Yu Chenghui with one of his painting. While a martial artists he was also an accomplished poet and calligrapher. Source: chinadaily.com.cn

Introduction: The Shadow of History

None of the short, English language, biographies of the respected martial artist and actor Yu Chenghui (1939-2015) have much to say about his struggles or activities during the Cultural Revolution.  Yet even a brief glimpse at the timeline of his career suggests that these events had a notable impact on his evolution as a martial artist.

How could it be otherwise?  The social foundations of the traditional Chinese martial arts were effectively destroyed during the era of High Socialism that followed the 1949 liberation of the Mainland.  Once the social and economic ecosystem that had supported and promoted these fighting systems was destroyed, the public practice of the folk martial arts vanished with surprising speed.   The newly instituted state sponsored Wushu framework, including regional tournaments and both local and provincial teams, grew throughout the 1950s and 1960s.  Yet these state sponsored institutions also found their legitimacy challenged during the period of disruption that followed.

Daniel Amos has argued that the actual impact of the Cultural Revolution on the survival and evolution of the Chinese martial arts is a much more complicated subject than it might first appear.  He has demonstrated that the folk arts disappeared with so little protest in large part because new social institutions were put in place that provided many of the same sorts of assurances that they had previously provided.  And, at the risk of oversimplifying, staying in the Party’s good graces was the key to maintaining access to these benefits and enjoying a safe and relatively stable life after 1949.

The Cultural Revolution was such a disruptive event precisely because it did not only focus its attacks on the artifacts of traditional Chinese culture.  Rather, once unleashed the Red Guards also turned their attention to many of the newly created social institutions and bargains that a previous generation of revolutionary leadership had put in place.  As former folk martial artists and repentant gangsters saw their positions of stability eroded during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution they began to actively reform their social structures and to restore their practices.  Private patronage and teaching networks that had previously been sidelined by social reforms once again looked like a possible survival strategy.

At the same time that official Wushu was coming under increased scrutiny, the groundwork was quietly being laid for an explosion of interest in the China’s older historic and folk styles.  While the sudden emergence of a “public park” Taiji and Kung Fu would have to wait for the end of the Cultural Revolution, it would be hard to underestimate the importance of this period in sparking the “era of restoration” that followed.

I have occasionally wondered whether and how the folk arts would have been able to reemerge on the mainland without the Cultural Revolution.   One suspects that if it had happened at all, it would have occurred much later and by very different means.  It seems doubtful that the “Kung Fu Fever” that gripped China in the early 1980s would have emerged in the absence of the Cultural Revolution.

These large scale political and social shifts might at first appear to play little role in Master Yu Chenghui’s life.  Yet as we will see they helped to shape the historical stage upon which his martial genius could expand.

Before proceeding with this discussion a few of my regular disclaimers are in order.  I do not claim any relationship with Yu or his martial clan, and I have no private knowledge about his life or teachings to divulge.  Instead I am interested in exploring what the distinct stages of his career suggest about the evolution of the Chinese martial arts in the 20^th century.  Most of the biographical material in this essay can be found in various published articles and obituaries that came out following his death in 2015.

Yu Chenghui on a poster for Yellow River Fighter (1988). Source: chinadaily.com.cn

 
The Life of Yu Chenghui

Yu Chenghui was born on August 16^th, 1939, in Penglai, Shandong Province.  A port city on the Pacific coast, it was the sort of environment that might nurture dreams of knight-errantry in the young and a yearning to reconstruct the region’s lost military history on the part of the more educated.  The city had once been a fortified naval base and it was rightly famous for its stone towers and walls in addition to its historic courtyards and gardens.  It had even been home to the illustrious “wall builder” and martial arts innovator General Qi Jiguang.  He was famous both for his work on the expansion of the Great Wall during the Ming era and for publicly advocating the use of boxing as a training tool in the Chinese military.  For these reasons, as well as the beautiful views, Penglai had actually been something of a minor tourist attraction for over 500 years before Yu’s birth.

Unfortunately this was not to be.  Yu’s father was forced to leave the area and fled to Taiwan while his son was still very young.  I am not sure whether this happened during WWII or the Chinese civil war.  One way or another it changed Yu’s fate.

The young boy was sent to Qingdao (another coastal city in Shandong) where he was put to work on a local farm.  There he exhibited an early interest in the martial arts and the village elders allowed him to begin his formal training.  In a feature article (based on an interview) in a 2012 issue of Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine, Yu states that his first teachers were Li Shuzan and Hong Junsheng.  The later appears to be the longtime student of Chen Fake who had recently relocated to Shandong after also falling on hard times.  Yu was 11 years old when he began his formal training (probably sometime around 1950).  Shortly thereafter he was accepted as a student at the Qingdao Amateur Sports School where he studied the martial arts within the newly emerging Wushu sector.

From a young age Yu showed great aptitude in his new profession.  In 1959 he won a championship title at a regional Wushu event held in Qingdao after competing successfully in four categories.  His performance in this venue led to a number of offers, and in 1960 he accepted an invitation to enroll in Shandong Sports University and join the Shandong Professional Wushu Team.

According to accounts related later in his life, it was at this point that Yu began to develop a sustained interest in various double handed longsword styles.  At the time there were no competition routines featuring two handed straight swords (shuang shou jian) within the Wushu establishment.  Yet long sabers, and to a lesser extent swords, had been objects of periodic fascination within Chinese martial circles for some time.  One of these cycles had occurred during the Republic era when a number of martial artists had started to reconsider what was by then an obscure, largely forgotten, weapon.  In fact, one of the very first images I ever posted on this blog includes a 1930s era swordsman holding a shaung shao jian on stage at some sort of public demonstration, probably in northern China.

Chinese martial arts display, northern China, sometime in the 1930s.  Note the individual holding the exceptionally long jian in the center of the back row.  Source: Vintage Postcard, author’s personal collection.

This interest was especially pronounced in Shandong Province.  Local Mantis Boxing traditions had developed a number of long sword styles. A quick search of youtube verifies that these are still widely taught and practiced today.

While researching the historical background of these weapons, Yu states that he studied the classic works of Cheng Zhongyou, the seminal Ming era martial arts writer and recorder of the Shaolin staff method.  Cheng had also written on the subject of two handed sabers (a topic of increasing importance with the sudden appearance of large numbers of Japanese pirates along China’s coastal waterways).  In his discussion of long, two handed weaponry, he stated that the shuang shou jian had fallen out of use after the Tang dynasty.  From that point onward its method had been “lost.”

Cheng’s works were subsequently reprinted in the Republic era.  While I have always suspected that most readers are most interested in his commentaries on life and training at the Shaolin Temple during the Ming Dynasty (which Shahar summarizes quite nicely) it seems that his work also fed a revival of interest in long swords and sabers among some practitioners.  Could the lost Tang era methods be rediscovered?

Yu’s interpretation of the shuang shou jian method was slow in developing.  The early 1960s were a time of great highs and lows in his career.  In 1963 he won top honors in the traditional division of the Hua Dong Wushu Competition with this Drunken Jian routine.  Unfortunately, later that same year he injured his leg in training.  After not receiving timely medical attention he was told that his injury would effectively end any hope for a livelihood in the martial arts.

Following this blow Yu took a factory job and tried to focus on the task of recovery.  While he had been told that he would never compete again, he also maintained an interest in the martial arts, continuing his own research and making contacts with other practitioners who shared his interest when possible.  In total, Yu would spend close to a decade away from the official martial arts community.

Still, if one were to take a ten year break from publicly practicing the martial arts in mainland China, you would be hard pressed to think of a better time to start than the middle of the 1960s.  Within a few years of his leg injury the Cultural Revolution erupted vastly complicating China’s social and martial landscape.  This should not be taken to imply that all practice ceased during this period.  As we saw in our introduction there was actually an uptick of activity and network formation as the folk arts began to reconstitute themselves.  Still, all martial artists found it advantageous to keep their heads down and their practice private.

By the first half of the 1970s a sense of social normalcy was slowly restored.  The death of Lin Bao in 1971 signaled the end of the active phase in the Cultural Revolution, and the trend towards restoration was accelerated in 1976 with the arrest of the Gang of Four.  Most historians place the de facto end of the Cultural Revolution in this year.  Yet the end of one era saw the birth of another.  Increasingly citizens began to look to the past in an effort to save and reevaluate the cultural history that had survived.

This was a broadly based trend seen throughout Chinese society.  A number of projects aimed at documenting the nation’s surviving folk martial art traditions were launched by Universities in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  It was in the midst of this collective striving to reclaim the past that Yu’s shaung shou jian method finally came to fruition.

An interesting example of a “village made” shuang shou jian. Source: http://forum.grtc.org/viewtopic.php?t=893

Yu had spent the last 14 years studying related methods and materials.  His form draws movements and inspiration from other late Qing/Republic era approaches to the problem.  Indeed, when attempting to “resurrect” a lost method, in the absence of detailed manuals, there are very few other sources to draw on.  Still Yu seems to have been determined to offer a complete and original rethink of the problem, drawing on his own research, and building a new longsword method from the ground up.  What was still missing was a unique movement pattern to shape his developing swordplay technique.

His inspiration came with the end of the Cultural Revolution.  After returning from a movie with his wife on the night of September 15^th, 1975, a massive thunderstorm broke.  As the rain fell Yu spotted a praying mantis (a totem insect for much of the region’s martial arts tradition) and observed the ways in which it responded to the onslaught of heavy rain drops.  The result was an epiphany, a moment of sudden enlightenment.  That night he completed his now famous longsword form.

Afterwards he recorded his insights in a classical Chinese poem titled “Realizing Swordsmanship.”  In his feature with KFTC magazine Yu identified this as a pivotal moment in his life’s work.

Still, Yu’s  shuang shou jian method meets the basic definition of an “invented tradition.” His explicit goal was not just to improve upon the other longsword forms that circulated throughout the region to during the Republic Period.  Rather he sought to restore a complete method of manipulating two handed weapons that, according to no less an authority than Cheng Zhongyou, had been lost following the Tang Dynasty.  With no written manuals to rely on he was forced to look at a variety of other sorts of documents, artifacts and still existing forms.  Yet the critical ingredient seems to have been his own martial genius.  Elements of his choreography have shown up in an increasing number of places over the years.

Nevertheless, the actual hurdle when promoting the restoration of a “lost technique” is convincing other individuals to accept it as such.  Yu was remarkably successful in doing just this, but the process was far from automatic.  He spent the next few years demonstrating and promoting his new method, and building enthusiasm for it.  In 1979 he published a book titled “Shuang shaou jian 20 Methods.”  Interestingly the text was written in rhymed classical Chinese couplets, much as a classic Ming era sword manual might be.

In the same year he was offered a position as the coach of the Ningxia Professional Wushu Team.  Yu used this as a platform to perfect and popularize the public performance of his long-sword method.  And when judges in regional competitions refused to allow competitors to perform his new form on the grounds that “no such weapon exists,” Yu would show up and give exhibitions to convince them otherwise.  It was while giving one such performance with a borrowed Japanese Katana at a regional Wushu tournament that Yu was first spotted by two directors looking to cast the various roles of a new film titled “The Shaolin Temple.”

When approached Yu agreed to show up and demonstrate some of his sword work.  At the time he had no idea that his life was once again about to change.  How could he?  The “Kung Fu Fever” that this film would unleash remains a unique phenomenon in modern Chinese popular culture.  Yu’s role as the evil “Wang Renze” opposite Jet Li (along with his subsequent appearances in the next two Shaolin Temple sequels) made Yu a star in a film genera that did not yet exist in the Peoples Republic of China.  It also spread images of his beloved long swords to audiences of a previously unimaginable size.

From this point forward Yu’s sword form became a regular and accepted feature of Wushu competitions, and the master himself made regular appearances in the world of film and later television.  Over the next three decades Yu would be involved with a big project every two or three years.  Starting in the early 2000s he increasingly turned his attention to wuxia style TV dramas including works based on Jin Yong’s incredibly popular novels.  Readers with an interest in Wing Chun may note that in 2008 he played Ip Man in the TV series “Legends of Bruce Lee.”

A mural showing Zhou Tong in the Yue Fei temple in Hangzhou. Source: Wikimedia.

Conclusion: The Beard of Zhou Tong

While Yu’s sword work was iconinc, among movie and TV fans he was perhaps most easily identified by his beard.  Yu famously refused to shave it even when various directors asked him to.  When asked about its significance in a 2005 interview Yu gave an answer that that may be useful in attempting to understand both the sources of his inspiration and subsequent legacy.  He was reported to have said that he refused to shave his beard because he was hoping that one day he would be approached by a director who wanted him to play the role of Zhou Tong, another individual who is remembered as having a very fine white beard.

The historic Zhou Tong is better remembered as the legendary Yue Fei’s archery tutor.   This alone would make him worthy of veneration, but Zhou’s significance has been vastly expanded in Chinese martial art fiction.  In a series of steps he has progressed from being merely an archery tutor to a master of all sorts of martial arts never mentioned in the historic record.  Likewise Republic era story tellers and later novelists dramatically expanded the field of martial fiction that Zhou could be found in.  Eventually he even came to be seen as the instructor of a number of heroes popularized by Water Margin.  Interestingly Yu also identifies Zhou as a figure associated with the characters from this classic novel.

One suspects that in directing the reader’s attention to Zhou Tong, the highly literate Yu was making an argument about his own martial ideals.  In his life he also strove to balance the martial art and the civil, both in his professional research and his artistic pursuits (as a prolific poet and calligrapher).  Like the later renditions of Zhou (who was famous for his spear forms) Yu had also created something new with the express goal of restoring elements of a more glorious past.  And while audiences saw Yu primarily as a performer, it seems likely that he wanted to be remembered as a gentleman who had preserved China’s martial traditions by acting as a tutor to the upcoming generation.  While, to the best of my knowledge, Yu never had a chance to play Zhou on screen, he embodied many of the values associated with his literary hero in the practice of his daily life.

oOo

If you enjoyed this you might also want to read:  Lives of Chinese Martial Artists (8): Gu Ruzhang-Northern Shaolin Master and Southward Bound Tiger.

oOo

“Chinese Reoccupy Great Wall Area.” 1933. Still taken from Vintage Newsreel.

“In the west, Asian martial arts are everywhere.  They are part of the texture of popular consciousness.  Nonetheless I want to argue that they remain marginal.  That is to say, although Westerners may see them often, and all over the place, they are not simply the norm.”

-Paul Bowman, “the Marginal Movement of the Martial Arts: From the Kung Fu Craze to Master Ken.” 2015.

Introduction

Students of martial arts studies stand at a perpetual crossroads.  It springs from the very nature of our subject.  A great many of us are current or former martial artists.  We have an intimate understanding of the embodied physicality of these practices.  As much as I like talking about the history of Wing Chun, I will be the very first person to say that if you want to understand what the art actually is, don’t start by reading a book or blog post about it.  Not even one written by me.  Go and do it.  Experience the actual system.  Examine how it makes you feel.

At the same time I have to wonder why you are asking me about Wing Chun in the first place?  As a historian I can tell you that it was a pretty obscure art back in 1949.  Chances are good that you first encountered this style through the media, either on TV or film.  That is just fine as the martial arts, while a sensuous experience, have always existed as an aspect of popular culture.  That was also the case in historic Japan and China.  In those countries commercial visual art (woodblock prints), professional storytellers, printed novels and traveling opera performers, spread the stories of various heroes just as effectively as film or videogames do today.

This is why martial arts studies needs to remain an interdisciplinary research area.  It is unlikely that any single methodological toolbox can reveal all that this body of practices has to offer.  On the one hand no less an authority than Douglas Wile has argued that Universities have an unprecedented opportunity to become involved in teaching, preservation and analysis of actual martial arts systems and traditions.

Still, we would be foolish to assume that the physical practice of the martial arts is a self-interpreting process.  The popular literature is littered with experts, spiritual gurus and ethno-nationalist propagandists all of whom would like assist us in discovering the “true” meaning of our practice.  How could it be otherwise?  The martial arts exist as social institutions, and social power is always somewhat fungible in nature.  That makes it a valuable and contested resource.

This realization should also spark a moment of self-reflection.  Images of these practices were introduced to us through an (often media driven) social discourse long before we started to practice them.  And while our understanding of their nature no doubt grew exponentially as we engaged with them, how do these “first impressions” continue to color our understanding of our practice?  How do they help to explain why some sorts of individuals, and not others, tend to be drawn to the martial arts in the first place?

We probably cannot understand our personal experiences within the martial arts, let alone their broader social impact, if we ignore the discourses which bring new students to the school door.  This is not simply a theoretical question.  For anyone interested in the health and future survival of the traditional martial arts it is a vital topic.

Readers interested in exploring this subject more deeply would be well advised to carefully consider Paul Bowman’s recent conference paper from which the introductory quote was drawn.  I suspect that as we look back on the development of martial arts studies it will be remembered as one of the more important papers given this year, particularly for those interested in the global spread and appropriation of the martial arts.

This paper is also a fun read.  It diverges from the (ever serious) mainstream discussion of history and film, and instead takes a look at the evolution of martial arts humor in the West.  As Bowman reminds us, humor is a powerful tool of analysis because it points to deeply held, and widely shared, cultural frameworks.  If you want to know what the public at large thinks about the martial arts, start by considering what they find funny.  This often reveals more nuanced views than a simple opinion survey might be able to uncover.

Unfortunately Bowman notes that the public spends a lot of time laughing at martial artists, rather than with them.  While these systems have successfully spread themselves throughout Western society, with terms like “Kung Fu” and “Ninja” now being part of popular culture, they always seem to lose out in the realm of respectability politics.

Consider the following.  No parent needs to explain or rationalize their decision to send a child to a summer sports camp, or to push them to excel in gymnastics or basketball.  But parents supporting their children in a Judo class or Kickboxing tournament generally come well-armed with a litany of justifications for their recreational choices.  It keeps my kids active, it teaches them to fend for themselves, it prepares them for the ‘real world,’ and (my personal favorite) it ‘builds character.’  Basketball probably does a lot of the same things.  But no one feels the need to concoct elaborate justifications for allowing their kid to try out for the school team.  It is just a normal and expected part of childhood.  And it is fun.

This is where the martial arts run into trouble.  For all of their name recognition, Bowman notes that they remain separated from the norms and hegemonic discourses that define mainstream western society.  Ergo the constant need to justify them as vehicles for other values that society has deemed to be acceptable.  In that sense our justifications of our practices are very revealing.  They speak to the sorts of questions and concerns that our neighbors might have when they learn that we have just signed a child up for a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class.

The distance between the perceived cultural place of the martial arts and society’s dominant value systems creates a space of puzzlement, tension, and sometimes fear among non-martial artists.  Humor is important as it can be used to either subtly disarm these emotions, or to further marginalize the “deviant” behavior.

“London Sees Thrill of Japanese Sports.”
A Judo match between a British and German competitors. Taken from a vintage newsreel. 1932.

Towards a Media Archeology of Martial Arts Studies: Judo, Kendo and the Dadao on Film     

While I agree with the main thrust of Bowman’s argument I would like to push its application in a more historical direction.  His investigation of the evolution of martial arts humor seems to begin in 1974 with the release of the now iconic disco hit ‘Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting.’  Bowman points out that the meteoric rise of this song through the charts marked, in many ways, the high-water mark of the ‘Kung Fu Craze’ of the early 1970s.

Touched off by grind house Kung Fu films (especially those by Bruce Lee), this interest in the Chinese martial arts had been seen as edgy, counter-cultural and somewhat dark.  This same view was even shared by some in the mainstream martial arts world where Bruce Lee’s movies did not always make a good impression on the more conservative practitioners of the Budo arts.  Yet by the middle of the 1970s the Chinese styles seem to have accomplished what it took the Japanese arts decades to do.  They too became fixtures in the pop culture landscape, and ‘Kung Fu’ quickly joined ‘Karate’ and ‘Judo’ as household words.  Krug places an acceleration in the cultural appropriation of the Asian martial arts as happening in this same time period.

Still, high-water marks foretell an inexorable retreat.  As the Chinese martial arts became famous they quickly lost their aura of danger.  What had been “dark” and mysterious became just another consumer good.

On Main Streets across America, Kung Fu schools opened their doors to throngs of students looking to recapture Bruce Lee’s magic.  The humorous disco hit of 1974 both illustrated and advanced this process.  As Bowman puts it “…the song ‘Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting’ participated in the domestication, sanitization, depoliticizing and, ultimately, ridiculing Kung Fu.”

Nor were the Chinese martial arts alone in this.  As Bowman points out in the rest of the article, what pop culture humorists tended to latch onto after the 1970s was the exotic “Oriental” nature of the martial arts.  The specific culture that gave rise to a given movement tradition (Japan, China, or the Philippines) was less important to western audiences than their essentially “Eastern” nature.  While it often irks aficionados that popular songs or TV shows seemed to confuse Chinese and Japanese traditions Bowman notes that this is simply how these things were perceived by audiences in the West.

Yet what sort of pre-history exists behind all of this.  Is it really the case that the Kung Fu Craze of the 1970s was a totally unique event?  Was this actually the first time that audiences were exposed to the Chinese (or Japanese) martial arts on a massive scale?  And can we trace the often uncomfortable humor that surrounds the martial arts to earlier periods, facing very different political and social challenges?

It seems that one of the hurdles facing students of martial arts studies is a periodic amnesia that grips public discussions of many of these topics.  It is certainly true that Bruce Lee was a unique figure on the western cultural landscape.  Yet he was not actually the first individual to put the Chinese martial arts on film and expose them to national audiences.  Likewise, the Japanese martial arts had gained wide exposure on the silver screen long before Samurai films became favorites of the post-WWII art house theater scene.

While I am still mulling over the specific mechanisms behind this unique form of cultural forgetting, I expect that at least some of it has to do with very basic factors dealing with the advertising and marketing of popular culture products.  The first step in selling the public something “exciting and totally new” is to never remind them that they have actually been exposed to similar things before.  Likewise audiences, in their excitement to be part of a cultural moment, seem inclined to see novelty in places that leave historians and archeologists of popular culture scratching their heads.  Ernest Renan famously remarked that a nation is a product of both collective remembering and forgetting.  It seems that this same sort of forgetting also plays a part in the construction of “new” social and media discourses.

For many research questions the historical antecedents of a phenomenon may not matter.  But in some cases I think they can be quite illuminating.  While the past may be consciously forgotten, its path-dependent structure leaves patterns that shape future events in interesting ways.  This is certainly the case when we examine media representations of Chinese and Japanese hand combat systems.  Consider, for instance, the question of exactly when these things became “humorous” and what that implies about the cultural appropriation of these systems in the west.

“London Sees the Thrill of Japanese Sports.” A still taken from from a vintage newsreel showing a Kendo exhibition match. 1932.

Newsreels: The Japanese and Chinese Martial Arts on Films

Bruce Lee’s iconic ‘Enter the Dragon’ was probably the first Chinese martial art film seen by an entire generation of Americans.  Samurai films had been present in the West for a while, yet they generally reached a smaller audience.  Kyle Barrowman has reminded us that Western audiences were also exposed to the martial arts in a variety of Hollywood films. Yet it is critical to remember that feature films were not the only places where individuals might be exposed to gripping and informative images of the Asian martial arts.

As I have argued elsewhere, the public display and discussion of the Japanese martial arts goes all the way back to the heyday of the magic lantern display.  Heavy glass slides, often delicately painted, along with standardized scripts, provided many late 19^th century and early 20^th century entertainment seekers with their first glimpse of Jujitsu, Kendo, reformed Judo, Sumo Wrestling and the historic Samurai.  Such images and discussions were actually quite popular and widespread almost 70 years before the explosion of the Kung Fu Craze.  More importantly for students of the history of popular media, they also helped to establish basic patterns and audience expectations that shaped the developing film industry.

As such we should not be surprised to discover that the Asian martial arts also made early appearances on film.  Yet they probably had their greatest impact in the now, mostly forgotten, newsreels that ran before or between the feature films that audiences had come to see.

A few words of orientation may be helpful before proceeding.  In an era before television, newsreels were a profoundly important instrument in displaying the sorts of images that would shape public opinion on critical issues.  Prior to the fragmentation of the media market they also had the ability to directly speak to large audiences.  While old newsreel footage may strike us as quaint, we should not underestimate the effect that it had on shaping people’s views of the world.  In fact, newsreels were popular with audiences precisely because (like the magic lantern shows of old) they allowed for a quick glimpse into foreign lands.  For students of popular culture and social discourse they are critical, and substantively important, historical documents.

A full survey of all of the martial arts related newsreels put together in the first half of the 20^th century is well beyond the bounds of what can be done in a single blog post.  But for the purposes of exploring Bowman’s article I would like to ask viewers to consider four specific clips from the late 1920s and early 1930s (an era that is particularly important to my own research).  While I briefly describe each of these scenes I cannot directly host them on this on blog.  Readers are encouraged to take a few moments to view each of these segments as they are discussed.

“London Sees Thrills Of Japanese Sport.” A Vintage Newsreel. 1932.

We begin with two clips that deal specifically with the Japanese martial arts.  These are important because they illustrate many of the trends that Bowman introduced in his paper.  Already in the early 1930s the public discussion of the Japanese martial arts was characterized by humor.  And much of this bears more than a passing resemblance to the sorts of word-play focusing on cultural discomfort that will once again rise to the surface two generations later.

Perhaps my favorite of these clips is titled “London Sees Thrills of Japanese Sports.”  It ran in 1932 and recorded a martial arts exhibition and Judo tournament that pitted competitors from Germany and the UK against each other.  While the German fighters managed to score an upset by winning the tournament, most of the footage focused on the exhibition performances.

The footage is historically quite interesting.  It includes some Kendo Kata work, and a very spirited exhibition match.  Next a member of the audience was selected to try and score a hit against one of the Kendo masters with a Shinai.  Perhaps the highlight of the event was a self-defense demonstration in which a woman defended herself against repeated (somewhat bafoonish) attacks.  While a trained martial artist, the woman in question was an even better actor.  She showed a great ability to play to the audience and give them what they wanted.  And that was humor.  Note the gales of laughter that can heard as she deals damage to her unfortunate attacker, only to end by powdering her nose while standing over the body of her fallen foe.

“London Sees Thrills Of Japanese Sport.” A self-defense demonstration by a female martial artist, choreographed to as to be humorous for the audience. Vintage Newsreel. 1932.

In this case the narrator of the film did not make many jokes himself.  It seemed to be understood by the audience that what they were seeing was intrinsically funny.  And as Bowman suggested, much of that had to do with the western appropriation of Japanese practices and attitudes mixed with questions of gender performance.

In subsequent years the producers of these newsreels would not be so circumspect.  As the 1930s progress (see here, here and here) the humor becomes more pronounced and sharper in its focus.  Increasingly the narrator takes the lead in articulating and directing the humor.  Thus we can almost track the evolution of this particular discourse.  Yet by 1932 it seems to have been already firmly established

Schoolboys “Kendo” at Tokyo. Vintage Newsreel. 1934.

These newsreels are also informative in that they did not confine themselves to domestic subjects.  Like the magic lantern shows that preceded them they functioned as a form of virtual tourism for a public that was hungry for travel and worldly knowledge yet firmly grounded in their own lives.

Schoolboys “Kendo” at Tokyo. Vintage Newsreel. 1934.

Particularly important is this very short segment titled “Schoolboys ‘Kendo’ at Tokyo.” Distributed in 1934 this film offers an important view of the evolving role of the martial arts in the Japanese educational system during a critical decade.  Note that the class has been moved out of the Kendo hall into a training field where the “future soldiers” could acclimate to fighting on bumpy and uneven ground.  The mass engagement between the two groups of sword wielding students rushing towards each other at the end of the film is a great illustration of the sorts of reforms (and militarization) of the Kendo curriculum during the 1930s and 1940s discussed by authors like Hurst and Bennett in their respective histories of Japanese swordsmanship.  In that respect this is another important historical document.

Note that the overall tone of this discussion is once again one of humor.  Even though the practice of the Japanese martial arts by Japanese students should raise no questions of cultural discomfort, humor is still evoked as the dominant paradigm by which a (somewhat disturbing) scene is discussed.  One wonders to what degree imperialist attitudes, or possibly fear in the face of rising militarism, contributed to the establishment of this discourse.

Schoolboys “Kendo” at Tokyo. Vintage Newsreel. 1934.

This makes a fascinating contrast to the next two newsreels.  They show scenes of Chinese hand combat training.  In some ways their historical and ethnographic value is even greater than the preceding films.  Yet how would their Western audiences have described what they were seeing on screen?

An exotic form of military training?  Certainly.  A “martial art”?  Possibly, though that term was not yet as popular in the public discourse as it became after WWII.  A type of self-defense system that they could learn and study for their own betterment and enjoyment (such as Judo, or possibly even Kendo)?  Certainly not.

“Russo/Chinese War Scenes.” Chinese soldiers drill with Pudao. Vintage Newsreel. 1929.

The first of these films is the longest newsreel in the post, yet it is worth watching in full.  The final sequence shows a small formation of soldiers drilling with pudao (horse knives).  The form that they are doing is relatively short, clearly illustrated, and I suspect that someone could even teach it to themselves simply by watching this footage.  It’s a very nice demonstration.

“Russo/Chinese War Scenes.” Chinese soldiers drill with Pudao. Vintage Newsreel. 1929.

“Russo/Chinese War Scenes.” Chinese soldiers drill with Pudao. Vintage Newsreel. 1929.

Yet this is not simply an attempt by the imperial West to show the Chinese as militarily weak or backwards.  This “training exercise” was introduced only after the audience was shown footage of a warlord and his officers, iconic images of modern troops marching along the Great Wall, and ranks of modern machine-guns being deployed in field exercises.  The Chinese military is shown as efficient and well disciplined.  One suspects that a Westerner watching this footage would likely equate the sword drill at the end to the Kendo of the Japanese military.  Which is probably what both the newsreels producer and the Chinese officers who agreed to be filmed both intended.

“Chinese Re-Occupy Great Wall Area.” Vintage Newsreel, 1933.

A similar pattern is seen in our next film, “Chinese Re-Occupy Great Wall Area.”  Dating to 1933 readers of Kung Fu Tea will be pleased to note that the soldiers in this film are drilling with the classic dadao.  Whoever produced this footage went to great lengths to try and make a strong impression on the audience.  The clip juxtaposes images of a vast field of smartly dressed soldiers with close-ups of individual martial artists shot against the sky.  The effect is striking and serves to emphasize the acrobatic elegance of their practice.

“Chinese Re-Occupy Great Wall Area.” Vintage Newsreel, 1933.

The starkness of an individual soldier, engaged in dynamic movement, silhouetted against the sky reminds me of some of John Ford’s iconic WWII footage.  Like his more famous counterpart, this director also had an argument that he was trying to bring to the masses.  It sought to answer once and for all the persistent questions about the willingness and ability of Chinese soldiers to stand and fight.  As if to drive that point home the last sequence is framed by a pair of crossed dadao, inviting the audience to grab one if they dared.

