Claiming Martial Arts in the Qing Period

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

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.

Dedication

Dedicated to Robert McNally and Janet Yetka-McNally

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

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

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.

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. Martial arts practice was something undertaken by peasants and scholars like. Martial Arts during this period still saw many practitioners drawing a connection between their practice and the military. Sword fighting and boxing continued to be practiced in the late Ming as in periods prior, though the number of names for such practices continued to grow.1 There were literati who even began keeping lists of these different systems. The most prominent distinction made between systems of this period was the separation of regular styles from so called “flowery boxing(花拳),” or systems that looked good but lacked effectiveness in combat.2 Most of the changes in martial arts during this period was happening among the literati, who took to practicing the straight sword, or jian (剑), fencing and took to identifying this practice as the embodiment of the cultivated spirit.3

While the saber, or dao (刀), was still perceived as a military weapon, the literati engaged in martial arts practice during this period by training with a weapon that was only considered viable in the hands of a skilled practitioner, thereby allowing these literati to show their skill and cultivation, as opposed to brute strength.

This idea of cultivated martial skill coincided with accepted modes of Ming literati masculinity, which often sought multiple modes of expression that differentiated between a common duality of Han thought, wen (文) and wu (武). This is one of the core methods through

1 Peter A. Lorge, Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (New York: Combridge University Press, 2012) 177. 2 Lorge, 177. 3 Lorge, 183.

4 which the Ming understood differing expressions of masculinity. The stereotype most commonly associated with martial artists in this period was that of the haohan (好汉), typified in The Water

Margin. These men existed on the margins of society, also known as the jianghu (江湖), and it is here where they lived lives of violence and honor.4 These haohan men were defined by their engagement in excess, drinking and eating heavily, Han martial skills, and disinterest in women.

It was this ideal that many Han martial artists ascribed to in the late Ming. On the other side of this duality, the caizi (才子), or “fragile scholar” exemplified the wen masculine ideal. During the Ming period, wen was often given preference over wu in overall desirability, stressing a

Confucian sense of cultivation as superior.5 This image of the caizi was a masculine ideal in the realm of the Confucian gentry. These ideas and images were in no way monolithic as evidenced by members of the literati adopting sword collecting and dueling as well as the ways many writings sought to soften the image of the martial artist or harden the image of the fragile scholar.6 These images were shifting throughout the Ming period, and the turmoil surrounding the end of the dynasty brought these ideas into even greater flux.

The Ming-Qing transition is understood as a period of great upheaval in China, a time that shook all people in all realms of life, public and private. While the most obvious event in this period was the Manchu takeover of Beijing in 1644, the unrest within the Ming and rise of the Qing both began much earlier in the 17th century. There had been Han populations

4 Avron Boretz, Gods, Ghosts, And Gangsters: Ritual Violence, Martial Arts, and Masculinity on the Margins of Chinese Society, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,2011) 33. 5 Geng Song, The Fragile Scholar, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004) 13. 6 Martin W. Huang, Negotiating Masculinities in Late Imperial China, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2006) 126.

5 collaborating with the Manchu court since around 1620s, in places like Liaodong.7 Han military units marched with Manchu bannermen into the city of Beijing in 1644, but this was not seen by many as an invasion. The rebels lead by Li Zicheng (李自成) had already taken control of the capital by that point and for many, due to Li’s abuse of gentry and officials, the Qing represented a much better alternative.8 This was by no means a simple contrast, and the chaos that stretched across China proper saw cities and literati siding with the Qing, the Ming, and with the rebels at their doorsteps.9 After the Qing secured Beijing, the south saw the worst of the fighting, due predominantly to its location of the Southern Ming court at Nanjing, and later Zhejiang and

Fujian.10 During this time Han men and women alike wrote in an attempt to capture their experience of this moment in their lives and make sense of their place in this time of unrest.

Some of these writings took on political tones, being a source of Ming loyalism or a condemnation of late Ming excess. These were couched in terms that often informed the position of ethnic and gender concerns relevant at the time, which will be delved into more detail later in this project. Martial arts and the images of the knights-errant were also used as a mode of women writers to make political statements.

As the civil unrest of the Ming-Qing transition slowly faded, there were still violent clashes. The revolt of the three feudatories (1673-1681) saw fiefdoms established in the Qing yb ex-Ming general fight against the established Qing court once they realized they would not be

7 Frederic Wakeman, The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press: 1985) 160. 8 Wakeman, 304. 9 Wakeman, 229. 10 Grace S. Fong, “Writing from Experience: Personal Records of War and Disorder in Jiangnan during the Ming- Qing Transition” in Military Culture in Imperial China ed. Nicola Di Cosmo, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009) 258.

6 allowed to maintain their control over southern China.11 Fujian, one of these controlled regions, continues to be the home of many martial arts legends and is credited with being the birthplace of systems such as Hong Quan. The late 17th century, despite being a period of continued Qing consolidation, was a time where many of the literati who refused to serve the Qing under the banner of Ming loyalty and their writings reflected this sense of moral unease.12 There were also many literati who collaborated with the Qing for personal reasons, or pragmatic ones, such as the rebuilding of many Ming cities and sites. The literati in these cities often identified themselves as a member of a single class of elites irrespective of which lord they served.13 They took this rebuilding as an opportunity to create new narratives that highlighted the pasts they wished to preserve and the place these localities had in the new future of the Qing.14 Ming loyalist ideals did not impede literati who espoused them from being on friendly terms with Qing officials, even those who served in both dynasties.15 More important in this period was rebuilding locally and establishing a post-Ming identity, whatever that would eventually mean.16

The Kangxi emperor was a man that seemed willing to give enough breadth to allow this to occur. He was not a strong interventionist, instead giving off a more cosmopolitan aura than those emperors who would come after him. The lack of direct intervention in local affairs, such as martial arts, seems to stem from earlier policies that treated Han peoples as separate, but equal to their Qing counterparts.17 Despite the fact that the Manchu were still seen as ethnically

11 Lorge, 187. 12 Wakeman, 1084. 13 Tobie Meyer-Fong, Building Culture in Early Qing Yangzhou, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003) 4. 14 Meyer-Fong, 4. 15 Meyer-Fong, 33. 16 Meyer-Fong, 35. 17 Wakeman, 163.

7 superior, this was not an open stance made in a way that would bring direct conflict with the Han peoples of the newly unified Qing empire. In his imperial tours, he asserted dominance through ideological means and ethnic undertones as opposed to direct appeals to Manchu superiority.18

Southern touring for the Kangxi emperor was couched in language concerning flood control and other infrastructural concerns.19 The Kangxi emperor ruled a multi-ethnic empire and handled this in ways more discreet than his descendants.

As martial arts activity grew in the mid-Qing, even established bastions of martial arts traditions within established religious institutions were not above suspicion. The Qing court was distrustful of the Shaolin temple, this suspicion began with the Yongzhen emperor. The

Yongzhen emperor saw the Shaolin temple as a potential military concern and his son continued to look at these monks similarly as a potential rebellious elements.20 This rise in suspicion regarding a form of force, in this case martial arts practice, that was not under the control of the state, would influence the ways in which the state would seek to establish their own superiority.

With the rise of Kangxi’s grandson, the Qianlong emperor, more direct and ethnically inflected intervention was taken during the eighteenth century. In ways that aligned with his grandfather at times and departed from him at others, the Qianlong emperor sought to find a way to portray himself in both ethnically superior and culturally assimilated terms.21 This kind of tension was often seen in how what was previously an ethnic undertone in previous reigns became more overt in the Qianlong court. In this period Han officials of the Qing were no longer

18 Michael G. Chang, A Court on Horseback: Imperial Touring and the Construction of Qing Rule, 1680-1785, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007) 86. 19 Chang, 86. 20 Meir Shahar, The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion and The Chinese Martial Arts (Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2008), 191-192. 21 Chang, 75.

8 allowed to be placed in charge of the logistics surrounding imperial procession and encampment during imperial tours, as that job became reserved for the banner elite.22 This kind of ethnic favoritism began to create more stark divisions between the Manchu and Han elites in the Qing.

This period also saw the rise of laws against the practice of martial arts publicly, as well as those against brotherhood and mutual aid societies.23 The Qianlong emperor saw such practices as sectarian, heterodox, and in need of imperial intervention. This reaction to localized rebellions saw the confirmation of the link between these mutual aid societies of the eighteenth century and martial arts related violence of the nineteenth century.24

By the late Qing many of the tensions present previously were coming to a head, exacerbated by the increased intervention of western powers. With the failure by the Qing to push back Britain in the Opium Wars, China’s military strength was being called into question and its economy suffered under unequal treaties. An increased missionary presence also began to place more external pressures on emperors as legal concerns brought Christians and locals into increased conflict.25 These foreign elements fanned the flames that were already brimming within Qing controlled China, and the turmoil and violent uprisings increased.

The nineteenth century saw many rebellious movements across China, creating a dangerous and volatile atmosphere for martial artists and state officials alike. From the Eight

Trigrams Uprising of 1813 to the Boxer Uprising (1899-1901), the late Qing was dealing with an increase of rebellious movements. Martial artists were involved on all sides of these conflicts,

22 Chang, 119. 23 David Ownby, Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in Early and Mid-Qing China: The Formation of a Tradition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 30. 24 Ownby, 26. 25 Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (London: University of California Press, 1987), 200.

9 from working as rebels, or training them, to fighting on behalf of the state, while still others just attempting to keep their own homes and villages safe from the violence surrounding them. This period was a hotbed of violent rebellious activity and martial artists made of portion of that activity. Even for those practitioners who were not directly involved, the presence of martial arts in rebellion influenced the way the court policy affected their ability to train publicly.

During this period, tensions were at their most strained and they were found along ethnic and religious lines. This time of turmoil also brought a new anti-Manchu rhetoric as Ming loyalist imagery once again became a way of framing anti-Qing discourse. At the same time many rose up with anti-Christian stances that attempted to push back against the pressure of western influence and intervention in China.26 All of these concerns and tensions found way their way into the world that martial artist in China dealt with even as the dynasty was coming to an end.

This, while by no means a comprehensive overview, begins to paint a picture of the kinds of contexts and circumstances within which martial arts developed in the Qing period and how martial artists understood their practice with respect to the changing world around them. Martial arts, as an aspect of one’s life, is understood within the context of one’s experiences and circumstances. It is only by understanding the historical context of the Qing that we can hope to understand the martial arts and martial artist present during that period.

26 Esherick, 154.

Concepts and Terms

This project focuses on understanding the ways in which martial arts was employed in different context for different purposes over the course of the Qing period. To properly analyze this, it is vital to make clear how these terms and concepts will be understood in this study and how that will affect the rest of the project. These terms represent the important analytical categories in this analysis and properly defining them is key to making clear the intentions and scope of this project.

The most important term in this study is that of “martial arts.” Other research projects have employed this term, usually defining it with respect to the practice’s connections with military training or as stemming from a purely combat method. 27 While these is an accurate and straightforward understanding of marital arts as a concept, it lacks the nuance that it needs in order to be of more nuanced analytical use. In this project, “martial arts” is understood as a category without a stable referent. It has never had a singular meaning and has been used for different purposes based on how people have employed the term. Martial arts are not one thing to all people and to analyze the Qing period with martial arts as our lens we must accept this fact. This does not expressly require the physical practice itself, as many who discuss martial arts are not themselves practitioners or their practice is merely a part of their overall self-identity. What makes martial arts distinctive as a form of physical expression, however, is its combative element, but this combat aspect of martial arts does not exist, I would argue, as an end in and of itself. Rather the expression of martial arts and combative skill is a means by which an individual asserts their identity through their own physicality. In this way the possession of martial arts skill act as a form of self-

27 Lorge, 3.

11 authentication, while at the same time existing within an set of markers, that while continuously contested are skill considered to be objective and allow outsiders to the martial arts community to verify their perceived skill and therefore act to authenticate the identities being constructed around them.

The term martial arts in this project serves as an analytical term, as the language of the

Qing period did not converge on a single term to reference all forms of practice. It is important for this analysis that we also understand the local terms that those who practice the martial arts and those who established policy surrounding the martial arts used to refer to these forms of practice.

