Before I met Ray Plummer, who manages the Beijing International Ice Hockey League, he sent me a one-line e-mail in response to coming to one of their games: “Drink lots of beer when watching.”

Who’s to argue with a man who stands 6’5” and weighs in at 250lbs? I found myself in the bleachers with the requisite can of Tsingtao in hand – taken from a ready supply sitting beside the locker rooms – and watched the Hot Wings battle the Dragons at HOSA, an Olympic-sized rink on the East Fifth Ring Road. As the puck drops players snap into action, the puck gliding soundlessly from stick to stick as the crunch of steel on ice mixes with the extremely colorful banter echoing across the rink.

The league began as a series of pick-up games organized by the Canadian embassy in the early ’90s. “It would be Canada versus the World, and then the Chinese team would come and some of us would stay behind and play against them as well,” explains Plummer. In 2005, a more formal league was born, which now has 110 players on six teams, including about 50 Canadians, 20 Americans, and a handful of Finns, Russians, Chinese, Swedes, plus the odd Kiwi or Brazilian. Each team plays once a week, on Thursday or Sunday night.

The skill level in the league spans a wide breadth. “We try and be an inclusive group of hockey players,” says Plummer. “We have guys who played Finnish Division One, we have guys who played Major Junior [part of the Canadian Hockey League], we’ve had guys in the past who played for Spartak Moscow, who are just amazing players – right down to a few who picked up playing hockey in China and worked at it and got up to a level that was good enough to not be a risk to themselves or others on the ice here.”

Every year, a team from the league makes it to a few international tournaments to spice up the competition. “We go to Bangkok and Mongolia, last year we went to North Korea, we went to Dubai a few times, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur ...” Plummer says. “The tournaments are great – it allows us to travel and compete all over the world. We compete in an annual tourney in Ulaanbaatar as well as one in Bangkok,” says Canadian J. P. Piltzmaker. The Ulaanbaatar tournament in particular, which takes place over Chinese New Year, is Plummer’s favorite: “It’s the Wild West, it’s outdoor rinks, it’s minus 30 – we usually try to make a holiday out of it and go live in a yurt and horseback-ride,” he says.

The league once tried to involve the local community more, but largely keeps to themselves these days. “I forget where I read it, but in China, there’s more pandas than hockey players,” says Plummer. “We’re not trying to be a trailblazer anymore. We tried to do that and just kind of got frustrated with the politics in China. Now we just kind of do our own thing and provide a fun experience for the expats in Beijing – we don’t take it too seriously.” For most, the league is just a chance to enjoy what Piltzmaker sums up as “the perfect combination of agility, speed and strength, the fastest game by far.” He smiles, then adds, “Well, maybe not the way we play it.”

Contact Ray Plummer at peking_puck@yahoo.com to join the league, or see www.beijinghockey.com for more details.