I am interested in these two films because they seem to represent a point of departure in the discussion of the Chinese martial arts in the West.  In one sense what audiences are being exposed to remains remote, especially in comparison to Judo and Kendo.  It is not hard to find newsreel footage of both Western and Japanese practitioners of those arts in the 1930s.  Already they were moving into the realm of cultural appropriation, yet they remain outside of the hegemonic norms and identities.  The result is the emergence of exactly the sort of humor in the 1930s that Bowman predicts and explains in the post-1974 era.

In comparison there is nothing funny about the Chinese sword routines.  They are introduced not as sporting events or community interest stories.  Rather they exist in a grimmer world, one of international conflict, cities falling under martial law and modern armies on the march in Northern Asia.  There are no western practitioners of these arts, and so there is not the same sort of cultural discomfort that Bowman describes.  Those blades instead represent a forbidding reminder of the challenges facing the Chinese people during the 1930s and 1940s.  As such they may make audiences somewhat uncomfortable.  Yet there is nothing humorous about what they represent.

“Russo/Chinese War Scenes.” Chinese soldiers drill with Pudao. Vintage Newsreel. 1929.

Conclusion

Bowman is correct in noting that there is an important relationship between humor and the media driven global spread of the martial arts.  However, this post suggests that this basic pattern may have been established much earlier than the 1970s.  The newsreel footage demonstrates that these discourses were already in place (and even began to accelerate and evolve) by the 1930s.  If you are willing to go back and look at the writing in sports pages many of the same sorts of jokes and subtle concerns about identity masculinity and race can be found in the early years of the 20^th century, just as Jujitsu begins to establish its presence in the West.

The Chinese martial arts, on the other hand, do not seem to come into their comedic own until much later.  This should not be taken as an indication that they were totally unknown, or that Bruce Lee was the very first Chinese martial artist to do something amazing on film before Western audiences.  The newsreel footage that we have reviewed here probably had a striking impact on the audiences that saw it during the early 1930s.  Yet it did not generate the uncomfortable humor that Bowman is interested in as it posed no threat to the West’s identity or dominant values.  Nor was it remembered decades later.

This provides additional support to Bowman’s central argument that (with some notable exceptions) the comedic discourse around the martial arts does not seem to be driven by pure racism.  More important is a critique of how certain types of westerners (often individuals already considered to be marginal by their own societies) seek to live out their fantasies by appropriating alternate models of masculinity or mastery.

What is left unresolved by all of this is the question “why?”  Why is there less public engagement with the Chinese arts than the Japanese one from the 1920s-1940s?  The immediate danger is that students of martial arts studies will fall back on the old trope that prior to the 1970s the world of Kung Fu was insular because the Chinese themselves were racist.  Their arts were not spread because they refused to teach outsiders.

This narrative conveniently ignores the truth that it was the Chinese-American community itself that was being victimized by systemic racism during the 19^th and 20^th century.  It also seems to neglect the fact that while a great many westerners were interested in learning about the Japanese martial arts, very few people seem to have had any interest in the Chinese systems, even when they were advertised to the public through newsreels such as these, performed at the 1936 Olympics, demonstrated by Ivy-League Chinese students as part of popular flood and famine relief programs, or widely seen during Chinese New Year displays in major urban areas.

Ultimately these things were not hidden from the public so much as they were studiously ignored.  Bruce Lee turned out to be a pivotal figure not because he was first to teach the arts, but because he managed to change what an entire generation of people wanted.

Yet his was not the first invitation.  These newsreels are important as they record early attempts to shape a more favorable public opinion of China in the West by showcasing its traditional martial arts.  Together the Dadao and Pudao disrupted the notion that the Chinese people were weak, the so called “sick man of East Asia,” and unwilling to stand and fight back against imperial aggression.  They attempted to showcase a highly disciplined army that had mastered both the modern technologies of the machine gun and mechanized transport, while staying connected to the cultured heritage of its past.  While America may have awoken to the beauty and potential of the Chinese martial arts only in the 1970s, these newsreels are a fascinating reminder that the hand of Kung Fu diplomacy had first been extended to the Western public at least 40 years earlier.

oOo

If you enjoyed this post see you might also want to read: Zheng Manqing and the “Sick Man of Asia”: Strengthening Chinese Bodies and the Nation through the Martial Arts

oOo

Chinese Sword Dance. Vintage postcard Circa 1950. Source: Author’s personal collection.

Introduction

In a recent post discussing the portrayal of the Asian martial arts in early 20^th century Western newsreels, I called for a “media archeology” of the early imagery surrounding these fighting systems.  The following post comments upon two examples taken from my collection of vintage postcards to better illustrate how ephemera can help us to uncover details of the now forgotten discourses that shaped both the popular culture of that era, and by extension our own.

On the surface the two images that we will be discussing share many similarities.  Both are dominated by a single male figure, center frame, wielding a Niuweidao (ox-tailed saber) of the sort that has been popular with civilian martial artists from the late 19^th century onward.    It was actually the strong, iconic, images of these swords that first drew me to these postcards.

In both cases the sword is used as a visual shorthand to convey a specific emotion.  The same can be said for the feeling of physical motion conveyed by the two swordsmen.  Lastly, we should note that neither gentleman is described by the card’s publisher as a “martial artist.”

Nevertheless, our swordsmen have distinct stories to tell.

These images were used to support and spread very different discourses about the Chinese martial arts.  And all of this was happening at a time when that topic is generally considered to have been invisible in the West.  Yet how exactly did the stories of these two swordsmen diverge?  To answer that we will need to know a little more about these postcards as physical objects.

“Well Known Sword Juggler in Shanghai City”

Before analyzing the image at the top of this post I would like to revisit another postcard to establish a starting point for the following discussion.  It is titled a “Well Known Juggler in Shanghai City.”  At one time this was one of the most iconic images of the Chinese martial arts available to Western consumers.  I come across about one copy of this postcard a year indicating that it must have been very popular and widely distributed.  I don’t think that I have ever seen a postmarked copy of one of these cards.  It may have survived in such great quantities precisely because people saved the striking photo in their scrapbooks.

There are two ways of thinking about the age of any postcard.  First, we can consider the image itself.  Here we have a photograph produced sometime between the late 19^th century and 1911.  Given the hair style worn by the martial artist, it could not have been produced after the advent of the Republic.

“Well Known Sword Juggler in Shanghai City” Vintage postcard, 1907-1914. Source: This particular scan from the digital collection of the NY Public library. They managed to get a crisper reproduction than I could.

In short, this is a classic image of a late Qing street performer of the sort that is so often remembered with varying levels of derision by modern Chinese martial artists.  The photograph itself emphasizes the urban (and filthy) nature of his surroundings.  The subject is skinny with pronounced ribs.  Yet he also embodies a sort of dangerous, exuberant energy.  While the customers receiving this card probably would not have been able to identify his stance, it is clear that he is dedicated to his plan of attack.

The production of the card as a physical object probably coincided closely with the capture of this photograph.  The type of split back used on the card strongly suggest that it was printed in Germany (it bears the VDK trademark) sometime between 1907 and 1914 and was intended for export to a variety of Western countries.  The card also indicates that it was sold through Kuhn & Komor, a well-known multinational firm specializing in the sale of exotic luxury goods with its headquarters in Shanghai.  WWI effectively ended Germany’s global dominance of the postcard industry so we can conclude, with a fair degree of precision, what this card was produced sometime after 1907, but prior to 1914.

The next set of images is labeled “Chinese Sword Dance” (A3-A4).  This title is the first thing that we should consider.  While “juggling” is a type of vulgar street performance, “dance” (especially early 20^th century national folk dances) had a different level of respectability.

Though the weapon held by this martial artist is nearly identical to what we saw before, nearly everything else has changed.  While more difficult to date this photo was probably taken in the 1930s.  Note that a neat western haircut and polished flair has replaced the traditional queue.  All of this suggests that we are now in the era of the ethno-nationalist (and statist) Guoshu movement.

The setting of the photo is also important.  Here we see a martial artist in a rural area, performing his ancient national “folk dance” upon a set of stairs that look like a relic of the past.  While the first image radiates a feeling of raw power mixed with the sort of anxiety that comes from living on the street, this photo cultivates a serene and relaxed atmosphere.

Like the first martial artist, this one is also in motion.  Yet he seems ready to “bend” and twist rather than lash out.  We are left with the clear impression of a well fed and well clothed country gentleman.  While youth dominates the first frame it is difficult to read the age of the second martial artist.  He seems neither particularly young nor old.

Identifying the circumstances under which this postcard was produced is more challenging.  The image at the top of this essay is the third (A3) in a series of unknown length.  I found another image online showing the next card in the series (A4) but I have not been able to locate any others.

An examination of the back of this card shows that it was printed in Japan, but there is no indication of who the publisher was.  It also appears that this card was produced for export to a global market.  Under a magnifying class you can see the pixelation in this image indicating that it is not a true reproduction of a photograph.  Instead it is a lithograph image reproduced via the photochrome process.  This production technique was invented in 1939, and it seems unlikely that Japan would have been exporting many postcards during WWII.  So the late 1940s to 1950s (or possibly later) is a better guess.

Also note that there were production issues with these cards.  The cheap dyes used in reproducing this image are starting to fade, and all of the copies of this card (A3) that I have seen have identical scratches on the image.   Again, all of this points to a cheaply produced, post-WWII postcard.  For sheer quality it is actually hard to do better than the pre-WWI German examples.

“Chinese Sword Dance.” Vintage postcard.

Two Swordsmen, Two Discourses

While we may be tempted to commence our analysis with the martial artists themselves, perhaps we would get better traction on the evolving discourse surrounding the traditional Chinese martial art by considering the backgrounds and labels that frame these images.  Once again, in neither case are we dealing with the “martial arts,” a term that was increasingly applied to Japanese fighting systems by the 1950s.

The first image is urban in nature.  Not only is the subject found on the street, but he is labeled as a juggler from “Shanghai,” not China.  One suspects that it was the sprawling and dangerous metropolis itself that was the star of this image.  Martial arts demonstrations were just one of the many sights that tourists could observe on the city’s streets.

This is actually somewhat ironic as in the late Qing the practice of the martial arts was overwhelmingly identified with rural areas.  Much of the derision aimed at professional marketplace martial artists had do with the fact that they were vagabonds who had abandoned their villages for a life of (supposed) hedonism and easy money on the streets of the big city.

The largely Confucian ire directed at these individuals was only partially based on the martial nature of their practice.  It also had its roots in the deep suspicion of the city and the types of people who flocked there (especially to the entertainment districts).  The boxing societies of rural youth relocating to urban factories, or the crowds that gathered to watch transient street performers, seemed indicative of the local disorder that made China at once colorful and somewhat backwards in the eyes of many reformers.

Given the nature of the product, a postcard does not have to fully establish any of these discourses, or even attempt to add nuance to them.  They are basically a type of “kitsch,” rather than art.  Like all forms of kitsch, postcards draw on iconic images to trigger pre-existing culturally conditioned responses.

In this case the process seems to have translated indigenous Chinese cultural anxieties about martial artists in a fairly straightforward way.  Western tourists were only too eager to be drawn in by the spectacles that they saw on the street, and to find in them an encounter with a dangerous and exotic “oriental other.”

The martial arts reformers of the 1920s and 1930s worked hard to re-imagine these fighting systems.  They published books to combat the (somewhat overstated) image of illiteracy that dogged them.  Whereas the martial arts had once been most strongly associated with local culture and specific regions (such as “Shanghai”), they sought to re-brand them as carriers of China’s “ancient national heritage” and thus rightly the property of all.

They reformed the ways in which these arts were taught and classes were structured.  All of this was done in an effort to make them more accessible to working professionals with nine to five jobs.  Lastly, as Republican era popular culture increasingly turned against traditional rural values, and instead came to re-imagine urban areas as China’s future, they worked to promote these systems in cities across the country.

In truth these reformers never managed to stamp out the older, more regionally focused, martial arts culture.  Yet they did succeed in laying down a new stratum of social discourse that partially obscured it.  For an increasing number of Chinese citizens after 1920, the martial arts would become respectable objects of study, capable of improving health, teaching discipline and unlocking the paradox of China’s once and future national identity.

The amazing thing about this second set of postcards (A3-A4) is the degree to which they highlights every one of these points.  This is an image of a cultured martial artist with time to spare for self-improvement.  He is the very embodiment of middle class prosperity.

Yet he also represents the modern man who seeks to find balance with (and build upon) the past.  His “dance” is proudly proclaimed to be a national, rather than a regional, art.  The twisting movements suggest strength wrapped in softness.

While he stands in a rural area, it is not the type of countryside that gave Republic era social commentator heartburn.  Rather than declining agriculture and poverty we instead see ancient steps, a relic of China’s past, sanitized and devoid of any “distracting” modern elements.  By acting as the backdrop for this set of images, we are assured that the new national arts (guoshu) are capable of cleansing and restoring the country as a whole.  The urban values of progressive enlightenment will soon become “Chinese” values.  This is a rural countryside yes, but one that has been pacified and colonized by indigenous dreams of an “Orientalized past.” The martial arts now act as a gateway for the physical experience of this cultural construct.

Conclusion: A Picture’s Journey to the West

While these may have been the dominant discourses running though the minds of the martial artists and cameraman in the 1930s, when this image was first produced, how might it have been translated by Western consumers in the late 1940s or 1950s?

Given the events of WWII the Chinese, who had once been viewed with a great deal of suspicion in American cities, were quickly being recast as “model minorities.”  Discussions of Chinese history and philosophy became popular during the 1950s as the currents of the Western counter-cultural movement found an easy ally in the self-Orientalizing discourse that had also come to dominate much of the discussion of the traditional martial arts in the previous decades.  If anything these trends accelerated after the liberation of the mainland in 1949 as western populations (with the encouragement of the KMT in Taiwan) found new reasons to wax nostalgic for the loss of traditional Chinese culture.

These simple postcards bear visual testimony to the sorts of popular discourses that existed, both in China and abroad, about the traditional martial arts in the first half of the 20^th century.  Better yet, when set in a series they suggest something about how these discourses evolved over time (from the early to late Republic), and the ways that they may have been translated by the foreign audiences.  While much was undoubtedly lost in the process, certain key symbols did convey.  Any viewer of these postcards can see the martial arts becoming less threatening, poor and parochial.  Instead they are re-imagined as relaxed, cultural in nature and national in origin.

The basic outlines of this transformation would have been immediately recognizable to any of China’s many martial arts reformers.  This subtle shift in imagery also constitutes the prehistory that makes the later, post-1960s, explosion of interest in the Chinese martial arts possible.  A media archeology of these discourses suggest that they have deeper roots, and more complicated entanglements, than might at first be apparent.

oOo

If you enjoyed this you might also want to see:  Ming Tales of Female Warriors: Searching for the Origins of Yim Wing Chun and Ng Moy.

oOo

A studio image of two Chinese soldiers (local braves) produced probably in Hong Kong during the 1850s. Note the hudiedao (butterfly swords) carried by both individuals. Unknown Photographer.

Introduction: J. G. Wood and the Popularization of the “Oriental Obscene.”

The following post introduces a few accounts of the Chinese (and other Asian) martial practices taken from a book first published in the United Kingdom during the 1860s.  When discussing sources such as these I find that there is a tendency to dwell on the rediscovery of “the first” account of some sort of behavior or art.   In this case I am very happy to say that the Rev. J G. Wood broke no new ground.  That is precisely what makes his early, and often overlooked, accounts so interesting to students of martial arts studies.

Wood was deeply interested in natural history, and he dedicated much of his life to researching, studying and writing about the varieties of biological and social life.  Born in London in 1827, and educated as a member of the clergy (at Oxford), he gained a fair amount of fame in his lifetime for his writings and innovative lectures on the natural world.  Yet Wood was not really a research scientist.  Instead he excelled as a popularizer of scientific thought.   While Wood was never the first person to write on some new topic, he was often the second.  And what he wrote entered the public discussion.

These facts are easily confirmed.  Wood’s books were best sellers during his lifetime and went through many editions.  They also managed to be referenced in the popular culture of their day.  Both Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain cited or referenced Wood’s encyclopedic collections in their own works of popular fiction.

While Wood seems to have been preoccupied with the natural sciences, on a few occasions he did venture into the field of traveler’s tales and ethnographic accounts.  This is not surprising as by the second half of the 20^th century travelogues had become one of the most popular genera of popular literature throughout the West.  Thus it would not be unusual for a professional author with a penchant for collecting to try his hand at such a profitable game.  Wood’s most popular (and frequently reprinted) effort in this area was the two-volume set The Uncivilized Races, or Natural History of Man (1868).

Readers should note, however, that Wood was not a global explorer.  After becoming a professional lecturer late in life he did have the opportunity to visit North America on a number of lecture tours.  Yet he did not directly observed most of the societies he discussed in The Uncivilized Races.  Like Frazer and Durkheim, he conducted his ethnographic research in the library.  In the social realm, as in the natural, Wood popularized preexisting discourses rather than creating them.

This is precisely what makes him so useful to us.  The problem with spending huge amounts of effort to locate the lost and forgotten “very first account” of some obscure practice is that it was so often ignored by its intended audience.  That is precisely why these things are so hard to find.  The same forces that make them obscure today often limited their relevance even to their contemporaries.

Yet if we want to know what the general level of understanding of Chinese, Japanese and Indian martial practice was during the middle of the 19^th century, Wood is a good place to start.  And if we are interested in the ways in which the Western public imagined these practices and their connection to social violence during the 1860s, he is invaluable.  While far from groundbreaking his volume reminds us of the sorts of accounts that would have been available to a curious reader able to gain entrance to a fair sized library during the second half of the 19^th century.  And there is more there than one might think.

This brings us to the content of Wood’s collection.  In this post I have excerpted a single section of his discussion of warfare in 19^th century China as it will be of the greatest interest to readers of Kung Fu Tea.  Yet Wood also reported accounts of the martial and military arts (broadly defined) of the Manchu, Japanese and Indian peoples as well.  As such this volume presents us with an opportunity to observe the ways that these discourses were starting to diverge in the 1860s.

Wood’s Chinese chapter seems to be driven by his own preoccupation with weapons and weapon collecting.  After a discussion of Chinese field artillery and siege guns (omitted from my post as it is mostly of interest to military historians) he turns to a discussion of more familiar topics.  These include one of the most detailed period discussions of the Chinese repeating crossbow I have ever seen (a weapon that Wood had obvious admiration for and found to be totally ingenious in its operation and simplicity), the types of swords and double swords seen in public sword dancing displays, and finally the use of extreme means of torture and execution by the Chinese judicial system.

I have always been fascinated by the repeating crossbow, and so I was happy to run across Wood’s assessment of the weapon’s design and capabilities.  And it is fascinating (though not unprecedented) that a resident of the UK could speak with confidence about the sorts of Kung Fu displays that they had observed in their home country during the middle of the 19^th century. I did, however, omit most of the discussion of torture and execution that takes up the majority of this chapter.

On the one hand this material is not terribly relevant to how we define the martial arts today.  Yet I did include the introduction to the section because it appears to have been very relevant to how Wood and others understood the parameters and meaning of social violence within China during the 1860s and 1870s.  While at one point the author finds himself making a mental equivalence between the practice of a Chinese sword dancer and western fencer (speculating that the later would likely get the better of the former), it is clear that for the most part he did not view the Western and Chinese realms of the “martial arts” to be equivalent.

When discussing the military (and recreational) practices of Europe, Wood, like any good child of the enlightenment, emphasized rationality and efficiency.  Yet when discussing the Chinese (and to a lesser extent other Asian nations) the physical practice of these arts could not be separated from the cultural and psychological impulse towards cruelty and actual sadism that he saw throughout society.  His readers are burdened with oddly personalized stories of graphic tortures and executions in an attempt to raise a level of sympathy for the Chinese people.

Yet they are informed, in almost the same breath, that these same long suffering victims are primed to unleash similar cruelties on their own vanquished enemies.  Like others in his generation Wood built an image of China’s national character (as well as its fighting arts) grounded in a culturally conditioned impulse towards cruelty.

Such account only became more common in the popular literature with the rise in anti-Christian violence and the approach of the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1900).  By this era there is often a sharp divide in how the Chinese and Japanese martial arts are discussed in Western texts.  While the Chinese arts are still imagined as the preview of dirty market place performers, religious fanatics and sadistic jailers, judo and kendo are held up as important cultural accomplishments and a key to understanding the Japanese miracle.

Importantly no such tendency is yet evident in Wood’s work.  Published in the 1860s (and relying on accounts that were even older), the Samurai are still very much a living presence in Wood’s vision of Japan, and this does nothing good for his opinion of that country’s martial arts.  Wood seems to have adopted the popular late Tokugawa civilian opinion of the Samurai class which saw them only as a repository of derelict and dangerous individuals who, more often than not, contribute little to the actual support of society.

Wood notes with some relish the similarities between urban, low ranking, Samurai and the Western tradition of “swashbucklers.”  He dwells on scenes of Japanese swordsmen testing their blades of stay dogs, leaving dismembered and disabled animals in their wake.  Nor would it have been hard to find Japanese merchants or artisans who would have agreed with Wood’s critique of the moral development of the samurai.  It seems that the real (notably unromantic) Samurai needed to vanish before either Japanese or Western society could develop an acute case of nostalgia for their martial pursuits.

Wood’s accounts of both the Chinese and Japanese military classes focused on powerful symbols of cruelty and disorder.  While he discussed instances of Chinese sword dancing, and the precursors of modern Japanese Kendo and Sumo wrestling, these activities seem to have been viewed as ultimately extensions of pathological cultural processes.  The Western reading public knew about them.  Even by the 1860s they had entered some level of popular discourse.  But they were not yet seen as the sorts of practices that anyone would want to make a Sunday afternoon hobby of.

Sylvia Shin Huey Chong may be of some help in thinking about Wood and what his work suggests about the place of the Japanese and Chinese martial practices (and violence more generally) in 19^th century popular thought.  In a book titled The Oriental Obscene: Violence and Racial Fantasies in the Vietnam Era, she puts forth an analysis of popular media in the 1980s that argued that the image of Asians as both the perpetrators and victims of horrific acts of violence and brutality reflected the psychological state of a country dealing with the fallout of a war of imperialist aggression in an era when Asians were becoming an ever more visible aspect of America’s social landscape.

While reading Wood I was struck by this same dual portrayal of Chinese citizens as both victims of unimaginable violence and incorrigible sadists.  Further, these accounts also emerged in the wake of a number of imperialist wars in Asia, and at a time when China was increasingly becoming a central hub in the global trade network (indeed, that was the root cause of the Opium Wars).

Obviously there are many aspects of Chong’s carefully argued critique that are unique to the post-Vietnam American experience.  Still, her basic insights may help us to make sense of some of the most puzzling, and troubling, aspects of Wood’s treatment of Asian martial practices.  Ultimately the obsession with judicial violence in accounts like his may suggest more about social state of 19th century Europe than China itself.  Nor would these attitudes disappear quickly.  They would linger and in some cases be reinforced by the conflicts of the 20th century.  The reemergence of these attitudes (commented on by Chong and others) followed a well-worth pathway in Western popular culture.

Chinese Warfare

“The most characteristic Chinese weapon with which I am acquainted is the repeating crossbow (shown on page 1425), which, by simply working a lever backward and forward, drops the arrows in succession in front of the string, draws the bow, shoots the missile, and supplies its place with another.  The particular weapon from which the drawings are taken was said to have been one of the many arms which were captured in the Peiho fort.

It is not at all easy to describe the working of this curious bow, but, with the aid of the illustration, I will try to make it intelligible.

The bow itself is made of three strong, separate pieces of bamboo, overlapping each other like the plates of a carriage-spring, which indeed it exactly resembles.  This is mounted on a stock, and, as the bow is intended for walled defense it is supported in the middle by a pivot.  So far, we have a simple crossbow; we have now to see how the repeating machinery is constructed.  Upon the upper surface of the stock lies an oblong box, which we will call the “slide.”  It is just wide enough to contain the arrows, and is open above so as to allow them to be dropped into it.  When in the slide, the arrows necessarily lie one above the other, and, in order to prevent them from being jerked out of the slide by the shock of the bowstring, the opening can be closed by a little wooden shutter which slides over it.

Through the lower part of the slide a transverse slit is cut, and the blow string is led through this cut, so that the string presses the slide upon the stock.  Now we come to the lever.  It is shaped like the Greek letter [illegible] the cross-piece forming the handle.  The lever is jointed to the stock by an iron pin or bolt, and to the slide by another bolt.  Now, if the lever be worked to and fro, the slide is pushed backward and forward along the stock, but without any other result.

Supposing that we wished to make the lever draw the bow, we have only to cut a notch in the under part of the slit through which the string is led.  As the slide passes along the stock, the string by its own pressure falls into the notch, and is drawn back, together with the slide, thus bending the bow.  Still, however much we may work the lever, the string will remain in the notch, and must therefore be thrown out by a kind of trigger.  This is self-acting, and is equally simple and ingenious.  Immediately under the notch which holds the string, a wooden peg plays loosely through a hold.   When the slide is thrust forward and the string falls into the notch, it pushes the peg out of the hole.  But when the lever and the slide are drawn backward to their full extent, the lower end of the peg strikes against the stock, so that it is forced violently through the hole, and pushes the string out of the notch.

We will now refer to the illustration.  Fig. 1 represents the bow as it appears after the lever and slide have been thrust forward, and the string has fallen into the notch.  Fig. 2 represents it as it appears when the lever has been brought back, and the string released.

A is the bow, made of three layers of male bamboo, the two outer being the longest.  B is the string.  This is made of very thick catgut, as is needed to withstand the amount of friction which it has to undergo, and the violent shock of the bow.  It is fastened in a wonderfully ingenious manner, by a “hitch” rather than a knot, so that it is drawn tighter in proportion to the tension.  It passes round the end of the bow, through a hole, and presses upon itself.

C shows the stock and D the slide.  E is the opening of the slide, through which the arrows are introduced into it, and it is shown as partially closed, by the little shutter f.  The lever is seen at G, together with the two pins which connect it with the stock and slide.  H shows the notch in the slide which receives the string.  I is the pivot on which the weapon rests, K is the handle, and L the place whence the arrows issue.

If the reader should have followed this description carefully, he will see that the only limit to the rapidity of fire is the quickness with which the lever can be worked to and fro.  As it is thrust forward, the string drops into its notch, the trigger-peg, the arrow is propelled, and another falls into its place.  If, therefore, a boy be kept at work supplying the slide with arrows, a constant stream of missiles can be poured from this weapon.

The arrows are very much like the “bolts” of the old English cross-bow.  They are armed with heavy steel heads, and are feathered in a very ingenious manner.  The feathers are so slight, that at first sight they appear as it they are mere black scratches on the shaft.  They are, however, feathers, projecting barely the fiftieth of an inch from the shaft, but being arranged in a slightly spiral form so as to catch the air and impart a rotary motion to the arrow.  By the side of the cross-bow on Figure 2 is seen a bundle of arrows.

The strength of the bow is very great, though not as great as I had been told.  It possesses but little powers of aim, and against a single and moving adversary would be useless.  But for the purpose for which it is designed, namely, a wall-piece which will put a series of missiles upon a body of men, it is a very efficient weapon, and can make itself felt even against the modern rifle.  The range of this bow is said to be four hundred yards, but I should think that its extreme effective range is at most from sixty to eighty wards, and that even in that case it would be almost entirely useless, except against large bodies of soldiers.

Of swords the Chinese have an abundant variety.  Some are single-handed swords, and there is one device by which two swords are carried in the same sheath and are used one in each hand.  I have seen the two sword exercise performed, and can understand that, when opposed to any person not acquainted with the weapon, the Chinese swordsman would seem irresistible.  But in spite of the two swords, which fly about the wielder’s head like the sails of a mill, and the agility with which the Chinese fencer leaps about and presents first one side and then the other to this antagonist, I cannot think but that any ordinary fencer would be able to keep himself out of reach, and also to get in his point, in spite of the whirling blades of the adversary.

Two-handed swords are much used.  One of these weapons in my collection is five feet six inches in length, and weighs rather more than four pounds and a quarter.  The blade is three feet in length and two inches in width.  The thickness of metal at the hilt is a quarter of an inch near the hilt, diminishing slightly towards the point.  The whole of the blade has a very slight curve.  The handle is beautifully wrapped with narrow braid, so as to form an intricate pattern.

There is another weapon, the blade of which exactly resembles that of the two handed sword, but it is set at the end of a long handle some six or seven feet in length, so that, although it will inflict a fatal wound when it does strike an enemy, it is a most unmanageable implement, and must take so long for the bearer to recover himself, in case he misses his blow, that he would be quite at the mercy of an active antagonist.

Should they be victorious in battle, the Chinese are cruel conquerors, and are apt to inflict horrible tortures, not only upon their prisoners of war, but even upon the unoffending inhabitants of the vanquished land.  They carry this love for torture even into civil life, and display a horrible ingenuity in producing the greatest suffering with the least apparent mean of inflicting it.  For example, one of the ordinary punishments in China is the compulsory kneeling bare-legged on a coiled chain.  This does not sound particularly dreadful but the agony that is caused in indescribably, especially as two officers stand by the sufferer and prevent him from seeking even a transient relief by shifting his posture.  Broken crockery is sometimes substituted for the chain……”

J. G. Wood. 1876. The Uncivilized Races of All Men in All Countries. Vol. II. Hartford: the J. B. Burr Publishing Co. Chapter, CLIV China—continued. Warfare.—Chinese Swords. pp. 1434-1435. (Originally published in 1868.)

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If you enjoyed this article you might also want to read:  London, 1851: Kung Fu in the Age of Steam-Punk

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The reader will probably notice that whatever may be their form, there is a nameless something which designates the country in which they were produced.  No matter whether the weapon has belonged to a rich or a poor man, whether it be plain wood and iron, or studded with jewels and inlaid with gold, the form remains the same, and there is about that form a graceful elegance which is peculiar to India.  Take, for example, that simplest weapon, the kookery, and see how beautiful are the curves of the blade and handle, and how completely they satisfy the eye.

J. G. Wood. 1876. The Uncivilized Races of All Men in All Countries. Vol. II. Hartford: the J. B. Burr Publishing Co. p. 1400 (Originally published in 1868.)  

Introduction

It may surprise regular readers of Kung Fu Tea to learn that some of the most popular articles I have ever posted have been those dealing with the identification, history and collecting of kukris.  For some prior examples see here, here or here. These unique knives are not only popular among Nepalese soldiers, farmers and hikers, but they have become something of a national symbol.