By understanding the local terminology, we can understand how these actors defined different forms of martial arts practice. Specific terms show us how individuals created specific connotations and meanings of martial arts practice in certain circumstances. By understanding their use of language, we can better analyze what martial arts meant at that moment, as well as how a change in language can reflect a change in meaning over time.

Martial arts practice during the Qing was generally discussed by martial artists using terms specific to the system of practice itself. The most common way for them to refer to their practice was by name. systems such as plum flower boxing (梅花拳), eight trigrams boxing (八卦拳), etc. were generally discussed by name without a generic term being applied. For those who were attempting to classify martial arts practices, a distinction was usually made between the so called

External School (外家), which were considered to focus on muscular and physical strength, and the Internal School (内家), which were defined by their focus on meditation and strength derived from the manipulation of qi (气), or internal life force. This language used primarily by martial

12 artists defined their practice by the specific set of techniques or skills they studied and grouped them by what those practices had in common.

Despite the fact that there had previously been overarching language used to describe martial arts practice, such as earliest known term Jiji (技系) from the third century BCE, the Qing period did not have a singular term used to officially describe martial arts practice in general.28

Even a term previously considered standard such as wushu (武术) does not appear anywhere in official records. Martial arts practice was discussed in an official capacity using language specific to the context in which it was being discussed. One of the earliest terms related to martial arts practice in the Qing was wuyi (武艺), a local term used to reference martial arts in a military context. It was used in discussions of armed martial practice, from archery to swordsmanship, though it had broader uses, with included other related skills, such as horseback riding. Another term to show up in official documents was wuyong (武勇), a term used for martial arts practices sanctioned by the state, but outside of military purview. This term appears most frequently in discussion of honorific titles. When discussing unarmed martial arts, official documents often used the term quanfa (拳法), a term that literally translates to “fist method.” The last official term that

I found was that used in court documents was quanbang (拳棒). A term that literally translates to

“fist and stick,” this language only appeared in court cases and seems to be an attempt to remove the skill and art from the practice implied by other forms of language, instead reducing unsanctioned martial arts of this kind to pure fighting, something normally understood to be distinct and separate from martial arts practice. While this official language different in meaning

28 Lorge, 10.

13 and usage, there was a sense that they were all connected to a particular form of practice that this project will refer to as martial arts.

The other main concept present in this project is that of the much-contested concept of ethnicity. To understand how this concept will be employed, it is important to understand how this term will be defined. This study attempts to understand ethnicity in two ways, each with its own advantages and challenges. Like in other studies of the Qing period, this study fist seeks to understand ethnicity in a more ideological sense, as a set of meaning employed to engender a sense of overall group affinity.29 This allows the concept of ethnicity to be used in analyzing both the martial arts practitioners and the Manchu court in terms of the ways that martial arts and its practice as well as court edicts and ideals creating this sense of affinity. In this way ethnically encoded language serves a political and social purpose in creating in group-out group distinctions without fully establishing or reifying the “reality of ethnic distinctions.” This idea alone, however, does not form a complete image of ethnicity as it was understood during the Qing period. For this I will also seek to define ethnicity as an embodied practice. This performative element creates bonds of physicality that when employed by social agents, establishes one as part of a group. Through this kind of definition along seems overly vague, when used in conjunction with the ideas surrounding ethnicity as ideology, I would argue it creates a concept that understands ethnicity both in the ways it is understood in a grand ideological sense as well as how it is lived by the martial arts practitioners and people on the ground living in the Qing period.

This project will be looking at two ethnic groups, that of the Manchu and the Han. This project will analyze closely the Manchu ethnic group and specifically their relationship with

29 Chang, 17.

14 martial arts practice as it pertained to their own sense of ethnic identity. Looking at the ways in which the predominantly Manchu court and bannerman system reified Manchu identity as being inextricable from a single martial practice, archery, we will be able to glean how the Manchu people viewed martial arts practice as a whole and how it influence the way Han and Manchu martial arts were controlled over the course of the Qing. For the Han ethnic group, this study will analyze firstly literati culture, which dominated martial arts written discourse. Through this lens we can see how Han people, specifically literate men, interacted with and understood their Manchu rulers. Another aspect of the Han that will be studied here is the Han within marginalized groups, such as small villages and secret organizations. This group is vital to analyze, as it constitutes the

Han people whose martial arts practice was being directly influenced by Qing policy and intervention. These groups will provide the foundation of my analysis as it pertains to questions of ethnicity and the martial arts.

Methodology and Structure

This project seeks to connect many disparate aspects of analysis of the Qing period through the lens of martial arts practice. In order to do this each section needed a different methodological framework to make full use of the sources that were available to me. To make certain each chapter is understood with regard to what it was attempting to achieve, it is necessary to properly explore the forms of analysis that will be present in this project as well as where they will be utilized going forward.

I will be relying extant historical scholarship and case studies to tell the story of martial arts during the Qing. This form of analysis will be buttressed with anthropological and literary

15 analysis. By looking through an anthropological perspective, this project will be able to consider martial arts as an embodied practice, analyzing the way in which this practice was understood to be constituted by the culture and ideologies within which it was developed. Literary analysis of the vernacular novel as well as the discursive analysis of official language in relation to the martial arts will give greater insight into the ways in which martial arts was not only being practiced, but also being described and understood linguistically.

This project focuses on the Qing dynastic period and in doing so relies on a dynastic perspective of analysis that looks at the distinctive elements of the Qing in relation to martial arts and ethnic discourse. Martial arts have been present for nearly all of Chinese history, but it is the ways in which it is able to embed itself into the shifting aspects of each dynastic period that makes for an intriguing analysis. Martial arts have not served the same purpose throughout each dynasty and it the specifics of the Qing that are being analyzed here. This use of a dynastic perspective is vital to the understanding of this project as it is looking to uncover how the understanding and discourse surrounding the martial arts changed over the course of the Qing period, as opposed to looking at the overarching aspects of martial arts across the Chinese historical spectrum.

This project has three chapters, the first chapter will be focused on martial arts as a form a political narrative, which intends to highlight the court perspective. It will look at how those in positions of state power understood martial arts, how these attitudes changed over the course of the Qing period, and how this concept was employed as a means of creating narrative and counter- narrative for political purposes. The analysis of the court will focus on primarily of political actors, the first and foremost being the Qing emperors. From their position, emperors during the Qing enacted sweeping edicts that impacted the lives of everyone across their dynasty and even beyond.

Understanding their dispositions toward Han martial arts in different periods of the Qing will highlight the changing attitudes of the Qing on a grander scale. Secondly, the term court here also refers to the officials and literati that have an official capacity within the Qing. Those who write documents and execute policy in a official capacity are also agents in this story and as such must be accounted for. Not all aspects of the court are solely the purview of the emperor and the relationship between martial arts and the Qing court is a complex one.

The primary sources that will be used in this section rely heavily on official records and documents. In order to better understand how martial arts was understood by the Qing court, especially in relation to questions of ethnicity, it is important to see how martial arts is discussed in an official capacity by the state. To this end, the main sources that will be employed are the

Qing Shi Gao (清史稿), or Qing Official History and Qing Shi Lu (清实录), or Qing Venerable

Records. While the official history was compiled after the fall of the Qing, the ranks and other official titles awarded during the Qing help to further unpack how martial arts was view in an official capacity. The other main primary source type that will be utilized in this section of the project is that of criminal case records. These records look at the period during which martial arts practice was largely outlawed and will help give a clearer picture both of how martial arts was viewed in this official perspective during this time as well as shed light of the ongoing relationship between state and local authorities that continued to cause tension throughout the Qing period. In the realm of Han martial arts, despite its practice and public display being outlawed in periods of the Qing, there is a continued martial arts presence and continued discourse on the local level. This conversation between the view toward Han martial arts by the state and the view of Han martial arts by the practitioners themselves within various contexts forms the heart of this project.

The second chapter discusses the concept of martial arts as a form of ethnic strength and focuses on the Han martial artists themselves. This term, “martial artist” requires some clarification, as not every person to every train to fight in the Qing period will be included in its purview. When the term martial artist is used it will be referring generally to one of three different categories of martial arts practitioner. The first is literate practitioners, those who could read classical texts and wrote about martial arts practice and theory. They were often part of local gentry or literati circles and are the source of most extant examples of written discourse on Han martial arts. This category includes both ex-officials of the Ming period and non-officials alike who wrote about martial arts in the Qing. The second category of martial artists are those who joined sectarian and secret societies, marginalized groups who practiced the martial arts for reasons beyond the academic or theoretical. This category is often the one standing in most direct conflict with the state and much of the changes surrounding martial arts as a practice was undertaken by this group of Han martial artists. While this might not touch on all of those who defined themselves as martial artists, it is the categories by which I intend to analyze the Han martial artists’ negotiation of identity.

This chapter relies on primary sources written largely by those literate martial artists who sought to discuss their own practice or that of the other masters who made an impact on their lives.

As such this section of analysis will rely on the epitaphs and biographies of Han martial artists written largely by their students. These, while not the words of Han martial artists themselves, do act as a means by which living martial artists understood their practice through the words granted to and about those practitioners who had passed on. The other main primary documents in this section will by writings on Han martial arts practice, specifically so called “internal” martial arts practice. By looking at the terms through which martial artists have understood the act of practice

18 at varying times within the Qing period, this study hopes to better understand how Han martial artists placed themselves within the shifting contexts of their lives throughout the Qing period.

The third chapter will focus on Han martial arts as a means of gender reimagining. This chapter will look at the ways in which both male and female martial artists have understood their gender identity through modes of martial arts discourse and practice. Through this kind of analysis we can see how Han martial arts was used to reconstruct concepts of gender among Han martial artists, as well as cross previously understood gender boundaries. By looking not only at discourse and practice, but also at the ways in which female martial artists in particular were represented in fiction, we are able to shed light on how female martial artists could employ their martial arts in establishing their own identity as well as the ways in which the image of the female martial artists could be employed for other social and political agendas.

The sources of this chapter are possibly the most uneven in this study and require the most extrapolation. While there are many poems written by women during the Ming-Qing transition that will be used in my analysis, much of the secondary source literature does not give many discreet primary source examples of female martial artists’ discourse and practice, during the mid-

Qing period in particular. This seems to largely be due to the fact that this was only a tangential aspect of the larger research goals of these scholars. As such munch of the information regarding the mid-Qing is extrapolated from secondary sources. Similarly for the late Qing, this project’s focus will shift away from women’s own writings and to the representation of female martial artist in fiction, which was written by men. Specifically this chapter will analyze Ernü Yingxiong Zhuan

(儿女英雄传), one of the most popular martial arts novels of the Late-Qing. Overall, the organizational structure of this project focuses on establishing a foundation of understanding of

19 the primary actors engaged in the discourse surrounding Han marital arts during the Qing period: the court and the practitioner.

Research Challenges

There are many areas that prevent this project from becoming as all-encompassing and detailed as it might otherwise be. I do not believe it renders the points or arguments invalid, but there were aspects of this research that were beyond the scope of this project, be they for reasons of time, ability, or relevance. Future research on this topic will hopefully fill the gaps present in this analysis, and by looking at where this project falls short creates a guideline on where to go next.

One of the largest general issues in this project is the relatively small number of case studies and sources. This project did not allow for the kind of time necessary to find and analyze all available sources on martial arts from the Qing period and the more sources utilized, the more complete the story will become. This project’s scope, while temporally large, looking at the entirety of the Qing period, is also quite narrow, focusing on a few case studies and key documents to help understand some of the ways in which martial arts practice was understood and employed during the Qing period. More examples of martial arts discourse from practitioners or state officials will do nothing but increase the scope of future research and allow it to go more in depth on the ways in which martial arts was employed by practitioners and the

Qing state.

This project relied heavily on English language secondary scholarship, specifically in the chapter relating to gender. Chinese scholarship and a few classical Chinese primary sources were

20 also used. Aside from Douglas Wile’s translations of texts from the Internal school and quoted poetry, all translations present in this project are my own. Going forward in this research a greater use of classical Chinese sources will allow us to paint a fuller picture of what kinds of discourse surrounding martial arts was going on at all levels over the course of the Qing period.

