Chinese jump rope
children's game, in which two players hold a circular elastic string taut, the other player(s) stand between the 2 strands, and a series of moves are made with rhythmic chants
Chinese jump rope is a children's game resembling hopscotch and jump rope. Various moves (creation of positions or figures) are combined to create patterns which are often accompanied by chants.
The game has spread around the world and as such has many alternative names that vary with regions: Chinese ropes, jumpsies, elastics (British English: Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain), rek (South Africa), yoki (Canada), Super Cali (Newfoundland), French skipping, American ropes/Chinese ropes (in Scotland), and Chinese garter in the Philippines. Some notable names for the game in languages other than English include Chinese: 跳皮筋; pinyin: tiàopíjīn, Japanese: "Rubber Jumping" (ゴムとび, gomutobi), German: gummitwist, and French: "jeu de l elastique".
The game is typically played by three or more players using a string of rubber bands that has been tied into a circle, usually at least six feet long ("approximately 2 feet in diameter"), or an elastic rope. Two of the participants (the holders) face each other several feet apart, and position the string around their ankles so that it is taut. The third player (the jumper) stands between the two sides of the rope and must accomplish a series of increasingly difficult moves without making an error. The position of the string is raised as the jumper moves through the levels, from ankle to waist height and higher. "They are great for stretching. Often a child gets so intrigued with the shapes the rope can make that [the child] stretches much harder than [the child] would have otherwise."
Moves, patterns, and chants
In this game, the two ends of the rope are tied together so that the rope forms a circle.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Chinese jump rope” as children's game, in which two players hold a circular elastic string taut, the other player(s) stand between the 2 strands, and a series of moves are made with rhythmic chants. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as children's game, in which two players hold a circular elastic string taut, the other player(s) stand between the 2 strands, and a series of moves are made with rhythmic chants. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1554487. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chinese jump rope” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.