Nor is their symbolic value confined to Nepal.  Within the Western imagination these iconic knives have also come to be closely associated with the Nepalese people.  They have seen combat with Gurkha troops fighting alongside the British army in World Wars One and Two as well as more recent conflicts in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.  Great acts of heroism have been carried out by soldiers armed with these knives.  Indeed, following the usage of Barthes in his classic 1957 work of cultural criticism, Mythologies, the visual image of a loyal Gurkha soldier, armed with his trusty Kukri, has become one of the great “mythologies,” or symbolically laden popular images, of the modern UK.

Yet when, and how, did these images emerge?  WWI was a watershed moment in popularization of the modern image of the Gurkha and his kukri.  Yet the current post suggests that the roots of this powerful mythology extends much further back in time, all of the way to the middle of the 19^th century.

It also suggests some of the ways in which the practice of assembling and displaying great collections of ethnographic arms became a powerful medium by which individuals in the West came to understand their world, and laid the foundation for the creation of the modern cultural complex which Sylvia Shin Huey Chong has referred to as the “Oriental obscene.”  While her research looked specifically at the aftermath of the West’s post-WWII conflicts in Asia, the history of the kukri suggest that the roots of what she observed reach far deeper into the popular psyche.

To explore these questions we will once again be returning to the pages of The Uncivilized Races of All Men in All Countries, by the Rev. J. G. Wood.  I dealt with Wood’s background and literary career in a previous post, and do not wish to repeat all of that material here.  It may be sufficient to remind readers that while he was trained for the ministry Wood actually found his greatest success in life as a lecturer and writer on natural history.

He is not remembered for his research.  Rather, his great contribution was to become a highly successful author capable of popularizing this new scientific approach and bringing its findings into the public sphere.  To use the modern parlance, Wood was more of a “scientific communicator” than a “scientist.”

Few of the subjects that he wrote about were totally his own.  Yet in the current case this lack of originality is precisely what makes Wood of interest.  In this essay we are concerned not so much with actual “discovery” of the kukri by Western explorers, but with the construction, dissemination and popularization of its mythos.

It may seem odd to some readers that Wood, whose great interest was the varieties of biological life, would be writing what amounted to an early ethnographic guide book.  Readers may wish to consider two facts in mind as they go forward.  First, during the second half of the 19^th century travelogues became one of the most popular and, best selling, genres of literature.  It is understandable that Wood, who sometimes worked as a professional lecturer, would want to get in on the act.

Yet this transition was complicated by the fact that Wood was not an accomplished world traveler.  Though he did visit North America on a number of occasions, he never observed most of the people or places on which he passed judgement in Uncivilized Races.  Like so many other 19^th century ethnographers, his research was confined to the library and the display halls of England’s great private and public collections.

This last location is of particular importance when weighing Wood’s writings on the kukri.  Like other gentlemen of his day, Wood maintained an extensive private collection of natural and ethnographic artifacts.  Follow the fashion of the times, various weapons collected from the far reaches of the UK’s newly acquired “Oriental empire” were prominently displayed throughout.  In an era before the widespread adoption of large public museums, such private collections were an important window that both looked onto, and framed, the world.

I have discussed this subject as it relates to Chinese arms and armor in other posts. It suffices to say that some of these arms were acquired as the spoils of war while others were brought back as souvenirs by soldiers and merchants.  Still others were swept up in a growing antiquities market and were auctioned off in cities like London and NY.  All of them functioned as powerful witnesses to the essential nature of the colonial system.

While the average reader in 1868 would not have had a chance to collect, or even see, such treasures, Wood’s publication drew them into these discussions.  Notice the way in which he frames the account of the kukri’s characteristics and uses.  Any thought that the kukri might be a versatile tool as well as a weapon (found in farmhouses across the country) is dismissed out of hand.

Instead he begins by recounting the skill of kukri wielding troops in the 1815-1816 Anglo-Nepali War.  At the time of his writing these events were already 50 years old, but it was still a puzzle to him that individuals of such small size, and wielding rather primitive arms, could perform so well against the forces of the East India Company.  The kukri itself, described in almost mystical terms, gets much of the credit.

Second, we are told of the manner in which (then contemporary) Nepalese individuals use their kukri in tiger hunts.  If the prior account was overly romantic, this one takes on the characteristics of pure fantasy.  While tiger hunts were real events, they did not consist of lone individuals armed only with a knife heading out into the wilderness.  Nor are tigers so obligingly predictable in their means of attack.  As you read Wood’s account it becomes clear that not only has he never seen a big cat attack, but it is rather doubtful he has ever seen a tiger in action at all.

Yet as Barthes, or Paul Bowman, would remind us, the mythologies of popular culture do not derive from careful ethnographic observation.  They are a multi-layer affair, one in which the animal nature of the tiger is juxtaposed with the animal nature of his hunter (“brave as a lion” and “active as a monkey.”) The heroics of a Gurkha dispatching a tiger reinforce his heroics in the service of the Crown.  Surely the empire must be seen as legitimate and a force for good if it can command the loyalty of men such as these?

Yet each of these symbols has its own dark side.  Lions are not only brave, they are also dangerous.  Monkeys are “active,” but are generally not seen as very intelligent or placed on the same level of civilization as men.  And what uses would these razor sharp kukris be put to if not for British intervention in India?

While the UK’s various wars in India are brushed off as events of the past, in truth they hang heavily on Wood’s account.  Ironically the kukri, now residing safely in the collections of gentlemen across Great Britain, has become a master symbol not only of the Nepalese people, but of the UK’s growing “Oriental empire.”

Chapter XCLIX

India—continued.

Weapons

One of the hill tribes, called the Ghoorka tribe, is worthy of notice, if only for the remarkable weapon which they use in preference to any other.  It is called the “kookery,” and is of a very peculiar shape.  One of the knives, drawn from a specimen in my collection, is given in illustration No. 2, on page 1403.  As may be seen by reference to the drawing, both the blade and hilt are curved.  The blade is very thick at the back, my own specimen, which is rather a small one, measuring a little more than a quarter of an inch in thickness.  From the back it is thinned off gradually to the edge, which has a curve of its own, quite different to that of the back, so that the blade is widest as well as thickest in the middle, and tappers at one end towards the hilt and at the other towards the point.

The steel of which the blade is formed is of admirable temper, as is shown by the fact that my specimen, which, to my knowledge, has not been cleaned for thirty years, but has been hung upon the wall among other weapons, is scarcely touched with rust, and for the greater part of its surface is burnished like a mirror.  Indeed, on turning it about I can see reflected upon its polished surface the various objects of the room.  The handle is made after a very remarkable fashion, and the portion which forms the hilt is so small that it shows the size of the hand for which it was intended.  This smallness of hilt is common to all Indian swords, which cannot be grasped by an ordinary English soldier.  My own hand is a small one, but is too large, even for the heavy sabre or “tulwar,” while the handle of the kookery looks as if the weapon were intended for a boy of six or seven years old.  Indeed, the Ghoorkas are so small, that their hands, like those of all Indian races, are very delicate, about the size of those of an English boy of seven.

The point of the kookery is as sharp as a needle, so that the weapon answers equally well for cutting or stabbing.  In consequence of the great thickness of the metal, the blade is exceedingly heavy, and it is a matter of much wonder how such tiny hands as those of the Ghoorkas can manage so weighty a weapon, which seems almost as much beyond their strength as does the Andamaner’s gigantic bow to the dwarfish man who wields it.  It may be imagined that a blow from such a weapon as this must be a very terrible one.  The very weight of the blade would drive it half through a man’s arm, if it were only allowed to fall from a little height.  But the Ghoorkas have a mode of striking which resembles the “drawing” cut of the broadsword, and which urges the sharp edge through flesh and bone alike.

Before passing to the mode in which the kookery is used, I may mention that it is not employed for domestic purposes, being too highly valued by the owner.  For such purposes two smaller knives are used, of very similar form, but apparently of inferior metal.  These are kept in little cases attached to the side of the Kookery-sheath, just as is the case with knives attached to a Highlander’s dirk, or the arrangement of the Dyak sword, which has already been described in the article upon Borneo.  There is also a little flat leather purse, with a double flap.  This is pointed like a knife-sheath, and is kept in a pocket of its own fastened upon the larger sheath.

In the illustration the kookery is shown with all of its parts.  Fig. 1 shows the kookery in its scabbard, the top of the purse and the handles of the supplementary knives being just visible as they project from the sheaths.  At Fig. 2 the kookery itself is drawn, so as to show the peculiar curve of the blade and the very small handle.  Fig. 3 represents the purse as it appears when closed, and figs. 4 and 5 are the supplementary knives.

My own specimen, which as I have already mentioned, is a small one, measures fifteen inches from hilt to point in a straight line, and twenty-one inches if measured along the curve of the back.  The knife is a very plain one, no ornament of any kind being used, and the maker has evidentially contended himself with expending all his care upon the blade, which is forged from the celebrated “wootz” steel.

This steel is made by the natives in a very simple but effectual manner.  After smelting the iron out of magnetic ore, the Indian smith puts small pieces of wood with them.  He then covers the crucible with green leaves and plenty of clay, and puts it in his simple furnace.  The furnace being lighted, a constant blast of air is driven through it for about three hours, at the expiration of which time the iron, now converted into cast-steel, is found in the form of a small cake at the bottom of the crucible.  Wootz steel was at one time much used in England, and great numbers of these cakes were imported.

A member of the 4th Gurkha regiment in 1880 holding a kukri.

In the hands of an experienced wielder this knife is about as formidable a weapon as can be conceived.  Like all really good weapons, its efficiency depends much more upon the skill than the strength of the wielder, and thus it happens that the little Ghoorka, a mere boy in point of stature, will cut to pieces a gigantic adversary who does not understand his mode of onset.  The Ghoorka generally strikes upward with the Kookery, possibly in order to avoid wounding himself should his blow fail, and possibly because an upward cut is just the one that can be least guarded against.

Years ago, when we were engaged in the many Indian wars which led at last to our Oriental empire, the Ghoorkas proved themselves most formidable enemies, as since they have proved themselves most invaluable allies.  Brave as lions, active as monkeys, and fierce as tigers, the lithe, wiry little men came leaping over the ground to the attack, moving so quickly, and keeping so far apart from each other, that musketry was no use against them.  When they came near the soldiers, they suddenly crouched to the ground, dived under their bayonets, struck upward at the men with their kookeries, ripping them open with a single blow, and then, after having done all the mischief in their power, darting off as rapidly as they had come.  Until our men learned this mode of attack, they were greatly discomfited by their little opponents, who got under their weapons, cutting or slashing with knives as sharp as razors, and often escaping unhurt from the midst of the bayonets.  They would dash under the bellies of the officers’ horses, rip them open with one blow of the kookery, and aim another at the leg of the officer as he and his horse fell together.

Perhaps not better proof can be given of the power of the weapon, and the dexterity of the user, than the fact that a Ghoorka will not hesitate to meet a tiger, himself being armed with nothing but his Kookery.  He stands in front of the animal (see the next page), and as it springs he leaps to the left, delivering as he does so a blow toward the tiger.  As the reader is aware, all animals of the cat tribe attack by means of the paw; and so the tiger, in passing the Ghoorka, mechanically strikes at him.

The man is well out of reach of the tiger’s paw, but it comes within the sweep of the kookery, and, what with the blow delivered by the man, the paw is always disabled, and often fairly severed from the limb.  Furious with pain and rage, the tiger leaps round, and makes another spring at his little enemy.  But the Ghoorka is as active as the tiger, and has sprung round as soon as he delivered his blow, so as to be on the side of the disabled paw.  Again the tiger attacks, but this time his blow is useless, and the Ghoorka steps in and delivers at the neck or throat of the tiger a stroke which generally proves fatal.

The favorite blow is one upon the back of the neck, because it severs the spine, and the tiger rolls on the ground a lifeless mass.  For so fierce is the tiger’s fury, that, unless the animal is rendered absolutely powerless, rage supplies for a few moments the place of the ebbing life, and enables it to make a last expiring effort.  All experienced hunters know and dread the expiring charge of a wounded lion or tiger, and, if possible, hide themselves as soon as they inflict the death wound.  If they can do so, the animal looks round for its adversary, cannot see him and at once succumbs; whereas, if it can espy its enemy, it flings all its strength into one effort, the result of which is frequently that the man and the tiger are found lying dead together.

Many of these little hunters are decorated with necklaces made from the teeth and claws of the animals which they kill.  One of these necklaces is in my collection, and is figured in illustration No. 1, on page 1403.  It is made of the spoils of various animals, arranged in the following way.  The central and most prominent object is one of the upper canine teeth of a tiger.  The man may well be proud of this, for it is a very fine specimen, measuring five inches and a half in length, and more than three inches in circumference.  This tooth is shown at Fig. 5.  At Fig. 1 is a claw from a fore-foot of a tiger, evidentially the same animal; and at Fig. 9 is a claw of the hind-foot.  Figs. 2, 3, 7, 8 are differently sized teeth of the crocodile; and Fgs. 4 and 6 represent claws from the foot of a sloth-bear.  The reader may remember that in all uncivilized countries such spoils are of the highest value, and play the same part with regard to them that titles and decorations do among more civilized nations.  Consequentially, it is almost impossible to procure such ornaments, the natives having as strong objection to part with them as a holder of the Victoria Cross would have to resign at the same time his badge and the right to wear it….

J. G. Wood. 1876. The Uncivilized Races of All Men in All Countries. Vol. II. Hartford: the J. B. Burr Publishing Co. pp. 1394-1399 (Originally published in 1868.)  pp. 1394-1399. [Additional paragraph breaks have been added to ease reading in an electronic format].

Antique kukri, hand picked from the Atlanta Cutlery warehouse. Probably mid 19th century. Author’s personal collection.

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If you enjoyed this you might also want to read: Through a Lens Darkly (28): Three Visions of the Kukri

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Darth Nonymous (left) faces off against John Solomon (right). Solomon is using the Krayt’s Eye guard to counter a strong overhead blow. Source: TPLA, photo by RiaFrequency.

A Tricky Step

Darth Nihilus* was grinning as he stripped off his fencing helmet and strode over to the open section of floor where I, and one of his more senior students, had been working on Shii-cho, the first of the seven classical forms of lightsaber combat.  He had agreed to review my form after class, but wanted to get in a few rounds of sparring first.  His smile suggested that he was happy with his performance.

While the lightsaber is unique to the mythology of the Star Wars universe, any martial artist would be quick to recognize Shii-cho as a variant of the “taolu” or “kata” that are the backbone of so many traditional Asian martial arts.  The resemblance is more than coincidence.  Shii-cho itself was created as a simplification of a much more dynamic taolu for the long, double handed, jian sometimes seen in Wushu competitions.

This complex mashup of Star Wars and the traditional Chinese martial arts was evident in the details of our training space.  The Central Lightsaber Academy meets in the same gym where Darth Nihilus runs his regular kung fu classes.  The neutral browns and blues of the room betray its former life as a retail space, as does its slightly cavernous feel.  The faux wooden panels on the walls, originally designed to accommodate retail shelving, have been seamlessly repurposed for a more martial mission.

Now the walls are filled with training gear (including racks of weapons and no fewer than three wooden dummies), as well as an abundance of photographs.  Large images of Dan Inosanto, Bruce Lee and Ip Man share space with many smaller snapshots chronicling the history of the Central Martial Arts Academy in its various incarnations.  These icons look out over a training space that is well equipped, but also showing the wear of a sizable student body.  They come, Monday through Saturday, seeking instruction in wing chun, JKD and kali.  Many comment on the comfortable and welcoming feeling of the space.

What visitors might find more jarring are the subtle intrusions of a far-away galaxy into this otherwise familiar scene.  These are most visible on Saturday afternoons when over a dozen students can be seen wielding blue, green, purple and red lightsabers.  Nor would you fail to notice a soundtrack from one of the Star Wars movies being played on a loop in the background.

A closer look reveals that a number of students (led by Nihilus) have formulated their own versions of Jedi or Sith training robes for the class.  Others prefer vintage Star Wars t-shifts.  And a few (myself included) stick with the branded t-shifts that so many kung fu schools use as their basic uniform. Choices in clothing and replica lightsabers can suggest what a particular student seeks from the class.

After giving me the signal I begin the first of the seven classic forms.  Shii-cho’s movement pattern is simple.  The swordsmen advances along a straight line in the first section of the form, turns and moves back along the same territory in the second, then reverses direction one more time before starting the third and final chapter.  The movements begin almost as a typology of different angled cuts and thrusts with a number of complementary blocks and guards.  These are strung together in more complex combinations as the form progresses.

Darth Nihilus vocally notes his approval as I finish the first and second section of the form.  After the third he hesitates.  “Ok, that is a lot better than last week, and I think you are 90% of the way there.  Let’s go back and look at your footwork and blade movement in one section.”

My heart sank.  Of course I knew exactly what section he was referring to.  At one point chapter three features a complex combination of attacks as the student drives forward.  I had been practicing this all week.  It begins with a broad slash coming over the left shoulder, followed with a lateral, circular, sweep of the blade around the head and ends with a decisive downward “angle seven” cut.  In itself this combination of cuts is not particularly complicated.

Nor is the footwork.  The sequence starts with a left side full step.  This is followed by a right side crossing step (which shifts the hips to the right), a left side half step (absorbing one’s forward momentum and bringing the hips back square) and finally a right side full step as the blade cuts straight down along the center line.

The complication arises when you attempt to put it all together.  It is not simply a matter of coordinating the hands with the feet.  Properly executed this particular combination has its own cadence, different from anything else in the form.  Only a few students in the class have actually mastered it to Darth Nihilus’ satisfaction, and it is a source of frustration for the rest.  This situation persists despite the fact that a large percentage of students practice their forms daily.

As other students in the room noticed that we were about tackle the third chapter of Shii-cho all eyes shifted to our floor space.  After a few quick attempts at clarification and some enthusiastic advice from onlookers, Darth Nihilus ignited his own saber and took the floor, indicating to the senior student that he too should pay attention to what was about to be said.

“Ok, try to think of it like this.  As you go through the opening movements of section 3 you are basically moving the same way you did in chapter 2.  But when you reach this point, the rhythm changes.”  He paused right at the cusp of the first cut in the combination for dramatic emphasis.

“As I go forward from here it has got to be like I am following a musical beat.  That is what is going to coordinate my hands and feet.  And if you do not figure out how to do that here you are going to have trouble when you get to some of the more advanced forms, like Soresu.”

At this point Nihilus broke with Shii-cho (form one) and demonstrated a single segment from Soresu (form three).  It required him to execute a number steps and turns as he spun his lightsaber around him in a plum blossom pattern.  If section three of Shii-cho was puzzling, this was like watching a dance.  But that was exactly his point.

“Once I get to this position I can’t stop.  If you stop or hesitate you fall out of time and then you can’t do it.  You just feel the music and keep moving on the beat.  It’s the same thing with Shii-cho.” He then resumed his performance of the first form.

“Your feet are basically fine, but when I do it this time I want to you watch the tip of my saber.  Note how it never stops moving.  It maintains a steady and continuous motion.  So keep your motions smooth as you move through space.”

Which is easier said than done.  While the blade tip moves smoothly the rhythm of the steps is distinctly broken.  Searching for a name to characterize this segment almost all of the students at the CLA have taken to calling it the “stutter step.”  For many of us it will take a lot more practice and correction before we intuitively “feel this beat.”

Lion dancers at Historic Chinatown Gate, Chinese New Year, Hing Hay Park, Seattle, Washington. Source: Wikimedia.

The Music of the Martial Arts

Over the next week I tried to integrate Darth Nihilus’ coaching into my daily practice.  Yet even more interesting was how he conveyed this advice.

I have been doing field work with the Central Lightsaber Academy for about half a year.  Almost all of the students have, at some point, struggled with this specific sequence of movements.  Nihilus has demonstrated and coached individuals through the form countless times, but something about his technique in this section is not legible to the class.  They see what he does, but they do not know how to make sense of it.

The study of the Asian martial arts is full of these sorts of puzzles.  It’s the challenge of mastering a different system of movement that keeps many students coming back week after week.  Yet prior to that day I had never heard Darth Nihilus use music as a metaphor to explain the timing of movement in Shii-cho.

I suspect that he came up with this particular explanation as a result of our collective inability to make sense of what we were seeing on that particular day.  Yet his words were also tinged with an air of revelation, as though he were revealing a deep truth about the martial arts that he did not want to bring into a normal class.  These were frequented by beginners, most of whom had no prior experience in the martial arts.  As Nihilius noted, many of these sequences came from types of wushu training that some people might find intimidating.  Yet they were now part of our lightsaber method. While Darth Nihilus focuses his teaching on wing chun during the week, he has studied a number of other Chinese arts.  The depth of his experience in this realm has proved handy when it comes to thinking about the lightsaber.

Yet his ability to “feel” the rhythm of a sequence of movements probably comes from someplace else.  Before becoming a full time martial arts instructor he was a professional musician who spent decades performing and touring.  When not playing with lightsabers or wooden dummies he can be found with a guitar.

This explains his heightened musical sensibilities.  One is reminded of the ancient stories of Spartan hoplites that turned to dance as an aspect of their military training.

Still, if Darth Nihilius is capable of identifying an underlying rhythm that ties these movements together, why do they remain such a paradox to his students?  Is it simply that we are less martially experienced or musically inclined?  Or is there something else going on?  What role does culture play in making certain movement patterns legible, even when most outward signs of that culture have been subsumed into something else?

While considering these questions I had the good fortune to reread a 2010 article titled “Rhythm Skills Development in the Chinese Martial Arts” by Colin P. McGuire (International Journal of Sports and Society, Vol. 1).  This is a relatively short paper and I highly recommend readers (especially those interested in lion dance) take a look at it.

I like this piece for a couple of reasons.  First, it speaks directly to some of the issues that have come up in my current field work with regards to the process of skills development, albeit in a very different environment.  This portability speaks to the general utility of McGuire’s approach.

Secondly, I have noticed a recent uptick of papers exploring the nexus of ethnomusicology and martial arts studies.   McGuire credits the early work of Greg Downey (2002,“Listening to Capoeira: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and the Materiality of Music.” Ethnomusicology, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Autumn): 487-509) in opening a space for this conversation.  Obviously students of Capoeira will have a special interest in the musical aspect of their art, as will many who study the fighting systems of South East Asia.

Yet McGuire reminds us that the traditional Chinese martial arts were often performed to musical accompaniment.  Solo forms work is sometimes accompanied by drums, gongs and cymbals in southern Chinese traditional village festivals.   These same instruments can also be found in the company of lion dancers at the Lunar new year, weddings and store openings.

What role has music played in the development of the southern Chinese martial arts?  Is its presence simply a cultural marker, a nostalgic remembrance of an earlier time? Or, for the kung fu schools that sponsor lion dance teams, does the musical training of students have an impact on their combative abilities?  Is it manifest in either the performance of taolu routines or patterns of attack and defense in kickboxing?

With a background in musicology and extensive experience in the Chinese martial arts McGuire is well positioned to investigate these questions.  Drawing on the theoretical literature of his field he introduces his subject matter in a way that is easily accessible for an interdisciplinary audience.   His writing examines both instruction and performance within TCMA schools, and demonstrates the utility of his approach for other students of martial arts studies.

Particularly important is the brief discussion of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus” (introduced in the Logic of Practice). Wacquant and others have sought to anchor their understanding of embodied martial practice within this theoretical framework.  Yet as McGuire notes, this strategy has some shortcomings when considering the TCMA.

While Bourdieu envisioned a deeply embedded, subconscious, group of behaviors, Chinese martial artists often short circuit this process via rigorous self-examination and an emphasis on conceptual analysis.  What might have been truly subconscious in Wacquant’s boxing gym is more often named and reified in a Chinese martial arts studio. Nor, as Bowman has argued, is it always clear that the average martial arts hobbyist really dedicates enough time and effort to fully “rewire” their habitus.

At the CLA I am sure that the “habitus” that most students embody is that of your typical office worker, sales person or college student.   While a number of students have gained a fair degree of competence in the use of the lightsaber, none seem to embody the habitus of a “Jedi” (whatever that would be).  One rather suspects that the average amateur martial artists, practicing a few hours a week, falls closer to this end of the spectrum than Wacquant’s highly dedicated boxers, some of whom harbored professional aspirations.

Nevertheless, McGuire concluded that the concept of the habitus is not without value in understanding skills acquisition within the Chinese martial arts.  While the central concepts of kung fu practice are often reified and examined, the same cannot be said of the sorts of rhythms and phrasing that make up traditional Chinese martial music.  The inhabitants of Toronto’s Chinatown have often grown-up with these musical tradition and may accept them on a subconscious level.

Musical understanding is also something that can be both experienced and transmitted through the body.  McGuire argues that the idea of habitus may have a great deal of utility in exploring the link between performance based practices such as lion or dragon dancing, and their subsequent connection to the traditional martial arts.

To more fully explore these ideas McGuire examines the various ways that rhythm manifests itself in the percussive music that accompanies a lion dance as well as the cadences of attack and defense that are seen in sanda (Chinese kickboxing). In both cases he focuses on the concept of “following” and “leading” as a way of theorizing how the internalization of rhythmic structures makes the actions of another individual legible.  In the case of lion dancing these two modes facilitate complex cooperation between the drummer, head and tail dancer, and the other musicians.  When applied to fighting the same basic pattern recognition skills allow one to anticipate and counter an opponent’s movements, thereby stifling their intentions.

Robert Downey Jr. and Eric Orem working on the wooden dummy.

Conclusion: Finding your Rhythm

The general outlines of this process seem pretty universal.  It is not hard to discover specific rhythms in the footwork, combinations and drills of western boxing.  McGuire notes that Japanese Kendo players have been observed to follow very complex rhythmic patterns in their onslaughts.   And one suspects that most American martial artists are now familiar with Bruce Lee’s idea of the broken rhythm.

Yet in actual application the details of any one of these examples tend to be culturally bounded.  In the technical section of his paper McGuire, following Boyu Zhang, notes that the concept of “the metre” (a constantly repeating cycle of strong and weak beats) which structures modern western songs simply does not apply to many types of traditional percussive Chinese music including those seen within lion dancing.  This is probably one of the reasons why most Westerners find this type of music bewildering when first exposed to it.  It does not seem to progress in the way that one expects a song should.

When describing the sorts of rhythm used in lion dancing McGuire instead turns to the idea of “phrases.” He defines these as sequences of distinct rhythms that are progressively linked together in significant or meaningful ways.  Note that this is quite different from the idea of a fundamentally repetitive metre.

It may be this distinction that underlies the class’ problem with the third chapter of Shii-cho.  While one might view lightsaber combat as an American or Western martial art, many of the individual forms that are practiced were borrowed, in whole or part, from other Asian fencing systems.  Shii-cho itself has its roots in wushu performance, an area where rhythmic ability is important.

The first and second sections of this form have their own rhythms, ones that seem more accessible to western students.  Yet when this structure breaks in the third chapter, students find it hard to grasp the sudden change in pulse and timing.  The perception of “entrainment” that McGuire describes in his paper fails, and students default to what they are more comfortable with.

Unfortunately this does not just disrupt the aesthetic quality of their movement.  It also short circuits the martial effectiveness of their attacks.  When a different rhythm is imposed on this sequence, the movements take on either a defensive or confused character.

Darth Nihilus sits at an interesting position vis a vis the cross-cultural communication of these movement patterns.  As a professional musician he probably has a greater sensitivity to “musical” nuances than many martial artists.  And given the depth of his experience in the Chinese martial arts, he has already been exposed to instances where culturally specific rhythmic patterns structure movement.

His experience in both of these areas has opened a pathway for cross-cultural translation in a realm that most martial artists never consciously consider.  A new generation of initiates is being introduced to the traditional Chinese rhythms of blade work through their instruction in the seven classic forms of Lightsaber combat.

Other scholars have noted that deep cultural knowledge of certain sorts of music, or even common childhood games, can be a critical factor in determining one’s ability to effectively acquire skills in a specific fighting system.  Thomas Green found that distinct rhythmic patterns conveyed in both popular music and urban street games form an important element in some African-American vernacular martial arts.  Without this specific cultural familiarity it can be very difficult to excel in arts like Jail House Rock or the 52 Hand Blocks (2014, “White Men Don’t Flow: Embodied Aesthetics of the Fifty-Two Hand Block” in Fighting Scholars, pp. 125-140.)  This would seem to further support McGuire’s contention that there is an element of habitus embedded within our recognition of these musical patterns that structures our experience of a fighting system on a deep level.

We should also be careful not to generalize too broadly, or to “essentialize” what might be regional patterns into markers of national identity.  One of my initial challenges when starting lightsaber training is that the sorts of timing and movement patterns used are reminiscent of the northern Chinese martial arts.  Much of this is quite different from Wing Chun, which developed in the Pearl River Delta region.  Yet even within a region (say, Southern China) there will be a wide degree of variation.

As I read McQuire’s essay I felt some slight pangs of “lion dance envy.”  These performance traditions are a critical part of Southern Chinese martial culture, but they are not something that I have any first-hand experience with.  Ip Man discouraged his students from becoming involved with lion dancing during the Hong Kong period for a variety of reasons.  As a result many of the modern Wing Chun lineages coming out of Hong Kong still have nothing to do with the practice.

This does not mean that our art is without culturally determined types of rhythm.  The mook yan jong makes a distinctive “clacking” sound when struck, and the elaborate patterns of strikes in each chapter of the wooden dummy form have their own tempo, timing and rhythm.  After a while the sound of the dummy literally becomes “music to the ears” of wing chun practitioners.  The unique nature of the dummy also ensures that there is a close connection between the martial effectiveness of one’s attacks and your ability to grasp and replicate these percussive patterns.

The cultural nature of these traditions renders them invisible to many of the individuals that draw upon them in their daily martial practice.  It may take conscious effort on our part to bring questions of rhythm and aesthetics to the fore and discover the ways in which they are linked the martial strategies of our systems.  Yet doing so will improve both our practical and academic understanding of these fighting arts.  That is why I will keep practicing my Shii-cho.  Sometimes the hyper-real functions as a doorway to the historical.

oOo

*Following standard ethnographic protocol, the names of both specific people and places discussed in this essay have been replaced with pseudonyms to protect the confidentially of those who have generously assisted me with this research.

oOo

Are you interested in Star Wars and the Martial Arts?  If so click here for some of my Rogue One predictions.

oOo

Darth Nihilus at the end of his sparring match.

Weapons seized by the NYPD and photographed for a 1922 report on violence in Chinatown. Source: NYPD Public Records/Vice.com.

The Yin and the Yang of the Hudiedao

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to participate in a day-long seminar on the Wing Chun swords taught by Sifu John Crescione. This was a great experience that provided many students with an introduction to this iconic weapon. Such events, by necessity, tend to be packed with information, activity and new faces. It is always a challenge to select a single high-point. Yet I think that for some of the students such a moment might have come just before we broke for lunch.