Expanding the base of language source will also be advantageous going forward. Japanese,

Mongol, and Manchu languages will likely open the door to possible sources not yet analyzed in existing scholarship on the topic of martial arts in the Qing period, especially about the court perspective.

In more specific terms, challenges and gaps arose around the specifics of each chapter.

The first main chapter looks primarily at official sources and the biggest challenges came from utilizing these sources. There are specific people whose names appear in these sources, such as in the Qing Official History, who provide examples of instances surrounding the use of certain martial arts terms, yet there does not seem to be any further mention of them in this or related sources. While they are still usable as examples, it would only strengthen my argument to be able to fully explain the contexts surrounding these specific actors.

The second main chapter focuses on the martial arts practitioners and the issues that arose were questions of scope. In my research I found many elements of martial arts practice during the Qing, such as the practice of martial arts by minority groups such as the Miao. While their story would be able to extend my analysis beyond the Han-Manchu dichotomy, it goes beyond the current scope of this project. Other issues such as unraveling the specifics of martial artist in secret societies, often suffered from a lack of source material, something also experienced in the last main chapter. While many martial artists in secret societies were not literate or did not write,

21 there are likely many sources that could expand upon what I was able to analyze by relying more heavily on secondary materials.

By looking at the challenges of an ambitious project such as this one, we can see what opportunities exist to further develop the research going forward. This project attempts to lay a foundation of scholarship that will hopefully lead to deeper and more expansive projects related to uncovering the experiences and contexts of martial artists, both military and layman, of the

Qing. To continue to look forward into the future of this field of study, challenges must be overcome so new challenges can be tackled.

Chapter 2: Martial Arts as Official Political Narrative

Introduction

Martial arts and military culture have been as aspect of Chinese life since the first martial artist, Fu Hao (妇好), lived in 1200 BCE.30 When looking at the history of the martial arts in

China, it is important to analyze the perspective of the emperors and court elite, because it shows us how different forms of martial arts practice were able to develop and spread in different political circumstances. By analyzing the ways in which the Qing court employed martial arts, in both practice and discourse, it allows us to see how their views changed over the course of the

Qing, and how that change influenced where and how martial arts were able to be practiced, and weather or not this practice was sanctioned by the court. Martial arts were a means for the Qing court to control the narrative surrounding their own military strength, through the discourse of

Manchu martial arts, as well as the narrative surrounding unrest in their dynasty, by intervening in the practice of Han martial arts.

This type of physical and martial practice has influenced literati and official culture in different ways depending on the circumstances of the dynasty in which these individuals were situated. In the Ming period, martial arts had become a popular aspect of literati life, even in a culture that valued learning and propriety exemplified in the Chinese concept of wen over the military and martial elements inherent in the concept of wu. By the late Ming, beyond the

Confucian veneration of archery, literati engaged in a variety of socially accepted martial arts

30 Lorge, 13.

23 practices, from the cataloging of styles, to learning fencing with straight swords, which had gained the reputation as the scholar’s weapon.31 This interest in martial arts and weapon among literati of the Ming went so far to the point that many spent time and money collecting and carrying the most exquisite blades they could procure.32 This became an expression of both martial skill and prestige by the upper class, but did not attract governmental attention. State sanctioned martial arts in the Ming was either a military endeavor or an elite fascination, not a direct imperial concern.

This changed with the conquest of China by the Qing in the late seventeenth century, as the Manchu rulers brought to China their own ideas about the primary importance of martial prowess. The dichotomy of wen, the civil, and wu, the martial, were a common aspect of Chinese culture since well before the Qing period and both were aspects of literati life.33 Conceptions of masculinity in Chinese history often involved the expression of one trait more strongly, for many dynasties this was the wen attribute. For the greatest of men, such as the hero Guan Yu from the

Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a balance the wen and the wu was shown as indicative of a man attaining the highest reaches of achievement. Harmony between these two aspects was also seen as a moral confirmation of one’s right to rule and with the rise of the Qing, emperors also attempted to create an image of themselves that combined both concepts. 34

31 Lorge, 180. 32 Ryor, 231. 33 Ryor, 242. 34 Kam Louie, “Chinese Masculinity Theorizing ‘Wen’ and ‘Wu’,” East Asian History, no. 8 (Australian National University, 1994), 144.

While both aspects were considered important and were stressed, the Manchu rulers and bannermen found the wu, or martial, to be the dominant form of Manchu masculine expression.35

This aspect of Manchu culture included certain forms of martial arts practice, most heavily archery. While Han literati martial arts also found a place in expressions of masculine identity, something that will be discussed further in Chapter 4, this form of Manchu martial arts practice was considered in many ways core to state concepts of Manchu identity, together these customs and practices were known as the “Manchu Way.”36 Manchu martial arts was only one aspect of this overarching identity, but it connected concepts of Manchu-ness with assertions of martial superiority over their Han subjects, and as such became one of the ways the Qing court were able to maintain their own Manchu identity, while also adapting the wen aspects of the majority Han elite culture.37 This connection between Manchu martial practice and ethnic identity became a more prominent issue over the course of the Qing period, as fears surrounding the decline of

Manchu martial and ethnic superiority spurred the Qing state to place a greater stress of the preservation of the “Manchu Way.”38 This expression of Manchu identity though certain customs, not the least of which were specific Manchu martial arts practice, also seems to have an effect on the ways in which Han martial arts are understood by the state over the course of the

Qing period.

Han martial arts practice outside of a military context was not initially a direct concern of the state. I would argue that state concern rose in response to fears over the loss of Manchu

35 Mark C. Elliot, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001) 5. 36 Elliot, 8. 37 Elliot, 3. 38 Elliot, 10.

25 superiority. These fears came from a feeling of deteriorating martial prowess among Manchus as well as concern that heterodox religious groups undermined the image of Confucian cultural assimilation. Intervention in the realm of Han martial arts became the way in which the Qing court took hold of the narrative surrounding this constant balance between cultural distinction and assimilation that provided the foundation of Qing rule, while at the same time using the fact that some Han martial artists were engaging in rebellious activity as a call to Manchus to reaffirm their own sense of martial identity by re-committing themselves to the “Manchu Way.”

This interplay between Manchu martial arts and Han martial arts influenced the ways in which the Qing court understood Manchu and Han identity through the lens of martial arts practice and then used policies to respond to the rising political tensions that developed throughout the Qing period.

Manchu Martial Prowess

The Ming-Qing transition was not a period of extensive debate surrounding Han martial arts in any aspect, but especially a Qing official one, as officials at this time focused on the consolidation of power. Despite this, however, Manchu martial arts are an aspect of this period insofar as there is an overall sense of Qing martial prowess in official records. Neither Han rebel forces, nor Ming military forces were able to repel the might of the Qing. This became a dominating aspect of later Han martial arts writings, the rise of Manchu domination of the narrative of martial prowess.

The moment Manchu forces rode into Beijing was not one of sadness among the people of the capital. Due to the devastation brought on by rebel attacks and the death of the emperor, many were glad to see a powerful force step in to stop the bloodshed.39 Many of the old Ming officials joined the new Qing government. With this victory, though the conquest was far from over, the Qing established the superiority of Manchu martial prowess that would become an aspect of both Han and Manchu martial arts development for the rest of the dynasty.

The Qing government’s focus on consolidating power created a space in which members of the Han literati could begin reconstruction of both destroyed places and destroyed identities.

Han martial arts were not common themes in official court documents. This seems to parallel the

Kangxi emperor’s more cosmopolitan view of his multi-ethnic empire.

The Kangxi emperor was a man fond of Manchus being skilled in the martial arts, from traditional Manchu expression of martial skill such as archery to more modern skills with firearms, but he was not one well versed in the specifics of military theory.40 In his attempts to reform the Qing military examinations, instead of looking at traditional Chinese military or Han martial arts texts, he focused on the philosophical and scholarly traditions of the Chinese classics, many of which abhorred war. He eventually went so far as to break down the segregation of the civil and military examinations, desiring to create Confucian generals and combine the wen, exemplified in the Chinese classics, with the wu, exemplified in Manchu

39 Wakeman, 314. 40 S. R. Gilbert, “Mengzi’s Art of War: The Kangxi Emperor Reforms the Qing Military Examinations,” in Military Culture in Imperial China, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009) 247.

27 martial prowess.41 This policy speaks to an emperor more concerned with the scholarly tradition of the Han Chinese than their martial tradition.

This also comes across in the Qing Venerable Records during his reign, where the discussion of martial arts primarily focused on military training. The most common references to

Manchu martial arts practice in this document related to the military. The use of the term wuyi

(武艺) is common and while it can be translated literally as “martial art” it is generally employed here to mean archery and horseback riding, skills seen as an integral aspect of the Qing military as well as Manchu identity.42 This usage of the term is more in line with previous conceptions of both Han and Manchu martial arts that positioned them as being primarily connected to military practices. The Kangxi emperor does not seem to have any interest in discourse surrounding Han martial arts from an official imperial perspective.

In the few instances where non-military martial arts do appear in the official records, they are not shown in a favorable light. In the two direct references to non-state supported martial arts practice in the venerable records of the Kangxi period they are spoken as an act of “villains with evil hearts who spend their days cockfighting and learning fighting without considering their crimes” (贼心恶棍平日斗鸡学习拳勇不顾罪戾).43 These actions are not discussed positively and reflect an image of the Han martial artist that highlight their potential for violence. In these records, a negative image of Han martial arts emerges in contrast to state-sanctioned martial arts.

41 Gilbert, 249. 42 Qing Shi Lu Kangxi Chao Shi Lu, 83, 3. 43 QSLKXCSL, 76, 239.

Issues and discourse surrounding the practice of Han and Manchu martial arts present in official records does not take on the kind of ethnic tone that is seen later in the Qing.

The Kangxi period was a time of power consolidation and much of this was made possible by the existence of Han Chinese collaborators from periods before the Manchu conquering of Beijing.44

By the time the Kangxi emperor comes along, he seems to have a policy of unity and equity between the subjects of his multi-ethnic empire, at least in his outward facing persona. Many

Han literati chose to shift loyalties and join the Qing during this time. The court’s concern was the question of loyalty more than ethnicity. This sense of trustworthiness relied on being seen as having “Confucian family tales and making the image of the loyal turncoat,” and was constructed through relationship these Han literati had, not only with Qing officialdom, but also with Han Ming loyalists.45 Despite expression of military and ethnic superiority from the Kangxi emperor, such as his act of partaking in southern tours and military exercises, the court of the early Qing was not defined by its strong reliance on a stance of ethnic superiority.46 There was not time or energy to go looking for more trouble than they were already dealing with. This mindset would change over the course of the Qing period, and sometimes in extreme ways.

Martial Arts Outlawed

The mid-Qing period, specifically the reign of the Qianlong emperor, is where the official reaction to Han martial arts practice becomes more interventionist, in line with Qianlong’s

44 Wakeman, 415. 45 Ying Zhang, Confucian Image Politics: Masculine Morality in Seventeenth-Century China, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017) 202. 46 Chang, 79.

29 overall governing style. His reign also brought the return of the southern tours from his grandfather, the Kangxi emperor. This period sees a stronger ethnic overtone to official reactions to both Han and Manchu martial arts practices. This period represents shift in attention toward all forms of martial arts practice and policy is applied differentially. Through the growing need to mitigate the perceived dangers of Han martial arts practice, state sanctioned martial arts activity in the mid-Qing were only those practices which were a part of the state apparatus. Han martial arts were viewed as something dangerous, a force of heterodox sectarianism. The martial arts of the Manchu bannermen, conversely, were viewed as something vital to the official understanding of Manchu identity.

