The Sevens

Yesterday I got a glimpse at why people go to Cal football games. I went to a game back in freshman year and left half way through because I just couldn’t take all the school spirit that I had deemed “mindless”. So, after reading an article about how sports games are like political rituals for my Anthropology class I headed out with a group of exchange students to an actual large sporting event. The Hong Kong Sevens is a well known and widely watched rugby tournament where the games are only 14 minutes long and seven people play on the field. (It took me a little too long to get where the “sevens” in “HK sevens” came from). As students we got into Friday’s games for free, which is really very cool. We got a section of just HKU kids together and sat for the next five hours watching the games, watching the event goers, eating greasy overpriced food and drinking expensive beer. It was a really entertaining tournament to go to because there were just people from all over the world. There was certainly a majority of white people but the faux hawks, flags as capes and multitude of different accents made it clear that it was still an international event. People actually got really creative with their costumes with my favorites being either the men in the Viking outfits with their little speedo bottoms, the guys with the hula skirts and red white and blue hair or maybe the people in the gorilla full body suits. The games went by fast and I did my best to try to learn as much about rugby as I could but mostly, as usual, I took my stance as an anthropologist studying why people were doing what they were doing and being less of a participant. I watched the guys hoot at the cheerleaders, I watched the crowd slowly get more intoxicated and less focused on the game, I noted the reactions to the women’s rugby final and I compared the whole scene to an American baseball or football game. What can I say, after an amazingly fantastic burger at Shake em’ Buns and being around too many drunkenly stupid people, I retired for the evening to be in bed by midnight. Still, a good day and time to be in Hong Kong.