One of the themes that Sifu Crescione emphasized was the importance of knowing your weapon. At this point in time there doesn’t seem to be any single standard pattern for the construction of the double swords used within Wing Chun, let alone across all of the southern Chinese martial arts. While these weapons all have enough points of resemblance to be identifiable, elements such as blade length, shape and handling characteristics vary immensely. Some swords are optimized for chopping and slashing while others seem to be better suited to stabbing. The form used within Wing Chun contains a wide range of techniques, but it is up to the practitioner to select the most appropriate ones for any given situation and set of blades.

Nor does this concern apply only to recently produced weapons. As I noted in my previous history of the butterfly swords, a huge amount of variation can be seen in the size and shapes of swords that were produced in 19th and early 20th century in Southern China. To demonstrate this Sifu Crescione had brought a set of late Qing era blades to the seminar. I also brought a pair of knives from my collection which date to approximately the same era. Both sets of knives were longer (and heavier) than most modern examples and possessed distinct tips.

It was fascinating to watch the other students crowd around, eager to get a glimpse, and then handle, these antique blades. Such relics are not frequently encountered by students today. There was a feeling of reverence in the room. The Butterfly Swords have taken on a near legendary status within the practice of our art. Instruction in this weapon is often reserved for only the most advanced students.

The knives have become a symbol of martial attainment. Mastery of these blades is seen as the culmination of years of dedicated practice. This may help to explain why so many organizations have included these swords in their school’s logo.

Nor am I immune to the romance of the blade. After some discussion with the publisher it was decided that the butterfly swords should grace the cover of our book on the history of Wing Chun and Southern Chinese Martial Arts. I must admit that I was elated when I received the news.

Still, it is not clear that any of the meanings that modern martial artists attribute to these weapons have much intrinsic value. Many of these students might be surprised, if not a bit scandalized, to see how these same weapons were perceived at various points in the past.

Far from being the epitome of martial excellence, in the 1840s the hudiedao were a standard issue weapon stocked for use by the quickly trained (and poorly equipped) militia companies of the Pearl River Delta. These weapons were produced by the tens of thousands and issued to troops who tended to carry them as side-arms (their main weapons being the musket, spear or pole). While never issued to the “official” Green Standard Army troops, local gentry seem to have appreciated the fact that these blades could be made cheaply and new recruits (more used to village boxing than formal military drill) could be trained in their use.

Ships crews and private security guards were also issued these weapons for the same basic reasons. That probably helps to explain their association with pirates, traveling opera companies and other elements of southern China’s rich nautical lore. During the 1840s and 1850s these short, guarded, double swords seem to have carried a different, more plebeian, set of symbolic associations.

Nor was southern China the only place where the public encountered such swords. For better or worse butterfly swords also appeared in publications, museum displays and public demonstration in the West throughout the 19th century. Once again, they carried with them a set of connotations quite distinct from those admired by modern Kung Fu students.

Rather than being a marker of self-discipline and martial excellence, these swords were most often associated with the periodic breakouts of violence that rocked both the East and West Coast Chinatowns. Whereas British military observers in the 1840s had found the Chinese use of these swords to be paradoxical and quaint, American audiences viewed them as symbols of everything that was untrustworthy and dangerous about the nation’s steadily growing Chinese population. In many ways the spread of the image of the butterfly sword went hand in hand with the spread of the Yellow Panic and the news coverage that supported it.

Butterfly Swords in the Roaring 1920s

This point was driven home for me as I read some of the publicity releases for a new book titled Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money and Murder in New York’s Chinatown by Scott D. Seligman (Penguin 2016). Given this volume’s discussion of community violence in the Chinese diaspora community during the 19th and early 20th centuries it has earned a spot on my “to read” pile. Even more interesting were some of the publicity photos that were distributed to the press and other media outlets.

Perhaps the most exciting of these can be seen at the top of this post. Taken from the archives of the New York City Police Department this image was apparently included in a 1922 report detailing the ongoing problem of violence in Chinatown. It shows a large group of weapons (and other contraband material) that had been captured by police.

Some of this material is what one would expect to see being carried by any well-outfitted gangster during the 1920s. I counted 16 revolvers in this picture and at least one automatic handgun in addition to holsters and ammunition. Yet more traditional weapons were also well represented. Within the haul there were two (quite nice) sets of butterfly swords as well as other daggers. These particular Tong members also seem to have had an affinity for brass knuckles, having accumulated at least five sets.

I have yet to read Seligman’s book, so I can’t say if his narrative contains a more detailed backstory for this particular photograph. But I did notice the following quote in a publicity interview that he did for Vice.

“Vice: How did the violence evolve from meat cleavers to pistols to bombs?

Segliman: It was a slow process, but it escalated as weapons got more sophisticated and capable of taking out more people at a time. In the late 1800s, they were mostly using cleavers and knives; by 1900, Chinatown saw a large influx of revolvers. Explosives were only used once or twice later in the game—about 1912—and they fortunately did more damage to property than to people.” (Read More Here)

What struck me about this quote was the sense of nostalgia for a previous period of violence. Needless to say, we hear a lot of this in traditional martial arts circles.

On a purely philosophical level I am not sure that being beaten to death or stabbed is preferable to being shot. Nor, historically speaking does there seem to have been a golden, pre-gun, era in modern Chinese violence. As I pointed out in a previous post looking at violence in the San Francisco Chinese community of the 1870s, the police seem to have been confiscating firearms from that neighborhood’s criminals at about the same rate as they were being taken off the streets in the rest of the city. While it is undoubtedly true that violence in NY escalated after 1900, I doubt that the primary factors behind that were exclusively technological in nature.

The other thing that struck me about the 1922 photograph was how similar it was to other images that police and government officials had been producing across the country for at least 50 years. Indeed, given the qualitative change in the level of violence, what is surprising is that the weapons look so similar.

Chinese Highbinders and Weapons in San Francisco. Harper’s Weekly, Feb. 13th, 1886.

Readers might recall that in 1886 Harper’s Weekly ran a lengthy piece profiling the “Highbinders” of the Bay Area. This included engravings showing the various types of arms that had been confiscated from these groups including knives, handguns and butterfly swords. The author of the piece went on to include a chilling description of their use:

“The weapons of the Highbinder are all brought from China, with the exception of the hatchet and the pistol. The illustration shows a collection of Chinese knives and swords taken from criminals, and now in the possession of the San Francisco police. The murderous weapon is what is called the double sword. Two swords, each about two feet long, are worn in a single scabbard. A Chinese draws these, one in each hand, and chops his way through a crowd of enemies. Only one side is sharpened, but the blade, like that of all the Chinese knives, is ground to a razor edge. An effective weapon at close quarters is the two-edged knife, usually worn in a leather sheath. The handle is of brass, generally richly ornamented, while the blade is of the finest steel. Most of the assassinations in Chinatown have been committed with this weapon, one blow being sufficient to ensure a mortal wound. The cleaver used by the Highbinders is smaller and lighter than the ordinary butcher’s cleaver. The iron club, about a foot and a half long, is enclosed in a sheath, and worn at the side like a sword. Another weapon is a curious sword with a large guard for the hand. The hatchet is usually of American make, but ground as sharp as a razor.”

(Feb 13, 1886. Harper’s Weekly. P. 103).

While never the deadliest weapon in the Tong arsenal, the American press certainly seems to have considered the Butterfly Sword to be the most distinctive. Some accounts seem to have gone beyond the purely tactical value of this weapon and to have associated it with obscure, esoteric and threatening aspects of the Chinese American Experience. Of course the Tongs themselves often stood in for all of these qualities in late 19th century “Yellow Peril” literature.

The San Francisco Call, 1898.

Consider the cover of an 1898 edition of the The San Francisco Call. The paper ran an expose on the initiations conducted by the area’s Chinese secret societies. The main illustration showed a number of tong members, butterfly swords in hand, swearing to destroy the Qing and restore the Ming.

Another evidence photo, produced around 1900 and included in a government report, also shows a typical assortment of weapons carried by Chinese criminals and Tong members. Among the various knives (one of which is clearly Japanese) we also find a pair of bar maces, a revolver and set of hudiedao. It appears to be almost identical in size and shape to the examples that the New York police department would confiscate one generation latter.

Chinese Highbinder weapons collected by H. H. North, U. S. Commission of Immigration, forwarded to Bureau of Immigration, Washington D. C., about 1900.
Courtesy the digital collection of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkley.

An Evolving Symbol of Chinese Identity in the West

The 1922 NYPD photograph is interesting precisely because it suggests that while levels of violence may have escalated and fallen off in rhythmic patterns, firearms and more traditional weapons continued to co-existing for a surprising length of time. The number of handguns in the community escalated but butterfly swords did not disappear. And if this photo is a representative sample, knuckledusters seem to have grown in popularity. That would be a good sign that someone was still expecting hand-to-hand encounters.

The one thing that is absent from any of these photos or discussions, however, is the martial arts. While elements of the American public were certainly aware of these swords, they were not imagined as the training tools of skilled practitioners of martial arts, or even as an element of Chinese cultural heritage. Of course this was exactly how Samurai swords came to be seen in the first few decades of the 20th century. Instead these weapons were imagined as the cutting edge of a violent and subversive force in American life.

I suspect that the popular discourse linking obscure Chinese fighting methods to criminal groups was a powerful force in impeding the transnational transmission of these arts in the first half of the 20th century. It was not until Chinese-Americans came to be reimagined as a “model minority” in the post WWII era that immigration policies would be relaxed and the stage set for Bruce Lee to unleash a Kung Fu Fever in the 1970s.

The hudiedao are a fascinating topic of study precisely because they have seen it all. First associated in the western mind with humble militia troops and later with criminal groups, for many people butterfly swords represented the backwards and dangerous elements of Chinese society. In the current era this same object has been reinterpreted as a relic of a “more civilized” time in which persistent effort led to martial mastery and self-transformation. It is hard to say that one of these visions is more intrinsically “true” than the others, but this unfolding discourse may hold important keys to the meaning and spread of the Chinese martial arts in the West.  As a result we must be careful not to inappropriately project our reading of these symbols onto the past.

oOo

If you enjoyed this you might also want to read:  Tools of the Trade: The Use of Firearms and Traditional Weapons among the Tongs of San Francisco, 1877-1878.

oOo

Illustration from Meyer’s Longsword.

Greetings!

If all has gone according to plan, I am now back in the United States and recovering after my recent trip to Germany.  As such, I would like to share with you another keynote addresses from this summer’s Martial Arts Studies conference in Cardiff as I work on on my report for next week.

This was an interesting talk for a number of reasons.  To begin with, Daniel gave it while wearing armor, which is something that one does not see every day.  Secondly, I have been hoping to get some discussion of the Historical European Martial Arts movement (HEMA) onto Kung Fu Tea for some time now.

In this paper Daniel asks whether it is possible to reconstruct a lost fighting system from existing books.  The answer seems to be that this sort of exercise is much more difficult than we often assume.  And while this talk is specifically discussing the reconstruction of Western fight books, I suspect that many of these issues might also be applicable to those thinking about Chinese or Japanese manuals.  As such, this paper may be of interest to a wide range of readers interested in the historical martial arts.

As Daniel is a younger scholar who we have not discussed before, a few words of introduction are in order.  He is a medievalist with a background in literary studies as well as the history of science and the material culture of the early modern period.  He received a PhD from the University of Geneva in 2013, is the co-editor of the Acta-Periodica Duellatorum (which you should definitely check out) and he just co-edited a new volume on Western fight books.  Lastly, if you are curious as to what he can actually do in that armor, be sure to check out this clip!

Lost Embodied Knowledge: Experimenting with Historical European Martial Arts out of Books

Chu shing Tin demonstrating the pole form. Source: http://www.wingchun.edu.au

A New Pole

I had been meaning to get a new “long pole” (or Luk Dim Boon Kwan) for a while.  As the name implies, these are somewhat unwieldly training tools and (unless you own a truck) they do not travel well.  In my experience most poles simply “live” in the training hall or at home.  It is easier to keep a couple of them at the various locations in which one might train than to constantly haul them back and forth.  As a result, I had been without a pole at home since moving to Ithaca almost a year ago.

That changed a few weeks ago when I returned to my place to find a very long package laid out awkwardly along the staircase.  Upon maneuvering it into the house I was delighted to discover my new, absolutely beautiful, hickory pole.

My first realization as I picked it up was how heavy it was.  Like all woods hickory exhibits a certain variation in densities and the stock for this staff seems to have been at the upper end of that range.  Hickory is also one of the few commonly milled North American woods that easily stands up to the rigors of martial arts training.  I like the grain, and the fact that one can be fairly certain that no tropical forests were cut for the making of hickory training weapons.

Nevertheless, this new pole still feels strange in my hands.  The balance is clearly off.  I do not say this out of any sense of emotional attachments to the weapons I have used before.  Rather, my circumstances forced me to get a little experimental when I ordered this pole.

Physics dictates that long poles can be very dangerous weapons to train with.  At close to nine feet in length, they are basically a real life workshop on the degree of force that can be generated through leverage and momentum.  The few actual injuries I have suffered while practicing Wing Chun have all been the result of seemingly incidental contact in partner pole drills or light sparring.

As such it is easy to forget that long poles can also be surprisingly delicate.  Their length makes them prone to warping.  They must be stored either vertically or laid out flat on a perfectly smooth surface.  They should never be hung in a horizontal position.

Also, the momentum generated while smashing a relatively long lever into the ground can be more than any wood (no matter how dense) can withstand.  If you plan on engaging in this sort of training, or any drills that involve hard contact, it is often better to invest in a pole with a slightly thicker diameter at the front end.

All of which brings me back to my new pole.  I delayed getting one in large part because the place that I currently live in, while nice, does not leave me with many options for pole storage.  The ceilings are too low to store a pole vertically, and because of the way that various rooms are laid out, it is even difficult to lay one down against a wall without it getting in the way of a door or heating vent.

It was clear that compromise would be necessary.  After some thought (and measurement) I decided that the longest pole I could house would be between 7.5 and 8 feet.  Nor did I want to spend a lot of money on a nicely carved pole from Hong Kong, only to be forced to cut a couple of feet off the end of it.

Eventually I found an armory that produced wooden and synthetic weapons for HEMA practitioners and ordered an 8 foot hickory pole from them. With a sigh of relief I noted that it just barely fits into its appointed place.  And compared to specialty Wing Chun poles, this one was really cheap.

Of course it was also inexpensive as European pole and staff weapons do not have any taper to them.  Most of the Southern Chinese fighting poles that I have worked with have a diameter of about 1.5 inches at the base, narrowing to just over 1 inch at the tip.  My new pole is a consistent 1.25 inches throughout.

The extra thickness at the tip gives me a bit more confidence in the strength of the pole.  Yet the point of balance and handling characteristics for these two different types of poles are surprisingly different.  Ironically my new pole seems to require greater strength in my hands, wrists and forearms to manipulate, even though it is actually shorter than other weapons that I have trained with.

Illustrations of pole fighting, “The Noble Art of Self-Defense.” Guangzhou, Circa 1870.

The Materiality of the Long Pole 

Acclimating to this new pole has given me plenty of time to think a bit about the history of these weapons in the TCMA.  Much of what we know about the development of the martial arts in China (especially prior to the Ming dynasty) is closely tied to the rising and declining popularity of different sorts of weapons.  Weapons, like written texts, are never simply the product of a single maker.

Rather they reflect both the utilitarian goals and the cultural values of the communities that created and passed them on.  They are the product of social discourses.  Properly understood weapons can be read, interpreted and deconstructed, just like any other sort of text.  The seeming lack of interest in material culture within the field of Martial Arts Studies has always struck me as somewhat puzzling.

What exactly do we know about the evolution and use of the long pole?  What do they reveal about the history of Wing Chun, the Southern Chinese martial arts, or Chinese martial culture in general?  What can they tell us about the types of people who passed on these technical and material traditions?

Let us begin by considering the physical description of these weapons.  A variety of staff-type weapons have been used within the Chinese martial arts over the centuries.  Yet the Long Pole stands out as a uniquely recognizable, and oddly stable, point of reference.

It is impossible to say exactly when this exact configuration came into use.  Yet we do know that some of the earliest surviving written martial arts training manuals, produced during the Ming dynasty, make reference to this weapon.

We also know that late imperial armies adopted the long pole as a type of basic training regime.  It was thought that expertise in the pole would facilitate later training in other double handed weapons, such as the spear or halberd.  Martial artists, on the other hand, often saw the pole as an ends unto itself.

Cheng Zongyou, a civilian expert on military training, published an account titled Exposition of the Original Shaolin Staff Method sometime around 1610.  This work was the end product of more than a decade of study at both Shaolin Temple in Henan, and with its monks in the field.  Martial Arts historians consider it to be an extremely important document.  It is both the oldest surviving manual of a Shaolin Martial Art, and it provides fascinating insights into the nature of life and instruction at this venerable institution during the late Ming.

It also provides a detailed discussion of at least one of the long pole fighting methods taught at Shaolin.  Cheng prefaces this manual with a description of the weapon in question.  He notes that a fighting staff can be made of either wood or iron.  Iron poles (which, to the best of my knowledge, have totally fallen out of use) were said to be 7.7 feet long, and weighed close to 20 pounds.

By way of comparison, the M1 Garand, America’s main battle rifle during WWII and Korea, weighed less than half of that at 9.5 pounds.  Most soldiers complained that even that was too heavy and cumbersome on extended marches.  Still, if one had the strength to wield a 20 pound iron pole in the field, it would make for a fearsome weapon.

17^th century wood poles, in comparison, were virtually identical to the weapons still used throughout the Southern Chinese martial arts today.  Their weight was a relatively light 3-4 pounds, and they ranged in length from 8 to 9 feet.  This range in dimensions is probably a reflection of wood’s natural plasticity.

Cheng noted that practically any hard yet pliant wood could be used to produce a pole.  As such, poles carved in the north or south of the country would have been made from woods of different types and weights.  Further, Cheng recommended using harvested pole lumber for the production of fighting staffs.  Cutting a small tree at the base ensured a uniform taper with minimal additional shaping.

Unfortunately Cheng did not specify what the preferred diameters at the tip and base of his poles were.  Still, we might be able to make some educated guesses on this point.  Most of the traditional poles advertised at Everything Wing Chun vary in weight from 4 pounds (shorter oak examples) to 6 pounds (heavier, exotic hardwoods).  It seems likely that Shaolin’s 17^th century staffs might have been made of hardwoods that more closely matched the density of something like oak, and had an average diameter slightly narrower than what martial artists favor today.  Still, when reading Cheng’s description the overwhelming impression that one gets is of how much has remained the same.

How did Shaolin (a Buddhist temple) become a nationally recognized center for pole fighting?  And why were its fighting staffs tapered, rather than straight like their European cousins of the same time period?  It turns out that the answers to these questions are closely related.

While we do not the space to review all of the relevant history in this post, Meir Shahar has demonstrated that by the Ming Dynasty the Shaolin Temple in Henan had become a recognized center of martial training with close ties to critical figures in the Chinese military.  A number of temples (both in China and Japan) found it necessary to house teams of “martial monks” to protect the institution’s estates and land holdings.  Modern students sometimes forget that in addition to being religious institutions, large temples were also some of the most economically powerful actors in their environments.  Like other landlords they found it necessary to provide their own security in turbulent times.

Obviously wooden staffs could be made cheaply and easily replaced.  While these weapons could be quite deadly, they were also in keeping with a monk’s prescribed public appearance.  Yet once the Temple became more closely associated with the Ming military, pole training gained an additional layer of importance.

The Chinese military had long used poles as a form of basic training.  One of the most important weapons on the 17^th century battle field was the spear.  It is not hard to imagine how the thrusting movements so commonly seen in the Six and a Half Point Pole form might function if a blade were to be affixed to the martial artist’s shaft.

In a recent article Peter Dekker discussed the regulation military spears of the Ming and Qing dynasties.  Luckily we know quite a bit about the earlier period as the later Qing seem to have simply adopted much of the older Ming regulation and equipment as the standard for the “Green Standard Army.”

In reviewing the various spears used by military, one thing quickly becomes evident.  None of them seem to be a close match for the long pole.  Some of the most commonly issued spears were much longer than poles with total lengths of between 12 and 15 feet.  As the adage goes, “an inch longer is an inch stronger.”

Various sorts of hooked spears tended to be closer in size to the long pole.  They could easily have been 7.5 to 9 feet long.  Yet we must also consider their taper.

The shafts of regulation Chinese military spears always had a straight taper, and they were usually lacquered red.  The relatively heavy iron tip was counter-balanced with a weighted metal piece affixed to the end of the spear.  This system maintained a certain balance and kept the spear from becoming excessively tip heavy and unwieldly.

Dekker notes that in contrast the (generally shorter) spears used by civilian militias and martial artists tended to be tapered, exactly like the long pole.  Noting that the production of steel spearheads and metal counterweights was expensive, he speculates that having a thicker diameter base on the weapons shaft was simply a cheaper way of achieving a proper balance.  Indeed, we have photographs of weapons confiscated from Red Spear Units in the 1930s that seem to show a similar geometry.  The relatively roughhewn poles favored by the village militias tended to be noticeably tapered.

All of this would seem to reinforce the notion that the specific form of the long pole was shaped by the realities of spear combat.  The military adopted pole training as an introduction to the spear, and many local militia members would have been expected to be conversant with both the pole and the spear.

Communist Party Women’s Militia in Yanan, 1938. Photographer unknown.

Southern Militias and the Birth of Modern Kung Fu

This brings us back to Wing Chun and the history of the Six and a Half Point Pole.  Far from being unique to just a single style, the Luk Dim Boon Kwan is a favored weapon throughout the world of Southern Chinese Kung Fu.  Historical sources suggest that public displays of pole work were quite popular in the 19^th and even the 20^th century.

The current mythology of Wing Chun (and certain other regional styles) tends to emphasize the “compact” nature of the system as its adaptation to fighting in cramped spaces (either narrow alleyway or on crowded ships, depending on who one asks).  Yet like almost all martial arts Wing Chun aspires to be a “complete style,” even if that is not the way that is often discussed by students today.  To put it bluntly, from a tactical standpoint there is just no point in stating that one will focus only a single range or situation (e.g., short boxing) to the exclusion of all else.

When looking at the current crowded conditions in Hong Kong it might be hard to remember that the pole really is a central part of the Wing Chun system.  Its presence reminds us that in the past this system operated in environments, and considered tactical problems, different from those faced by most students today.  Indeed, it is the environmental nature of these issues that best explains why so many Southern styles practice some variant of the Six and a Half Point form, or one of its many cousins.

To understand the place of the long pole in these systems we must once again return the question of military training.  As Jon Nielson and I discuss in our recent book, the Pearl River Delta region developed a very strong gentry led militia movement during the 19^th century.  These para-military forces emerged as a response to the external threats of the Opium Wars and continued to function during the later civil conflicts that wracked the region.  The most notable of those was the Red Turban Revolt (sometimes called the Opera Rebellion).

During the volatile middle years of the 19^th century tens of thousands of individuals were recruited into various sorts of militias and para-military groups.  What were the most commonly issued weapons?  A split bamboo helmet, a spear (usually about 8-9 feet long), and a pair of hudiedao (carried by most soldiers as a sidearm).

The Wing Chun system that was passed on by individuals like Leung Jan and Chan Wah Shun emerged out of the aftermath of these conflicts.  It is no coincidence that the only two weapons taught in most lineages of this art happen to be the same ones used by the area’s many militia units.  And other regional arts with much more extensive armories (Choy Li Fut, Hung Gar, etc…) also tend to introduce these same tools near the start of weapons training.

This suggests something important about the community, era and concerns that shaped the early history of all of these fighting styles.  It also suggests that perhaps the region’s fighting poles were tapered so that they could easily be fitted with spear heads should the need arise.

If that is the case, then perhaps the relatively base heavy balance of these shafts which we have all become accustomed to is more a quirk of training safety protocols than anything else.  The more tip heavy feel of my new hickory pole might more accurately reflect how the Six and a Half Point pole form was supposed to feel in battle (e.g., when the pole is mounted with a steel spearhead).

Or maybe not.  As we look back on the Ming era literature I referenced earlier it is clear that there was an active debate in military circles as to how well pole training actually prepared soldiers for spear combat.  Recall for instance that many of the spears issued to Ming and Qing era soldiers were much longer and heavier than Shaolin’s most substantial poles.

In his 1678 treatise, Spear Method from the dreaming of Partridge Hall, the military writer Wu Shu noted:

The Shaolin staff method has divine origins, and it has enjoyed fame from ancient times to the present.  I myself have been quite involved in it.  Indeed, it is high as the mountains and deep as the seas.  It can truly be called a “supreme technique.”…Still as a weapon the spear is entirely different from the staff.  The ancient proverb says: “The spear is the lord of all weapons, the staff is an attendant on its state.”  Indeed, this is so…the Shaolin monks have never been aware this.  They treat the spear and staff as if they were similar weapons.

(Translation in Meir Shahar, 2008 p. 64).

This point bears consideration.  While some of the techniques and tactics of the Wing Chun pole method could be adapted to the spear, others might be more counter-productive.  Or perhaps what we see here is yet another example of the simplifying, almost theoretical, tendency to search for a single set of principles capable of solving the greatest number of tactical problems regardless of what weapon one happened to pick up.

That certainly sounds like the modern, conceptually focused, approach to Wing Chun.  And it makes a lot of sense from an amateur’s point of view.

Yet it is quite different from the highly specialized world that most professional soldiers inhabited.  When leaving the barracks as a member of the Green Standard Army there was exactly zero mystery as to what sort of spear you would be handed, or who you would be fighting besides.  All of this helps to remind us that while the growth of the militia movement may have shaped these fighting systems, they remained fundamentally “civilian” in their worldview and concerns.

Chin Woo crouching tiger quarterstaff stance, Singapore, 2007

The Weapon, The Self

This essay began with the observation that even seemingly minor variations in a weapon are immediately sensed by the body of the trained martial artist.  17^th century soldiers in both China and Europe trained and fought with 9 foot poles.  To the untrained eye they may have appeared to be identical.  Yet the hand would never mistake one for the other.

Students of martial arts history need to pay more attention to the material culture of these fighting systems for this precise reason.  Each of these weapons carries fossilized within it layers of history and meaning.  It may be impossible to reconstruct with perfect accuracy what a Ming era Shaolin pole form looked like, even if we are lucky enough to have a manual and some pictures describing it.  Yet when we pick up the weapon that Cheng Zongyou described, we can experience something of its reality on an embodied level.

Indeed, bodies are the other half of this equation.  My body may be very different from that possessed by a 19^th century militiaman in Guangzhou.  Yet our poles are identical, and they have a disciplining influence upon the body.

A certain amount of absolute strength must be developed to wield the weapon.  New types of bodily awareness and dexterity will be necessary to do so well.  While we may be starting from different points, the unyielding materiality of the weapon has a transformative effect on both of our bodies.  As we train with the pole, and are shaped by it, we are forced to transcend the self and converge on a new state of being.  It is the demands of the pole and its techniques that shape the student.

This last point might solve a minor mystery that I have wondered about for some years.  While training with my Sifu in Salt Lake I noticed that lots of students seemed to quit the Wing Chun system about the time that they were introduced to the pole.  (In our lineage it is introduced after all of the unarmed forms and the dummy have been taught).  Students who had previously been enthusiastic and dedicated just seemed to lose interest.

On one level this might be easy to explain.  Pole training is physically demanding, even painful at times.  It is probably the only time in the Wing Chun system that the low horse stance is extensively trained and used.  Its basic strength and conditioning exercises ensures that there will be sore muscles.

Yet I think there was something more going on.  The pole did not seem to meet their expectations of what the system was about.  Boxing and chi sao are very flexible expressions of martial skill.  Many individuals simply find an approach that works with their body type and personality and seek to perfect that.  That may not have been what Bruce Lee meant when he discussed Kung Fu as the art of “expressing the human body”, but I think that this is how many individuals interpret his adage.  What works for them personally is the “proper” expression.

The pole is different.  Its materiality demands a greater degree of transformation.  Our bodies are physically altered (made stronger, more flexible) so that the pole’s logic can be expressed.  This commitment to transcend (rather than to express) the self does not seem to easily mesh with the way that many modern students understand Wing Chun.  I wonder if that, more than the pain, caused some to lose interest.

Still, this process of embodied transformation allows us to experience elements of the fossilized history of the martial arts that might not otherwise be accessible.  Written historical accounts of professional soldiers and militia members wielding their spears might sound very similar.  As we read about the 19^th century “militarization of the countryside” these two figures might even begin to merge in our heads.   Indeed, historians have noted with some frustration the ease with which categories like “militia member,” “bandit” and “soldier” seem to blend into one another, or to have appeared in a single individuals career.

Yet when you pick up their preferred weapons, your physical senses are immediately confronted with evidence of the different identities, techniques and goals that they possessed.  The martial training that each group underwent imprinted these nuances of philosophy on flesh and bone.

All of which is to say, choose you pole carefully.  The details matter.

 
oOo

If you enjoyed this post you might also want to read: The Nautical Origins of the Wooden Dummy.

oOo

The JQ Pilgrim with black grips. Source: jqsabers.com

 

“The lightsaber has become an important touchstone, both within the films and within our culture…They serve as a source of identification and identity.  They are the ultimate commodity: a nonexistent object whose replicas sell for hundreds of dollars.  This is not bad for something that defies the laws of physics and cannot and does not exist.  And, in conclusion, if I am honest. I must admit that I still want one.”

Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. 2007. “’Your Father’s Lightsaber’ The Fetishization of Objects Between the Trilogies.” in Carl Silvio and Tony M. Vinci (eds.) Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & co. p. 187.

“This is the Weapon of a Jedi Knight”

Wetmore concludes one of the first truly scholarly discussions of the lightsaber with a candid admission that, critical theory and the laws of physics aside, he still wants one.  It’s a shame really.  There is one sitting on my desk right now.

I understand his sentiment as it is one of my prized possessions.  And I say that as a practicing martial artist and student of history who is currently surrounded by various sorts of antique swords and knives.  Nor am I alone in this. Darth Nihilus, my lightsaber combat instructor, was just telling me how much he wanted this particular model.

It is, after all, the quintessential fencer’s saber.  Named the “Caliburn Pilgrim” the hilt is just under 10.5 inches, with a diameter of 1.25 inches.  The whole package is surprisingly light.  The good folks at JQ Sabers have produced a weapon that is compact enough to easily wielded with a single hand (for those Makashi users), but with enough length that it can accommodate double handed techniques as well.

Designing (or possibly marketing) a saber like this seems to be more difficult than it sounds.  These are, after all, artifacts that come from a technologically advanced civilization in a galaxy far, far away.  To remind their owners of this fact even sabers that are not prop replicas tend to have all sorts of accoutrements that get in the way of actually using these hilts in training or sparring situations.  Extra buttons, retro-switch boxers, large “emitter windows”, thin nicks and the like can make for a visually impressive weapon, but one that is also uncomfortable in the hand.