With the rise of the Qianlong emperor came the outlawing of Han martial arts practice and performance in public spaces. It was in this period that the Han martial arts became something of interest to state officials, particularly with regards to its growing connection to sectarian and rebellious activity. It was not specified in court documents what forms of Han martial arts practice was considered “banned” and seems to include all forms of non-military martial arts training that was practiced publicly. Court documents during the reign of the

Qianlong emperor and later show an increased concern over the practice of unsanctioned martial arts by the general public. These documents list those arrested for martial arts practice under the crime of “cheating and seducing people into break the law” (zha jiaoyu ren fanfa, 诈教诱人犯

法), insinuating that the practice of unsanctioned martial arts in a public space was not only dangerous from the perspective of the threat of the practitioner themselves, but also the threat of

30 their effect on population at large.47 Within this overarching crime, Han martial artists who were arrested were charged with two crimes, which were listed below the previous heading. The first was “practice of martial arts with intent to develop physical strength” (qiunong quanbang tuzhang liqi, 演弄拳棒圖長力氣) and the second was “seeking to recruit people to the practice of martial arts” (jingying zhaomu xuexi quanbang zhiren, 京營招募學習拳棒之人).48 These two crimes gives us a much clearer picture on what was considered a concern to the state with respect to unsanctioned martial arts practice, namely the strengthening of those who practiced such martial arts as they were not under the purview of the state, and the recruitment of other members to an expanding network of secret and sectarian societies. One record, written by an official named Si An (司案) of Guangdong province, tells of a man by the name of named Zhang

Da (張大) who came to the capital on the eighth year of Daoguang reign (1829) and began training martial arts with a man named Yang Xuan (楊宣), who promptly died before the completion of Zhang Da’s training. Zhang Da did not know martial arts training was illegal and so he then petitioned the yamen to enroll at the local recruitment camp in order to increase his skills but was instead given fifty lashes for his crimes.49 Cases like Zhang Da’s were classified along with more violent crimes, such as assault. This seems to suggest that martial arts practice was viewed by the Qing court of this period as a potentially violent element within local populations. The practice of martial arts by non-military was viewed by the officials of the

47 刑案匯覽 kanhan huilan [Criminal Case Compilation], no. 14, 3931. 48 KHHL, no. 14, 4417. 49 KHHL, no. 14, 4599.

Qianlong court as a concern and a threat, something that had to be regulated and suppressed whenever possible.

Suppression of martial arts practice by the Qing state also highlights a growing discrepancy between how state authorities and local elites, which made up village and lineage leadership, with regard to secret societies and connections to banned martial arts. During this period of heightened state intervention on local organizations, which often included secret and brotherhood societies, the question becomes how did so many continue to grow and thrive in these villages if they were outlawed? The answer is not complicated: local elites were aware of and permitted the formation of these associations.50 For groups to be able to put down roots in local villages and communities they needed the tacit approval, if not the direct involvement from local elites within those localities. The forms of banned martial arts practice that was an aspect of these groups, was something these elites must have been aware of, as these organizations were getting involved in increasingly violent clashes with Qing officials in a way that was being increasingly framed as a struggle between the Qing, who Ownby describes as taking the side of

“harshness and brutality” against the “anti-Manchu agitations” of the Han secret societies.51

These banned martial arts required secret and brotherhood societies in order to survive during the official crackdown of the mid-Qing and these Han martial arts groups and secret brotherhood societies both found themselves the safety of sympathetic local elites in order to continue to grow organizations and practice their heterodox religions and illegal martial arts.

50 Ownby, 50. 51 Ownby, 126.

This period also saw a renewed focus in the ideology of the “Manchu Way” which defined Manchu-ness in terms of moral character and proficiency in certain military skills, including Manchu martial arts. propagated and supported by the Qianlong emperor, the “Manchu

Way” became an aspect of discussions of military logistics, ethnic stereotypes, and defining proper Manchu behavior. During the Qianlong emperor’s revival of southern touring, and the ethnic display that came with it, He continued to highlight the distinction between the Manchu and the Han. In this period, Han Chinese officials were only allowed to serve on the Grand

Council, but never the Superintendency of the Imperial Encampment, which reflects a determination by the emperor that Han Chinese were not to be trusted with such sensitive matters.52 The root of this policy derived from Qianlong’s view of Han culture as being the cause of the degradation of Manchu values, the so called “Manchu Way,” and overall military discipline. When Manchu bannermen were reprimanded by the emperor, it was with language that compared them to their Han equivalents, implying this to be a negative state. The Han were viewed by the Qianlong emperor in terms of their desire for an easy life and luxury, a concept incompatible with his understanding of what it meant to be Manchu.53 For the Qianlong emperor, positive virtues such as diligence and discipline were ethnically Manchu qualities and they were only not found in those bannermen who were negatively influenced by their Han compatriots.54

The Qianlong emperor viewed the “Manchu Way” as defining Manchu identity, including expectations surrounding martial arts prowess. Martial skills such as archery were

52 Chang, 119. 53 Chang, 180. 54 Chang, 416.

33 considered by the Qianlong emperor to be as important as any other part of the “Manchu Way.”

For the Qianlong emperor, the crises faced by the Qing state of military strength and ethnic identity were, as Michael Chang describes, “at once institutional, administrative, and ideological in nature.”55 By abiding by the ideology of “the Manchu Way,” those who were not skilled in archery could not be viewed as truly Manchu.56 This ideology also created a worldview where those of the proper skill in the banners were able to don the mantle of Manchu through adoption of the appropriate symbols. 57 Even if they were born Han Chinese, this connection between

Manchu archery, banner membership, and Manchu identity, would only become more tightly defined over the course of the Qing period.

As Han martial arts entered the Qing official purview, it brought with it preconstructed notions of who practiced state sanctioned martial arts versus banned martial arts. This, in turn, influenced they ways in which the Qing court, officials and emperor alike, understood both Han and Manchu martial arts in distinct and often contrary ways. This is reflected in how banned martial arts were discussed in official documents, specifically those that catalogued court cases resulting from the arrests of Han martial artists.

The Official Narrative of the Martial Arts

Han martial arts practice was in a complicated position within the late Qing political landscape. The practice of banned martial arts by those involved in brotherhood organization

55 Chang, 217. 56 Elliot, 16. 57 Elliot, 17.

34 activity was still under threat of the Qing and there was a prevailing rebellious response to this intervention. This was not the only response by Han martial artists however, nor was it the only terms in which Han martial arts practice was viewed by the state. Both Han and Manchu martial arts became means through which Qing officials were able to craft a political narrative, whether that be displaying an image of military strength or highlighting the achievements of those official historians deemed worthy. Qing officials venerated the Manchu virtues of state sanctioned martial arts skill, which in this period included the practice of certain Han martial arts. Martial arts in the late Qing was a frame through which the Qing state was able to create adversaries, allies, and heroes through a delicate manipulation of the circumstances and narrative surrounding both Han and Manchu martial arts practice in the period.

Han martial artists became connected to rebellious activities through their connection to secret and brother societies, but that was not the only ways in which these martial artists were involved in rebellions during the late Qing. Many Han martial artists were active in alliance with the Qing state during the late Qing, fighting against bandits and other Han martial artists who engaged in rebellious activity. These alliances were not seemingly influenced by martial arts group or ethnic background, but rather the specific contexts that each martial artist found themselves in during periods of violence.58 This alliance with the Qing state also allowed the

Qing to present an image of martial skill and military strength, particularly during a period where increased western pressure and recent military losses, such as the Opium Wars, had created a feeling of degrading martial skill within the Qing. It could be argued that this fracturing

58 Esherick, 60-61.

35 constituted a continuation of both the military degradation feared by the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors, as well as the growing tensions between state authorities and local village leadership which will be discussed next.

Despite the outlawing of Han martial arts in the mid-Qing, such martial arts practice continued in small villages, as was explored in the previous section, and this did not change in the late Qing period. Han martial arts were imbedded in popular culture and martial arts vernacular novels (wuxia 武侠) were popular, both among the local elites in their printed form and among the less literate through the production of chantefables which was a form that was easier to read and retain due to its use of homophonic alternate characters and verse rather than prose form.59 Many martial arts groups used this recognition to perform at markets and festivals to draw interest.60 Continuing with this tradition of public displays of Han martial prowess, many banned martial arts groups also set up their own boxing grounds in villages in places such as

Gaotang county (高唐县), an act that required the consent of local village elders.61 The power of the local village leaders was often at odds with the state during the Qing in political concerns such as martial arts practice, or issues surrounding the Cult of Chastity which gained political strength during the Qing.62 This kind of tension between the state authorities and local leadership provided Han martial artists a means of continuing their practice, even as the Qing state continued to regulate what it considered appropriate contexts for the practice of martial arts.

59 Margaret B. Wan, Green Peony and the Rise of the Chinese Martial Arts Novel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 136. 60 Esherick, 65. 61 Esherick, 234. 62 Janet M. Theiss, Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China (Berkley: University of California Press, 2004) 77.

Documents such as official histories written about the late Qing show this court as one which highlighted the martial arts skills and virtue of its soldiers, despite the late Qing being a period of concern of military degradation and fear of banned martial arts aided sectarian rebellion. The Qing Official History is a complicated source in this regard. While it was not compiled until after the fall of the Qing, it does include records of the ranks and military honors bestowed onto those who lived during the Qing. While much of its contents cannot be taken as a direct reflection of the official stance of the Qing court, these records of documented bestowal of titles and the like can give some clues to the ways in which the late Qing government treated different forms of martial arts practice in an official capacity.

This source does possess the occasional refence to different forms of martial arts practice and these references take on three distinct flavors, each of which see the use of a different term for these state-recognized martial arts. The most common and general reference is that of military skills (Wuyi 武艺). These references occur in accounts of the lives of men whose lives included life in the military and subsequent training during periods from the early Jiaqing period

(1768) to the late Xianfeng period (1852). When this source discusses state sanctioned martial arts in terms of the military it is usually regarding simple biographical information, or remarks on someone skill with weapons.63 This suggests that a narrative of Manchu martial arts skill and military prowess continued from the mid Qing into the late Qing, establishing a continuity with current state sanctioned martial practice and the Manchu martial arts practices that had been the core of Manchu identity since before their conquest of Beijing in 1644.

63 清史稿 Qing Shi Gao [Qing Official History], vol. 505, Biography vol 292, Art vol. 4, no. 13924

State sanctioned martial arts were also used in the late Qing as part of a narrative that praised those who were considered to be heroes in the minds of the court and were subsequently granted an honorary title. The fact that men such as Han Chao, who was assigned to suppress bandits in Guizhou (命幫辦貴州剿匪事) in the fourteenth year of the Daoguang reign

(1835), and Li Huiwu, a general from Hunan who fought and captured a bandit leader in

Sichuan in the eleventh year of the Xianfeng reign (1861), were both honored with the title of

Batulu (巴图鲁), which was a Manchu title only conferred upon those who achieved great deeds, seems to reflect this.64 These titles were bestowed in recognition of their marital achievement, which in this case is referred to by the term wuyong (武勇), which combines the character for

“martial” with the character for “brave.” This term is also used in other contexts to refer to martial arts but does not seem to have the same connection to the military, despite its link to an official title.

Other titles were given to men like Ji Jian for their achievement in certain martial arts skills, from marksmanship to the mastery of internal martial arts, a skill born from a rising Ming loyalist sentiment at the end of the seventeenth century.65 While there is no further reference to Ji

Jian in the Official History, we know that these titles in martial skill were being grated to

Manchu martial artists from the Kangxi period until Xianfeng period, though there are little specifics on the exact date each rank was given out. Despite this we can still see the continuity in these ranks across the mid and late Qing period. Contrasting with previous references to Manchu martial arts, however, internal martial arts are discussed in this source using their own term,

64 QSG, vol. 420, Biography vol. 207, no. 12140, 12304. 65 QSG, military strategists, no. 4333.

38 quanfa (拳法). This term literally means “Fist Method” and seems to differentiate internal martial arts from Manchu martial arts practice. This distinction of quanfa as opposed to another term for this form of practice seems to suggest that internal martial arts were not considered to be a lesser form of practice. This is largely seen with the terms use of the word for “method” (fa), which highlights internal martial arts as a form of bodily practice as to opposed to a deeper practice as is seen with the connection between practices such as archery and Confucian conceptions of the ideal gentleman. Ji was conferred first rank in both marksmanship and the

Internal School of Han martial arts. Its origins lie in Han discourse surrounding martial practice during the early Qing and will be discussed more in later chapters. Despite the origins of internal martial arts, it was still considered valuable enough to officially grant titles to those who achieved a level of skill in its practice. Despite the rising tension of rebellion and military decline of the late Qing, the court still felt there was some value in conferring ranks and titles to those with skills in both state sanctioned martial arts and those Han martial arts developed in a non- military and often anti-Manchu environment.

