Witches, black gowns and broomsticks - it's all just a game

Members of the Beijing Quidditch Club play the game.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Book series has given birth to a sport for those who lack the magic

One afternoon recently two young women walked into a shopping mall in the Liudaokou area of Beijing, and when they arrived on the third floor they made a beeline for a deserted corner that was being redecorated.

"This is the place," Li Yangdan, 26, told her companion, Liu Yiying, 22.

Out of their bags they took black gowns and proceeded to put them on. Then the pair, now transformed into witches, took out wands.

That may sound like a scene from a Harry Potter novel, according to which the magic world is invisible to muggles, those who lack magic.

And that is precisely the answer Li and Liu give when people ask what the point is of playing the sport of Quidditch on brooms if they cannot not fly.

Li and Liu, who founded the Beijing Quidditch Club, were in the shopping mall shooting a short video for a company.

In late 2011, when Liu was still a high school student at Hangzhou Foreign Languages School, her schoolmate Wang Jiasheng returned after studying in the United States and introduced the muggle Quidditch to the school.