Like many of the martial artists in the lightsaber combat community, I prefer simple hilts.  I like to think that they look elegant, but it is how they feel that is critical. The Pilgrim manages to keep its visual appeal with a parkerized grip that offers the look of leather wrapping with none of the maintenance.

This not to suggest that the Pilgrim is lacking in features.  It has a single (lit) activation button which can also be used to manually trigger the “blast deflection” and “lock up” effects that some individuals like.  A recharge port is also standard eliminating the need to mess with batteries.  I also ordered mine with a RGB tri-cree LED which, when paired with the standard Spectra Blade Control board allows the saber to cycle through six really nice blade colors in addition to supporting “flash on clash.”  These include a rich guardian blue, ice blue (more like Luke’s saber in A New Hope), green, a golden yellow, an almost neon red and finally a violet purple (for the Mace Windu fans).

All of these colors have good, uniform, coverage across the length of even a “heavy weight” dueling blade.  No more blades that are brightly lit only at the tip and base.  Plus the Spectra blade controller provides an interesting flickering effect which seems to make the blade come to life.  When paired with a medium weight blade this effect is really awesome.

At times it almost seems like this lightsaber is alive.  How many other training tools must be “fed” on a regular basis or they simply refuse to work?  While my Pilgrim has worked wonderfully from day one, the addition of electronics (that can have a mind of their own) and eccentric hilt designs conspire to give most lightsabers very definite “personalities.” That tends to be a quality that one becomes progressively more aware of as you use them.

Weapons of any kind have a disciplinary effect on the movement of a martial artist. We must accommodate the new possibilities that the materiality of a sword or a spear make possible.  Yet I often wonder whether it all boils down to purely material factors.  How important are the stories, myth and discourses that I have been exposed to in my understanding and actual experience of a weapon?

Before practicing my forms, drills, or sparring, I must choose a blade color when I activate my lightsaber.  It seems that there are certain colors I never use.  If I am working with someone on a choreographed piece and they need me to be “the bad guy” I will turn my saber red.

Yet I would never practice forms with a red blade at home.  They just don’t feel “right.”  I just don’t feel right.  The cognitive dissonance between what I see in my hands and my goals are as a martial artist is a bit much. In the Star Wars universe red is a very loaded color and I experience those associations on an almost subconscious level.

Guardian blue seems like a good color for someone setting out to master a new discipline.  That is the one that I use the most.  If I am having troubling with an exercise and need to slow down or relax I find that I am often holding a green saber.  This probably reflects the fact that Jedi Consulars (diplomats, scholars and students of the Force), as well as teaching figures such as Yoda and Qui-Gon Jinn, favored Green blades.  Yellow and purple both feel like they have promise, yet they remain undiscovered countries.

Critics might look at my Pilgrim and note that it is, in fact, “not a real lightsaber.”  As Whitmore correctly notes, science has not yet figured out how to trap that much plasma in a magnetic field of such great magnitude, all powered by a battery that cannot weigh more than a few ounces.  One certainly hopes that by the time we have developed the technical expertise to make such a weapon possible we will have also gained the wisdom and common sense not to do so.

Yet in some ways this misses the point.  Every person I meet in the park where I practice takes one look at what I am doing and immediately asks (in breathless fashion) “Where did you get a real lightsaber!”  No one confuses this object with the much cheaper toys that you can buy at your local Walmart.  Even to the uninitiated it appears as something that is qualitatively different than the “fake” lightsaber that children play with.

As a martial artist I have to agree with them.  A one inch heavy polycarbonate blade is the sort of thing that can hurt you if used without the proper safety gear.  When you have been hit in the head with something so many times that you find yourself pricing out heavier grade HEMA fencing masks, it is hard to think of the object in question as anything other than “real” in the most concrete terms.  Yet how does this ever evolving combination of lightsaber as object and myth effect my development as a martial artist?  What other ideas or identities might be coming along for the ride?

Moro weapons. Vintage Postcard.

Material Culture in Martial Arts Studies

The “salvage Anthropologist” of the early 20^th century loved material culture.  They did not just set out to collect the languages, folklore and life-ways of “primitive people.” They often returned from their expeditions with enough stuff to fill whole museum collections.  The basic idea was to preserve all of this cultural material for posterity before the indigenous peoples of the world inevitably succumbed to ravages of modernity and disappeared forever. (Needless to say that did not come to pass). And then there were the weapons.

Early explorers, missionaries, merchants and anthropologists all seem to have taken a special interest in the collecting and study of ethnographic weapons.  While wealthy gentlemen might pursue this as a hobby, the more academically inclined saw in these artifacts a key to understanding critical elements of other cultures.

This same impulse seems to have been present in earlier incarnations of martial arts studies as a field.  From the obsessive categorization of ancient Japanese swords to the classification of the seemingly limitless varieties of knives (and other bladed weapons) coming out of South East Asia, a fair amount of attention was paid to the material culture of the martial arts.  We were sagely informed by the authors of the time that “the sword was the soul of the Samurai,” and every Nepalese kukri “invoked Shiva.”  If we could get our heads wrapped around these statements then we would be a little bit closer to understanding the societies that called forth these weapons from the vast depths of the human imagination.

In contrast the current martial arts studies literature has had relatively little to say on weapons, or any other aspect of the material culture (uniforms, training gear, architecture, etc…), found in the practice of the modern martial arts.  Students of the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) have generally been more attentive to these matters.  Who could forget Daniel Jaquet delivering his keynote in a suit of armor at our last conference?   Yet when looking at current practices there seems to be less interest in these questions.

Given the recent development of the current literature this may be understandable.  In all honesty there are many interesting topics floating around that no one has had an opportunity to discuss.  Yet given the capitalist character of the current global order, this seems like an oversight that needs to be corrected.  Simply put, most of us encounter the martial arts as a series of goods to be consumed provided by either the entertainment, fitness or the self-improvement industries.  If we wish to better understand how the martial arts function in modern society, or what they mean to those who practice them, looking at the material goods that these pursuits inspire would be an obvious place to start.

Archeologists and historians have noted that to a skilled interpreter a medieval European sword is like a book.  It reveals very specific information about the vast network of craftsmen who were necessary to mine, forge, dress and market a single blade.  Both trade and administrative networks are revealed in life histories of individual weapons.  Their embellishments, and in some cases even their basic geometry, can reveal much about the societies that produced and used these weapons.    Material objects do not stand apart from the realm of social values and identity.  They are cultural debates made manifest in steel, wood and leather.

The same is true of the material culture of the martial arts today.  The synthetic training swords of HEMA practitioners, foam foot and hand protectors of TKD students, and the rapid spread of the Wing Chun style wooden training dummy, all have specific stories to tell.  Some of these are technical in nature, others are historical.  For instance, in a previous paper I discussed how the sudden appearance of high quality replica lightsabers as part of an advertising campaign for the prequel movies (episodes I-III) seems to explain the timing of the development of this practice.

Yet there is a rich interplay between the imagined, discursive and physical objects that any society creates.  Martial arts studies is well situated to explore this terrain.  Further, the development of Lightsaber combat suggests that even the most hyper-real of weapons can speak to important puzzles in both the interpretation of texts and the development of new types of physical practice.  All that is necessary is to find the right lens.

Luke receiving his fathers lightsaber in Episode IV: A New Hope (1977).

“Your Fathers Lightsaber”

While few academic studies have taken the lightsaber on as their sole object of interest, the same is not true of the Star Wars film series.  Its momentous following has ensured that students of cultural and film studies have discussed the subject from the late 1970s to the present day.  The movies have been critiqued and interpreted from a number of perspectives, and George Lucas himself has been the subject of a good deal of biographical interest.

A number of scholars have followed the lead of early observers and offered interpretive studies of these films drawing on various mythological and psychological frameworks.  These have been used to explore issues such as “coming of age” narratives, or the many historical resonances (both real and imagined) that can be found within the films.

Other scholars (including Wetmore) have cautioned against of these approaches.  They rightly point out that when we seek “universal” meanings in a film such as this, we often become blind to the sometimes unpleasant forces that emerge as the narrative advances racial, political and sexual values that are very much grounded in a specific time and place (e.g., post-War America).

Zeroing in on the rhetoric of “empire” and “resistance” found throughout the franchise Wetmore applied a post-colonial reading to the saga in his volume The Empire Triumphant: Race, Religion and Rebellion in the Star Wars Film (McFarland & Co, 2005).  As the title implies, this study tackled the appearance of imperialism, sexism, racism and cultural appropriation in these films.

One a certain level none of this new.  A variety of fans and commentators had already noticed that Darth Vader appeared to be the only “black” character in the original film. Worse yet, he seemed to become a Caucasian at the very moment of his redemption/death.  Alternatively, lots of Asian American teenagers have noted that while many Jedi have Asian sounding names, there were no actual Asian Jedi in the films.  In his volume Wetmore systematically explored these issues in an attempt to demonstrate that various approaches to critical theory could offer productive readings of the Star Wars films.

In many respects he accomplished what he set out to do.  Yet his volume probably contributed less to the development of these theoretical approaches than one might like due to the fact that Wetmore was clearly writing for a dual audience of both fans and other scholars.  In some ways I find his shorter paper on the lightsaber to be a more significant and original contribution to both the popular and academic discussions of these films.

Wetmore begins by noting that material objects seems to play an important role in uniting what might otherwise be a sprawling collection of movies.  Indeed, some of them (such as the Millennium Falcon) are more popular than even well-known characters in the series.  Other “objects,” such as R2D2, have even been elevated to the status of principal characters.

No other object is more significant to the series than the lightsaber.  These iconic weapons appear in each of the seven films that have so far been produced.  More importantly, they are consciously used to bridge historical and narrative gaps.  In Episode IV: A New Hope, Luke receives his father’s lightsaber.  Of course it is the very same weapon that we see Obi-Wan picking up off the ground after literally dismembering Anakin Skywalker at the end of Revenge of the Sith.  Wetmore suggests that these moments of recognition, triggered by the repeated appearance of the same material objects both help to define the materiality of the Star Wars universe and are an important mechanism by which viewers make sense of the action, uniting threads of meaning across both the films and the decades.

Wetmore also suggests that we should pay close attention to how and when lightsabers appear on screen.  In fact, the relative abundance (Phantom Menace) or scarcity (A New Hope) of lightsabers gives us an interesting perspective from which to view these films in both a narrative and critical way.  Doing so effectively requires some sort of theoretical framework.

At this point Wetmore turns to the idea of “fetishism” in an attempt to make sense of the importance of reoccurring physical objects both within (and now outside) the Star Wars universe.  This strategy is not without its drawbacks.  As he notes at the start of the exercise, the very concept of the fetish seems to be hopelessly overdetermined and has been used in many different (sometimes contradictory) ways.

Yet rather than imposing another definition upon this concept he takes the preexisting debates and uses it to develop a typology of different approaches, each of which might be useful in resolving some different element of what lightsabers mean on screen.  While there are a great many theories and approaches that might be used to explore material culture within Martial Arts Studies, it might be worth briefly considering what contributions the idea of fetishism can make.  Specifically, how might it help to better illuminate the micro-foundations connecting both the weapon as physical object (subject to history and technique) and the weapon as a mythic symbol (subject to shifting norms and discourses)?

While the origins of the term remain somewhat obscure Wetmore suggests that “fetish” originally emerged as a pidgin term in West Africa used to describe powerful or sacred objects that could not be traded.  From the Portuguese perspective these may have included items that were desirable, but were resistant to normal commerce. A fetish, simply put, was something that could not be “bought.”

Early Anthropologists later generalized this basic notion by extracting it from its imperialist and commercial framework. For them a fetish was seen as a material object (often very ordinary in appearance) that was endowed with supernatural powers or associations.  As such these objects might become an object of worship or group identification (Durkheim).  In other situations a fetish might take on the characteristics of a magical tool that granted great power to the proper user.

Elements of this sort of system can be found in a number of places in both the films and the real world.  Like other sorts of athletes martial artists can be fairly superstitious when it comes to their training tools.  On a deeper level the idea that a Jedi must make her own lightsaber before their training can be considered complete seems to play into both aspects of the anthropological conception.  On the one hand the completion of this task is often discussed in mystical terms.  In the real world the building of a functioning stunt saber is also the last step necessary before being recognized as a “Jedi Knight” (and thus a fully-fledged member of the community) within some groups like the Terra Prime Lightsaber Academy.  As one would expect, it is difficult to disentangle the mythic and ritual meanings of this object.

Sigmund Freud later adopted the idea and elaborated upon it in a 1927 article where he (characteristically) defined the fetish as a substitute for the female penis.  More specifically Wetmore notes that in Freud’s writing:

“It is a substitute for the penis, a protection against castration, and a source of pleasure.  One might also see the fetish as a weapon against the father, who seeks to castrate the son in response to the son’s own murderous oedipal drive.” (177)

Indeed, it is not hard to see the first of these sentences reflected in the sorts of stunt sabers used by martial artists.  After all, in the current era the pursuit of traditional weapons training is mostly seen as a pleasurable leisure activity.  Alternatively one could do worse than the Freudian reading of the lightsaber as a fetish for a one sentence summary of the Luke/Darth Vader story arc.

Returning the concept to its economic roots, Marxism has also developed a concept of the fetish.  In this case it reflects the surplus value of any trade above and beyond its purely utilitarian value.  An object functions as a fetish both due to the prestige it brings the owner and because it creates a group of individuals that have similar possessions.

One might be able to buy six bamboo Shinai (and then paint them any color that you desire) for the price of my lightsaber.  From a purely utilitarian standpoint the Shinai would work just as well for the sort of training that I am doing.  Nor would one ever have to worry about the batteries dying or the electronics coming lose.  And yet I felt like I got a great deal when I bought the more elaborate, delicate and expensive training tool?  The Marxist theory gives us a way to discuss and theorize this paradox.  It also brings economic markets (through which most of us encounter our lightsabers) back into the discussion.

Finally, Amanda Fernbach has suggested that fetishism might also suggest a direct reversal of Freud’s theory.  She sees it as a fundamentally modern phenomenon in which the transformation of the self or the body has become a prominent social goal.  A fetish thus acts as an item that is both transformative and transgressing.  By taking up this object you both transform the self and, by transgressing social standards, create a new identity.

Again, it is not hard to see how this might apply to the world of lightsabers.  These are physical objects that are endowed not just with social meaning, but with strategic purpose.  As I have conducted various interviews over the course of my fieldwork a number of people have noted that they started coming to class because they “wanted to get in shape.”  In short, they had a desire to physically transform the self.  Yet rather than accepting the dominant social image of athleticism, they chose to do so in an environment that self-consciously celebrated geek culture.

Indeed, it is the sort of looks that one occasionally gets from passersby in the mall that reminds you just how transgressive such an activity can be.  Yet sociologists of religions have theorized that it is precisely the “high costs to entry” within a community that may account for the strong bonding that can take place there. The creation of such identities can be very empowering.  As one of my classmates noted, “The CLA is where bad ass nerds are made!”

A participant at a recent Saber Legion tournament. I love what this guy did with his fencing mask. Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/euBjd

“This weapon is your life!”

Fetishism is interesting as it allows us to explore both those areas of the use and appreciation of material objects that are amenable to commerce and markets as well as those that are resistant to it.  Ironically the West African conception of the term remains, in some ways, the most interesting and fruitful.

While there are a staggering number of stunt and replica sabers that can be purchased over the internet, the process by which the physical object becomes a “real” lightsaber is less easily captured.  The reality of the weapon emerges as a nexus between the martial artists, the object, technique, mediated images and the desire to craft a new type of identity (or community).  Indeed, the evolution of the material culture of the lightsaber combat movement suggests that it would probably be a mistake to simply reduce this process to the unintended consequences of a massive advertising campaign.

There are many sources selling replicas of the iconic prop sabers used in the films.  Yet the model that I reviewed at the beginning of this essay does not resemble any of those in size, shape or layout.  It is a good deal smaller and simpler than the lightsabers in the film because it was designed to be used as efficiently as possible as a martial arts training tool.  That goal has nothing to do with the sabers that dominated the silver screen.  Nor did George Lucas intend to spawn a new martial arts movement.  Nevertheless, these sorts of robust “battle ready” designs appear to be a quickly growing segment of the market with both large and specialty producers trying to fill the niche.

The lightsaber that most feels like an extension of myself is “real” not because it corresponds to anything in George Lucas’ universe, but because it best fulfills a practical function in my own training.  The existence of stunt sabers such as this suggests that lightsaber combat exists primarily as a mechanism for creative self-expression through the appropriation and reordering of a commercial mythos.  I doubt that it can be reduced simply to an extension of the consumption of the Star Wars franchise.  While the weapons in questions are hyper-real, the emotions, identities and relationships that they generate are both real and transformative.  Nor can they simply be purchased.

Of course this reimagination of the lightsaber happens within certain limits.  It is the structure and limitations of the story that makes it seem real.  That is probably why I refuse to train with a red blade.
oOo

If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to see:  Is Star Wars a Martial Arts Film Franchise?

oOo

Antique hudiedao or “butterfly swords.” These weapons are commonly seen in a number of styles of southern Kung Fu including Choy Li Fut, Hung Gar and Wing Chun. Source: Author’s personal collection.

In January of 2013 I posted an essay titled “A Social and Visual History of the Hudiedao (Butterfly Sword) in the Southern Chinese Martial Arts.” As a student of Wing Chun I have always been fascinated by these weapons, and as a researcher in the field of martial arts studies I have been equally curious as to what they reveal about life in Southern China during the 19th and 20th centuries.  I was both surprised and gratified to discover just how many of you share my enthusiasm for these questions.  That post has become one of the most frequently visited articles here at Kung Fu Tea.  

While revisiting that document as part of my current research, it occurred to me that it was time to offer an updated and revised version.  Since writing that piece I have encountered a number of other important sources that have added to, and modified, our understanding of these iconic weapons. Some of those discoveries have been discussed in various places on the blog.  In truth, our current body of knowledge is too large to be contained in a single post. Nevertheless, I felt like Kung Fu Tea’s readership deserved a more up to date resource.

To maximize continuity I have kept the original text of the article where possible, deleted sections or made edits where necessary and added new discussions, images and topics where space would permit.  A notice has also been added to the top of the original post directing readers to the newly updated and expanded version.

I would like to extend a special note of thanks to Swords and Antique Weapons for allowing me to use a number of wonderful photographs of hudiedao that have passed through their collection over the years.  It would have been very difficult to present anything approaching a complete survey of the subject without their assistance.  Also, Peter Dekker has generously shared the fruits of his own extensive research on Chinese swords and weapons.  His insights have been most helpful.

Introduction:  What do we really know about butterfly swords?

No weapon is more closely linked to the martial heritage of southern China than the hudiedao (Cantonese: wu dip do), commonly referred to in English as “butterfly swords.”  In the hands of Wing Chun practitioners such as Bruce Lee and Ip Man, these blades became both a symbol of martial attainment and a source of regional pride for a generation of young martial artists.

Nor are these blades restricted to a single style.  Choy Li Fut, Hung Gar, Lau Gar and White Crane (among numerous others) all have lineages that employ this weapon.  Prior to the modern era these swords were also a standard issue item in the region’s many gentry led militias and private security forces.  Even ocean going merchant vessels would carry up to two dozen sets of these swords as part of their standard compliment of sailing gear.  The hudiedao are worthy of careful study precisely because they have functioned as a widespread and distinctive cultural marker of the southern Chinese martial arts.

This is not to say that hudiedaos are not occasionally seen in other places.  They have been carried across China by the adventurous people of Guangdong and Fujian.  By the late 19th century they were making regular appearances in diaspora communities in Singapore and even California.  Today they can be found in training halls around the world.

Of course there are a number of other Chinese fighting traditions which have focused on paired swords, daggers or maces that are very reminiscent of the butterfly swords of southern China.  Still, there are distinctive elements of this regional tradition that make it both easily identifiable and interesting to study.

The following post offers a brief history of the hudiedao.  In attempting to reconstruct the origin and uses of this weapon I employ three types of data.  First, I rely on dated photographs and engravings with a clear provenance.  These images are important because they provide evidence as to what different weapons looked like and who carried them.

Secondly, I discuss a number of period (1820s-1880s) English language accounts to help socially situate these weapons.  These have been largely neglected by martial artists, yet they provide some of the earliest references that we have to the widespread use of butterfly swords or, as they are always called in the period literature, “double swords.”  While the authors of these accounts are sometimes hostile observers (e.g., British military officers), they often supply surprisingly detailed discussions of the swords, their methods of use and carry, and the wider social and military setting that they appeared in.  These first-hand accounts are gold mines of information for military historians.

Lastly, we will look at a number of surviving examples of hudiedao from private collections.  It is hard to understand what these weapons were capable of (and hence the purpose of the various double sword fighting forms found in the southern Chinese martial arts) without actually handling them.

Modern martial artists expect both too much and too little from the hudiedao.  With a few exceptions, the modern reproductions of butterfly swords are either beautifully made a-historical “artifacts,” high tech simulacra of a type of weapon that never actually existed in 19^th century China, or cheaply made copies of practice gear that was never meant to be a “weapon” in the first place.  This second class of “weapon” sets the bar much too low.  Yet it is also nearly impossible for any flesh and blood sword to live up to the mythology and hype that surrounds butterfly swords, especially in Wing Chun circles.  As these swords appear with ever greater frequency on TV programs and within video games, that mythology grows only more entrenched.

Unfortunately antique butterfly swords are hard to find and highly sought after by martial artists and collectors.  They are usually too expensive for most southern style kung fu students to actually study.  I hope that a detailed historical discussion of these swords may help to fill in some of these gaps.  While there is no substitute for holding a weapon in one’s hands, a good overview might give us a much better idea of what sort of weapon we are attempting to emulate.  It will also open valuable insights into the milieu from which these blades emerged.

This last point is an important one.  Rarely do students of Chinese martial studies inquire about the social status or meaning of weapons.  This is a serious oversight.  As we have seen in our previous discussions of Republic era dadaos and military kukris, the social evolution of these weapons is often the most interesting and illuminating aspect of their story.  Who used the hudiedao?  How were they employed in combat? When were they first created, and what did they mean to the martial artists of southern China?  Lastly, what does their spread tell us about the place of the Chinese martial arts in an increasingly globalized world?

The short answer to these questions is that butterfly swords were popular with civilian martial artists in the 19^th century.  While never an official “regulation weapon” within the imperial Qing military they may have been a local adaptation of the “Green Standard Army Rolling Blanket Double Sabers” seen in official manuals outlining the weapons of both the Ming and Qing armies.  Based on his translations of  皇朝禮器圖式, Peter Dekker notes that these blades (shaped like small military sabers) had the following dimensions:

The left and right opposites are each 2 chi 1 cun and 1 fen long. [Approx. 73 cm]. The blades are 1 cun 6 fen long. [Approx. 56 cm]. Width is 1 cun [Approx 3.5 cm].

The Rolling Blanket Saber of the Green Standard Army as discussed in the 皇朝禮器圖式. 1766 woodblock print, based on a 1759 manuscript. Subsequent editions from 1801 and 1899 reproduced basically identical images. Source: Peter Dekker.

While dressed to look like standard issue sabers, these double blades were actually comparably sized to many of the “war era” hudiedao that can be found in collections today.  Thus there may be more of a military rational for the existence of such weapons than was previously thought.  While the vast majority of butterfly swords were owned or used by civilians, this might also suggest an explanation of why a few pairs have been found with military markings. It is hypothetically possible that at least some of these swords were seen as a locally produced variant of a known military weapon.

While exciting, we must be careful not to over-interpret this discovery.  When discussing the martial arts were are, by in large, referencing a civilian realm that, while related to military training, remained socially distinct from it.  To be a “martial artist” in 19^th century China was to be a member of one or more other overlapping social groups.  For instance, many martial artists were one or more of the following: a professional soldier, a bandit or pirate, a member of a militia or clan defense society, a pharmacist or an entertainer.

As we review the historical accounts and pictures below, we will see butterfly swords employed by members of each of these categories.  That is precisely why this exercise is important.   Hudiedao are a basic technology that help to tie the southern martial arts together.  If we can demystify the development and spread of this one technology, we will make some progress toward understanding the background milieu that gave rise to the various schools of hand combat that we have today.

Hudiedao: Understanding the basic history of the butterfly sword.

The monks of the Shaolin Temple have left an indelible mark on the martial arts of Guangdong and Fujian.  This mark is none the less permanent given the fact that the majority of Chinese martial studies scholars have concluded that the “Southern Shaolin Temple” was a myth.  Still, myths reflect important social values.  Shaolin (as a symbol) has touched many aspects of the southern Chinese martial arts, including its weapons.

In Wing Chun Schools today, it is usually assumed that the art’s pole form came from Jee Shim (the former abbot of the destroyed Shaolin sanctuary), and that the swords must have came from the Red Boat Opera or possibly Ng Moy (a nun and another survivor of temple).  A rich body of lore linking the hudiedao to Shaolin has grown over the years.  These myths often start out by apologizing for the fact that these monks are carrying weapons at all, as this is a clear (and very serious) breach of monastic law.

It is frequently asserted that our monks needed protection on the road from highwaymen, especially when they were carrying payments of alms.  Some assert that butterfly swords were the only bladed weapons that the monks were allowed to carry because they were not as deadly as a regular dao.  The tips could be left blunt and the bottom half of the blade was often unsharpened.  Still, there are a number of problems with this story.

These blunt tips and unsharpened blades seem to actually be more of an apology for the low quality, oddly designed, practice swords that started to appear in the 1970s than an actual memory of any real weapons.

The first probable references to the hudiedao (or butterfly swords) that I have been able to find date to the 1820s.  Various internet discussions, some quite good and worth checking out, as well as Jeffery D. Modell’s article “History & Design of Butterfly Swords” (Kung Fu Tai Chi Magazine, April 2010, pp. 56-65) usually suggest a later date of popularization.  Modell concludes that the traditional butterfly sword is a product of the “late 19^th century” while other credible sources generally point to the 1850s or 1860s.  The general consensus seems to be that while a few examples may have existed earlier, this weapon did not really gain prominence until the middle or end of the 19^th century.

This opinion was formed mostly through the first hand examination of antique blades.  And it is correct so far as it goes.  Most of the existing antique blades do seem to date from the end of the 19^th century or even the first few decades of the 20^th.  Further, this would fit with our understanding of the late 19^th century being a time of martial innovations, when much of the foundation for the modern Chinese hand combat systems was being set in place.

Recently uncovered textual evidence would seem to indicate that we may need to roll these dates back by a generation or more.  As we will see below, already in the 1820s western merchants and British military officers in Guangzhou were observing these, or very similar weapons, in the local environment.  They were even buying examples that are brought back to Europe and America where they enter important early private collections.

The movement of both goods and people was highly restricted in the “Old China Trade” system.  Westerners were confined to one district of the Guangzhou and they could only enter the city for a few months of the year.  The fact that multiple individuals were independently collecting examples of hudiedao, even under such tight restrictions, would seem to indicate that these weapons (or something very similar to them) must have already been fairly common in the 1820s.

Accounts of these unique blades become more frequent and more detailed in the 1830s and 1840s.  Eventually engravings were published showing a wide variety of arms (often destined for private collections or the “cabinets” of wealthy western individuals), and then from the 1850s onward a number of important photographs were produced.  The Hudiedao started to appear in images on both sides of the pacific, and it is clear that the weapon had a well-established place among gangsters and criminals in both San Francisco and New York.

But what exactly is a hudiedao?  What sorts of defining characteristics binds these weapons together and separate them from other various paired weapons that are seen in the Chinese martial arts from time to time?

The term “hudiedao,” or “butterfly sword,” never appears in any of the 19^th century English language accounts that I have examined.  Invariably these records and illustrations refer instead to “double swords.”  A number of them go to lengths to point out that this is a weapon unique to China.  Its defining characteristic seems to be that the two blades are fitted together in such a way that they can be placed in a shared opening to one sheath.  Some accounts (but not all) go on to describe heavy D guards and the general profile of the blade.  I used these more detailed accounts (from the 1830s) and engravings and photos (from the 1840s and 1850s) to try and interpret some of the earlier and briefer descriptions (from the 1820s).

Some of these collectors, Dunn in particular, were quite interested in Chinese culture and had knowledgeable native agents helping them to acquire and catalog their collections.  It is thus very interesting that these European observers, almost without exception, referred to these weapons as “double swords” rather than “butterfly swords.”  Not to put too fine a point on it, but some western observers seemed to revel in pointing out the contradictory or ridiculous in Chinese culture, and if any of them had heard this name it would have recorded, if only for the ridicule and edification of future generations.

I looked at a couple of period dictionaries (relevant to southern China) that included military terms.  None of them mentioned the word “Hudiedao,” though they generally did include a word for double swords (雙股劍: “shwang koo keem,” or in modern Pinyin, “shuang goo gim.”  See Medhurst, English and Chinese Dictionary 1848; Morrison, Dictionary of the Chinese Language, 1819.)

Multiple important early Chinese novels, including the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin (All Men are Brothers) include protagonists who use these weapons, so for that reason alone this would be a commonly understood term.  Even individuals who were not martial artists would have known about these literary characters and their weapons.  In fact, the literary legacy of those two novels could very well explain how these blades have managed to capture the imagination of so many martial artists up through the 21^st century.

In modern martial arts parlance, “double swords” (shuang jian or shuang dao) refer to two medium or full size jians (or daos) that are fitted into a single scabbard.  These weapons also became increasingly popular in the late 19^th century and are still used in a variety of styles.  It is possible that they are a different regional expression of the same basic impulse that led to the massive popularization of hudiedao in the south, but they are a fairly different weapon.

The real complicating factor here is that neither type of weapons (shuang dao vs. hudiedao) was ever adopted or issued by the Imperial military, so strictly speaking, neither of them have a proper or “official name.”  (Again, while similar in size and function, the “Rolling Blanket Double Sabers” clearly followed the forging and aesthetic guidelines seen in all other military sabers and were categorized accordingly.)  When looking at these largely civilian traditions, we are left with a wide variety of, often poetic, ever evolving terms favored by different martial arts styles.  Occasionally it is unclear whether these style names are actually meant to refer to the weapons themselves, or the routines that they are employed in.

The evolution of the popular names of these weapons seems almost calculated to cause confusion.  For our present purposes I will be referring to any medium length, single edged, pair of blades fitted into a shared scabbard, as “hudiedaos.”  Readers should be aware of the existence of a related class of weapon which resembles a longer, single, hudiedao.  These were meant to be used in conjunction with a rattan shield.  They are only included in my discussion only if they exhibit the heavy D-guard and quillion that is often seen on other butterfly swords.