This kind of veneration can be seen as a tool to push a narrative that portrayed Qing military and Manchu martial heroes as those possessed of extraordinary skills, despite the fact that there was still great uncertainty of Qing military prowess, with their inability to handle foreign incursion or internal rebellion, as well as their indecision regarding what side of this internal conflict between rebels and foreign powers they would support.66 The Qing court at this time considered Han and Manchu martial arts only as either the possible rebellious elements in

66 Esherick, 286.

39 need of suppression, or images of Qing martial strength that deserved veneration. As the end of the Qing loomed, this period also saw a continued disconnection between the court and local elites with respect to how sectarian martial artists were handled. These tensions were escalating into violence and uncertainty, court martial arts discourse became a point where these issues were renegotiated into a viable political narrative for the state.

Conclusion

Manchu martial arts were a consistent aspect of official discourse throughout the course of the Qing period, with Han martial arts become a focus of court attention more and more and the period progressed. Over the course of the Qing the make of the imperial house and officialdom shifted and with them so too did the ways in which these martial arts practices were viewed and administrated. The early Qing, highlighted by a slow solidifying of Qing power, also did not see Han martial arts or its practitioners take a central role in official discourse, as the

Qing state had more important issues, which led to an ambivalence toward Han martial arts practice. This period was not one where Han martial arts were a large part of the political conversation. That wouldn’t begin to happen until the mid-Qing.

The rise of the Qianlong emperor and his strengthening of the “Manchu Way” concept was the beginning discourse on suppressing Han martial arts. The level of the negative connotation given to Han martial arts outside the military sphere gave no concession to it as an artform, or even as a form of martial practice. These tensions would continue from this period into the late Qing, even while Manchu martial arts skill, and in some cases skill in internal

40 martial arts practice, would be able to gain men official titles. The late Qing was defined by a court that attempted to use state sanctioning of some martial arts as a means of projecting an image of strength through the veneration of skilled Manchu martial artists, while at the same time wrestling with rising foreign and internal pressures. State martial arts discourse became a tool used to tell the story the state needed in an attempt to preserve its Manchu martial image and authority.

Han and Manchu martial arts in the Qing period were heavily influenced by its connection to the Qing court. Each ruler understood and dealt with with unsanctioned martial artists outside of the military or direct court control in different ways. These strategies and discourses became more and more ideological over the course of the Qing and these changes in

Han martial arts can be seen not only through the eyes of emperors and court officials, but also through the discourse and practice of the martial artists themselves.

Chapter 3: Martial Arts as Ethnic Strength

Introduction

In the Qing period, many of the Han martial arts systems known in modern martial communities were founded outside of officialdom. The ways in which Han martial artists understood and transmitted their practice during this period became the foundation for modern

Chinese marital arts, and analyzing the ways in which these understandings shifted over the Qing period shows us how Han martial arts have always been changing and that the modern discourse that surrounds Chinese martial arts is, at its core, no different than that which came before it. Han martial artists at this time employed their martial arts as a means of creating meaning and an overall sense of ethnic identity. Understanding how these meanings changed over time is important, as they show us how Han martial artists situated themselves into their specific social and political context, something martial artists in China have done before the Qing and will continue to do well into the modern period.

This birth of new forms of Han martial arts and its practice was situated within the rise of

Qing rule in a post-Ming world. As the world around them changed, Han martial artists recontextualized themselves in this shifting political and social environment. Han marital arts took on a new role for people in these troubled times, as Han martial artists used their practice as a vehicle to better understand themselves in the Manchu led Qing dynasty. Others attempted to utilize discourse of these martial arts as a means to define themselves politically or socially. Over the course of the Qing period this kind of ethnic strengthening would take differing forms as those martial artists involved in creating new self-identities were met with changing

42 circumstances resulting from the reigns and policies within which they acted out their form of self-actualization. Han martial arts were not simply a form of physical practice during the Qing, it was a means through which its practitioners were able to find their place and establish their ethnic identity in an expanding multi-ethnic empire.

Han Internal Strength

In the time of chaos that formed the period of the Ming-Qing transition, people were suffering and attempting to understand their place in this new world. Poems and stories abound in this time as Han peoples tried to find where they fit within the Qing world order, causing them to question aspects of themselves and their society that had not previously been scrutinized. Han martial artists themselves as well as those with knowledge of the martial arts, saw it as both the cause of the upheaval of their identity, as well as a way of exerting a modicum of control and make sense of the trauma they were experiencing during this period.

During the moments leading up to the watershed moment of the Qing army marching into

Beijing in 1644, the Ming military had already been handed decisive defeats at the hands of the

Qing combined forces, lead by the Manchu bannermen. As those in power watched their Han military fall at the hands of a predominantly Manchu force, even before the days of rebellion that led to the death of the last Ming emperor, the Han were forced in many ways to confront Qing martial prowess as a reality beyond simply the concept of Qing rule. This confrontation caused many Han martial artists, specifically those in elite positions, to recontextualize themselves in relation to this new order. The practice of Han martial arts itself also quickly became a lens

43 through which even non-practitioners could work through their own traumas and thoughts surrounding the rise of the Qing.

As the seventeenth century saw the rise of the Qing, it also saw the rise of discourse surrounding the place of the old Ming elite within the new Qing court. There were many who chose to accept assignments and there were those who refused service. These became the bedrock of ideas surrounding loyalty that gained traction later in the Qing period. During this period of recovery, however, many of these elites were more interested in establishing and solidifying elite class identity, regardless of the politics of its constituent members.67 This provided a means to reconfigure self-identity trans-dynastically and it was within this burgeoning elite discourse that many Han martial artists of means constructed their own identities.

The case that exemplifies Han martial arts discourse as a process of identity making is the rise of the so called “internal” school of martial arts. This system of martial arts focused on practices derived from Daoist roots as opposed to Confucian concepts contained in traditional archery practices, or the Buddhist ideologies that acted as the underpinning of systems such as those taught in the Shaolin temple. For those who wished to reconstruct an image of Han martial arts superiority after the rise of the militarily superior Qing, the internal school provided a means of doing so.

The most prominent figure in this discourse was Huang Zongxi (黄宗羲) (1610-1695), a

Neo-Confucianist of the late Ming and early Qing period. Described by local gazetteers as a learned man, filial son, and Ming loyalist, Huang traveled to the capital to seek justice for the

67 Meyer-Fong, 32.

44 death of his father, an imperial censor, during which he attacked and killed a warden.68 After the rise of the Qing, Huang retreated from official politics and continued to write scholarship on intellectual and political history. One of these writings was an epitaph for internal martial artist

Wang Zhengnan (王征南) (1617-1669) written nine years after his passing.69 Huang described

Wang as a man of high ethical character, summarized best in the first line of the inscription from his tomb that states Wang was “possessing the highest level of skill, yet he never abused, or prostituted it” (有技如斯而不一施).70 It is interesting to see how Huang makes sense of the Daoist roots of internal martial arts despite his own anti-Buddhist and anti-Taoist leanings.71 In the epitaph itself, Huang begins by focusing on the superiority of internal marital arts against so called “external” practices such as the Buddhist Shaolin, which he defines as purely offensive giving “opportunities of an opponent to exploit.”72 There are those who read this epitaph’s use of

Buddhism as a stand in for critique of the new Qing court, such as the translator Douglas Wile’s understanding as this reading one of the “three most common interpretations of the distinction between the ‘internal’ and ‘external.’”73 Peter Lorge also uses this reading when discussing the fact that Huang Zongxi’s Ming loyalism is “particularly important when we examine his epitaph for Wang Zhengnan.” 74 While I see this as a valid interpretation of Huang’s words, I believe that this may not be the only terms in which to read this epitaph. Huang’s Ming loyalism did not

68 Shaoxing FuZhi 绍兴府志 80 卷 [Shaoxing Provincial Gezeteer Vol. 80]，53. 69 Huang Zongxi, “Epitaph for Wang Cheng-nan” Tr. Douglas Wile in T’ai Chi’s Ancestors (New City: Sweet Ch’I Press, 1999) 56. 70 Huang Zongxi, 57. 71 Douglas Wile, T’ai Chi’s Ancestors (New City: Sweet Ch’i Press, 1999) 46. 72 Huang Zongxi, 53. 73 Wile, 51 74 Lorge, 193.

45 seem to prevent him from allowing his sons to serve under the Qing. He even instructed Baijia, his youngest, to study for the civil service examinations.75 Rather than being interpreted as anti-

Qing sentiment, Huang’s anti-Buddhist and anti-Taoist beliefs seem to represent something of an outlier in the Han martial arts discourse of the early Qing. Writings by a Shaolin monk named

Xuanji (闩鉄) who also lived during the Ming-Qing transition, such as the Hand Combat

Classic, did not seem to hold explicit anti-Qing sentiment or an undercurrent of religious tension, instead focusing on the practice of the external martial art itself.76 The sentiments expressed by

Huang in his epitaph seem to focus more on his own identity making expressed through discourse of Han martial arts and using the image of the internal martial artists Wang Zhengnan to reflect his own opinions on what constituted ethical use of internal martial arts, more than it expresses a prevailing sentiment held by Han martial artists during this period. Huang uses this epitaph and the discussion of internal martial arts as a means through which to construct an identity that preserves his own sense of ethics though the veneration of Wang’s actions as a Han martial artist.

Huang’s son, Huang Baijia (黃百家), who trained with Wang Zhengnan also wrote about internal martial arts and its place in the Qing world. Huang Baijia followed in his father’s footsteps, writing Art of the Internal School, as a means of exploring his history with training

Internal martial arts under Wang Zhengnan, as well as negotiating the place of Han marital arts in the early Qing. Like his father, Huang Baijia’s work starts with a focus on the superiority of internal martial arts such as which he learned from Wang over external systems such as Shaolin

75 Huang Baijia, “Art of the Internal School” Tr. Douglas Wile in T’ai Chi’s Ancestors (New City: Sweet Ch’i Press, 1999) 66. 76 Shahar, 117.

46 by stating that “acquiring even a smattering of this art is sufficient to overcome Shaolin” (得其一

二者已足勝少林).77 Huang Baijia’s writings go into further depth regarding his time training with

Wang, while also discussing in more detail the specifics of his internal martial arts practice. Most of his writing, however, expresses his own uncertainty in how he should understand himself and his internal martial arts training as he adapted and observed what was happening in the early

Qing. He starts by expressing how his thoughts surrounding his training originally shifted:

I believed that the affairs of the world could not be entrusted to those contemptible Confucian scholars but required men who could jump on their horses and lay the enemy, jump off and capture the king. This is the only life worth living. However, by that time, the south-west was already pacified, and the southeast was also quiet. The whole country was at peace, truly a time better suited to the simple farmer than the great warrior.78

(余時鼻端出火興致方騰慕雎陽伯紀之為人謂天下事必非齷齪拘儒之所任必其能上馬殺敵

下馬擒王始不負七尺於世然當是時西南旣靖東南亦平四海晏如此眞挽强二石不若一丁之

時)

His youth was marked by a desire to move away from what he saw as the elite who wrote but did not fight, but he found a world where the image of the Han martial artist as a Ming loyalist warrior no longer applied. This forced him to reassess his identity as a Ming loyalist Han and a Han martial artist within a world of relative peace which led to his time preparing for the

77 Huang, 58. 78 Huang, 66.

47 civil service exam at the behest of his father, an action that was not indicative of the staunch

Ming loyalty supposedly possessed by his father and himself. Huang Baijia further describes how Wang’s death caused him to once again doubt himself and his decision to move away from his martial arts training. 79 Looking at what he had already expressed I would suggest that after

Wang’s death, Huang saw the local towns under attack from bandits and he doubted if the world was still the peaceful place that had caused him to abandon his training. Huang became unsure of his life, his identity, and weather he truly was a martial artist which I would argue spurred him to create this work. Huang Baijia’s words speak less of a Ming loyalist rebel who wanted to fight against the Qing, but rather that of an uncertain martial artist seeking to understand his practice and its purpose.

