BEIJING: For Shi Qi, the 35-year-old owner of a Beijing door factory, there is one haven for peace and quiet in an otherwise stressful existence: horse-riding.

When he visits his plant on the outskirts of the capital, which he does nearly every day, he also stops by the Equuleus Horse Riding Club to mount one of his three thoroughbreds.

“Horses are a hobby for me, not an investment object,” said Shi. “Riding is a form of communication without language, where man and horse try to understand each other.”

Shi is one of a growing number of wealthy Chinese who have taken up horse riding as a refuge from careers that seem to get busier by the year.

The craze appears to be immune to the global financial crisis – or at least has been so far – as ever larger numbers take up the expensive sport.

The Equuleus club, located in the middle of upscale villa compounds inhabited mostly by expats, started out a decade ago as a modest operation with a dozen local horses.

Now it is a thriving business with 85 horses – many of them retired from the jockey clubs of Hong Kong and Macau – and it is struggling to fit into the limited space at its disposal.

“When we began, most members were foreigners, but now it’s roughly half-half,” said Michelle Wang, the club’s manager.

“More and more Chinese people come here to try horse-riding, and a certain percentage stay. For them, it becomes a lifestyle.”

Members cited unofficial statistics showing that Beijing now has more than 100 riding clubs, up from fewer than 80 a year ago.

At the Equuleus club, most members are “middle to upper class,” although Wang said she did not know for sure: “When people come here, they only talk about horses.”

The Chinese love affair with horses is a reflection of growing wealth in the world’s fourth-largest economy – but it is more than that.It is after all a tradition with millennia-long roots in China that was only interrupted by the cars, the bikes and the trains of the 20th century.

“The Chinese have loved horses since ancient times. Maybe this love is inside most Chinese, and once they get the chance they will of course like this sport,” said Shi, the factory owner.

It is an interest that runs deeper than other Western fads picked up by China’s newly rich in recent years, such as golf, fine red wine or cigars.

Indeed, Chinese history would have looked very different without horses.

Chariots from the second millennium BC have been excavated from several famous burial sites, suggesting that ownership of horses was a symbol of nobility and kingship.

There is reliable evidence that the stirrup was in use in China by about 300 AD, several centuries before it was adopted in Europe, although it may have a much older history in the Middle Kingdom.

Mounted armies twice swept in from the north and established empires that laid claim to all of China – first the Mongols in the 13th century, followed 400 years later by the Manchus.

As protection against the threat from the north, China developed some of history’s most efficient cavalry armies – the Great Mounted Wall of China, which explains the geographical discrepancy in the popularity of equestrian pursuits.

“There’s a huge difference between north and south. A lot of north Chinese like to ride horses, the south Chinese less so. In the past that was also the case,” said Shi.

He himself is a product of the northern horsemanship, born in the desert region of Xinjiang where he first mounted a horse at the age of ten.

Now tradition is coming back with a vengeance, and businesses are noticing the trend too.

In November, a major equestrian fair in Beijing featuring everything from saddles to instructional videos attracted thousands of visitors.

The Equuleus club is also looking to capitalise on the growing popularity and establish a presence in less affluent parts of Beijing or even beyond elsewhere in China.

“In this area it’s very difficult to expand because it’s a villa area and very expensive,” said Michelle Wang, the manager of the Equuleus club. “We’re thinking about looking for some land, maybe in other cities.”—AFP