Hudiedao were made by a large number of local smiths and they exhibit a great variability in form and intended function.  Some of these swords are fitted with heavy brass D-guards (very similar to a European hanger or cutlass), but in other cases the guard is made of steel.  On some examples the D-guard is replaced with the more common Chinese S-guard.   And in a small minority of cases no guard was used at all.

The sorts of blades seen on hudiedao from southern China can also vary immensely.  Two types are most commonly encountered on 19^thcentury weapons.  Some are long and narrow with a thick triangular cross section.  These blades superficially resemble shortened European rapiers and are clearly designed with stabbing in mind.  Other blades are wider and heavier, and exhibit a sturdy hatchet point.  While still capable of stabbing through heavy clothing or leather, these knives can also chop and slice.

Most hudiedao from the 19^th century seem to be medium sized weapons, ranging from 50-60 cm (20-24 inches) in length.  It is obvious that arms of this size were not meant to be carried in a concealed manner.  To the extent that these weapons were issued to mercenaries (or “braves”), local militia units or civilian guards, there would be no point in concealing them at all.  Instead, one would hope that they would be rather conspicuous, like the gun on the hip of a police officer.

While these two blade types are the most common (making up about 70% of the swords that I have encountered), other shapes are also seen.  Some hudiedao exhibit the “coffin” shaped blades of traditional southern Chinese fighting knives.  These specimens are very interesting and often lack any sort of hand guard at all, yet they are large enough that they could not easily be used like their smaller cousins.

One also encounters blades that are shaped like half-sized versions of the “ox-tail” dao.  This style of sword was very popular among civilian martial artists in the 19^th century.  Occasionally blades in this configuration also show elaborate decorations that are not often evident on other types of hudiedao.

Lastly there are shorter, thicker blades, designed with cutting and hacking in mind.  These more closely resemble the type favored by Wushu performers and modern martial artists.  Some of  these weapons could be carried in a concealed manner, yet they are also better balanced and have a stronger stabbing point than most of the inexpensive replicas being made today.  It is also interesting to note that these shorter, more modern looking knives, can be quite uncommon compared to the other blade types listed above.

I am hesitant to assign names or labels to these different sorts of blades.  That may seem counter-intuitive, but the very existence of “labels” implies a degree of order and standardization that may not have actually existed when these swords were made.  19^th century western observers simply referred to everything that they saw as a “double sword” and chances are good that their Chinese agents did the same.  Given that most of these weapons were probably made in small shops and to the exact specifications of the individuals who commissioned them the idea of different “types” of hudiedao seems a little misleading.

What defined a “double sword” to both 19^th century Chinese and western observers in Guangdong, was actually how they were fitted and carried in the scabbard.  These scabbards were almost always leather, and they did not separate the blades into two different channels or compartments (something that is occasionally seen in northern double weapons).  Beyond that, a wide variety of blade configurations, hand guards and levels of ornamentation could be used.  I am still unclear when the term “hudiedao” came into common use, or how so many independent observers and careful collectors could have missed it.

The First Written Accounts: Chinese “double swords” in Guangzhou in the 1820s-1830s.

The first English language written account of what is most likely a hudiedao that I have been able to find is a small note in the appendix of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society for the year 1827.  Lieutenant Colonel Charles Joseph Doyle had evidently acquired an extensive collection of oriental arms that he wished to donate to the society.  In an era before public museums, building private collections, or “cabinets,” was a popular pastime for members of a certain social class.

The expansion of the British Empire into Asia vastly broadened the scope of what could be collected.  In fact, many critical artistic and philosophical ideas first entered Europe through the private collections of gentlemen like Charles Joseph Doyle.  Deep in the inventory list of his “cabinet of oriental arms” we find a single tantalizing reference to “A Chinese Double Sword.”

I have not been able to locate much information on Col. Doyle’s career so I cannot yet make a guess as to when he collected this example.  Still, if the donation was made in 1825, the swords cannot have been acquired any later than the early 1820s.  (Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 1.  London: Royal Asiatic Society. 1827.  “A Chinese double Sword.  Donated on Nov. 5, 1825.” P. 636)

If Doyle’s entry in the records of the Royal Asiatic Society was terse, another prominent collector from the 1820 was more effusive.  Nathan Dunn is an important figure in America’s growing understanding of China.  He was involved in the “Old China Trade” and imported teas, silks and other goods from Guangdong to the US.  Eventually he became very wealthy and strove to create a more sympathetic understanding of China and its people in the west.

For a successful merchant, his story begins somewhat inauspiciously.  Historical records show that in 1816 Nathan Dunn was disowned (excommunicated) by the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers) for bankruptcy.  While socially devastating, this bankruptcy may have been the best thing that ever happened to Dunn.  In 1818 he left for China on a risky trading mission in an attempt to rebuild his fortune.  He succeeded in that task many times over.

Unlike most western merchants Dunn found the Chinese to be very intelligent and worthy of close study and contemplation.  He objected strenuously to the selling of opium (an artifact of his prior Quaker faith) and made valuable friendships and alliances with individuals from all levels of Chinese society.  Appreciating his open outlook these individuals helped Dunn to amass the largest collection of Chinese artifacts in the hands of any one individual.  In fact, the Chinese helped Dunn to acquire a collection many times larger than the entire cabinets of both the British East India Company and the British Government, which had been trying to build a vast display of its own for years.

Dunn’s collection was also quite interesting for its genuine breadth.  It included both great works of art and everyday objects.  It paid attention to issues of business, culture, horticulture and philosophy.  Dunn made a point of studying the lives of individuals from different social and economic classes, and he paid attention to the lives and material artifacts of women.  Finally, like any good 19^th century gentleman living abroad, he collected arms.

Dunn’s collection went on display in Philadelphia in the 1838’s.  When it opened to the public he had an extensive catalog printed (poetically titled 10,000 Chinese Things), that included in-depth discussions of many of the displays.  This sort of contextual data is quite valuable.  It is interesting to not only see double swords mentioned multiple times in Dunn’s collection, but to look at the other weapons that were also employed in the 1820s when these swords were actually being bought in Guangdong.

“The warrior is armed with a rude matchlock, the only kind of fire-arms known among the Chinese.  There is hung up on the wall a shield, constructed of rattan turned spirally round a center, very similar in shape and appearance to our basket lids.  Besides the matchlock and shield, a variety of weapons offensive and defensive, are in use in China; such as helmets, bows and arrows, cross-bows, spears, javelins, pikes, halberds, double and single swords, daggers, maces, a species of quilted armour of cloth studded with metal buttons, &c.” pp. 32-33.

“Besides these large articles, there are, in the case we are describing, an air-gun wooden barrel; a duck-gun with matchlock; a curious double sword, capable of being used as one, and having but one sheath; specimens of Chinese Bullets, shot powder, powder –horns, and match ropes…..” p. 42

“444. Pair of Swords, to be used by both hands but having one sheath.  The object of which is to hamstring the enemy.” P. 51

“In addition to the spears upon the wall, there are two bows; one strung, and the other unstrung; two pair of double swords; one pair with a tortoise shell, and the other a leather sheath; besides several other swords and caps, and a jinjall, or a heavy gun on a pivot, which has three movable chambers, in which the powder and ball are put, and which serve to replace each other as often as the gun is discharged.” P. 93.

Enoch Cobb Wines.  A Peep at China in Mr. Dunn’s Chinese Collection.  Philadelphia: Printed for Nathan Dunn. 1839.

I found it interesting that Dunn would associate the double sword with “hamstringing” (the intentional cutting of the Achilles tendon) an opponent.  In his 1801 volume on crime and punishment George Henry Mason included an illustration of a prisoner being “hamstrung” with a short, straight bladed knife.  This was said to be a punishment for attempting to escape prison or exile.  He noted that there was some controversy as to whether this punishment was still in use or if legal reformers in China had succeeded in doing away with it.  It is possible that Dunn’s description (or more likely, that of his Chinese agent) on page 51 is a memory of the “judicial” use of the hudiedao by officers of the state against socially deviant aspects of society.

It is hard to overstate the importance of Dunn’s “Museum” in shaping China’s image in the popular imagination.  As such, descriptions of his ethnographic objects reached the public through many outlets.  One of these was the writings of W. W. Wood.  Wood was a friend and collaborator of Dunn’s while in Canton.  In fact, Wood was actually responsible for assembling most of the natural history section of the “China Museum.”  Still, his writings touched on other aspects of the collecting enterprise as well.

CHINESE ARMS.

A great variety of weapons, offensive and defensive, are in use in China; such as matchlocks, bows and arrows, cross-bows, spears, javelins, pikes, halberds, double and single swords, daggers, maces, &c. Shields and armor of various kinds, serve as protection against the weapons of their adversaries. The artillery is very incomplete, owing to the bad mountings of the cannon, and efficient execution is out of the question, from the ignorance of the people in gunnery. Many of the implements of war are calculated for inflicting very cruel wounds, especially some kinds of spears and barbed arrows, the extraction of which is extremely difficult, and the injuries caused by them dreadful. A kind of sword, composed of an iron bar, about eighteen inches long, and an inch and a half thick, or two inches in circumference, is used to break the limbs of their adversaries, by repeated and violent blows.

The double swords are very short, not longer in the blade than a large dagger, the inside surfaces are ground very flat, so that when placed in contact, they lie close to each other, and go into a single scabbard. The blades are very wide at the base, and decrease very much towards the point. Being ground very sharp, and having great weight, the wounds given by them are severe. I am informed, that the principal object in using them, is to hamstring the enemy, and thus entirely disable him.

Most of the arms made in canton, are exceedingly rude and unfinished in comparison with our own, In the sword-making art they are better than in other departments, but the metal is generally of inferior quality, and the form of these weapons bad; the mountings are handsome, but there is little or no guard for the protection of the hand.

W. W. Wood. 1830. Sketches of China: with Illustrations from Original Drawings. Philadelphia: Carey & Lead. pp. 162-163

Woods descriptions of the hudieado are important on a number of counts.  To begin with, they prove that European collectors had started to acquire these specimens by the 1820s.  Further, the swords that he describes are relatively broad and short, similar to the weapons favored by many modern Wing Chun students.  Lastly, his contextualization of these blades is invaluable.

These are the earliest references to “double swords” in southern China that I have been able to locate.  Already by the 1820s these weapons were seen as something uniquely Chinese, hence it is not surprising that they would find their way into the collections and cabinets of early merchants and military officers.

Still, the 1820s was a time of relatively peaceful relations between China and the West.  Tensions built throughout the 1830s and boiled over into open conflict in the 1840s.  As one might expect, this deterioration in diplomatic relations led to increased interest in military matters on the part of many western observers.  Numerous detailed descriptions of “double swords” emerge out of this period.  It is also when the first engravings to actually depict these weapons in a detailed way were commissioned and executed.

Karl Friedrich A. Gutzlaff (English: Charles Gutzlaff; Chinese: Guō Shìlì) was a German protestant missionary in south-eastern China.  He was active in the area in the 1830s and 1840s and is notable for his work on multiple biblical translations.  He was the first protestant missionary to dress in Chinese style and was generally more in favor of enculturation than most of his brethren.  He was also a close observer of the Opium Wars and served as a member of a British diplomatic mission in 1840.

One of his many literary goals was to produce a reliable and up to date geography of China.  Volume II of this work spends some time talking about the Chinese military situation in Guangdong.  While discussing the leadership structure of the Imperial military we find the following note:

(In a discussion of the “Chamber for the superintendent of stores and the examination of military candidates.):

“Chinese bows are famous for carrying to a great distance; their match-locks are wretched fire-arms; and upon their cannon they have not yet improved, since they were taught by the Europeans.  Swords, spears, halberts, and partisans, are likewise in use in the army.  Two swords in one scabbard, which enable the warrior to fight with the left and right hands, are given to various divisions.  They carry rattan shields, made of wicker work, and in several detachments they receive armour to protect their whole body.  The officers, in the day of battle, are always thus accoutered.  Of their military engines we can say very little, they having, during a long peace, fallen into disuse.” P. 446.

Karl Friedrich A. Gützlaff. China opened; or, A display of the topography, history… etc. of the Chinese Empire. London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1838.

This is an interesting passage for a variety of reasons.  It seems to very strongly suggest that the Green Standard Army in Guangdong was using large numbers of either Rolling Blanket Double Sabers or hudiedao in the 1830s, or at least stockpiling them.  Occasionally I hear references to hudiedao being found that have official “reign marks” on them, or property marks of the Chinese military.  Accounts such as this one might explain their existence.

The conventional wisdom (as we will see below) is that the hudiedao were never a “regulation” weapon and were issued only to civilian “braves” and gentry led militia units which were recruited by the governor of Guangdong in his various clashes with the British.  Still, this note falls right in the middle of an extensive discussion of the command structure of the Imperial military.  Who these various divisions were, and what relationship they had with militia troops, is an interesting question for further research.

More specific descriptions of hudiedao and their use in the field started to pour in from reporters and government officers as the security situation along the Pearl River Delta disintegrated.  The May 1840 edition of the Asiatic Journal includes the following notice:

“Governor Lin has enlisted about 3,000 recruits, who are being drilled daily near Canton in the military exercise of the bow, the spear and the double sword.  The latter weapon is peculiar to China.  Each soldier is armed with two short and straight swords, one in each hand, which being knocked against each other, produce a clangour [sic], which, it is thought, will midate [sic] the enemy.” P. 327

The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australia.  May-August, 1840. London: Wm. H. Allen and Co.

Such new recruits would clearly have been both “Braves” and members of the gentry led militia system.  So this would seem to indicate that the hudiedao was a weapon favored by martial artists and citizen soldiers.  This is also the first reference I have seen to soldiers beating their hudiedao together to make a clamor before charging into battle.  While this tactic is usually noted with disdain by British observers, it is well worth noting that their own infantry often put on a similar display before commencing a bayonet charge.

Born in 1805 (1805-1878) J. Elliot Bingham served for 21 years in the Royal Navy.  In the late 1830s he had the rank of First Lieutenant (he later retired as a Commander) and was assigned to the H. M. S. Modeste.  Launched in 1837, this 18 Gun Sloop or corvette was crewed by 120 sailors and marines.  It saw repeated combat along the Guangdong coast and the Pearl River between 1839 and 1841.

As a military man Commander Bingham was a close observer of Chinese weapons and he leaves us with what must be considered the very best account of the use of hudiedao by militia troops in the late 1830s.

“March the 21^st, Lin was busy drilling 3,000 troops, a third portion of which was to consist of double-sworded men.  These twin swords, when in scabbard, appear as one thick clumsy weapon, about two feet in length; the guard for the hand continuing straight, rather beyond the “fort” of the sword turns toward the point, forming a hook about two inches long.  When in use, the thumb of each hand is passed under this hook, on which the sword hangs, until a twist of the wrist brings the grip within the grasp of the swordsman.  Clashing and beating them together and cutting the air in every direction, accompanying the action with abuse, noisy shouts and hideous grimaces, these dread heroes advance, increasing their gesticulations and distortions of visage as they approach the enemy, when they expect the foe to become alarmed and fly before them.  Lin had great faith in the power of these men.” P. 177-178.

J. Elliot Bingham.  Narrative of the Expedition to China, from the Commencement of the Present Period. Volume 1.  London: Henry Colburn Publisher.  1842.

Commander Bingham was not much impressed by the Chinese militia or their exotic weaponry.  In truth, Lin led his forces into a situation where they were badly outgunned, and more importantly “out generaled,” by the seasoned and well led British Navy.  Still, his brief account contains a treasure trove of information.  To begin with, it confirms that the earlier accounts of “double swords” used by the militia in and around Guangzhou in the 1830s were in fact references to hudiedao.

Fredric Wakeman, in his important study Stranger at the Gate: Social Disorder in Southern China 1839-1861, cites intelligence reports sent to the British Foreign Office which claim that Lin had in fact raised a 3,000 man force to repel a foreign attach on Guangzhou.  Apparently Lin distrusted the ability of the Green Standard Army to get the job done, and the Manchu Banner Army was so poorly disciplined and run that he actually considered it to be a greater threat to the peace and safety of the local countryside than the British.

He planned on defending the provincial capital with a two pronged strategy.  First, he attempted to strengthen and update his coastal batteries.  Secondly, he called up the gentry led militia (and a large number of mercenary braves) because these troops were considered more committed and reliable than the official army.  Bingham was correct, Lin did put a lot of confidence in the militia.

The Foreign Office reported that Lin ordered every member of the militia to be armed with a spear, a rattan helmet, and a set of “double swords” (Wakeman 95).  Other reports note that members of the militia were also drilled in archery and received a number of old heavy muskets from the government stores in Guangdong.  Bingham’s observations can leave no doubt that the “double swords” that the Foreign Office noted were in fact hudiedao.

Local members of the gentry worked cooperatively out of specially built (or appropriated) Confucian “schools” to raise money, procure arms and supplies for their units, to organize communications systems, and even to create insurance programs.  It seems likely that the hudiedao used by the militia would have been hurriedly produced in a number of small shops around the Pearl River Delta.

Much of this production likely happened in Foshan (the home of important parts of the Wing Chun, Choy Li Fut and Hung Gar movements).  Foshan was a critical center of regional handicraft production, and it held the Imperial iron and steel monopoly (He Yimin. “Thrive and Decline:The Comparison of the Fate of “The Four Famous Towns” in Modern Times.” Academic Monthly. December 2008.)  This made it a natural center for weapons production.

We know, for instance, that important cannon foundries were located in Foshan.  The battle for control of these weapon producing resources was actually a major element of the “Opera Rebellion,” or “Red Turban Revolt,” that would rip through the area 15 years later. (See Wakeman’s account in Stranger at the Gate for the most detailed reconstruction of the actual fighting in and around Foshan.)

Given that this is where most of the craftsmen capable of making butterfly swords would have been located, it seems reasonable to assume that this was where a lot of the militia weaponry was actually produced.  Further, the town’s centralized location on the nexus of multiple waterways, and its long history of involvement in regional trade, would have made it a natural place to distribute weapons from.

While all 3,000 troops may have been armed with hudiedao, it is very interesting that these weapons were the primary arms of about 1/3 of the militia.  Presumably the rest of their comrades were armed with spears, bows and a small number of matchlocks.

Bingham also gives us the first clear description of the unique hilts of these double swords.  He notes in an off-handed way that they have hand-guards.  More interesting is the quillion that terminates in a hook that extends parallel to the blade for a few inches.  This description closely matches the historic weapons that we currently possess.

This style of guard, while not seen on every hudiedo, is fairly common.  It is also restricted to weapons from southern China.  Given that this is not a traditional Chinese construction method, various guesses have been given as to how these guards developed and why they were adopted.

There is at least a superficial resemblance between these guards and the hilts of some western hangers and naval cutlasses of the period.  It is possible that the D-guard was adopted and popularized as a result of increased contact with western arms in southern China.  If so, it would make sense that western collectors in Guangzhou in the 1820s would be the first observers to become aware of the new weapon.

The actual use of the hooked quillion is also open to debate.  Many modern martial artists claim that it is used to catch and trap an opponent’s blade.  In another essay I have reviewed a martial arts training manual from the 1870s that shows local boxers attempting to do exactly this.  However, as the British translator of that manual points out (and I am in total agreement with him), this cannot possibly work against a longer blade or a skilled and determined opponent.  While this type of trapping is a commonly rehearsed “application” in Wing Chun circles, after years of fencing practice and full contact sparring, my own school has basically decided that it is too dangerous to attempt and rarely works in realistic situations.

Another theory that has been advanced is that the hook is basically symbolic.  It is highly reminiscent of the ears on a “Sai,” a simple weapon that is seen in the martial arts of China, Japan and South East Asia.  Arguments have been made that the sai got its unique shape by imitating tridents in Hindu and Buddhist art.  Perhaps we should not look quite so hard for a “practical” function for everything that we see in martial culture (Donn F. Draeger. The Weapons and Fighting Arts of Indonesia.  Tuttle Publishing.  2001. p. 33).

Bingham makes a different observation about the use of the quillion.  He notes that it can be used to manipulate the knife when switching between a “reverse grip” and a standard fencing or “brush grip.”  Of course the issue of “sword flipping” is tremendously controversial in some Wing Chun circles, so it is interesting to see a historical report of the practice in a military setting in the 1830s.

It is also worth noting that Commander Bingham was not the only Western observer to describe hudiedao training and to doubt its effectiveness.

Of swords the Chinese have an abundant variety.  Some are single-handed swords, and there is one device by which two swords are carried in the same sheath and are used one in each hand.  I have seen the two sword exercise performed, and can understand that, when opposed to any person not acquainted with the weapon, the Chinese swordsman would seem irresistible.  But in spite of the two swords, which fly about the wielder’s head like the sails of a mill, and the agility with which the Chinese fencer leaps about and presents first one side and then the other to this antagonist, I cannot think but that any ordinary fencer would be able to keep himself out of reach, and also to get in his point, in spite of the whirling blades of the adversary.

J. G. Wood. 1876. The Uncivilized Races of All Men in All Countries. Vol. II. Hartford: the J. B. Burr Publishing Co. Chapter, CLIV China—continued. Warfare.—Chinese Swords. pp. 1434-1435. (Originally published in 1868.)

J. G. Wood, while responsible for few discoveries of his own, was one of the great promoters and popularizers of scientific knowledge in his generation.  Most of his writings focused on natural history, but occasionally he ventured into the realm of ethnography. Like Dunn, Wood was a collector by nature.  So its not hard to imagine him amassing a number of Chinese swords.

Yet where would he have seen these skills demonstrated?  While Wood traveled to North America on a lecture tour, I am aware of no indication that he ever ventured as far as China.  Of course, one did not have to go to Hong Kong or Shanghai to see a martial arts demonstration.  Between 1848 and 1851 the crew of the Keying (a Chinese Junk) staged twice daily Kung Fu performances in London.

Stephen Davies, who is an expert of the voyages of the Keying, has hypothesized that by the time the ship reached London almost all of its original Chinese crew had already left and returned home.  If this is true, the Keying would have had to recruit a replacement “crew” from London’s small Victorian era Chinese community.  If his supposition is correct (and to be clear, I feel this still needs additional confirmation), by the middle of the 19th century the UK may have had its own population of indigenous martial artists, more than willing to perform their skills in public.  J. G. Wood’s account suggests that the butterfly sword was a well established part of their repertoire.

Early Images of the Hudiedao: Western Engravings of Chinese Arms.

It was rare to encounter collections of Chinese artifacts of any kind in the 1820s and 1830s.  However, the situation changed dramatically after the First and Second Opium Wars.  The expansion of trade that followed these conflicts, the opening of new treaty ports, and the creation and growth of Hong Kong all created new zones where Chinese citizens and westerners could meet to change goods and artifacts of material culture.  Unfortunately these meetings were not always peaceful and a large number of Chinese weapons started to be brought back to Europe as trophies.  Many of these arms subsequently found their way into works of art.  As a quintessentially exotic Chinese weapon, “double swords” were featured in early engravings and photographs.

Our first example comes from an engraving of Chinese weapons captured by the Royal Navy and presented to Queen Victoria in 1844.   The London Illustrated News published an interesting description of what they found.  In addition to a somewhat archaic collection of firearms, the Navy recovered a large number of double handed choppers.  These most closely resemble weapon that most martial artists today refer to as a “horse knife” (pu dao).

Featured prominently in the front of the engraving is something that looks quite familiar.  The accompanying article describes this blade as having “two sharpened edges” and a “modern guard.”  I have encountered a number of hudiedao with a false edge, but I do not think that I have found one that was actually sharpened.  I suspect that the sword in this particular picture was of the single variety and originally intended for use with a wicker shield.

Another useful engraving of “Chinese and Tartar Arms” can be found in Evariste R. Huc’s Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China (London, 1852).  Unlike some of the previous sources this one is not overly focused on military matters.  Still, the publishers include a fascinating engraving of Chinese arms.  The models for these were likely war trophies that were brought to the UK in the 1840s and 1850s.  They may have even been items from Nathan Dunn’s (now deceased) vast collection which was auctioned at Sotheby in 1844 following a tour of London and then the countryside.

Featured prominently in the middle of the picture is a set of hudiedao.  The engraving shows two swords with long narrow blades and D-guards resting in a single scabbard.  It is very hard to judge size in this print as the artist let scale slide to serve the interests of symmetry, but it appears that the “double swords” are only slightly shorter than the regulation Qing dao that hangs with them.

While it would appear that hudiedao had been in use in southern China since the 1820s, they make their first documented appearance on the West coast of America in the 1850s.  The Bancroft Library at UC Berkley has an important collection of documents and images relating to the Chinese American experience.  Better yet, many of their holdings have been digitized and are available on-line to the public.

Most of the Chinese individuals who settled in California (to work in both the railroads and mining camps) were from Fujian and Guangdong.  They brought with them their local dialects, modes of social organization, tensions and propensity for community feuding and violence.  They also brought with them a wide variety of weapons.

Newspaper accounts and illustrations from this side of the pacific actually provide us with some of our best studies of what we now think of as “martial arts” weapons.  Of course, it is unlike that this is how they were actually viewed by immigrants in the 1850s.  In that environment they were simply “weapons.”

The coasts of both Guangdong and Fujian province were literally covered in pirates in the 1840s, and the interiors of both provinces were infested with banditry.  Many individuals have long suspected that the hudiedao were in fact associated with these less savory elements of China’s criminal underground.  Butterfly swords, either as a pair or a single weapon, are sometimes marketed as “river pirate knives.”

The Armory of the Wang-Ho as seen on an early 20th century postcard. Note the Hudiedao in the rack on the back wall. Source: Author’s personal collection.

Perhaps it would be more correct to note that these versatile short swords were an ubiquitous part of Chinese maritime life.  In a period account describing (in great detail) the outfitting of typical Chinese merchant vessels we find the following note:

The armament is as follows: one cannon, twelve pounder, one do., six pounder; twelve gingalls or small rampart pieces, on pivots; one English musket; twenty pairs of double swords; thirty rattan shields, 2000 pikes, sixty oars; fifteen mats to cover the vessel, two cables, one of them bamboo, and the other coir, fifty fathoms long, one pump of bamboo tubes; one European telescope: one compass, which is rarely used, their voyages being near shore.

R. Montgomery Martin, Esq. 1847. China; Political, Commercial and Social: In an Official Report to Her Majesty’s Government . Vol. I. London: James Madden, 8 Leadenhall Street. p. 99

As Chinese sailors and immigrants traveled to new areas they brought their traditional arms with them.  Early observers in the American West noted that these weapons were often favored by the Tongs, gangs and drifters who monopolized the political economy of violence within the Chinese community.

The Bancroft library provides the earliest evidence I have yet found for hudiedao-type weapons in an engraving produced by the “Wild West Office, San Francisco.”  This picture depicts a battle between two rival Tongs (communal organizations that were often implicated in violence) at Weaverville in October, 1854.  Earlier that year the two groups, Tuolomne County’s Sam Yap Company and the Calaveras County Yan Wo Company, had nearly come to blows.

Both groups closed ranks, began to order weapons (including helmets, swords and shields) from local craftsmen, and spent months drilling as militia units.  However, the two sides were far from evenly matched.  The Sam Yap Company ordered 150 bayonets and muskets in San Francisco and hired 15 white drill instructors.  The Yan Wo Company may also have had access to some firearms, but was generally more poorly provided.

Period accounts indicate that about 2,000 individuals (including the 15 western military advisers) clashed at a place called “5 Cent Gulch.”  The fighting between the two sides was brief.  After a number of volleys of musket fire the much more poorly armed Yan Wo Company broke ranks and retreated.  Casualty figures vary but seem to have been light.  Some reports indicate that seven individuals died in the initial clash and another 26 were seriously wounded.

The conflict between these two companies was a matter of some amusement to the local white community who watch events unfold like a spectator sport and put bets on the contending sides.  An engraving of the event was sold in San Francisco.

While a sad historical chapter, the 1854 Weaverville War is interesting to students of Chinese Martial Studies on a number of fronts.  It is a relatively well documented example of militia organization and communal violence in the southern Chinese diaspora.  The use of outside military instructors, reliance on elite networks and mixing of locally produced traditional weaponry with a small number of more advanced firearms are all typical of the sorts of military activity that we have already seen in Guangdong.   Of course these were not disciplined, community based, gentry led militias.  Instead this was inter-communal violence organized by Tongs and largely carried out by hired muscle.  This general pattern would remain common within immigrant Chinese communities through the 1930s.

“A Chinese Battle in California.” Depiction of rival Tongs of Chinese miners at Weaverville in June 1854. Contributing Institution: California Historical Society. Bancroft Library, UC Berkley.

Given that the first known Chinese martial arts schools did not open in California until the 1930s, the accounts of the militia training in Weaverville are also one of our earliest examples of the teaching of traditional Chinese fighting methods in the US.  The degree to which any of this is actually similar to the modern martial arts is an interesting philosophical question.

The Hudiedao as a Marker of the “Exotic East” in Early Photography

While the origins of photography stretch back to the late 1820s, reliable and popular imaging systems did not come into general use until the 1850s.  This is the same decade in which the expansion of the treaty port system and the creation of Hong Kong increased contact between the Chinese and Westerners.  Increasingly photography replaced private collections, travelogues and newspapers illustrations as the main means by which Westerners attempted to imagine and understand life in China.

Various forms of double swords occasionally show up in photos taken in southern China.  One of the most interesting images shows a rural militia in the Pearl River Delta region near Guangzhou sometime in the late 1850s (Second Opium War).  The unit is comprised of seven individuals, all quite young.  Four of them are armed with shields, and they include a single gunner.  Everyone is wearing a wicker helmet (commonly issued to village militia members in this period).  The most interesting figure is the group’s standard bearer.  In addition to being armed with a spear he has what appears to be a set of hudiedao stuck in his belt.

The D-guards, quillions and leather sheath are all clearly visible.  Due to the construction of this type of weapon, it is actually impossible to tell when it is a single sword, or a double blade fitted in one sheath, when photographed from the side.  Nevertheless, given what we know about the official orders for arming the militia in this period, it seems likely that this is a set of “double swords.”

The next image in the series confirms that these are true hudiedao and also suggests that the blades are of the long narrow stabbing variety.  This style of sword is also evident in the third photograph behind the large rattan shield.  These images are an invaluable record of the variety of arms carried by village militias in Guangdong during the early and mid. 19th century.

The next photograph from the same period presents us with the opposite challenge.  It gives us a wonderfully detailed view of the weapons, but any appropriate context for understanding their use or meaning is missing.  Given it’s physical size and technology of production, this undated photograph was probably taken in the 1860s.  It was likely taken in either San Francisco or Hong Kong, though it is impossible to rule out some other location.

On the verso we find an ink stamp for “G. Harrison Gray” (evidently the photographer).  Images like this might be produced either for sale to the subject (hence all of the civil war portraits that one sees in American antique circles), or they might have been reproduced for sale to the general public.  Given the colorful subject matter of this image I would guess that the latter is most likely the case, but again, it is impossible to be totally certain.

