Byan Drill Hall

Byan Drill Hall

扁師
Location	West Side District, Kien-k'ang
Public transit	Tram #74, #28, #25 Urban line Diagonal line
Owner	City of Kien-k'ang
Operator	Sherrywood Corporation
Type	Exhibition/sports complex
Genre(s)	Sports venue
Seating type	Wooden benches Chairs (in royal box)
Capacity	2,800 (old hall) 5,000 (hall #1) 2,500 (hall #2) 570 (gallery)
Surface	Wood
Scoreboard	Yes
Construction
Broke ground	1875
Opened	22 February 1881 (1881-02-22)
Renovated	1967, 2008
Expanded	1951
Construction cost	approx. ₤20,000
Tenants
Themiclesian Badminton Association

Byan Drill Hall is a complex of four connected, indoor exhibition spaces, shopping arcade, and outdoor public area, located in the West Side District, Kien-k'ang. Originally a place for several local regiments' military drill—hence the name—it has since 1917 been used exclusively for civilian events. It is most famous for hosting the three major annual badminton events in Themiclesia—Themiclesian National Championships, the Kien-k'ang Open Championships, and the Lower Themiclesia Open Championships. It also hosts the the National Indoor Tennis Championships.

Design and construction

Original hall

The original hall was planned on the site of the Byan green, which was used by various Kien-k'ang-based military units for their drills and public displays. The place abutted an artillery of considerable scale. To increase the ability of both regular troops and volunteers to train during rainy and cold days, a drill hall was planned in 1875 on the green, as otherwise the training would have been cancelled or postponed. The hall was planned to be 120 by 70 feet and cost ₤8,000 to build, under the architect Jonathan A. Parson, who worked for the Themiclesian government in the 1870s.

Then prime minister the Chief Baron of Sng'raq and his disciple Lord Tlang-men funded the building of these halls in many places to support the raising of 100 companies of soldiers. Construction was somewhat delayed when the Liberals lost the 1878 general election to the Conservatives, who were less enthused by erection of military infrastructure. The hall nevertheless was complete by 1881 and became the headquarters of the Storm Riders and the Honourable Guild Rifles.

Parson provided a relatively restrained realization of the popular Beaux-Arts architecture style for the hall's exterior, while the interior was spartan in ornamental orientation. The hall was centred on a drilling ground about 80 by 40 feet. Rooms functioning as officers' offices were built around the drilling ground, forming the perimeter of the hall except on the east side. The east wall was left without offices on the ground level, instead having a box for distinguished visitors to the drill hall. Above the offices were steps intended as temporary barracks for soldiers who were in transit.

At some point early in the hall's life, the open-air barracks idea was abandoned because it provided no privacy or sound insulation. Rather, the steps were converted to seating space for those who wished to watch the drilling activity that went on.

In October 1907, the future Emperor Grui visited the hall as Crown Prince and played badminton with Captain H. K. Sam, losing to the latter 2-15, 1-15. The canopy of the box on the east side of the hall was changed to royal purple for his visit and has remained this colour since.

Sports

Badminton

Badminton was first played in Byan Drill Hall around 1895 or so, but it was not until 1901 that a competitive event was held there, initially as a recreation for the military officers stationed in the hall. The first edition of the National Championships, open to the general public, occurred in 1903, recurring every two years until 1909, when it became an annual event. The discipline of gentlemen's singles was the first to be played; gentlemen's doubles was added in 1909.

Ladies singles, ladies doubles, and mixed doubles were first played at the Hap Club in 1909 and only moved to Byan in 1915. The relocation of ladies' and mixed events was delayed because Themiclesian soldiers turned out to watch their officers lose, and it was thought somehow improper to allow soldiers to watch women's events; however, public interest in the sport compelled the relocation of the events as attendances overwhelmed the grounds of the Hap Club.

By 1916, however, the army was no longer interested in using the hall, since the arsenal close to it had been demolished and the land sold to property developers. The hall was thus transferred to the City for administration, when it then became an exhibition hall when it was not used for sports. The badminton tournaments expanded with the army's schedule out of the way, from a two-day event into a five-day one. Between 1901 and 1931, badminton had arisen from a quaint passtime to a highly spectated sport, temporarily outdrawing the Lower Themiclesia Tennis Championships. Byan was at the epicentre of the pre-war badminton craze, becoming known as the place in the city to watch the sport in September.

After the Pan-Septentrion War, badminton became less popular but underwent a notable transformation from a spectator sport—where many more people watch rather than play—into a player sport. In the 40s, for the requirement of comparatively expensive indoor courts, badminton was not favoured by government policy. Nevertheless, some factories were converted to "badminton halls" by landlords seeking to collect rent.

For the gentlemen's singles final of 1970 between Martin Schmick and Ko-ner Pyir, Byan received its record attendance of 14,421 individuals in Hall #1, which had a designated capacty of 5,700. Spectators squeezed into the benches of the viewing galleries and stood on the playing level shoulder-to-shoulder. Some even encroached on the press area or scaled the hall's scoreboard in spite of what the tournament cautioned as an electrical hazard. Though the crowd was enormous, the atmosphere was "so taken by the playing that more sound came from the shuttlecock landing on the wood, than from 10,000 people".

Facilities

Scoreboard

In 1948 the Byan Drill Hall installed two scoreboards, one in the old hall and the other one in Hall #1, which was just completed that year. Hall #1's scoreboard is quite iconic due to its soft, warm glow and heat it physically emits in operation. The board makes its numbers by lighting a series of light bulbs in pre-wired patterns, which are given power via dials on the chair umpire's chair. If a dial is set between its marks, the digit the dial controls receives no electrical power and goes black. If the dial needs to be changed from 9 to 0, it had to be dialed through all the lower numbers, which manifests on videos as a series of flashes of 9, 8, 7 ... 2, 1, then 0. As the bulbs were incandescent blubs, they lit up a little more slowly than modern LED-based sources of light.

When Hall #1 became home to the Indoor Tennis Championships in 1951, tennis scores were initially displayed on the badminton scoreboard as 1 (for 15), 3 (for 30), 4 (for 40), and 8 (for advantage). In 1954 this was remedied with an extra digit, which was only wired for 0 and 5, since tennis scoring did not require any other number in this position. The part of the scoreboard that displayed results of previous games/sets had two digits, but the first digit could only display the number 1, as badminton scoring (then) usually only advanced to 15. In the event a score beyond 19 was recorded, only the second digit would appear, sometimes leading to the observation that a set had concluded with the score of 18-0, which was actually 18-20.

The scoreboard was mounted in the northwest corner of the hall. As it was about 1.5 by 4 m in dimension, it was not unusual for some patrons of the event to scale the scoreboard and sit on it for the better view it affords. However, the organizers of tournaments have historically discouraged this because the scoreboard was not designed to support the load of several people sitting on it. This was particularly prevalent in the 40s through 70s as the event could be oversold, leaving some patrons with no seats, or indeed leave some patrons unable to see where empty seats are. After the advent of computerized assigned seating, watching the game from the scoreboard became rare.

Oddities

• Byan Drill Hall is known for the amplified ping from racquets hitting shuttlecocks, which was described as a "gun salute" to the sport and particularly appropriate to the origins of the venue. It is said to bring a thunderous percussion to a silent audience watching an ongoing game. The wood-lined ceiling may be responsible for amplifying the ping, though its volume has diminished since the advent of metal and graphite racquets, which take higher tensions and emit a commensurately softer ping. Not all players like this loud, lingering ping, and laxer rules about audience noise in recent years has further diminished the drama of the ping.

See also

• Themiclesia