Interview with SahDee - The danish importer of Qianball

It all startet back in April 2004, when we got a visit from a good pal from Bangkok, Thailand. He had brought something along he wanted to show us. He had always been full of surprices, so we were anxious to see what he had in store this time. He pulled a Badminton like cover out of his bag, containing to rackets. To start with, we thought we were going to play Squash, but our pal explained that it was something called Qianball, which actually didn't help our understanding much.

The entire package consisted of two rackets, an anchorbag and two rubber balls (each with a 4.2 metre rubber band). Our pal explained that we had to fill two ½ litre bottles with water, and place them inside the anchorbag as ballast. Then we had to attach one of the rubber bands (with the ball) by a small hook, to the anchorbag. The rubberband is able to stretch up to 15 metres. Our pal continued explaining that in China, the game is played over a net and both players stand on the same side of the net, and take turns hitting the ball.

This was a game we really had to try, but as we didn't have any net, we had to use a boom that fenced of our neighboors driveway.

We soon contacted another of our pals, who tried the game and got so hooked on it, that we decided we wanted to start an official club in Naestved. To do this we had to order a few more games from China, more exactly 500 more games. This would demand some economic support, so we contacted our father/father-in-law (at that point owner of a small minimarket called Kildekiosken), who quickly got impressed by the game and gave us the economic support we needed.

The 1st of June we anxiously waited in Kastrup Airport, DK, where we recieved our 500 games, which filled up an old truck, we had rented in a rush at "RENT-A-WRECK".

Now both our family and friends came to see this new game. One of our friends from Vordingborg got very excited. He wanted to start a club in his hometown. Another friend wanted to start an affiliate on Moen and then of course our self, who started one in Naestved at a lent parking lot by a shcool.

How much more could we ask for? Three clubs had been started in less than a month, and yes, they all got to work putting together a management board, getting places to play and translating and learning the english written rules. To help with the rules we had got hold of some chineese Qianball movies, but we didn't understand anything of what was said. We didn't have any nets to play with either, so a friend took on the job of making some.

They say that in China they have more than one million active players. Denmark was the first country besides China to play Qianball, and today there are over 200 players and still counting.

Today SahDee consists of employees in both east and west Denmark.

In 2006 a we got associated with the YMCA of Sports in Denmark which turned out to be a very good move for Qianball. SahDee is today very happy with the positive response we've recieved with Qianball. We had never imagined that we, in Denmark, should be the founders and contributers of this new racket sport.