The young man in the photo (labeled “Chinese Soldier”) is shown in the ubiquitous wicker helmet and is armed only with a set of exceptionally long hudedao.  These swords feature a slashing and chopping blade that terminates in a hatchet point, commonly seen on existing examples.  The guards on these knives appear to be relatively thin and the quillion is not as long or wide as some examples.  I would hazard a guess that both are made of steel rather than brass.  Given the long blade and light handle, these weapons likely felt top heavy, though there are steps that a skilled swordsmith could take to lessen the effect.

It is interesting to note that the subject of the photograph is holding the horizontal blade backwards.  It was a common practice for photographers of the time to acquire costumes, furniture and even weapons to be used as props in a photograph.  It is likely that these swords actually belonged to G. Harrison Gray or his studio and the subject has merely been dressed to look like a “soldier.”  In reality he may never have handled a set of hudiedao before.

A studio image of two Chinese soldiers (local braves) produced probably in Hong Kong during the 1850s or the 1860s. This mix of weapons would have been typical of the middle years of the 19th century.  Note the hudiedao (butterfly swords) carried by both individuals. Unknown Photographer.

The Hudiedo and the Gun

While guns came to dominate the world of violence in China during the late 19^th century, traditional weaponry never disappeared.  There are probably both economic and tactical reasons behind the continued presence of certain types of traditional arms.  In general, fighting knives and hudiedao seem to have remained popular throughout this period.

The same trend was also seen in America.  On Feb. 13th, 1886,  Harper’s Weekly published a richly illustrated article titled “Chinese Highbinders”  (p. 103).  This is an important document for students of the Chinese-American experience, especially when asking questions about how Asian-Americans were viewed by the rest of society.

Readers should carefully examine the banner of the engraving on page 100.  It contains a surprisingly detailed study of weapons confiscated from various criminals and enforcers.  As one would expect, handguns and knives play a leading role in this arsenal.  The stereotypical hatchet and cleaver are also present.

More interesting, from a martial arts perspective, is the presence of various types of maces (double iron rulers and a sai), as well as an armored shirt and wristlets.  The collection is finished off with a classic hudiedao, complete with D-guard and shared leather scabbard.  It seems that the hudiedao actually held a certain amount of mystic among gangsters in the mid 1880s.  The author notes that these weapons were imported directly from China.

“The weapons of the Highbinder are all brought from China, with the exception of the hatchet and the pistol. The illustration shows a collection of Chinese knives and swords taken from criminals, and now in the possession of the San Francisco police. The murderous weapon is what is called the double sword. Two swords, each about two feet long, are worn in a single scabbard. A Chinese draws these, one in each hand, and chops his way through a crowd of enemies. Only one side is sharpened, but the blade, like that of all the Chinese knives, is ground to a razor edge. An effective weapon at close quarters is the two-edged knife, usually worn in a leather sheath. The handle is of brass, generally richly ornamented, while the blade is of the finest steel. Most of the assassinations in Chinatown have been committed with this weapon, one blow being sufficient to ensure a mortal wound. The cleaver used by the Highbinders is smaller and lighter than the ordinary butcher’s cleaver. The iron club, about a foot and a half long, is enclosed in a sheath, and worn at the side like a sword. Another weapon is a curious sword with a large guard for the hand. The hatchet is usually of American make, but ground as sharp as a razor.

The coat of mail shown is the sketch, which was taken from a Chinese Highbinder, is of cloth, heavily padded with layers of rice paper that make it proof against a bullet, or even a rifle ball. This garment is worn by the most desperate men when they undertake a peculiarly dangerous bit of assassination. More common than this is the leather wristlet. This comes halfway up to the elbow, and pieces of iron inserted in the leather serve to ward off even a heavy stroke of a sword or hatchet.” (Feb 13, 1887.  Harper’s Weekly. P. 103).

These passages, based on interviews with law enforcement officers, provide one of the most interesting period discussions of the use of “double swords” among the criminal element that we currently possess.  These weapons were not uncommon, but they were feared.  They seem to have been especially useful when confronting crowds of unarmed opponents and were frequently employed in targeted killings.  It is also interesting to note that their strong hatchet-points and triangular profiles may have been a response to the expectation that at least some enemies would be wearing armor.

Desperate men and hired thugs were not the only inhabitants of San Francisco’s Chinatown to employ hudiedao in the 19^th century.  Both Cantonese Opera singers and street performers also used these swords.

During the early 1900s, a photographer named Arnold Genthe took a series of now historically important photographs of San Francisco’s Chinese residents.  These are mostly street scenes portraying the patterns of daily life, and are not overly sensational or concerned with martial culture.  One photo, however, stands out.  In it a martial artist is shown performing some type of fighting routine with two short, roughly made, hudiedao.

Behind him on the ground are two single-tailed wooden poles.  These were probably also used in his performance and may have helped to display a banner.  Period accounts from Guangzhou and other cities in southern China frequently note these sorts of transient street performers.  They would use their martial skills to attract a crowd and then either sell patent medicines, charms, or pass a hat at the end of the performance.  This is the only 19^th century photograph that I am aware of showing such a performer in California.

The lives of these wandering martial artists were not easy, and often involved violence and extortion at the hands of either the authorities or other denizens of the “Rivers and Lakes.”  Many of them were forced to use their skills for purposes other than performing.

Arnold Genthe collected information on his subjects, so we have some idea who posed for in around 1900.

 “The Mountainbank,” “The Peking Two Knife Man,” “The Sword dancer” – Genthe’s various titles for this portrait of Sung Chi Liang, well known for his martial arts skills. Nicknamed Daniu, or “Big Ox,” referring to his great strength, he also sold an herbal medicine rub after performing a martial art routine in the street. The medicine, tiedayanjiu (tit daa yeuk jau), was commonly used to help heal bruises sustained in fights or falls. This scene is in front of 32, 34, and 36 Waverly Place, on the east side of the street, between Clay and Washington Streets. Next to the two onlookers on the right is a wooden stand which, with a wash basin, would advertise a Chinese barbershop open for business. The adjacent basement stairwell leads to an inexpensive Chinese restaurant specializing in morning zhou (juk), or rice porridge.”

Genthe’s Photographs of San Francisco’s Old Chinatown by Arnold Genthe, John Kuo Wei Tche. p. 29

Dainu’s hudiedao are shorter and fatter than most of the earlier 19^th century models that have been described or shown above.  One wonders whether this style of shorter, more easily concealed, blade was becoming popular at the start of the 20^th century.  These knives seem to be more designed for chopping than stabbing and are reminiscent of the types of swords (bat cham dao) seen hanging on the walls of most Wing Chun schools today.

Lin expected his militia to fight the British with these weapons, and the swords shown in G. Harrison Gray’s photograph are clearly long enough to fence with.  In contrast, Dainu’s “swords” are basically the size of large 19^th century bowie knives.  They are probably too short for complex trapping of an enemy’s weapons and were likely intended to be used against an unarmed opponent, or one armed only with a hatchet or knife.

The next photograph was also taken in San Francisco around 1900.  It shows a Cantonese opera company putting on a “military” play.  The image may have originally been either a press or advertising picture.  I have not been able to discover who the original photographer was.

It is interesting to consider the assortment of weapons seen in this photograph.  A number of lower status soldiers are armed with a shield and single hudiedao shaped knife.  More important figures in heroic roles are armed with a pair of true hudiedaos.  Lastly the main protagonists are all armed with pole weapons (spears and tridents).

Cantonese opera troops paid close attention to martial arts and weapons in their acting.  While their goal was to entertain rather than provide pure realism, they knew that many members of the audience would have some experience with the martial arts.  This was a surprisingly sophisticated audience and people expected a certain degree of plausibility from a “military” play.

It was not uncommon for Opera troops to compete with one another by being the first to display a new fighting style or to bring an exotic weapon onstage.  Hence the association of different weapons with individuals of certain social classes in this photo may not be a total coincidence.  It is likely an idealized representation of one aspect of Cantonese martial culture.  Fighting effectively with a spear or halberd requires a degree of subtlety and expertise that is not necessary (or even possible) when wielding a short sword and a one meter wicker shield.

We also know that the government of Guangdong was issuing hudiedao to mercenary martial artists and village militias.  Higher status imperial soldiers were expected to have mastered the matchlock, the bow, the spear and the dao (a single edged saber).   While many surviving antique hudiedao do have finely carved handles and show laminated blades when polished and etched, I suspect that in historic terms these finely produced weapons there were probably the exception rather than the rule.

Confiscated weapons. Shanghai Municipal Police Department, 1925. University of Bristol, Historical Photographs of China.

The Hudiedao as a Weapon, Symbol and Historical Argument

Butterfly Swords remained in use as a weapon among various Triad members and Tong enforcers through the early 20^th century.  For instance, an evidence photo of confiscated weapons in California shows a variety of knives, a handgun and a pair of hudiedao.  This set has relatively thick chopping blades and is shorter than some of the earlier examples, but it retains powerful stabbing points.

Still, “cold weapons” of all types saw less use in the second and third decades of the 20^th century as they were replaced with increasingly plentiful and inexpensive firearms.  We know that in Republican China almost all bandit gangs were armed with modern repeating rifles by the 1920s.  Gangsters and criminal enforcers in America were equally quick to take up firearms.

The transition was not automatic.  Lau Bun, a Choy Li Fut master trained in the Hung Sing Association style, is often cited as the first individual in America to open a permanent semi-public martial arts school.  He also worked as an enforcer and guard for local Tong interests, and is sometimes said to have carried concealed butterfly swords on his person in the 1920s and 1930s.

Weapons confiscated in Chinatown, New York City, 1922. This haul shows a remarkable mixture of modern and traditional weapons. Source: NYPD Public Records.

On the opposite coast, New York newspapers ran a number of pictures of butterfly swords that reinforced many of the mythologies of the period. These portrayed Chinese-Americans as violent and untrustworthy individuals.  While a certain level community violence is (unfortunately) a constant in American life, such photos of exotic weapons (sometimes at crime scenes) seem to have closely tied such incidents to supposedly “timeless” and “unchanging” ethno-nationalist traits.  In a very real way butterfly swords and hatchets became identifying symbols of the Chinese American community prior to WWII.

“Chinese With Knives. Ready for a Hammer and Tong War?” June, 1930.

Consider the iconic photograph of the Tong leader Eddie Gong inspecting a pair of hudiedao in 1930.   The caption that originally ran with this image promised violence as local Chinese-American hatchet men shined up their “cleavers” before turning them on their enemies.  In truth much of the violence in this period was carried out with guns, but the hudiedao remained a powerful symbol within the public imagination.

On a more technical level these swords have broad blades which show little narrowing as you approach the tip.  The actual point of the sword is rounded and not well adapted to stabbing.  In fact, they seem to be built more along the lines of a performance weapon than anything else.  On the one hand they are too large for concealed carry, yet they also lack the reach and stabbing ability that one would want in an offensive weapon.

Still, Eddie Gong’s hudiedao compare favorably with many of the more cheaply produced copies available to martial artists today.  Many experienced fencers and sword collectors are utterly perplexed when they pick up their first set of “bat cham dao,” and openly express wonder that these short, rounded, and poorly balanced blades could actually function as a weapon.  Their disbelief is well founded, but it usually evaporates when you place a set of well-made mid-19^th century swords in their hands instead.

Hudiedao, like many other weapons, developed a certain mystique during the 19^th century.  They were used in the poorly executed defense of Guangdong against the British.  In the hand of the Triads they were a symbol of personal empowerment and government opposition.  They were widely used by groups as diverse as local law enforcement officials, traveling martial artists, opera singers and community militias.  Their iconic nature probably helped them to survive in the urban landscape well after most other forms of the sword had been abandoned (the dadao being the notable exception).  However, by the 1920s these weapons were finally being relegated to the training hall and the opera state.  In those environments length, cutting ability and a powerful tip were not only unnecessary, they were an unrewarded hazard.  The symbolic value of these weapons was no longer tied to their actual cutting ability.

When not found within the training hall, butterfly swords made frequent appearances within Western “Yellow Peril” literature. The San Francisco Call, 1898.

Consider for instance the “bat cham dao” (the Wing Chun style name for butterfly swords) owned by Ip Man.  In a recent interview Ip Ching (his son),confirmed that his father never brought a set of functional hudiedao to Hong Kong when he left Foshan in 1949.  Instead, he actually brought a set of “swords” carved out of peach wood.  These were the “swords” that he used when establishing Wing Chun in Hong Kong in the 1950s and laying the foundations for its global expansion.

Obviously some wooden swords are more accurate than others, but none of them are exactly like the objects they represent.  It also makes a good deal of sense that Ip Man in 1949 would not really care that much about iron swords.  He was not a gangster or a Triad member.  He was not an opera performer.  As a police officer he had carried a gun and had a good sense of what real street violence was.

Ip Man had been (and aspired to once again become) a man of leisure.  He was relatively well educated, sophisticated and urbane.  More than anything else he saw himself as a Confucian gentleman, and as such he was more likely to display a work of art in his home than a cold-blooded weapon.

Swords carved of peach wood have an important significance in Chinese society that goes well beyond their safety and convience when practicing martial arts forms.  Peach wood swords are used in Daoist exorcisms and are thought to have demon slaying powers.  In the extended version of the story of the destruction of the Shaolin Temple favored by the Triads, Heaven sends a peach wood sword to the survivors of Shaolin that they use to slay thousands of their Qing pursuers.

Hung on the wall in a home or studio, these swords are thought to convey good fortune and a certain type of energy.  In fact, it was not uncommon for Confucian scholars to display a prized antique blade or a peach wood sword in their studies.  Ip Man’s hudiedao appear to be a (uniquely southern) adaptation of this broader cultural tradition.  As carved wooden works of art, they were only meant to have a superficial resemblance to the militia weapons of the early 19^th century.

Ip Ching also relates that at a later date one of his students took these swords and had exact aluminum replicas of them created.  Later these were reworked again to have a flat stainless steel blade and aluminum (latter brass) handles.  Still, I think there is much to be said for the symbolism of the peach wood blade.

Butterfly swords remain one of the most iconic and easily recognizable artifacts of Southern China’s unique martial culture.  Their initial creation in the late 18^th or early 19^th century may have been aided by recent encounters with European cutlasses and military hangers.  This unique D-grip (seen in many, though not all cases) was then married to an older tradition of using double weapons housed in a single sheath.

By the 1820s, these swords were popular enough that American and British merchants in Guangdong were encountering them and adding them to their collections.  By the 1830’s, we have multiple accounts of these weapons being supplied to the gentry led militia troops and braves hired by Lin in his conflicts with the British.  Descriptions by Commander Bingham indicate the existence of a fully formed martial tradition in which thousands of troops were trained to fight in the open field with these swords, and even to flip them when switching between grips.  (Whether flipping them is really a good idea is another matter entirely).

Increased contact between Europeans and Chinese citizens in the 1840s and 1850s resulted in more accounts of “double swords” and clear photographs and engravings showing a variety of features that are shared with modern hudiedao.  The biggest difference is that most of these mid-century swords were longer and more pointed than modern swords.

Interestingly these weapons also start to appear on America’s shores as Chinese immigration from Guangdong and Fujian increased in the middle of the 19^th century.  Period accounts from the 1880s indicate that they were commonly employed by criminals and enforcers, and photographs from the turn of the century show that they were also used by both street performers and opera singers.

Later, in the 1950s, when T. Y. Wong and other reformers wished to reeducate the American public about the nature of the Chinese martial arts they turned to public demonstrations and even the occasional TV appearances.  Once again the hudiedao were deployed to help them make their point.

TY Wong demonstrating the use of the hudiedao on network television in 1955.  In this instance he appears to be using a very nice set of vintage blades. (Photo courtesy of Gilman Wong)

Still, these blades were in general shorter, wider and with less pronounced points, than their mid. 19^th century siblings.  While some individuals may have continued to carry these into the 1930s, hudiedao started to disappear from the streets as they were replaced by more modern and economical firearms.  By the middle of the 20^th century these items, if encountered at all, were no longer thought of as fearsome weapons of community defense or organized crime.  Instead they survived as the tools of the “traditional martial arts” and opera props.

Conclusion

While it has touched on a variety of points, I feel that this article has made two substantive contributions to our understanding of these weapons.  First, it pushed their probable date of creation back a generation or more.  Rather than being the product of the late 19^th century or the 1850s, we now have clear evidence of the widespread use of the hudiedao in Guangdong dating back to the 1820s.

These weapons were indeed favored by civilian martial artists and various members of the “Rivers and Lakes” of southern China.  Yet we have also seen that they were employed by the thousands to arm militias, braves and guards in southern China.  Not only that we have accounts of thousands of individuals in the Pearl River Delta region receiving active daily instruction in their use in the late 1830s.

The popular view of hudiedao as exotic weapons of martial artists, rebels and eccentric pirates needs to be modified.  These blades also symbolized the forces of “law and order.”  They were produced by the thousands for government backed elite networks and paid for with public taxes.  This was a reasonable choice as many members of these local militias already had some boxing experience.  It would have been relatively easy to train them to hold and use these swords given what they already knew.  While butterfly swords may have appeared mysterious and quintessentially “Chinese” to western observers in the 1830s, Lin supported their large scale adoption as a practical solution to a pressing problem.

This may also change how we think about the martial arts that arose in this region.  For instance, the two weapons typically taught in the Wing Chun system are the “long pole” and the “bat cham do” (the style name for hudiedao).  The explanations for these weapons that one normally encounters are highly exotic and focus on the wandering Shaolin monks (who were famous for their pole fighting) or secret rebel groups intent on exterminating local government officials.  Often the “easily concealable” nature of the hudiedao are supposed to have made them ideal for this task (as opposed to handguns and high explosives, which are the weapons that were actually used for political assassinations during the late Qing).

Our new understanding of the historical record shows that what Wing Chun actually teaches are the two standard weapons taught to almost every militia member in the region.  One typically learns pole fighting as a prelude to more sophisticated spear fighting.  However, the Six and a Half Point pole form could easily work for either when training a peasant militia.  And we now know that the butterfly swords were the single most common side arm issued to peasant-soldiers during the mid. 19^th century in the Pearl River Delta region.

The first historically verifiable appearance of Wing Chun in Foshan was during the 1850s-1860s.  This important commercial town is located literally in the heartland of the southern gentry-led militia movement.  It had been the scene of intense fighting in 1854-1856 and more conflict was expected in the future.

We have no indication that Leung Jan was a secret revolutionary.  He was a well known and well liked successful local businessman.  Still, there are understandable reasons that the martial art which he developed would allow a highly educated and wealthy individual, to train a group of people in the use of the pole and the hudiedao.  Wing Chun contains within it all of the skills one needs to raise and train a gentry led militia unit.

The evolution of Wing Chun was likely influenced by this region’s unique history of militia activity and widespread (government backed) military education.  I would not be at all surprised to see some of these same processes at work in other martial arts that were forming in the Pearl River Delta at the same time.

The Creation of Wing Chun by Judkins and Nielson.

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If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to read: The Creation of Wing Chun – A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts.

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“Back to Weapons of Forefathers in War with Japanese.” Vintage newspaper photograph. June 1937. Source: Author’s private collection.

Wonder Woman with a Dadao

In China the realm of social violence, and the martial arts in particular, has been male dominated.  That does not mean that women never became a part of such activities.  After all, they played an increasingly high profile role in the martial realm from the early 1920s onward.  By the time that hostilities erupted between China and Japan in 1937, female martial artists and soldiers were often at the forefront of Western reporting on the conflict, if not the actual fighting.

Nevertheless, locating accounts of these individuals can be difficult.  It seems that within the resolutely patriarchal lineage societies of the martial arts the contributions (and even presence) of daughters, sisters and female students was less likely to be remembered.  Just as serious  an issue is our (in)ability to search through the mountains of historical data that remain.  While many stories have been forgotten, others are hidden in plain sight.

As is so often the case, finding the proper search terms (in both Chinese and English) is half the battle.  To investigate the past, even in one’s native language, is to engage in an act of “cultural translation.”  Ideas, associations, idioms and identities that made perfect sense 60 or 70 years ago might never occur to us today.  Worse yet, they can seem off-putting.

Here is a quick pro-tip.  If you are interested in unearthing accounts of female Chinese martial artists and soldiers during the 1930s-1940s, try searching for “amazons.”  One suspects that the release of the new Wonder Woman film (set during WWI) might refresh some of these linguistic associations within our modern popular consciousness.  Yet as the newspapers of the period will be quick to remind you, the Chinese also had a wide variety of “amazons.”

Students of cultural history and gender studies may find it interesting to note what sorts of activities and identities fell within this category.  I have seen female bandits, soldiers, rioters, politicians and suffragettes all referred to as “Chinese Amazons” by various newspaper reporters.  While at the first cut this may seem like an overly broad label, it is actually a very helpful way of understanding the connotations, connections and inflections that were associated with the idea of female martial artists during the Republic period.

Still, for our purposes, female martial artists and soldiers are the most interesting cases.  The image at the top of this essay is a scan of a eight by ten inch press photo dated June, 1937.  The photograph itself, marked with a wax pencil to increase the level of contrast and detail, is fascinating.  It shows a woman holding either a long handled dadao or a shorter pudao.  The weapon has a tightly braided cord handle with a ring at the bottom.  It is also possible to make out two holes in the spine.  Best of all, the back of the image retains its caption bearing a wealth of information.

BACK TO WEAPONS OF FOREFATHERS IN WAR WITH JAPAN

HONG KONG, CHINA—Famous among the modern amazon warriors of the Chungshan district near Macao—where Chinese women guerillas are engaging in combat with the Japanese—is Miss Tam Tai-men, who has achieved fame through her skills with the famous Chinese broad sword against the Japanese invaders.  6-7-39

Readers may recall that a few years ago I interviewed Prof. Stephen Chan about his grandmother who was also a swordswoman and militia leader at this point in time (though her village was just outside of Guangzhou).  It is fascinating to find a picture of another female martial artist following a similar career path.  Yet from the perspective of my current research, what is most remarkable is not simply the existence of such women, but that their presence was being actively promoted in the Western press.

In the coming decades western martial artists would show a great deal of interest in the idea of Chinese “warrior women.”  Historically inclined discussions often debunk this as a simple misunderstanding (or naive acceptance) of Republic era folklore. But I think that we should also consider the possibility that this fascination was partially a result of fact that such “amazons” had been the public face of the Chinese war effort for the better part of two decades.

That observation suggests many other questions.  There is something about this photograph that feels not just heroic, but mythic.  I think that images like this resonated with the public because they tapped into fundamental symbolic structures (“myths” in the anthropological sense) which made cross-cultural communication (or at least empathy) possible.  Yet one suspects that they also promoted a entire range of political ideas and ideologies as well (or “myths” as the term is often encountered in cultural studies).

Indeed, everything about this photo, from the reference to taking up the “weapons of the forefathers”, to the almost stark image of a lone female warrior standing against an empty sky, seems calculated to raise awareness of, and interest in, China’s plight at the start of WWII.  Wartime reporting is never without an ideological slant. Indeed, that is a feature of this genre rather than a  bug.

Readers may also recall that Wonder Woman, perhaps the most successful “amazon warrior” of all time, first emerged to fight the Axis Powers on the pages of American comic books in 1941. One cannot help but suspect that the two streams of mythology that would have guided the audiences interpretation of this press photo probably shaped her creation and acceptance as well.

We can delve more deeply into what exactly these streams contained by reading the many articles that accompanied such photos.  I have transcribed a later example of one such piece that explores a slightly different aspect of the Chinese “amazon phenomenon.”  Rather than focusing on the lone warrior (or the improbable leader of a rebel band), this piece tracks the creation of a much larger, all female, fighting force organized as part of a regular military structure.

The story of how the unit came together, and what inspired individual women to enlist, is fascinating.  Yet once again, its hard not to see in these verbal images the creation of a very politically useful set of myths.  The first task facing the Chinese and their friends in the West in 1937 was to convince the American public that the Chinese people were both capable and willing to stand up to Japanese aggression.  The next task was to generate monetary contributions for the war effort.  Readers should note the various ways in which this article accomplishes both goals.

To a large extent these tasks are carried out by manipulating the image of “Chinese amazons.”  Women’s bodies are shown as the sites of both victimization and resistance.  In an effort to generate broad based public sympathy these female soldiers are notably de-sexualized.  Indeed, that task takes up a surprising amount of the author’s overall effort.  Clearly the idea of fighting amazons was somewhat threatening. As a result, great efforts were made to argue that contributions to the war effort would not be supporting anything “unsavory.”  And yet these women had to be seen as at least somewhat attractive to generate sympathy.  This article makes it clear that more than one battle was being fought with/over these women’s bodies.

By the end of the Second World War combat journalism and political propaganda had familiarized American audiences with the image of the Chinese amazon.  The public seems to have been fascinated by her ability to disrupt certain hierarchies in the pursuit of “universal values.”  Yet what exactly those values were, whether the Chinese martial arts were deeply conservative in character, or an aspect of the burgeoning post-war counter-culture movement, would be negotiated for decades to come.  Unsurprisingly many of these conversations continued to revolve around the feminine and the female in these fighting systems.

AMAZON FORCES AID RESISTANCE

About three thousand of Kwangsi’s hardy womenfolk have laid aside the sickle and hoe for the big sword and Mauser rifle and joined their men in resisting the  Japanese penetration in the Southwest.

For 22 months of the war, China’s New Life Movement has carried extensive propagation of the significance of China’s unity to the rural districts.  China’s womanhood has been mobilized under Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s banner in all phases of war work-but in Kwangsai, a province famed for its fighting spirit, it has been the peasant women who have taken the initiative in rallying for the salvation of their country.

Not content with performing the mere domestic services connected with Kwangsi’s armies, they have formed a Women’s Regiment which has been drilled and disciplined under the leadership of Madame Pai Chung-his, wife of Kwangsi’s No. 2 General.

Recent reports from the Southwestern front state that the Women’s Regiment is participating in the defense of the Lingyang Railway in an effort to prevent the Japanese drive on Toishan, Yanping and Hoiping, rich towns in the West River delta and the native homes of many overseas Chinese in the United States and Canada.  Chinese overseas remittances contributed largely to the support of Kwangsi’s valiant army and its Women’s Regiment.

When their men first rallied to Kwangsi’s Commander-in-Chief, General Li Tsung-jen, and then followed him to Central and Northern China at the outbreak of hostilities, the more prominent among Kwangsi’s women, as in most other provinces, organized a Women’s Corp.  They were recruited for service behind the lines and for carrying on agriculture and industry at home.  In this respect, Kwangsi’s women earned the praise of Madam Chiang for their initiative and self-reliance.

But as the months rolled on, the war assumed a new significance for Kwangsi’s women.  The battles of Taierchwang and Hsuchow, in which General Li’s fifth group army won fame, swelled the number of widows and bereaved mothers and sisters in Kwangsi.  In increasing numbers, bands of sturdy women and workers presented themselves at the Group Army headquarters in Kweilin, demanding to be allowed to join their men in the ranks or to be allowed to fight the enemy to avenge the deaths of their male relatives.

It was in the latter part of 1937 that the first really militant sections of the Women’s Corp was formed.

At first it numbered about 700, composed mainly of land workers with muscles as hard as those of their menfolk through years of toil in their mountainous province; but as the spirit spread the ranks of the Women’s Regiment swelled with the recruitment of women from all walks of life-teachers, nurses, store assistants and even housewives.

Now the Women’s Regiment is reliably estimated to number 3,000.

“No stream lined beauties these,” said an executive of an American oil company when he recently returned from a tour of the Southwest, where he came into contact with the women soldiers.” “’amazons’ is rather a shop-soiled term, but it is the only one which describes them.

“Most of them are short and squat and of sturdy build…in appearance they are actually not unlike the Japanese soldiers.  They wear a uniform which is the exact counterpart of the men’s and throw a hand-grenade with the best of the men.

“In fact, I had no idea the detachment I saw was composed of women until I saw them at close quarters.”

“Their code of discipline is of a high order.  They live in the barracks when at their headquarters in Kweilin and are subject to the same military routine as the men.  As a rule they are detailed to rear positions, forming support and supply lines but vernacular reports received in Hong Kong tell of women fighters engaging in actual combat, side by side with the Kwangtung and Kwangsi troops in the West River sector.  They have suffered some casualties and a recent report from Shekki tells of some badly wounded being in hospital there.

Their moral discipline is also of the highest order.  Although they are not completely segregated from the men when at the front, maybe for long weeks of entrenchment, strict celibacy is maintained.

“There’ll be no call for a midwife in the Women’s Army.” Said the foreign oil man,  “The girls are loath to betray any sign of femininity.  I don’t suppose one of ‘em has known the taste of lipstick nor the feel of one of these slit gowns the slim Hong Kong girls wear.  But don’t get the idea that they are without attraction…they are bronzed and healthy, with perfect teeth and the merriest of smiles.

“They are paid about twenty Chinese dollars a month, but money doesn’t seem to trouble them much.  Given their ration of rice and vegetables and a place in the ranks, they are content…but what they hunger for most is a chance to take a smack at the enemy.”

“The vernacular papers in Hong Kong recently published a story of one of the wounded women soldiers. She was formerly a Kwangsi countrywoman.

“My husband has done me the greatest honor in my life by dying for China in the fight in the north.  I have his name and will continue his fight against the enemy till I die.” She said.

The China Critic (Shanghai; 1939-1946). Jun 8, 1939. P. 154

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If you enjoyed this you might also want to read: Lives of Chinese Martial Artists (15): Fei Ching Po – Professional Gambler and Female Martial Artist in Early 19th Century Guangzhou

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“Muslim Bandits,” Xinjiang, China [c1915] Marc Aurel Stein [restored]

Any traveler can attest that detours come in two forms.  They all take a little longer, and most offer nothing but delay.  Others can lead to fascinating discoveries.  These often come in the form of local sandwich shops frequented by hipsters or a scenic overlook. This same principle applies regardless of whether one is on a purely geographical journey, or if you are traveling through time.

And it goes without saying that there is no better portal for time travel than the rare book collections at Cornell University.

That is where I found myself earlier this week.  I was about to embark on a lengthy exploration of how Chinese martial artists were discussed in the Western press between the months of May and August in 1900.  Historically informed readers will immediately recognize this as one of the most fluid periods in the Boxer Uprising.  It was in the spring and early summer of 1900 that what had previously been a local disturbance between groups of marginal peasants in Shandong Province ignited like a wild fire across northern China and began to take on a much more menacing character.  Newspapers across Europe and North America found themselves scrambling to explain to their readers what exactly a “Chinese boxer” was at the start of what turned out to be one of the great media spectacles of the early 20^th century.