In the early Qing, Han martial arts discourse was a space where Han martial artists were able to understand their own identity. After the end of the Ming-Qing transition and the pacification of the south after the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, there was a period of relative peace. Those who discussed Han martial arts, such as the Huang family, did so as a means of connecting their practice to their own lives and construction of a self-identity in a post-Ming world. Even when their words spoke to a sense of loyalism and discontent, there was no strong collective voice given to their frustrations, they were personal. Their words were those of Han martial artists attempting to find meaning in their practice.

79 Huang, 67.

Survival Through Sectarian Connection

Han martial arts in the mid-Qing period deepened their connection to secret and brotherhood societies in order to survive the outlawing of Han martial arts practice by the

Qianlong emperor. Brotherhood and mutual aid societies were not new to the mid-Qing period, as such organizations had existed in the early Qing as well, but there was something about their more prominent role in the eighteen century and onward that appeared distinctly different among those who discussed them.80 The increased connection between banned martial arts and brotherhood and secret societies resulted in new forms of Han martial arts in the mid-Qing.

These worked to reconstruct the local and religious identities of society members through Han martial arts, a practice that would continue into the late Qing.

Before ethnicity became a strong rallying point of violence among society members, the mid-Qing brotherhood societies acted as a point where banned martial arts were able to connect with and adapt local religious and ethnic tradition. The formation of early brotherhood societies focused originally on mutual aid. As early as the 1660s, Qing writers were discussing the formation of village organizations with a focus on mutual assistance, encouraging families to band together in ways that could provide help with farming in the case of a village member’s sudden death or illness.81 Over the years, however, as violent unrest from events such as of the

White Lotus Rebellion in the late eighteenth century and the Taiping rebellion in the early nineteenth century pulled secret societies into the fighting, the purview of mutual aid societies expanded into other area of assistance, including the promise of physical protection for

80 Ownby, 30. 81 Ownby, 34.

49 members.82 These kinds of organizations aligned with the writings of learned martial artists like

Huang Baijia, who spoke of the ineffectuality of local officials and young scholars to overcome the rise of banditry in his home after the death of Wang Zhengnan.83

By the 1700s, however, these kinds of brotherhood societies had become linked with sectarian activity and violence. Officials like Governor Dingchang of Fujian spoke of brotherhood societies as connected to both violent and illegal activities as well as more innocent expressions of popular religion and mutual aid.84 Scholars like David Ownby focus on the structural particularities of these brotherhood societies, the fact that they were situated “between traditional institutions,’ such as the traditional village, lineage, or ethnic structure, which allowed them the freedom to engage in forms of violence for personal gain.85 This kind of violence was occasionally ethnically motivated, but much of this form of violence did not find its way to prominence until the late eighteenth century.86

Sectarian martial arts practice in mid-Qing secret societies provided a means of expressing and authenticating one’s religious identity and access to divine power. This form of martial arts practice was an aspect of banned martial practice, though more directly connected to sectarian religious groups, and was normally considered a Han practice. A trend that would continue into the nineteenth century, secret society members often engaged in forms of sectarian martial arts training to bolster their ability to defend themselves against government intervention and many of these forms of practice took on religious meaning. Forms of medical gymnastics

82 Ownby, 58. 83 Huang, 67. 84 Ownby, 30. 85 Ownby, 32. 86 Ownby, 89.

50 and meditation became connected to sectarian martial practice and acquiring skill in these forms representing not just martial skill but also self-cultivation.87 These forms of martial arts training acted as a means of authenticating both martial skill and religious devotion by drawing their power from both the physical practice and associated religious rituals and rites. This mode of martial arts practice connected to the traditions of the Buddhist Shaolin school and the Internal school, which despite the anti-Daoist sentiment of men like Huang Zongxi was still considered by him to be created by Daoist priests and rooted in Daoist cosmology, continued and in secret societies that thrived, though in ways that were both more locally defined and sectarian in nature.

This form of martial arts allowed practitioners to understand their own identity in a religious way.

Many sectarian martial arts of the mid-Qing were forced to rely on the mechanisms inherent in secret societies to maintain their lineages, further solidifying their connection to each other. These early forms of martial brotherhood societies organized a system of lineage based on the progression of skills from master to pupil, a system that while similar, maintained itself as initially separate from the religious activities of the association.88 What made the structure of martial arts lineage succession in secret societies different from the traditional familial social order of the mid-Qing was its use of a hierarchy that did away with the roots traditional

Confucian hierarchies found in the biological familial structure. The sectarian martial arts lineage focused purely on the teacher-student relationship, a fact that made these societies a

87 Lorge, 198 88 Chen Qiang, “An Analysis on the Influence of the Secret Association in Qing Dynasty on Wushu Development” Wushu Lishi Yanjiu [Research in Martial Arts History], 19.

51 threat to the Confucian social order.89 This system recognized no intrinsic requirement for high status other than skill and proper transmission. The combative aspect of these sectarian martial arts was the means by which this transmission was authenticated.

For those who sought to learn Han martial arts, they would commonly receive instruction from those who were able to defeat them in an open challenge, thus demonstrating their skill.90

In this way, not only was skill verified, but hierarchy was established through the combative act.

In a form of self-identification, it follows that one who must acknowledge the skill that bested him was also inclined to acknowledge the belief structure in which these skills were rooted. This was likely used in the membership recruitment for the martial side of sectarian organizations.

While unfortunately there do not seem to be extant records that can attest to Han martial artists exhibiting this acknowledgement, the growth of martially and religiously inflected societies in the mid and late Qing period seems to attest to a growth of membership that seems to point to this as a likely source of sectarian martial artist members.

Martial arts in the mid-Qing filled multiple roles in the lives of people as they attempted to contextualize their practice in the ever more ethnically divided culture. The mid-Qing also saw the rise of communal practice of banned martial arts that drove this understanding of identity beyond the individual constructions common in the early Qing. This environment allowed various forms martial arts practice to find purpose the realms of rebellion, secret societies, and ethnic minority discourse. This is where it would remain for the most part as the late Qing dawned.

89 Naquin, 41 90 Naquin, 32.

Fighting for the Han or Fighting for the Village

The world of the late Qing was marked by a sharp increase in western intervention in

Chinese affairs. With the Opium Wars and an increased missionary presence, The Qing government worked to balance the threat of foreign intervention with the rising threat of domestic unrest. Men like governor Yu-Xian (豫咸) were stuck in the position of trying to prevent boxer harassment of Catholic missionaries, while also expressing the need many villagers had to defend themselves from local catholic missionaries, who often took the law into their own hands.91 At the same time martial artists continued to practice within the realm of secret societies and many began to become involved in one way or another in the rising civil unrest of the late Qing period. In the late Qing sectarian rebels used Han martial arts as a means of strengthening their ethnic identity. The increased violence associated with this activity raised stakes for Han martial artists of the late Qing.

Discourse among the Han marital artists of this period also began to express more strongly an ethnic meaning. With a rise in anti-Manchu and anti-foreign rhetoric, the chances of violent uprisings among Han sectarians and marital artists rose, and with it so too did politically charged rebellious discourse.92 One of the most well-known figures within this community of anti-foreign martial artists was Zhao San-duo (赵三多), who would be involved in anti-Qing efforts starting from 1897 and would eventually found the group that would lead the Boxer

Uprising. His mindset sought Han martial arts practice as a means of strengthening those who

91 Esherick, 198-200. 92 Esherick, 38.

53 would oppose the Qing government and other foreign forces in China, specifically Christian forces.93 In this way sectarian martial arts became a tool for groups such as the Boxer United in

Righteousness to rally support through the means of both public demonstration and religious sect ritual.94 By utilizing these skills, sectarian martial arts became a means to attract likeminded to their cause and display the strength of their belief through the skill that resulted from it.

Not all Han martial artists of this period, however, used their practice for anti-Manchu activities. For many, Han martial arts, specifically those of the internal school, remained a system to be cultivated, mastered, and passed on to the next generation. Men like Wu Chengqing

(武澄清), who held the degree of jinshi (进士) which he earned in a special exam held in 1852, was not only a practitioner of internal martial arts, but also formulated theory.95 His writings focused on the practice of internal martial arts with titles such as “Treatise on Boxing” (拳论) and “Song of Sparing” (打手歌). Others such as Li Yishe (李亦畲), who lived from 1832-1892, wrote of the deeper aspects of training internal martial arts. In works such as “Song of the

Circulation of Qi” (神气运行歌), Li describes qi flowing “like the waters of the Yangzi” (气如

长江水) and finally proclaiming that “the whole body is one flow of qi” (浑身一气).96 These works do not speak about the Manchus, only about the development of this Han martial art.

Internal martial arts were created by the Han, but in the late Qing that did not mean that those martial artists who practiced internal martial arts would follow their fellows in standing against

93 Esherick, 152. 94 Esherick, 232. 95 Douglas Wilde, LostT’ai-Chi Classics From The Late Ching Dynasty (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996) 41. 96 Wilde, 132-133.

54 the Qing. Their focus is on development of a Han martial skill, one to be passed on to later generations.

Han martial arts were not seen by martial artists like those above as means to make a political statement. Another interesting example is that though Zhan San-duo, who employed his martial arts of Plumb Flower Fist in rebellious action against the Qing. His school found this to cause more local governmental interference than they desired, and subsequently forbade him from using their school’s name.97 This implies that the martial artists of the greater Plumb

Flower Fist school did not see their martial art as something inherently Han or Sectarian. It was not meant to be employed in accordance with rising tensions, or at least they did not want their organization tied directly to these activities.

Conclusion

Han martial arts took on many different meanings during this Qing period as the circumstances surrounding practitioners changed. The practice of Han martial arts was flexible and gave rise to different modes of expression as the period moved from the turmoil of the Ming-

Qing transition to the rebellious landscape of the late Qing. As changing emperors and imperial courts sought to negotiate their way through the centuries by changing what was perceived as a state supported martial arts practice and what forms of banned martial arts needed to be dealt with at an official level, Han martial artists were also forced to change the ways in which they employed and understood their practice.

97 Echerick, 154.

Early Qing Han martial artists attempted to establish elite and ideological roots in their arts by makes sense of their practice in terms of the reconstruction of society going on around them. Men like the Huangs saw internal martial arts as a vehicle through which their Ming loyalism could be expressed subtly in a period without the strong ethnic connotations that would arise in later periods. The mid-Qing saw the establishment of laws prohibiting certain Han martial arts practice publicly and drove many Han martial artists to take refuge among the secret societies. This act created a form of practice with greater meaning in spheres of religion and ethnicity. Sectarian martial arts practice became about establishing oneself as a member of one of these societies and skill in these practices conferred an authenticity not only to the practice itself, but also to the society to which it was linked. As the late Qing period rose in the nineteenth century, tensions were also on the rise due to foreign intervention and the stress it placed on policy makers to find a way to maintain their own power. Han marital artists in this period saw the stakes surrounding practice rise in scope and intensity, and many took this as an opportunity to reinforce the political or ethnic meanings of their practice, while others instead saw their practice as a means of strengthening local or personal identities. Han martial arts practice in the

Qing was employed in myriad ways over the course of the period depending on the specific contexts of the practitioner.

Chapter 4: Martial Arts as Gender Reimagining

Introduction

Ethnicity was not the only aspect of Han identity under negotiation during the Qing period. Han martial arts discourse and practice created a means to reimagine archetypes of masculinity and femininity within the new contexts of the Qing. This engagement with Han martial arts came from practitioners and non-practitioners alike as men and women took up the language often associated with martial practice to push their own agendas surrounding gender.

Han women found a space though Han martial arts practice and discourse to cross previously established gender boundaries. Han men during this period were also reconstructing the meaning of masculinity within the new context of the Qing. Even Manchu writers employed images of women and Han martial arts in their literary pursuits as a means of pushing a specific political and social agenda.

