Kassel – Germany

In October, the time of the large pigeon shows and markets started again in Kassel, Germany. The weather was nice and ‘die Taubenmesse’ was well-attended, it even seemed busier to me than last year. For us, such a happening is an indicator of what to expect from 2020. The Kassel Messe was more international in nature than other years, with visitors not only from Poland, Rumania, Hungary and Yugoslavia, but also from the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK.

Langfang – China

After Kassel, we were also present with a large stand in China, at the so-called Langfang show. Langfang is a city southeast of Beijing, halfway to Tianjin. This is the centre of pigeon racing in China. Beijing ranks first, while Tianjin takes second place. There are tens of thousands of pigeon fanciers, perhaps not surprisingly given how huge these cities are. Beijing has 30 million inhabitants and Tianjin approximately 14 million.
I have been visiting this marvellous country with its 1.3 billion inhabitants and 5000 year old civilization for over twenty years. Back then, I imagine that in Europe we still walked around in bear hides.
In China, there is still order, authority and discipline, which is needed to keep its approximately 50 ethnicities together. Twenty years ago, around the Tiananmen Square in the old Hutongs (classic Chinese residential districts), I already observed how the children arrived home from school in their uniforms and started doing their homework straight away. At that point I said to my family: “China is going to conquer the world, there is no European remedy against this mentality.”
The prediction proved rather accurate, because nowadays, China is a very important player on the world stage, as you know.

Langfang

The show was held on the 23rd and 24th of November 2019, and we were really lucky with the weather! A slight frost, a bit foggy in the morning but a clear sky for the rest of the day with a temperature of 6 °C, hardly any air pollution and a pleasant breeze from the North. In 2017, the snow lay thick everywhere and you could hardly see anything because of the dense fog, as a result of which the show attracted less visitors. According to the organisation, headed by Dr. Wang, the show had approximately 30,000 visitors this year. The hall was further expanded this year and next year, everything will be even bigger. The demand for stands has increased considerably and Sunday afternoon, many people approached the organisation to already reserve a place for next year. Since we have practically the biggest stand of the show, we do not need to make a separate reservation. We attended with 18 employees, most of whom work in our domestic animal and pigeon clinic in Beijing. We had a few very busy days and the team performed very well.

CRPA (Chinese Racing Pigeon Association)

When I was in China for the first time, approximately 22 years ago, I visited the One Loft Race of the Eijerkamp family in Beijing. Nice lofts and a wonderful initiative, and already so long ago. The first Chinese I met there was Mr. Huang Jian, he took pictures upon our arrival and during the visit to the lofts.
By now, Huang Jian has become a good friend and is a big shot in the Chinese pigeon racing world; he is also on the organising committee of the show and closely involved in the CRPA (Chinese Racing Pigeon Association). He gave me the following information, in outline, on the evolution of pigeon racing in China:

• In the last 10 years, pigeon racing has increased with approximately 10% per year;
• In 2019, the CRPA had approximately 400,000 members;
• In 2019, the CRPA sold 26 million rings;