Kite Flying: A Man’s World

“Go fly a kite,” an angry housewife snarls at her husband—but imagine her surprise if he actually went and did. There was Ben Franklin, of course, with his handkerchief, his key and his lightning bolt, and if Orville and Wilbur Wright had not been kiting enthusiasts, a Russian might have invented the airplane after all. But the adult U.S. male who shows up at the park with kite and twine is certain to be suspect unless he has a passel of kids in tow. And there is something definably foreign about the doughty Somerset Maugham hero who preferred to rot in jail rather than pay his ex-wife alimony—all because she had smashed his favorite kite.

Perhaps it is just that Americans have no sense of the sublime. “My kite rises to celestial regions,” wrote a 9th century monk. “My soul enters the abode of bliss.” On Formosa, the ninth day of the ninth moon is the Day of Ascending Heights, a holiday in honor of kites. In Japan, kite flying is so popular that it was once legislated out of existence, so that people could keep their minds on their work. And nowhere is kiting pursued with more passion than in Thailand, where legend has it that a young lover found his lady fair by following the string of a runaway kite.

Talons & Nooses. From February to May, when the Lorn Ta-Phao wind blows from the southwest, the sky above Bangkok resembles a vast aerial Disneyland. Long (up to 25 ft.), hinged kites, shaped like kraits and cobras, wriggle sinuously in the breeze. Peacock and butterfly kites flutter their iridescent wings; owls roll their eyes, and paper hawks wheel and dive. Thai boys get their first kites about the same age that U.S. youngsters get their first baseball gloves, and most of them dream about growing up to be another Poon Yuvaniyom, who is the closest thing to a Mickey Mantle west of the Mekong.

A telephone company executive, Poon, 55, is the kite-fighting champion of Thailand—and in Thailand, kite fighting is a big-league sport. It has its teams (sponsored by private companies, like U.S. bowling teams), its league, its rules (72 of them), its umpires and its World Series, the All-Thailand championships, held each spring in Bangkok’s Phramane Grounds. In India, where kite fights are also common, strings are coated with ground glass; in South America, frames are studded with razor blades.

The Thais are too sophisticated for such crude devices. Their fighting kites, which cost up to $18, are made of rice paper delicately stretched on a fragile bamboo frame, and come in two sexes: the star-shaped chula, or male kite, and the diamond-shaped pakpao, or female. Each has its special weapon. The chula sports five bamboo talons called champas (literally: fruit pickers), and the pakpao carries a long noose called a nhiang. The male kite tries to capture the female’s control string in its talons and drag it to earth; the female tries to encircle the male with its noose and ride it to the ground.

Courtly Advantage. The battle is not really equal—but that fits perfectly into the oriental scheme of things. Only 34 in. sq., the dainty pakpao is less than half as big as the bulky (85 in. sq.) chula, which takes as many as 50 men to control. But the pakpaos line up along the north side of Phramane Grounds, and the steady southwest wind gives a courtly advantage to the weaker sex. The female kites bank on speed and guile: sometimes two pakpaos will pounce on a single chula, like nimble fighter planes attacking a lumbering bomber. Even if an opponent’s kite is captured, the fight is only half over: it must be grounded on the attacker’s side of the field.

Poon Yuvaniyom is strictly a chula devotee, and he is an old hand at outwitting wily females. “I’m a man,” he says, “and I like male kites.” This year’s All-Thailand championships started in the middle of April and went on for two weeks. While vendors hawked spiced fish and chicken in the milling throngs of fans, Poon maneuvered the control ropes of his chula with hands callused by 30 years of kiting. He and his Thailand Telephone Organization team had little trouble winning their third straight national title and the King’s Cup—thus proving that, for the moment at least, it’s still a man-kite’s world.