Book Review – The Forbidden Game Golf and the Chinese Dream by Dan Washburn

The Forbidden Game focuses on three men and how golf affects them: Zhou, a peasant who turns pro after many years of hardship; Wang, a lychee farmer who finds out that they are building a huge, top secret golf course resort next door; and Martin, an American who is in charge of building golf courses and stickhandling through red tape, the “golf police” and a political battle among builders, local officials and the central government

Golf or the “green opium” was outlawed by Communists when Mao came to power in 1949 and it wasn’t until the early 1980’s when Deng Xiaopeng’s reforms allowed for golf to gain a foothold in China. When Arnold Palmer had a site visit of a course he designed near Zhongshan in the early 1980’s he said “The Chinese know nothing about golf. Absolutely nothing.” He recounted handing a golf ball to a worker. “He stared at it for a few moments, then tried to bite the cover”.

In the past decade China is the only country to have a golf boom

Ken Chu, the son of Paul Chu who developed the large Mission Hills Golf Club in Guangdong province went to Western University in London, Ontario and during the 1980’s was raised in the golfing community of Glendale Golf and Country Club in Toronto. He raced back to help his father run the club. The sprawling complex is nearly six times the size of New York City’s Central Park and has its own public transportation

With China’s middle class growing Hainan became the new tourist destination even though it maintained its reputation for being an outlaw state with rampant corruption, smuggling and unchecked property speculation

In China land is owned by the government, not the villagers. Developers pay the local officials for the land but the money that filters down to the villagers is not close to the land’s value

Mission Hills Haikou was built with a similar name and was even bigger

Amazing that golf courses are illegal yet courses continue to get built. Officials have to admit they like ping pong or tennis but never golf. In the last 25 years there have been no official photos of politicians playing golf because it is taboo. Zhao Ziyang, the premier from 1980-1987 is the last top-level Party official to admit to liking golf

Since 2004 when the central Chinese government put a moratorium on golf course construction, 400 golf courses have been constructed and technically the 600 or so courses are illegal in some way

Land is precious and since they have 21% of the population they only have less than 8% of the arable land

Villagers will put up roadblocks to prevent further golf course construction if they feel they are not getting paid the proper value for their land

Feng Shanshan is the first Chinese golfer to win a major championship in 2012. And people remember the fourteen year old Guan Tianlang playing at the Masters and making the cut in 2013. All from a country that doesn’t know about golf and is illegal.