The role of gender and the martial arts is important, as the changes in the meaning of martial arts during the Qing affected both men and women. While most primary sources of the period were written by men, which created the need for increased extrapolation in this section, it is still vital that we at least get a sense of how martial arts influenced the way women saw themselves. It is also important to show that what form of Han martial arts practice was considered masculine, also changed in this period. Han men were engaging in forms martial arts practice during the Qing that had not been seen in earlier periods. The union of Han martial arts and internal cultivation practices reaches a high in the Qing period that changes the foundation of

Han martial arts, something which is vital for a clear understanding of martial arts practice in the

Qing period, or any research in the martial arts practice that comes afterward.

This chapter will look at Han martial arts and how it was employed across the spectrum of discourse surrounding gender during the Qing. In the realm of Han men, this analysis will focus on masculinities. This plural is purposeful, for though the present scholarship still debates if a single masculinity can be defined, I will be following scholars such as Martin Huang who argues there tends to be “contingencies of masculinity” that reaffirm more than one mode of being masculine in Chinese culture.98 Beyond the masculine-feminine dichotomy, this will also be an analysis of masculinities understood along the wen-wu dyad, which looks at civil and literati ideals on one hand and a military and martial ideal on the other. This dyad has never been a matter of exclusivity and it was often preferential for a man to exhibit qualities that showed aspects of both concepts.99 Women as well were stepping onto this stage and utilizing Han martial arts to cross gender boundaries. Both in their writing and in their practice, Han martial arts provided women a method of expressing a political identity beyond the restrictions normally placed upon their gender. Both men and women of the Qing period were relying on the unstable nature of martial arts as a category to understand their own of gender identity and influence the discourse surrounding it.

98 Huang, 9. 99 Song, 14.

Martial Arts and Masculinity

Two of the common masculine archetypes of the late Ming, the caizi and the haohan, underwent changes during the Ming as martial arts became part of literati life. These archetypes were originally as expressions of wen and wu respectively. The caizi was normally associated with young literati men, but this did not mean these men did not posses a martial arts background. In fact many literati of the late Ming saw themselves as scholar-warriors, training in swordsmanship and collecting weapons.100 This practice was emblematic of the martial hero in the minds of the Ming inteligencia who saw themselves as possessing the characteristics of both wen and wu with wen being of primary importance, but not sole import.101 Elite Ming culture found a space for the appreciation of marital skill, even if it was not the dominant space in which

Han marital artist was considered to situate themselves. The haohan was most predominately associated with those who did not have ties to the government, plebian folk with martial arts skills.102 The most well-known representation of this archetype during the Ming was through the heroes of The Water Margin, one of the most famous novels in China. This archetype often represented a kind of violent strength and was part of this martial mode of expressing masculinity. Both the caizi and the haohan was considered viable forms of masculine expression during the Ming period by the elites who wrote and read about them. While these archetypes did not represent perfectly the realities of masculine identity during the late Ming, they are represented of the forms in which masculinity was understood and negotiated during that period.

100 Kathleen Ryor, “Wen and Wu in Elite Cultual Practices during the Late Ming” in Military Culture in Imperial China, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009) 231. 101 Ryor, 236. 102 Huang, 104.

Within both the civil and military aspects of society, the elite and commoner alike found that Han martial arts reaffirmed the modes of behavior within their masculine imagination. For the scholar, masculine martial arts showed themselves as a command of the gentlemanly art of sword fighting for both self-defense and self-cultivation. For the commoner or man living on the margins, martial arts were expressed as a form of violent heroics that would allow one to stand out through skill and masculine prowess within the archetype of the haohan. Han martial arts were an aspect of the Ming masculine culture and as that culture changed, Han martial arts and

Han martial artists were forced to reassess the role of their practice in the realm of gender.

Martial Arts and Gender Boundaries

As the Manchu led Qing military proved time and again their superior martial prowess against the Han forces of both the Ming and the rebels, those whose identity were tied to a sense of martial masculine strength were forced to question how they understood their own masculinity. Han martial strength was a hallmark of both elite and common masculine culture.

After their defeat by the Qing those who followed the same martial path, both military families and Han martial artists alike, could no longer support their sense of masculine identity through expressions of pure martial strength.103

For many male elites, the expression of this loss of their dynasty was viewed in gendered terms. Male literati were able to hide their political feelings in poems of lost love written from a female perspective or with a female pen name using indirectness to make their point.104 For

103 Lorge, 195. 104 Li, 14.

60 women however, writing a poem of lost love would be interpreted by readers in a more straight forward fashion, forcing those who wished to express a political view to adopt more direct language to make their point. Han concepts of masculine martial arts prowess, which had not yet shifted away from Ming conceptions of Masculine martial arts, could not be used by the male elite writers to express their feelings regarding the fall of the Ming. Han martial arts in this period instead served as a method for women to use their writing to cross the gender boundary, giving themselves a public voice woman traditionally did not have.

One of the ways in which women used martial arts to navigate this changing political landscape was through poetic language. These women writers adopted Han martial arts language, which included the image of the knight-errant, to gain a political voice. For some, such as Li

Yin, this took the form of imaginary heroics that create a mode through which Li was able to express her political views through martially charged language. In her poetry, Li writes that her

“will to serve the country is belied by ignorance of the sword,” pointed to that which Wai-yee Li describes as a “pathos of [a] merely heroic endeavor.105” For others this imagery reflected their reality where women took up arms against the Qing or others for the sake of displaying their filial piety and virtue. This was true of women such as Bi Zhu, known in her life as a women who combined marital and poetic talent, who took revenge against those who killed her father.106

The language employed during this period was one of subtle reference, and in her language the

“bandits” who murdered her father could have also been reference to the Qing who her father died fighting. Another woman of martial and poetic skill was Liu Shu who raised an army to

105 Wai-yee Li, Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University press, 2014) 131. 106 Li, 132.

61 fight after the fall of the Ming and expressed her desire to fight against the Qing poetically through the use of this heroic martial language, throwing down her sword to write of her wish to fight for the Ming.107 These women used their skills with the sword and the pen as means of expressing themselves in a tumultuous political landscape. Though they did not have the opportunity to publicly denounce the Qing like many of their male counterparts, they did use

Han martial arts language as a method of expressing their political loyalties in both subtle and obvious ways.

After the rise of the Qing, discourse surrounding Han martial arts among the literati shifted from a focus on physical prowess to a search for a martial art that could overcome the external power of the Manchus. This conversation held questions pertaining to Han masculine identity. Han martial artists attempted to come to terms with a new political context overshadowed by a Manchu masculine paradigm within which wu stood above wen in importance.

As mentioned in the previous chapters, the early Qing saw the rise of discourse surrounding the so-called internal school of martial arts in China. This school’s foundation training was not based on traditional concepts of external strength, but rather on the development of qi for self-cultivation and power. This also created a means by some to reimagine their masculine identity through the frame of the internal martial arts. Men like those of the Huang family framed internal martial arts as being inherently stronger than the external martial arts previously studied, exemplified in Huang Zongxi’s estimation of the Buddhist Shaolin system.108

107 Li, 133. 108 Huang, 53.

This can be seen as an attempt to place a Han martial art supposedly created by a Daoist alchemist during the Song dynasty as superior to other martial practices.109 Explicitly the internal school was being placed above the Buddhist Shaolin, though some scholars see it as implicit statement against the Manchu.110 In this way, internal martial arts discourse became a means for elite practitioners from the previous dynasty to reconstruct a sense of strength from traditional

Chinese cosmological concepts. This act represented a more obvious connection between Han martial artists and traditional Daoist practices such as daoyin, a form of medical gymnastics that focused on Daoist concepts of internal health and self-cultivation, than previously seen. 111 With masculine martial arts practice among man Han shifting into this form of internal power, we can see a shift in how internal martial arts is being view as an expression of Han masculinity. Instead of Huang Zonxi expressing Wang’s prowess in the terms of a Ming haohan, that of excessive violence and drinking, he described how he gave up eating meat after a military defeat and how he only fought when forced by others, such as when Drill Master Yen did not allow Wang to decline a sparring match.112 Wang was depicted as a man respected by military officers who “all paid their respects” as well as gentry with whom he conversed “with no hint of crudeness.”

Huang Zonxi’s image of Wang Zhengnan was that of a man who deserved to be emulated and who represented a Han man with high martial skill, but whose power came from internal cultivation.113 While Han literati were attempting to understand their place in Qing society, they were also taking Han martial arts, something understood as wu and inherently masculine, and

109 Huang, 53. 110 Lorge, 192. 111 Lorge, 201-202. 112 Huang, 56. 113 Huang, 55-56.

63 turning it into something that could still express a masculine identity, while also shifting further into concepts of wen and internal development, ideas that had not previously been associated with martial arts.

Women’s Place in the Martial Arts

By the eighteenth century much of the turmoil of the early Qing had died down, but the

Qianlong emperor still saw the need to outlaw public displays of Han martial arts. This period saw banned martials arts practice grow in spaces such as secret and mutual aid societies. Many of these societies possessed a more gender-neutral approach to membership and as such there were many women sect members who practiced such banned martial arts as part of sect participation. Be it for religious purposes or defensive reasons, women were crossing established gender boundaries, taking on roles and responsibilities usually reserved for men, and using Han martial arts as a means through which to establish themselves within these newly marginalized communities.

As the connections between religious and martial aspects of these secret societies grew, so to did involvement of women in sect activities, including teaching. In practices that would continue into the nineteenth century, women who followed these sects had no restrictions on engaging in the role of teachers to those who joined after them, or who they personally brought into the fold, regardless of age or gender. While extant records only speak of a few women who led sects, such as Mrs. Liu Kung, who herself inherited her position from her great grandmother, it is likely that other women achieved this level as well.114 Due to the tradition of foot binding, it

114 Naquin, 41.

64 makes sense that many women were not able to engage as fully in the martial aspects of sect activity, but with the number of women involved in sectarian life, as well as the number of women in teaching or leadership positions, it can be inferred that martial teaching and learning were at least part of female involvement in sect life. By the time of the Boxer Uprising in the late nineteenth century, those sectarian women who wished to fight were even able to join their own unit known as “Red Lanterns Shining” (红灯照), who were said to possess powerful magics.115

By engaging in these sect activities women were challenging the established gender boundaries of traditional Chinese society.

This period also saw a rise in legends related to the founding of martial arts systems by women, specifically those with religious root for their practice. The most famous of these women were Wu Mei (伍枚), a Buddhist nun who is said to have invented a myriad of martial arts including the Wing Chun (咏春) system after mastering Shaolin martial arts and fleeing from the destruction of the Shaolin temple by the Qing government.116 The other famous female martial artist of this period was the legendary figure of Yan Yongchun (严咏春), who supposedly learned the system that bears her name to this day from Wu.117 These stories are the ones told through the Wing Chun lineage of Yip-man (葉問).118 Whether their pursuits are real or fictionalized, the fact that these stories exist shows women were being recast as martial arts masters at the head of a lineage, a right reserved for men is normal village life. With the shift of

115 Esherick, 297. 116 Richard Chu, Rene Ritchie, and Y. Wu, Complete Wing Chun: The Definitive Guide to Wing Chun’s History and Traditions (North Clarendon: Tuttle Publishing, 1998) 4. 117 Chu, Ritchie, and Wu, 5. 118 Wing Chun is a form of Han external martial arts popularized by Bruce Lee, who studied under Yip-Man.

Han martial arts toward a concept of internal skill and qi the previous vision of women as martial artists was no longer reserved for the occasional heroic or historical figure.

In terms of the construction of gender identity through Han martial arts practice, the mid

Qing period overall represents something of a transitional stage. Martial arts practice in this period broadened its purview, granting political and social agency to women who did not previously possess it. In the late Qing women continued to shape the ways Han martial arts was understood.

Female Martial Artists in Literature

In the late Qing, Female martial artists became a means of pushing social agendas.

Women were now at the heads of sectarian organizations and martial arts lineages, giving them new forms of social authority among Han martial artists. Male Manchu writers also employed female martial artists as main characters in their work in order to push their own meaning into their actions. Han martial arts in the late Qing was defined as much by its connection to the female as the male.

