骑着马中文 Riding Chinese Horses

The day before my birthday this year my frieng Qiu Lian Feng took me horseback riding in a rural village east of Nanning. He'd been there before, riding retired thoroughbread race horses from the Hong Kong racing circuit. I was excited to ride a huge expensive beautiful horse, but they were closed.

The horses we rode, like many things in China, were much smaller than I was accustomed to. I rode their largest horse, which was still relatively small compared to the quarter horses I'm used to in North America. Still, it was fun, to a point.

The saddles didn't have a horn on them and were not comfortable (as much as a horse saddle can be comfortable) but the stirrups were so much better than those in the US; the stirrups ran parallel to my feet, not at 90 degrees which, when putting weight on them, really yanks my knees. Of course the stirrups were too short for me even adjusted to their full length, so it was difficult to shift my weight from my legs to butt while riding, and my feet kept coming out of the stirrups.

We rode for about an hour, through a bamboo forest, fields of freshly sprouted crops, up a pine covered hill, and along a straight concrete road through the forest. It was beautiful but not as easy as I remembered.

Communication between rider and horse in China is different than its American counterpart. I never got the hang of it. My horse never did what I told her to, mostly because I was telling her the wrong things by using the reins with an American "accent."

I'm no horse expert but I have ridden horses before and have some equine confidence. My father's family has a long history of proud horsemanship (informally) and I shamed that history in China, or finally joined it depending on your perspective.

I was trying to get my horse to gallop and keep up with the other two horses but she just wouldn't do it. She finally decided to increase her speed right as we were taking a right turn up a hill. Of course my left foot had come out of my stirrup and I hadn't gotten it back in yet when she bolted. As I was sliding down the left side of this horse, trying to keep from falling by pulling on the reins, saddle, and squeezing my legs together, my right calf muscle went into a large painful spasm (charlie horse!) and I knew I was going down. It was in slow motion. I landed square on my butt. Imagine doing a free fall from 5 feet in the air, hooray for spinal compression!

The force of the imapct stunned me and for a second I couldn't move. All of the muscles in my body were suddenly very tight and very sore. I eventually stood up and started walking up the hill. It didn't take long for my horse to catch up to the others and then I heard Qiu Lian Feng yelling out my name and soon they were coming back down the hill with my horse in tow. I was the stupid American city-dweller who couldn't stay on his horse.