Internal Cultivation or External Strength?: Claiming Martial Arts in the Qing Period Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Ian McNally, B.A. Graduate Program in East Asian Studies The Ohio State University 2019 Thesis Committee: Ying Zhang, Adviser Morgan Liu Patricia Sieber i Copyright by Ian McNally 2019 ii Abstract Martial arts in China has always had multiple meanings, depending on the context in which it was understood. This project seeks to evaluate what the different meanings of martial arts changed over the Qing period and how different people employed these understandings at different times and in different circumstances. By placing martial arts as the focal point of analysis, something rarely seen in academic scholarship, this project highlights how there the definition of martial arts has always been in flux and it is precisely that lack of definition that has made it useful. This project begins by focusing on establishing a historical overview of the circumstances during the Qing period within which martial arts developed. It also analyzes and defines both the important analytical and local terminology used in relation to discourse surrounding the martial arts. Chapter 1 looks at official documents and analyzes how the Qing court understood martial arts as a means of creating a political narrative and how the form of that narrative changed during the Qing, depending on the situations that required court intervention. Chapter 2 will analyze how Han martial artists employed their martial arts as a means of developing or preserving a sense of ethnic strength. Chapter 3 expands the discussion include how Han men and women reimagined their own gender identity using martial arts practice and discourse. Chapter 3 also highlights how literature written by Han women was able to use martial arts practice as a means of breaking down previous gender norms, while stories written by Manchu men used female martial artist character to push social agendas. This project will look at the changing meanings of martial arts in the Qing, laying the groundwork for future scholarship. i Dedication Dedicated to Robert McNally and Janet Yetka-McNally ii Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my thesis adviser Dr. Ying Zhang of the Department of History at The Ohio State University. Prof. Zhang was always there to listen to any problems I might have had or to give guidance and support when I needed it. She always saw what this project could be, even when I found myself lost or frustrated. I truly believe this project could never have happened without her. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Morgan Liu and Dr. Patricia Sieber at The Ohio State University. They were always willing to make time to give me advice. Their expertise brought an invaluable layer to this project. Finally, I must express my profound gratitude to my parents and to the rest of my family for providing unfailing support throughout my years of study. They were always there with an encouraging phone call when I needed it most during the process of researching and writing this thesis. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. Thank you. iii Vita June 2006 ……………………………..Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School 2010……………………………………B.A. Japanese, Colgate University 2011 to 2013…………………………..Native English Teacher, INTERAC Group, Tokyo, Japan 2014 to present………………………...Head Instructor, Magui Bagua New Jersey/Columbus Fields of Study Major Field: East Asian Studies iv Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….…………….i Dedication…………………………………………………………………………..…………....ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..………..iii Vita……………………………………………………………………………………….………iv Chapter 1: Martial Arts and Qing China: An Introduction…………………………..…………..1 Chapter 2: Martial Arts as Official Political Narrative…………………………………………..24 Chapter 3: Martial Arts as Ethnic Strength………………………………………………………43 Chapter 4: Martial Arts as Gender Reimagining…………………………………………...……58 Chapter 5: Qing Martial Arts and the Modern Era: A Conclusion……………………………....75 References………………………………………………………………………………….….....78 v Chapter 1: Martial Arts and Qing China: An Introduction Introduction Martial arts in China are an everchanging practice that has existed since the earliest of dynasties and continues into the modern day. Though its position in Chinese culture has changed over time, martial arts have always found a place in Chinese life, practiced by elite and commoners alike. Insofar as this practice has been such a prevalent part of Chinese society, it is surprising that academic scholarship has rarely given it direct attention. While many have discussed martial arts in relation to secret societies, religious organizations, or rebellious traditions, it is rare that the practice of martial arts becomes the focus of the research itself. Instead, this practice most often becomes a supporting piece of a larger research goal or narrative framework. As martial arts are often considered a ubiquitous aspect of Chinese society, much in the same way as the cultural concept of filial piety, it is often over looked as the subject deserving of its own scholarly research. Where such scholarship does exist it tends toward a focus that can be either too broad or too narrow to create any strong changes to the field of study as a whole. This project seeks to take martial arts and analyze how it has been used to construct identity push differing agendas. In order to maintain a manageable scope, this project focuses on martial arts during the Qing period (1644-1911). This period is often connected to the creations of many modern forms of martial arts, including Hung Ga (洪家) and Taiji Quan (太极拳), and martial folk heroes, such as Huang Fei Hong(黄飞鸿). With the Qing being such a prominent period of martial arts development, it serves well as a productive site for scholarly inquiry into martial arts and its 1 position within both Han and Manchu culture. This project intends to look at the questions surrounding the contexts within which these systems of martial arts were created. Through viewing martial arts from its shifting position during the Qing period, I seek to raise questions regarding its practice and understanding: What purpose did martial arts serve for members of Qing officialdom? How were martial arts employed by the practitioners themselves? How did these uses change over the centuries of the Qing period? These questions seek to look at martial arts within the myriad contexts within which it had found itself. Martial arts have always existed without a stable referent to define its meaning and it would take on different meanings throughout history as different actors understood and employed it. This was especially true during the Qing period. Due to the changing circumstances of the dynasty, martial arts filled different roles for different people at different times, being employed in various ways and embodying multiple meanings. For the court, Han and Manchu martial arts were a tool, employed by the state in the creation of narrative and counter-narrative for the purpose of pushing a political agenda, which shifted with each successive emperor. This discourse was able to create images of Manchu martial arts as reifying Manchu ethnic and military superiority, or it turned Han martial arts into a sectarian threat to the Confucian social order. Martial arts, in practice, discourse, and representation, served as a platform for Han people to re-contextualize their identity within a new political and social framework after the trauma suffered during the Ming-Qing transition and throughout the Qing period. Over the course of the Qing period these negotiations and narratives became tangled in larger tensions of foreign intervention and rising rebellious movements that forced martial artists to interact more directly with the larger Qing society. Increased foreign intervention in Chinese life placed higher 2 pressures on Qing leadership, and influenced the changing dispositions of Qing emperors. This influence led to martial arts and its use as a tool of self-authentication and narrative construction to grow both in scope and stakes as the period of the Qing ended. This project looks at martial arts as a practice employed by its practitioners as a means of forming new identities and understandings of their own changing circumstances. As a bodily practice, martial arts can serve as a unique frame for these questions. Despite the prevalence of discourse and literary representation of martial arts and martial artists in both the Ming and Qing periods, it is this physicality that separates it from other means of identity construction, such as literary pursuits, that were occurring at the same time. Martial arts were something that was practiced bodily and did not exists purely within the realm of the theoretical. It is also became inextricably linked to other topics of discourse in the Qing, such as ethnicity, gender, and use of force both sanctioned and unsanctioned. Historical Overview The scope of this study extends from the late Ming up through the end of the Qing, so establishing an overarching historiographical overview is paramount to providing proper contextualization. Martial arts are not a single practice, and what form these practices take and how they are used is dependent on the social and political contexts that surround them. In order to properly analyze how Chinese martial arts practice changes over the course of the Qing, we must first understand the ways in which the political and social landscapes of that period changed. This will provide the context that will allow us to properly analyze the development of Qing specific meanings of the martial arts. 3 The late Ming period was marked by the growth of martial arts practice within both the general population and the literati. The popularity of novels such as The Water Margin shows us that by the Ming period martial arts practice had become part of popular culture.