Women members of secret societies during the mid and late Qing found themselves in positions of power that were not available to them previously. The White Lotus sect of the early nineteenth century did not discriminate by age or gender and women, though less common, were just as capable of becoming sect leaders as their male counterparts. During the Eight Trigrams

Uprising of 1811, almost a quarter of its members had a female teacher.119 With martial arts training as part of sect practices and routines, likely many of these female teachers would also be

119 Naquin, 41.

66 involved in both the teaching and practice of some form of martial art as an aspect of sect membership. There were many different forms of martial arts practiced in the White Lotus, with practitioners not only learning, but also engaging in contest with other schools and groups at markers and fairs.120 Women in these roles, even in not their intent, represent a crossing of traditional gender boundaries.

This new role of women in the martial arts was not just reflected in the lives of sectarian women, but also in the portrayal of female martial artists in vernacular novels. Depending on the context, women martial artists represented both a threat and a support to the Qing social order.

The Qing state saw female martial artists in sectarian groups as subversive, a threat to the

Confucian social hierarchy. Manchu authors, however, employed the image of the female martial artist not as a subversive element, but rather as a representation of their own social agenda.

The most well know of these stories is Ernü Yingxiong Zheng, a vernacular novel written in 1878 by the Manchu bannerman Wen Kang (文康). Wen wrote about a Han woman skilled in martial arts and used a pen name to do so. On the whole pen names were common among literati who did not wish to be connected to lesser genres such as vernacular fiction. There is a question among scholar’s regarding the extent to which Wen self-identified as a Manchu and how much his Sinicization influenced his writing.121 Regardless on the influence, this story represents

Wen’s attempt to cast a female martial artist in the role of a Confucian hero.

120 Naquin, 31. 121 Maram Epstein, Competing Discourses: Othodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late Imperial Fiction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001) 276.

This story focuses on the female martial artist by the name of He Yufeng (何玉凤), also referred to as “Thirteenth Sister” (十三妹) and Wen describes her in terms that reflect her martial arts skill. In Chapter 8, when she is explaining her family history and her reason for traveling alone, she tells An Ji (安骥), the male protagonist, of her father’s time in the military and lists what she was taught by him:

If you are talking of the eighteen weapons of the solder, I can use any of them. It was only the skills of swordsmanship, marksmanship, the slingshot, the hidden dart, and unarmed fighting, however, that my father truly passed onto me.122

若论十八般兵器，我都算拿得起。只这刀法、枪法、弹弓、袖箭、拳脚，却

是老人家口传心授。

These skills grant He Yufeng unparalleled martial skill that is venerated by An Ji as is evidenced by his awestruck reactions, such as when he saved him from a mad monk with only a slingshot.123 Kang uses this female martial artist as a frame through which he looks at the concept of martial arts itself.

In Chapter six, when He Yufeng is displaying her martial arts skill to An Ji, The author goes on to take this opportunity to enlighten the reader surrounding the differences between internal and external martial arts. This is a distinction that has grown more foundational to martial arts discourse over the course of the Qing. Wen described the martial arts of his time in these terms:

122 Wen, Ernü Yingxiong Zheng, 1878. ch. 8. 123 Wen, ENYXZ, Ch. 6.

This form of empty hand martial arts is not the same as a close quarters brawl with

weapons, there are specific schools, there are specific customs, there are specific

postures. Speaking of martial arts schools, the top two are Wudang Fist and Shaolin

Fist.124

列公，打拳的这家武艺，却与厮杀械斗不同，有个家数，有个规矩，有个架

式。讲家数，为头数武当拳、少林拳两家。

Two things stand out in this passage. The first is that it is clear, most likely from both Wen’s experience as a banner man, that the author is drawing a sharp distinction between martial arts and simple fighting. Beyond the world of the bannerman, many Han martial artists of the period, especially those of the internal school, wrote discursively in ways that expressed much the same idea. This distinction between marital arts and simple fighting is explicit in martial arts being defined by Wen as having schools, customs, and posture training elements. These elements represent how the author viewed martial arts and how it represented something beyond just combat. The other aspect that is important to note is that internal and external schools of martial arts, something that was only just introduced in the early Qing period, is now being relayed in vernacular novels as a foundational aspect of martial arts in the Late Qing. While it does not possess the same connotative claims as Huang’s original writings, Wen’s description of external

124 Wen, ENYXZ, ch. 6.

69 and internal martial arts shows that this dichotomy had become as accepted part of Han martial art classification.

Wen’s story also comes a perspective that highlights the inherent morality of Confucian values and uses He’s martial prowess as a method of authenticating these virtues. Her journey does not come out of a sense of adventure, but rather her desire to seek revenge for her father, a common trait in heroes that expresses filial piety. Her piety and virtue extends to her initial unwillingness to interact with An, following the Qing customs surrounding chastity, even going so far as to regret letting him take her slingshot to defend them, due to the impact it may have on their interactions.125 Wen characterizes He in Confucian terms of filial piety, from her knowledge of Mencius to her desire to properly honor her father, and in so doing reaffirms the social order upon which the images of culturally assimilated Sinicized authority was based. He does this by using He and the image of the female martial artists as his medium, relying on what had become a common image of “the feminine as an unproblematic site of authenticity.”126 He engages with her martial skill as a result of her father’s training and she employ’s it, in turn, for the sake of filial piety. Martial arts for Wen have become the site of Confucian virtue, and He is made the acting exemplar.

He Yufeng in this story does not represent a resistance or rebellion against the gender order, unlike the previous uses of the female knight-errant from the early Qing. Despite her crossing of traditional gender boundaries in to the realm of Han martial artist, instead she takes

125 The quoted line in Chapter 6 is nannü shoushou buqin (男女授受不亲) which is a line from Mencius which roughly translates to “it is improper for men and women to touch hands in passing objects.” 126 Epstein, 300.

70 on the role of what Maram Epstein describes as the “filial outlaw” and suborns herself to the higher affairs of the state when necessary.127 When her actions might be seen as transgressive, they are “executed within the logic of the narrative because it is motivated by her filiality” and thus acceptable. This is an image often seen in spaces of female agency, such as women taking a form of control over defining the nature of chastity within the Qing government.128 In defining

He’s actions within the scope of acceptable Confucian behavior, Wen’s uses utilized a gendered trope to establish and reassert the authentic value of Confucian ideals through the medium of the vernacular martial arts novel.

The late Qing period marks a continuation of the connection of Han martial arts and gender boundary crossing that was established in earlier periods. Women continued to show involvement banned martial arts and sectarian practice through their roles in sects such as the

White lotus. Their role as teachers of male students also indicates a breakdown of traditional gender roles in these marginalized spaces. The vernacular novel also became a space in which

Han and Manchu martial arts discourse could take on gendered meaning, and women were represented as Han martial heroes. This followed a similar trend from the Ming-Qing transition of the female knight-errant, though this period saw the rise of Manchu authors writing stories of martially skilled Han women, indicating a shift in how even the Manchu bannerman viewed both ethnicity and gender as it related to martial arts prowess and virtuous heroism in the late Qing.

127 Epstein, 288. 128 Theiss, 163-164.

Conclusion

Han martial arts in the Qing period representing a means through which men and women were able to reimagine their own gender identity. This construction took many forms and entered the spheres of Han martial arts discourse and practice, as well as representation in vernacular literature. As the period progressed female martial artists seemed to find more available for them to transition across gender boundaries or establish new ones, especially for women of the period.

Han martial arts discourse saw the introduction of a new concept in the form of the internal school of martial arts practice. Much of what was advocated by this discourse could be said to be a response to the Manchu establishment of themselves and their banner system as the pinnacle of wu and there for martial masculine expression. For Han martial artists to continue to form masculine self-identities, it was necessary for them to shift the conversation away from the purely external expressions of masculine martial prowess and inward toward forms of self- cultivation and internal strength inherent in religious discourse, in Daoism in particular. This discursive shift made such an impact on the understanding of Han and Manchu martial arts in the

Qing, that by the time internal martial arts was being represented in late Qing vernacular novels.

Women also found the Qing a period in which they were able to cross gender boundaries and engage in banned martial arts practice, while at the same time female and male writers were representing female martial artists as skilled enough to match, or even surpass, their male counterparts. While engagement in sectarian martial arts practice by women was by no means started in the Qing period, it became a means through which women they could engage with the political turmoil of their time either by attempting to fight, or by employing martial imagery in

72 their writing to make their political loyalties and lament for a lack of options to engage in the defense of their fallen dynasty explicitly clear.

By the end of the Qing period women had entered the martial arts sphere in the realms of sectarian martial arts practice, legends of martial arts founders, and even in the vernacular novels of Manchu bannermen. Female martial skill became such an aspect of Han martial arts culture that authors portrayed women as being skilled fighters, while at the same time abiding by the virtues that made them chaste Confucian women worthy of admiration on both sides of the gender spectrum. The Qing created an opportunity for the blurring of gender lines through the practice and discourse of Han martial arts. With this platform, men and women were able to reimage their gender identity with respect to their own training. As the period progressed these boundary crossings became more common and more understood outside martial arts communities to the extent that they were being depicted in popular vernacular novels of the time.

Han martial arts created a space during the Qing where gender could be reconstructed and authenticated through practice and expression of Han martial skill. In this way the Qing dynasty served as a period of change for Han martial arts and its relationship with gender.

Chapter 5: Qing Martial Arts and the Modern Era: A Conclusion

This project opens the doors to future research topics based on the concepts explored here. The most salient concept for further study is a deeper analysis of martial arts identity beyond the negotiations of identities contextualized through marital arts practice. Research of this nature would look at how the many contexts and circumstances and identity negotiation developing into a more complete image of martial arts identity during the Qing period. It raises the question of weather or not there are means through which we can decipher how martial artists saw themselves in this period outside of the specific contexts researched in this project. Beyond the ways in which martial arts was used as a means of negotiation of other identities, did there exist a concept of one, or a plurality of martial arts identities during the Qing period? The narrow scope of my research project prevented the full exploration of this question, but by using this project as a foundation continued research would be able to tackle this question.

Another topic of future study takes the elements of this current project and extends it forward into the post-imperial and modern periods of Chinese history. The martial arts systems founded during the Qing are the some of the most famous in the modern era. Their stories, legends, and identities persist and can provide us with insight on how later peoples in China used these Qing period ideas, sifted and evolved them to fit their own communities and contexts after the fall of the Qing. This idea would take the concepts discussed in this project and apply them in later historical contexts, raising the question of weather or not these kinds of marital arts negotiations continued to be relevant after the Qing, or if martial artists and their surrounding

74 communities shifted the ways in which they thought of their practice and even the practice of those living in the Qing period to fit a new historical narrative and political or social agenda.

The last kind of future research this project creates a window into is the expansion of this concept beyond China and into an analysis of Chinese martial arts and identity as it is understood outside of China. Chinese martial arts have continued to grow outside of China and many practitioners, both Chinese and non-Chinese, identify with both the practice and the history of

Qing martial arts. As an American practitioner of martial arts, I am intrigues by the shift nature of Chinese marital arts as it enters foreign contexts. Are identity constructions able to continue the use of martial arts as a point of negotiation in another locality and context? How does the foreign-ness of Chinese martial arts alter the way in which identity is constructed around it by practitioners? These kinds of questions, I believe will allow research into Chinese, specifically

Qing period, martial arts to carry itself forward and look at the ways in witch an ever-expanding scope affects these concepts that were negotiated during the Qing period.

This project looked at varied understandings of martial arts during the Qing period.

Martial arts became a flexible concept employed in practice, discourse, and representation in literature for differing social and political purposes. Martial artists were able to use the variability of the martial arts to make it fit whatever framework was necessary for their own agenda and buttressed that identity through the combative elements of martial arts, which served as a self-authenticating process, both within and between communities.

At the same time, Qing state agents, from the emperor to court officials, utilized martial arts as a means of controlling narrative around concepts of Manchu military and ethnic, superiority. At times when martial artists seemed to pose a threat to the state, they were turned

75 into a threat to all. When martial artists could be used to suppress uprisings or as proof of Qing martial prowess, they were employed and even venerated by the state.

Marital arts were, and are, a flexible practice able to become whatever a person needs it to be for them. Martial arts continue to serve whatever purpose in one’s life that is needed, from health and self-defense to meditation and mindfulness. The purpose that was needed in the Qing just happened to be one of political and ethnic negotiation. Martial arts was more than capable of filling that role as well.

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