Big Money is Ruffling Pigeon-Racers’ Feathers | Exclusive
With corruption and high-stakes competition invading pigeon-racing, hobbyists worry about the future of their ancient sport
Since the early afternoon, Hou Yong (pseudonym) has been watching the sky for the return of one of his 50 racing pigeons as it finds its way home from nearly 700 kilometers away in a pigeon race on April 29.
The previous morning, the 60-year-old Beijing resident had brought the 2-year-old bird to the Guang’an Gymnasium as his sole entry to the Beijing Xicheng District Racing Pigeon Association (BXDRPA). There, the bird and 1,181 of its fellow racers were loaded into nine-layered metal cages on a truck and transported to a parking lot in Zhoukou, Henan province, where they were released at precisely 6:08 a.m. the following day to fly back to their respective homes in Beijing.
As soon as each racing pigeon lands on the electronic pad at the door of its home, a chip embedded in its foot ring automatically sends its time of arrival and its owner’s address to the race organizer, down to the exact millisecond. When TWOC spoke to Hou at 4:30 p.m., over 100 birds had already returned home, with the fastest arriving at 3:08 p.m.—having taken exactly nine hours to complete the trip at an average speed of 71.3 kilometers per hour.
“To race is the only meaning of raising these pigeons,” Jin Bing (pseudonym), another Beijing pigeon racer in his 50s, declares to TWOC. “The joy of keeping racing pigeons lies in their instinctive homing ability even when they’re transported hundreds of kilometers away.”
But it’s becoming an increasingly pricey sport to pursue. Over the last century, pigeon racing has transformed from a simple hobby into a business worth billions of RMB, opening the door to corruption and organized crime. According to Chinese Racing Pigeon, a bi-monthly magazine published by the Chinese Racing Pigeon Association (CRPA), the prize money of all pigeon races in China in 2015 alone totaled over 28.1 billion RMB. A single race can generate a pool of billions of RMB in prize money, and a prizewinning pigeon can sell for millions. A champion pigeon in a 2018 auction in Beijing fetching 22 million RMB.
China has a long history of breeding pigeons, initially for food during the Zhou dynasty (1046 – 256 BCE), and later as couriers for letters and military correspondence in the Sui (581 – 618) and Tang (618 – 907) dynasties. A Chinese idiom for sending letters, 飞鸽传书, literally translates to “flying pigeons delivering letters.” Pigeon-racing was first recorded in the 1640s when, according to Chinese Racing Pigeon magazine, so-called “pigeon-release meetings” were held in Foshan, Guangdong province, with prize money awarded for the fastest birds. In the Qing dynasty (1616 – 1911) keeping pigeons and other pet birds for their looks and charming coos was popular among the nobility and the rich in the capital—a hobby known as “carrying the cage and displaying the birds (提笼架鸟),” still popular enough to remain a staple sight in Beijing’s hutongs right up to today.
China’s National Sports Commission recognized pigeon-racing as a sport in 1961, but during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, racing was suspended due to promoting “idleness” and “capitalist lifestyle.” Today, though, the sport thrives: There were over 10,000 pigeon races held per year from 2015 to 2019. As of 2020, there were 400,000 registered pigeon breeders in China and over 25 million foot rings issued that year, over half of the global total, Huang Jian, deputy president of the CRPA, told China Newsweek magazine last November. The CRPA, a non-profit NGO that has regulated the sport since 1984, now has 33 provincial branches, and over 1,600 associations across China including the BXDRPA, which Hou belongs to.
The hobby requires serious dedication. Jin, who used to keep 200 to 300 birds before cutting down to 50 due to his age, starts each day by attending to his pigeons at around 6 a.m.: releasing them, cleaning the loft where they roost, and then feeding the birds and cleaning again when they return two to three hours later.
Hou, who considers himself a novice, releases and feeds his pigeons only once a day, though this still takes him four to five hours each afternoon. In the evening before going to bed, he also returns to the loft to tend to their needs. “It requires more effort than taking care of children,” he says, explaining that breeders need to keep an eye on every unusual movement. Common intestinal troubles may cost a pigeon’s life, and even when cured, the bird may never race again.
In July and August, prior to the autumn racing season that usually spans September to November, pigeons take part in extra training sessions. Hou drives the pigeons 30 to 100 kilometers away every day and opens their cages, and the birds immediately fly back home.
“All pigeon breeders dream of winning a championship,” Guo Zhanfa, a national pigeon-racing judge and head judge of the BXDRPA, tells TWOC. He admits, though, that this may remain a dream for many breeders despite a lifetime’s effort, because a pigeon race is full of uncertainty. “It requires favorable climatic, geographical, and human conditions.”
The conditions are many: well-bred and trained pigeons, favorable weather, and not running into predators or “bird-nappers” (people who net racing pigeons to sell) along the way. Ancestry is considered one of the most important factors. “Pigeons with European bloodlines, such as Belgian and Dutch ones, which are larger and stronger, are considered better than domestic ones,” says Guo, who was unwilling to splurge on European pigeons. Instead, he borrowed their descendants from his friends to breed with.
However, even a match of the best available pigeons cannot guarantee good descendants. “You just need to try, to see if their genes and blood go well together. Sometimes, you can only find out whether it worked on race day,” Guo points out.
Meanwhile, even the best pigeon may fall victim to bird-nappers, who later contact their original owners for ransom money or sell them on online platforms like Kuaishou. These pigeons are sold for tens to thousands of RMB, based on the species, according to Hou.
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