebi]

Coming in all ancient at 64, it got some play in my childhood, though it was dominated by jump rope, four square, and tag. I don't know whether a contemporary told me the name "Chinese jump rope," or I learned it from children's books. I was traumatized by double Dutch and never played, not that I was invited.

[asakiyume]

No one in our school was good enough to attempt double Dutch! (IIRC)

[light_of_summer]

Chiming in late (but long 😏):

I played Chinese Jumprope in elementary school in northern Northern California, in the late 1960s. It was one of the fads in toys and games for school recesses that seemed to go through my school every few months. (There were also outside-of-school toy/game fads in my neighborhood.)

I imagine most of these fads were driven by new toys coming to market, and the "I want one, too!" phenomemon, after the first ones appeared at school. But not always—

When I was in sixth grade, my school had a surprisingly co-ed fad for jump-rope, where we lined up to each take one running jump through the long rope that two kids were turning. The jump ropes in question were longstanding school equipment that inexplicably gained wider popularity for awhile, as distinguished from the Chinese Jumpropes, Clackers, and other toys/equipment fads that were brought from home. (The other portable school-owned recess equipment consisted of tetherballs, foursquare/dodge/kickballs, and basketballs, I think. And maybe softballs and bats?)

A couple of related thoughts:

I think I still own a book (in a box, somewhere) called One Potato, Two Potato: the Secret Education of American Children. It's been a long time since I read it, but I remember it as being quite interesting.

In kind of a reversal of the racialized naming thing, Holly Tannen used to perform a horrifyingly funny song that I think she learned from children, called "The Dirty Old Man from [country]." In concert, Holly sang "Fresno" instead of "[country]." And she would pair it with an old English folk song that had probably been its ancestor—tune and story much the same, but details hilariously altered. Ah, the folk process!

Footnote #1: In case "Fresno" is unfamiliar, it's the name of California's most populous inland city, surrounded by and related to land used for agriculture. I think the venue(s) where I heard the song were about three hours' driving time from Fresno.

Footnote #2: The old folksong has many names and versions, so that it's considered a "family" of songs. It goes back to at least the 1700s, and is often called something like "The Old Man's Courtship" or "Old Shoes and Leggin's."

Footnote #3: The song might be seen as ageist and sexist (as well as racist in some versions), but it's hard to blame a probably-teenaged girl for not wanting to marry someone who was probably at least two generations older and who had thoroughly unattractive habits...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

OK, I'll stop rambling, now.

[asakiyume]

Very good rambling! I do know Fresno--not personally, but from TV and friends who live in the area--and I think that's a very effective way to get people to feel the songs/rhymes etc. from the other side. And yeah, I have no problem with a girl not wanting to marry an old man!

The One Potato, Two Potato book does sound great! I love handclapping games, jumprope rhymes, nursery songs, the whole deal.

Very cool that the jumprope thing when you were in sixth grade attracted both boys and girls! We had some huge co-ed games of tag on the playground at that age, but I remember the jumping rope games as being just girls.