Dong Shouyi

Dong Shouyi attended the Christian Tongren Academy, where he learned to play basketball. In 1910, he entered Tongzhou Union College and was appointed captain of the school’s basketball team. After graduating, Dong became Director of Physical Education at the YMCA in Tientsin in 1916 and went on to become a top Chinese basketball player. After graduating, Dong worked for the Sports Department of Tianjin YMCA and as sports instructor at Nankai School. There, he coached the “Nankai Five Tigers”, the most famous Chinese team at the time. In 1923, Dong studied at Springfield College in the US, and on his return, was named basketball coach to the Chinese team for the 1927, 1930, and 1934 Far Eastern Games and at the 1936 Olympics. Beginning in 1930, Dong served as a professor in Peking Normal University and a number of various other universities and colleges and concurrently held several high positions in China’s sports administration including director of the North China Sports Federation, the director general of the All-China Sports Association, and member of the Ministry of Education’s Sports Committee. In 1944 Dong became Secretary-General of the Chinese Amateur Athletic Federation. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, he continued to teach at the Northwest Normal University, serving successively as the vice chairman of the All China Sports Federation, the chairman of the Chinese Basketball Association, the director of the Sports Technical Committee of the National Sports Commission, and the deputy director of the Sports Department. He later became a Vice-President of the Chinese Olympic Committee.

Co-opted onto the IOC in June 1947, Dong Shouyi served as director general of the Chinese delegation to the 1948 London Olympics. Asked to attend the 1952 IOC Session in Helsinki by President J. Sigfrid Edström, he arrived with an interpreter who claimed Dong spoke no English and demanded that he (the interpreter) also be allowed to attend the Session. Edström noted that Dong had previously spoken perfect English and dismissed them both. Dong next attended a Session in 1957 at Sofia, when China withdrew from the IOC because of the Taiwan issue. Dong also resigned personally from the IOC, and in fluent English, launching into a tirade against the IOC and President Avery Brundage in particular. Dong Shouyi wrote a number of books, mainly on basketball, and eventually died of cancer.