Beijingers Play Fetch with Migratory Birds in Traditional Game 

Xie Yufeng, a 39-year-old cook, opens his hand for a bird to return after throwing it into the air to catch a bead shot up, as they practice a Beijing tradition that dates back to the Qing Dynasty, outside a stadium in Beijing, Tuesday, March 26, 2024. (AP)
Xie Yufeng, a 39-year-old cook, opens his hand for a bird to return after throwing it into the air to catch a bead shot up, as they practice a Beijing tradition that dates back to the Qing Dynasty, outside a stadium in Beijing, Tuesday, March 26, 2024. (AP)
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Beijingers Play Fetch with Migratory Birds in Traditional Game 

Xie Yufeng, a 39-year-old cook, opens his hand for a bird to return after throwing it into the air to catch a bead shot up, as they practice a Beijing tradition that dates back to the Qing Dynasty, outside a stadium in Beijing, Tuesday, March 26, 2024. (AP)
Xie Yufeng, a 39-year-old cook, opens his hand for a bird to return after throwing it into the air to catch a bead shot up, as they practice a Beijing tradition that dates back to the Qing Dynasty, outside a stadium in Beijing, Tuesday, March 26, 2024. (AP)

Passersby in Beijing during winter or early spring might happen upon groups of locals playing fetch with birds. The players blow plastic beads into the air through carbon tubes for the birds — often from the migratory wutong species — to catch and return, in exchange for a treat.

It’s a Beijing tradition dating back to the Qing Dynasty, which ruled between the 17th century and early 20th century. Today, only about 50 to 60 people in Beijing are believed to still practice it.

Xie Yufeng, a 39-year-old cook, is one of them. On Tuesday late afternoon, Xie gathered with a few friends near Workers’ Stadium, where locals often congregate in the evenings to dance in tandem, practice tai chi or play the Chinese yo-yo.

Xie and his friends brought along their winged playmates — most of them wutong birds, with their distinctive yellow beaks and which fly southward from China’s northeast to Beijing every fall to escape the bitter winter.

Domesticating the birds and training them for the bead-catching game may take four to five months, Xie said. Players teach the birds to fetch by first throwing seeds into the air, and later replacing them with plastic beads. Every time the birds retrieve the beads, they are rewarded with a snack. In the past, the beads were made of bone.

“In order to do this well, patience is the most important quality for a player,” Xie said.

The tradition is said to have taken root in the capital with the arrival of the Qing Dynasty, a Manchu group that took control of Beijing in the mid-1600s.

Manchu nobles, living around the Forbidden City, are believed to have popularized catching and training birds as a pastime.

Today, residents of Beijing’s traditional alleyways, called hutong in Chinese, often still raise birds in cages and may even take the whole birdcages out for walks.

The wutong bird owners usually release them in late spring and allow them to migrate back to the northeast — only to catch or purchase new ones the following fall.



Ancient DNA Shows Genetic Link Between Egypt and Mesopotamia

This photo provided by researchers shows rock-cut tombs in Nuwayrat, Egypt where a pottery vessel in which the remains of a man, radiocarbon dated to around 2855–2570 cal BCE, was discovered. (John Garstang, Mahmoud Abd El Gelel/Garstang Museum of Archaeology/University of Liverpool via AP)
This photo provided by researchers shows rock-cut tombs in Nuwayrat, Egypt where a pottery vessel in which the remains of a man, radiocarbon dated to around 2855–2570 cal BCE, was discovered. (John Garstang, Mahmoud Abd El Gelel/Garstang Museum of Archaeology/University of Liverpool via AP)
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Ancient DNA Shows Genetic Link Between Egypt and Mesopotamia

This photo provided by researchers shows rock-cut tombs in Nuwayrat, Egypt where a pottery vessel in which the remains of a man, radiocarbon dated to around 2855–2570 cal BCE, was discovered. (John Garstang, Mahmoud Abd El Gelel/Garstang Museum of Archaeology/University of Liverpool via AP)
This photo provided by researchers shows rock-cut tombs in Nuwayrat, Egypt where a pottery vessel in which the remains of a man, radiocarbon dated to around 2855–2570 cal BCE, was discovered. (John Garstang, Mahmoud Abd El Gelel/Garstang Museum of Archaeology/University of Liverpool via AP)

Ancient DNA has revealed a genetic link between the cultures of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Researchers sequenced whole genomes from the teeth of a remarkably well-preserved skeleton found in a sealed funeral pot in an Egyptian tomb site dating to between 4,495 and 4,880 years ago.

Four-fifths of the genome showed links to North Africa and the region around Egypt. But a fifth of the genome showed links to the area in the Middle East between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, known as the Fertile Crescent, where Mesopotamian civilization flourished.

"The finding is highly significant" because it "is the first direct evidence of what has been hinted at" in prior work," said Daniel Antoine, curator of Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum.

Earlier archeological evidence has shown trade links between Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as similarities in pottery-making techniques and pictorial writing systems. While resemblances in dental structures suggested possible ancestral links, the new study clarifies the genetic ties.

The Nile River is "likely to have acted as an ancient superhighway, facilitating the movement of not only cultures and ideas, but people," said Antoine, who was not involved in the study.

The skeleton was found in an Egyptian tomb complex at the archaeological site of Nuwayrat, inside a chamber carved out from a rocky hillside. An analysis of wear and tear on the skeleton - and the presence of arthritis in specific joints - indicates the man was likely in his 60s and may have worked as a potter, said co-author and bioarchaeologist Joel Irish of Liverpool John Moores University.

The man lived just before or near the start of ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom, when Upper and Lower Egypt were unified as one state, leading to a period of relative political stability and cultural innovation, including the construction of the Giza pyramids.

"This is the time that centralized power allowed the formation of ancient Egypt as we know it," said co-author Linus Girdland-Flink, a paleogeneticist at the University of Aberdeen.

At approximately the same time, Sumerian city-states took root in Mesopotamia and cuneiform emerged as a writing system.

Researchers said analysis of other ancient DNA samples is needed to obtain a clearer picture of the extent and timing of movements between the two cultural centers.