But before jumping into the fires of the Boxer Uprising I decided that I should wrap up one last loose end from my research for a previous chapter.  In 1830 a Western magazine published a fascinating discussion of a mass produced Chinese martial art manual (printed with wooden blocks) that was then being sold in the markets around Guangzhou (previously discussed here). The editor of the magazine noted that their article was a reprint of a piece that had originally run on a specific date in The Canton Register.

I had never taken the time to track down the original version of the article before, but I decided that it would be a good idea to do so.  While unlikely, it was possible that the original description would be more detailed.  And an “easy” assignment such as this would be a good way to get to know the rare books collection.

Did I already mention the nature of detours?

It was with great excitement that I opened the bound volume of beautifully preserved, hand set, newspapers that one of the research librarians brought to the reading room.  There is always a thrill when you work with a primary source document, particularly one that you know was handled by a figure that you have researched (in this case William Wightman Wood, the paper’s editor, who would later go on to help Dunn assemble his famous “China Museum.”)

That sense of “touching history” creates a real rush.  And it is amazing how fast it can all come crashing down when you search the volume and realize that Wood didn’t print an issue of his newspaper on the date specified by the later editor (at least not in the year 1830)!  Of course, this is exactly the reason why historians go back and look at original documents, rather than just relying on later reprints and inference.  And scanning an entire years’ worth of shipping news and local gossip, was also a valuable reminder of how long doing your ‘due diligence’ can take.

I was faced with a choice, either start looking for the missing article in previous volumes of the newspaper, or slow down and take a closer look at 1830.  Given that the volume was already in front of me, I opted for the latter.  And it was fortunate that I did.  While the Canton Register never devoted many column-inches of space to Chinese boxing (though the subject certainly came up from time to time), I found at least three short stories published in 1830 that provide some valuable texture and detail regarding the world that traditional martial artists inhabited following the pirate crisis of the early 19^th century, and prior to the outbreak of the Opium Wars and the Red Turban Revolt in the middle of the century.

Each of these pieces is also interesting in that they address the question of who was imagined as “the villain” in situations where the martial arts might be employed.  In the first case the problem was groups of armed ruffians engaged in daylight activities as diverse as extorting “alms” from wedding processions, to kidnapping children who would then be trafficked into slavery.

In the second instance the stakes were more existential in nature.  This is a story about the “martial virtue” of individual officers when a case of cheating was uncovered in the military examination system.  It is interesting to read about the case in question, and also the repercussions for those involved.

The third article returns to the world of crime.  The opposition is no longer armed bands harassing individuals in public places.  Rather, the new problem is cat burglars sneaking along the rooftops of a neighborhood and the utter inability of both the local magistrate and residents to do anything about it.  This story is also particularly interesting as it reminds us that (Wong Fei Hong movies notwithstanding) there has never been a golden age of kung fu in which firearms did not exist. It is too often forgotten that it was the Chinese who invented gunpowder, and no, they did not only use it for fireworks.

Indeed, this notice turns out to be largely a story about how common firearms ownership was and the inability of local magistrates to do anything about it.  By the end of the incident the official in question was reduced to reminding the people that, at least on paper, none of them owned firearms, and that he would greatly appreciate it if they only used their (non-existent) guns on actual night stalkers.  The continual shooting at shadows was keeping the entire neighborhood up at night.

Beyond that, each of these accounts carries a certain undertone of dark humor.   One suspects that this reflects Wood’s personality rather than the official Chinese proclamations that they were based on.  Still, I think that each of these accounts is vastly improved if read in the voice of Cecil, the community radio announcer from “Welcome to Night Vale.” Taken as a set they help to enrich our understanding of the social environment that gave rise to the modern martial arts.

Mid 19th century Chinese soldier with matchlock. Firearms like this one were the most commonly encountered type during the early 1830s.

Canton Register

Wednesday, 3rd February 1830

Vol. 3 No. 3

No title.

A series of proclamations have been issued by the magistrate against vagabonds who form themselves into parties of THREE to FIVE, who arm themselves with swords and “iron clubs”—i.e., sticks of iron about a foot in length.  Night and day, the Magistrates say, these vagabonds distress the peaceable inhabitants by putting them in bodily fear and extorting money; and sometimes by detaining people and extracting ransom.

Another proclamation is to interdict swearing in brothers—i.e., forming associated banditti by a solemn oath.  This they say has long been a violation of the law; and “hundreds of thousands” have been punished for it; some by decollation; some by strangling; others by transportation.  But still the mania continues.  The law is disregarded, and death is not dreaded—a state of feeling the most detestable.

Another proclamation is against the harbourers of thieves and receivers of stolen property.

A fourth is against incendiaries who set fire to houses for the sake of plundering.

A fifth is against banditti who force farmers and fisherman on the coast, to take out a permit of personal security from them—paying out the same.

A sixth is against play-actors setting off large rockets, which have of late occasioned large fires and the deaths of many persons.  For during the confusion, some are trampled to death, and some are burnt.  As these plays in Canton are often on the banks of rivers it happens that numbers of people are drowned; and banditti who assemble at these religious plays, run away with women and children for the purpose of selling them.  Mr. Hoo, the Pwan-Yu Magistrate says, that plays in Spring when playing to the Gods; and plays in Autumn when thanking them are allowed by law: But sending up large rockets is contrary hereto.

A seventh proclamation is against killing cattle used in agriculture.  A man who kills his own buffalo is liable to a punishment of 80 blows, and wearing a wooden collar one month.  Those who kill and sell beef are liable to the same punishment as those who steel cattle, i. e., to be punished with a hundred blows, and transported three thousand le.

The eighth and last proclamation in the series that comes to us, is one against sturdy beggars, who extort money at marriages and funerals. [Page 2.]

ARCHERY

For the highest honors both civil and military, certain examinations take place in the presence of the Emperor.  The other day Lew-Chaou-Lan of Shan-Tung Province exhibited in the Imperial presence and passed with success, till O-Ke-Wang re-examined the Candidates, when an imposition in the strength of the bow was detected. The Impostor is disallowed to exhibit again for one term, and the great officers who first passed him, as well as he who detected him, are delivered to a court of inquiry, the first to be punished and the second to be rewarded. [Page. 3]

Canton Register

Saturday, July 3rd 1830.

Vol. 3 no.13

FIRE ARMS. The Magistrate of the Namboy District lately gave permission to the inhabitants to fire upon thieves on the top of houses after dark.  By an order which he has now just issued it appears that the permission has been abused, and that the inhabitants are disturbed by constant firing and popping all night.

The magistrate has therefore modified his former order, and declares fire arms to be by law illegal, and that nothing but the most urgent cases can excuse the use of them.  He still permits the moderate use of them, when it is certain a man is a thief and they cannot catch him; but not to be firing off on every absurd suspicion, which rather aids the thieves than hinders them. [Page 1].

Chinese Matchlocks, most likely Qing era. The middle example is the type most commonly encountered in historic illustrations. The top most model appears to be Indian in style. Source: Wikimedia.

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If you enjoyed these articles you might also want to read: Forgetting about the Gun: Firearms and the Development of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts.

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A Duandao. The blade is about 18 inches long, and the original sword was probably 25 inches when originally mounted. Collected in China, 1900. Author’s personal collection.

What is it?

The first question seems straight forward.  This sword was purchased at auction a few years ago.  It is a short saber, often called a duandao by martial artists. Its blade is just under 18 inches (46 cm) long, and its tang (broken at the end where the peened pommel was removed) is about 5 and 1/2 inches (14 cm).  The blade itself is a hair over one and half inches in width (close to 4 cm).  The sword tapers notably along the spine from the base (4 mm) to the tip (1mm).  The tip has been lightened with a false edge.

The sword itself is in poor condition.  The blade, with double fullers, is structurally in good shape, though it needs a careful cleaning.  Some of the original file marks are still present from its final shaping leading me to suspect that the sword never enjoyed a detailed polish.

The handle is totally missing, leaving us to speculate as to the nature of its original furniture.  Some hints can be derived from the existing scabbard.  It is covered in ray skin (still in decent shape), and appears to have shrunk over the years (which is not uncommon in scabbards of this age.)  Both the fixtures from the throat and tip are missing.  However, the hangers are in place and show a floral pattern.  One suspects that this would have been repeated on the missing hilt.

Blades of this length were common in the late 19^th century.  It seems that as the security situation degenerated, and firearms became the primary arm, there was still a demand for short side arms.  Of course, stout hatchet tipped sabers had been used in conjunction with heavy rattan shields for quite a long time.  One of my favorite pictures from the Boxer Uprising period shows a unit armed with shields and seemingly quite similar sabers.  This same pairing of weapons was also seen in southern China, and I have occasionally wondered if the late-Qing explosion of the Hudiedao in Guangdong was a regional expression of this growing interest in Duandao.  But that is a topic for another day.

Things get complicated when we more closely examine of the details of the scabbard.  Swords with identical fittings, in very similar ray skin scabbards, show up from time to time on the antique market.  This example (sold by Peter Dekker), while more nicely finished than my blade, probably gives us a very good idea of how it originally looked.

As Dekker points out, martial artists were not the only one’s interested in portable weapons.  He notes that tourists visiting China in the closing years of the 19^th century may have been looking for souvenirs to take home.  And a 25-inch sword would fit very nicely in a steamer trunk.  Such blades needed to be visually impressive, but they did not require proper heat treatment or functional blades.

This last point raises some interesting questions.  I am not sure that it always follows that the blades of “tourist weapons” from this period were of inferior quality.  One of my other areas of collecting is the Nepalese Kukri.  While the market has been flooded by lots of bad tourist blades in the post-1960s period, many of the knives made for foreign consumers in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries are absolute marvels.  It seems that quite a few of the gentlemen frequenting bazaars in India and China during the late 19^th century were soldiers (or had served in the military in the past) and tended to be fairly good judges of steel.

There is a lot about the commercial production of these weapons in 19^th century China that I am still trying to figure out.  Nevertheless, I just came across a fascinating account which mentioned that as the Boxers started to stream into Beijing in the Spring of 1900, shops throughout the city put up signs advertising that they had swords for sale.  Unsurprisingly, residents of the Foreign Legation took this is as a bad sign.  Yet it does suggest that however these weapons were being produced, the supply could be increased on short notice.

I have no idea whether my example would show lamination if polished.  But in looking carefully at the edge there are suggestions that a previous owner attempted to test the sword’s cutting ability.  Gladly it survived the owner’s curiosity better than the subsequent years of neglect.

A detailed shot of the furniture on a “curio saber” (circa 1900) sold by Peter Dekker. While the blade of my example is about 1/2 inch longer than this sword’s, I suspect that it would have looked very similar when originally mounted. Source: mandarinmansion.com/late-qing-curio-saber

Where did it come from?

I will admit to not caring very much about this question when I first purchased this piece.  As a martial artist, I am interested in China’s shorter sabers and thought that this piece might make a good study blade or a possible restoration project at some point in the future.  And the price was right.

Things got more complicated when the saber showed up.  There is one final detail of note about the scabbard.  It bore a scalloped paper label with the following (severely faded, nearly illegible) inscription.

“Chinaman Sword Pekin, China N.H. Hall USMC”

Captain Newt Hall was a Marine who took part in the defense of the Foreign Legation in Beijing during the Boxer Uprising.  He saw heavy fighting and was later awarded the Marine Corps Brevet Medal for “distinguished conduct in the face of the enemy.”  This would normally be enough to make any arms collector extremely suspicious as unscrupulous dealers are only too happy to increase the value of a common item by attaching it to the memory of a military hero.

Nevertheless, if one were to attribute a random sword to a survivor of the Boxer siege, Captain Hall might not be at the top of the list.  People are swayed by the romance of a weapon that has seen action (or at least been captured there in).  While Hall’s men saw a good deal of action, he had an uncanny habit of remembering there was someplace else he needed to be just when the fighting broke out.

This pattern was noted by other residents of the ligation.  No less a figure than Sir Claude MacDonald, the British minister to Beijing, wanted to see Captain Hall court-martialed for cowardice.  After the siege, Hall requested a Naval Court of Inquiry to clear his name.  His subsequent commendation demonstrates that his reputation was restored.

Yet history has looked at him with some ambivalence.  Popular books, such as David J. Silbey’s The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China (Hill and Wang, 2012) and The Boxer Rebellion, by Dian Preston (Walker, 1999), probably provide a decent snapshot of his personality.  They remember him as much for his boorish behavior as his absence under fire.  Often noted was the occasion when he left Private Dan Daily to defend the Tartar Wall while it was under heavy fire.  Hall supposedly left to find reinforcements, but never returned with any.  Daily held the position by himself, fighting on through the night, and was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor.  If an antique dealer were to attach the name of a war hero to a Chinese weapon, one suspects that Daily would serve their purposes much better than Hall.

Setting thorny issues of provenance aside, let us assume that the label is correct.  How would Hall have come across the weapon.  This is where stories of taking a weapon from the body of a fallen enemy (probably one of the fanatical Boxers trying to kill Private Daily) typically emerge.  Or given that swords like this were finding their way back to the West in steamer trunks even before the Boxer Rebellion, Hall might simply have purchased it in a curio shop of the type that were common in the “Tartar City.”

We will never know for certain.  But there is a third possibility that is more likely than either of those.  It may be the case that what we are looking at is a relic not of the fighting that engulfed the region, but the large-scale looting by the Western military forces that happened afterward.

This looting was one of the most prominent features of the entire period.  Soon after liberating the ligation soldiers from all the allied states turned their attention to systematically stripping the palaces, mansion and common homes of the city of anything of value.  The most sought after items were (unsurprisingly) gems, precious metals and furs.  Close behind were silks, ceramics and art objects.

In the newspaper accounts of the period the officers of each army criticize their brothers in arms for the rapaciousness of their looting.  Americans stood in wonder of the daily “prize auctions” hosted by the British in which the treasures accumulated by common soldiers were auctioned to more wealthy officers, diplomats and missionaries.  Yet American soldiers could often be found taking part in these affairs, and were flagrantly disregarding the US Armies own orders against the practice. Everyone feigned horror at Russian and German soldiers kicking down the doors of curio shops.  The Japanese officer corps, ever disciplined, distributed specific lists to their soldiers telling them what sorts of cultural artifacts and artistic treasures were most needed by museums and schools back in Japan.  As word of this prolonged “carnival of loot” spread, enterprising Chinese merchants from Hong Kong and Shanghai even headed to Beijing to take part in the buying and selling.

While the Japanese and European diplomats assembled collections of immense cultural value, American soldiers were noted to be more interested in weapons and swords.  It should be remembered that many of these individuals were campaign hardened veterans who left the battlefields of the Philippines for China’s hot and dusty plains.  Hall’s sword seems to fit the overall patterns nicely.  One suspects that it was purchased at a roadside stall being run by an enterprising soldier, or possibly at one of the daily auctions run by the British. That is how most officers acquired their loot.

Chinese Soldiers and Officer in Beijing. Source: Illustrated London News, July 14th, 1900.

What does it mean?

It may be the case that the broad forces behind this weapons’ murky back story are more interesting than its actual history as an artifact.  For instance, if this blade was plucked from a battlefield in 1900, why not just say so?  Readers may recall that the Opium Wars (1839-1860) resulted in huge amounts of looted weapons and artifacts being shipped back to Europe where they were prominently displayed in both private and public collections. The display of these material objects seems to have been a major event in the creation of the popular image of China in the West.

Yet, as James L. Hevia (2007) reports in “Looting and Its Discontents: Moral Discourse and the Plunder of Beijing, 1900-1901” (in Bickers and Tiedemann eds. The Boxers, China and the World), there were no major public displays of looted goods in the West following the Boxer conflict as there had been earlier in the 19^th century.  It is useful to consider why.

First, the public knew about the scale of looting, and it became something of a social controversy.  Reporters for major newspapers and magazines ran accounts of auctions, markets, robberies and “punitive expeditions” into the countryside that seemed more interested in seizing property than finding Boxers.  In fact, the public hungered for any news about events or the conduct of the War in China.

The Boxer Rebellion emerged as a media spectacle just as interest in the concluding Boer War began to wane.  Early film makers created some of the first narrative “action films” to bring the sights of these battles to Western consumers. [Link] Publishers produced young adult fiction about boys who fought the dreaded Boxers to save their families (and earn a place in the imperial machinery). The 1901 “Grand Military Spectacle” in Earl’s Park staged a twice daily theatrical pageant telling the story of these events in which white actors in yellow face put on Chinese costumes and took up swords and spears to recreate for audiences the occult gymnastic practices of these enemies of civilization before staging an abbreviated siege of the Foreign Legation. (see page 42).

Yet the widespread reports of looting seem to have touched a nerve.  The practice had its defenders.  Looting was often framed in purely punitive terms, as the righteous retribution for the death of foreign missionaries and the destruction of Christian churches.  In fact, many missionaries were at the forefront of looting activities, seeing them as a quick way to raise the funds necessary to rebuild their communities.

Nor can one discount the connection between the psychological and the political meaning of these acts.  As Hevia notes, if the fighting was a type of violence inflicted on the bodies of combatants, looting was very much seen as violence inflicted on the property of the losers, and by extension the Chinese state at large.  Looting carried clearly legible meanings.  It was not just economic retribution.  It was also seen as the just humiliation of a backwards people who refused to prostate themselves before the superior West.

Public opinion at home quickly shifted against these arguments, in both their explicit and implicit formulations.  No less a cultural figure than Mark Twain took up his pen to decry looting being carried out by Christian missionaries.  The Western intervention in Northern China had never been justified in purely political, economic or imperialist terms.  That would have been impossible as the fierce competition between the Western powers would have ensured the almost immediate collapse of cooperation the moment that one country seemed to be gaining an upper hand in the “Great Game.”  Indeed, Japan and Russia would come to blows within a few years of these events.

Rather, the conflict had been framed in normative terms.  The West was forced to act to avert a massacre and defend both its fundamental values and vision of proper social order.  It was the lawless murder of Christian converts and Western missionaries, and then the systematic looting of their property, that started the crisis.  Newspaper stories of punitive expeditions into the countryside (which managed to kill many more innocent Chinese civilians than Boxers), and accounts of the “carnival of loot” in Beijing and Tianjin exasperated the public in both the West and Japan.

All of this was interpreted through an overtly racialized lens. Throughout the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Chinese hand combat practices were seen not so much as a set of skills to be mastered, practices with a history and cultural value, as a racial manifestation of Chinese cruelty, violence and indolence. For much of the 19^th century what was emphasized in this mixture was the “indolence” and backwards superstition.  I haven’t run across any Western account that viewed Chinese martial artists as particularly dangerous individuals at that time, though some were grudgingly willing to admit that they could be stronger and faster than one might guess.

All that background remained present after 1900, but now the threat of actual danger and violence came to the fore.  Yes, these individuals were backwards and superstitious, but they were also fanatics who could kill with exotic weapons.  And that was critical.  Killing always comes with a level of grudging respect.  In standing up to this manifestation of racialized violence the West found yet another justification for its imperialist zeal.

On some level, there was a desire for the danger that the Boxers promised.  This was the reason why they were recreated with such painstaking care in the yellow face performances at Earl’s Court or in the various early films romanticizing the action in China.  While interested Westerners had known about Chinese martial arts for much of the 19^th century, only now did they become interesting.  Only now did they appear on the front covers of magazines, or become something that one might want to “possess” (perhaps in the guise of a curio sword).  Chinese boxing gained an emotional power during these years as it was reimagined as a totemic messenger of the racialized forces of disorder and violence.

Every text or event carries multiple meanings, and there is often a tension between them.  This is where we will find the roots of the public aversion to the looting of 1900.  It is also probably why Hall’s sword, and so many others like it, sat languishing in closets rather than having someone pick them up and start asking serious questions about how to use them.

To see western soldiers, supposedly the epitome of discipline and honor, acting out the same “uncivilized” vices that were attributed to the Chinese Boxer, raised serious questions that went well beyond hypocrisy.  For the West, empire always carried with it the threat of racial pollution.  How does one structure a system where the metropole can exploit the periphery, without the periphery somehow finding a foothold in the metropole?

Had these troops been infected by their time in China?  Could “racial degeneration” occur simply through contact with Chinese individuals, or by prolonged exposure to the violence of Chinese society? The various treasures that were hauled back to the West were quietly laundered into the antique and curio market as the public backlash against looting was simply too strong to do otherwise. Yet in that rigidly hierarchic era, questions intensified about those who served at the edges of the empire. (Hevia, 106-107)

While produced before the outbreak of the Boxer rebellion, one would be hard put to come up with a more appropriate cartoon.The original caption read “It’s all a matter of perspective. When a Chinese coolie strikes a French soldier the result is a public cry of ‘Barbarity!’ But when a French soldier strikes a coolie, it’s a necessary blow for civilization.”
Le Cri de Paris, July 10, 1899
Artist: René Georges Hermann-Paul

Conclusion

How should a looted sword be read?  In the year 1901 did it represent the victory of the rational West over the forces of superstition and uncivilized barbarism?  Or was there a more sinister undertone.  Did it remind one too much of the violence that had been done, of the individual and social damage that could not be undone.  Had the West been infected by its contact with China, even though it sought to contain it?  Clearly such thoughts would help to inspire the prolific and popular Yellow Peril literature that would mushroom in the coming decades.

Swords such as this one would make frequent appearances in these novels.  In Western story-telling the line between a sacred treasure, a stolen treasure and a cursed treasure is often quite thin.  That anxiety might be helpful in thinking about the very slow spread of the Chinese martial arts. We often assume that because Westerners did not seek to practice the Chinese martial arts in the early 20th century that they must not have known about them.  Or that these practices did not shape China in the public imagination.

This discussion, inspired by a single sword’s rather murky backstory, should remind us that neither of these assertions are necessarily true.  The racialized nature of national identity in the 19^th and early 20^th century might explain why, even after the Chinese martial arts had gained a level of dark glamour previously been denied them, few Caucasians would be interested in such practices.  While authors, actors, artists and film producers had discovered that one could make a great deal of money by appropriating the image of these fighting systems and repurposing them for the enjoyment of Western audiences, there was not much to be gained by reimagining them in a more heroic mode.

That task would await a future generation of reformers.  They would begin with efforts to deal with the still festering memory of the Boxer debacle, on both the domestic and international stage.  Still, if the Boxer had not demonstrated a willingness to stand up to the forces of imperialism, and occasionally give them a run for their money, one wonders whether later Chinese nationalists would even have bothered.  While certainly a mixed and contested legacy (see for instance Paul Cohen), the dark glamour that arose through myths of the Boxer’s may have been more valuable to the emergence and eventual popularization of the modern Chinese martial arts than is generally realized. Who wants to study a martial art (or own a sword) that isn’t a little bit dangerous?

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If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to read: Zhang Sanfeng: Political Ideology, Myth Making and the Great Taijiquan Debate

oOo

Introduction

Greetings!  I am currently on the road for a conference and workshop.  As such, I will be sharing some papers that were presented at the Martial Arts Studies Research Network’s recent conference in Bath.  If you missed the first presentation in this series, click here for the discussion of “Bartitsu and Suffragette Jujitsu of the Early 20th Century.”

In this presentation Dr. Bok Kyu Choi will be discussing the dissemination of the Japanese martial arts in Korea. While most of the papers at this conference looked at events in the modern period, his research was unique in that it focused on an earlier era of Korean/Japanese interaction.  This talk may be of particular interesting to those of you who follow the Chinese fighting arts during the late imperial (Ming/Qing) period.

Dr. Bok Kyu Choi is currently affiliated with Leiden University as a visiting lecturer on Korean martial arts theory and practice.  He obtained a Masters degree from the Seoul National University researching the modern history of the Korean martial arts and then a PhD (also from SNU) with his dissertation on the interpretation of the Muyedobotongji and its significance in modern times.

Click here, or on the image below, to see more!

General Li Jinglin sporting both sunglasses and a jian.

Who was China’s “Number One Sword?”

Few individuals come to be known as both a warlord and a “sword saint.”  Even by the standards of China’s tumultuous 1920s, the carving out of two such notable public personas was an impressive achievement.  Yet General Li Jinglin managed to leave his stamp on both Chinese politics and the development of the nation’s traditional martial arts.

I recently started to delve into the modern development (early 20^th century) of the Wudang sword tradition.  The following biographical discussion of General Li Jinglin is part of my very preliminary research on the subject.  If all goes well, more posts on the background and social development of this unique style of fencing may follow.

Still, there can be no doubt that Li Jinglin (1885 – 1931) deserves more attention than he typically receives.  Beyond his role as a political figure in the turbulent warlord era, he was a dedicated martial artist.  Li studied with several important teachers, tirelessly promoting both Yang style Taijiquan and the Wudang sword tradition.  When not exchanging techniques with China’s most famous martial artists he was bringing them together as he created one martial arts association after another, eventually becoming a chief architect of the KMT’s Guoshu movement.

While clearly dedicated to the practice of the martial arts, General Li was also acutely aware of the multifaceted role that these practices could play in the creation of a new type of Chinese state and society.  Whether one’s research is historical or social in nature, concerned with the development of sword techniques, or attempts to impart “martial values” to the Chinese body politic, Li’s career can reveal much about the state of the Republic era martial arts.

The following essay touches briefly on each of these topics.  Yet its major goal is simply to lay out what is currently known about Li Jinglin’s biography.  At times this is a challenge as key issues are not well documented and other topics (his political maneuvering during the Warlord era) are complex.  Some questions, such as, “At what point did he acquire the nick-name of “sword saint?” are likely to remain unresolved.  This essay should be considered an initial research note rather than the final statement on any of these topics.

By way of disclosure I should state that I am not a member of any lineage stemming from Li Jinglin though, like a great many martial artists, I find that my practice has been somewhat influenced by his eclectic innovations.  If not for his tireless work during the 1920s, its very unlikely that I would currently be reading up on Wudang sword traditions. Indeed, it is an open question whether the current enthusiasm for Wudang could exist in his absence.

This essay is based both on published writings by Li’s students (such as Huang Yuanxiu’s 1931 Essentials of Wudang Sword) and other publicly available articles (including this very helpful translation of a Business Times piece provided by Bernard Kwan at Be Not Defeated by the Rain). Lastly, given the nature of Li’s career as a warlord during the 1920s, he actually shows up in a fair amount of history that has nothing to do with the martial arts. While specific questions remain, the broad outlines of Li’s life are well known and help to illuminate the massive transformation that overtook the Chinese martial arts during the 1920s-1930s.

Li Jinglin in uniform. Soure: benotdefeatedbytherain.blogspot.com

The Making of a “Sword Saint”

Li Jinglin was born in 1885 as the youngest of five sons.  His family were hereditary Han bannermen located in Zaoqiang County, Encai Township, Hebei.  This martial legacy notwithstanding, most of Li’s immediate and extended family seem to have been merchants. Some sources indicate that his grandfather had been a well-known martial artist in his own day.   Like many younger sons in similar situations Li seems to have been drawn to the martial arts at an early age and struck out while still young, attempting to make his mark on the world.

I suspect that the biographical appendix on Li Jinglin provided by Huang Yuanxiu at the conclusion of his study of Wudang sword is not entirely reliable.  Still, it is probably correct when it asserts that Li first began martial arts training with his father.  Other sources suggest that as a child (sometime between 1890 and 1898) he studied Yan Qing Men and Er Lang Men, two styles that were regionally popular.

Huang’s biography, which was approved by the still living Li, then asserts that as a youth he met and befriended a strange hermit named Chen Shijun from Anhui.  Chen supposedly instructed Li in a variety of practices including jacketed wrestling, Taijiquan, the spear and (of course) some method of Daoist sword.  When the young and impulsive Li attempted to leave to join the military Chen prophesied that if he left now, before completing his training, Li would have at best a middling military career and would struggle to achieve his full potential with the blade.  Li left anyway, and his subsequent career as a Warlord and sometimes ruler of Tianjin is, as they say, history.

Chen Shijun is a mysterious figure.  When outlining Li’s sword lineage in the appendix, Huang traces it back to Chen but does not attempt to go farther (say to Zhang Sanfeng).  In any case, the veracity of this story is unclear.  I haven’t been able to find independent discussions of Chen, and most sources trace Li’s sword instruction to another, more historically verifiable, set of teachers.

What is known is that (ominous prophecies not withstanding), Li left to enlist in the Qing’s military “Youth Corp” in Luoyang in 1898 at the age of 13.  Some sources, including the Business Times article translated by Bernard Kwan, assert that the leader of this unit was none other than Song Weiyi, another of the Republic period’s legendary swordsmen, and someone who is known to have taught Li his sword method.  Yet when they first met is a matter of debate.

In one version of the story Song was already the Ninth generation inheritor of the Wudang Dan Pai sword tradition.  Noting Li’s obvious talent, he accepted him as a disciple and began to train him in the jian.  As we will see below, there is at least one other account of how Li and Song first met which would suggest that their relationship started many years later.  Nor is Song ever discussed in Huang’s brief biographical sketch, which instead relies on the shadowy Chen.  As such the credibility of this account is unclear.

What is clear is that 1898 may have been a uniquely bad year to enlist in the Youth Corp.  The organization was disbanded because of the Boxer Uprising in 1900.  At this point the young Li (only 15 years old) returned home, but he remained focused on the martial arts.

In the same year Li sought out Taijiquan instruction with Yang Jianhuo (the third son of Yang Luchan).  History remembers him as a notably difficult and demanding teacher, a trait that Li would encounter again over the course of his martial pilgrimage.  At the same time, he formed a lifelong friendship with Yang Chengpu (the son of Yang Jianhuo).  The two remained close and Li would go on to champion and promote Yang style Taijiquan throughout his career.

This setback was not, however, the end of the young Li Jinglin’s military aspiration.  In 1903 he enrolled in the “Accelerated Military Training Hall for the Beiyang Army”, which was the predecessor for the better known Baoding Military Academy.  It is believed that immediately after graduation he began his career as a lower level officer in the capital.

Li first rose to prominence as a loyalist officer during the 1911 revolution.  Taking the initiative Li volunteered to command the 500 man 2^nd Suicide Squad and in the battle for Hanyang led the assault that captured “Turtle Mountain.”  He was awarded the Yellow Jacket (a color normally reserved for the imperial family) by the then moribund Qing dynasty.

While the fighting at Hanyang was probably Li’s greatest individual military achievement, his career flowered during the warlordism that marred the 1920s.  A complete accounting of this era is beyond the limits of this essay, which by necessity must focus on the martial aspects of his career.  One could write a small book on Li’s various postings and adventures during the period.

Suffice it to say that in 1920 Li Jinglin operated as a regional commander under the Anhui Clique General Qu Tong Feng.  After being ousted by Wu Peifu he sought refuge with the famous warlord Zhang Zoulin.  In 1922 he received a substantial promotion and became the Commander-in-Chief of the Three Eastern Provinces following the restructuring of Zhang’s military.

Two years later Li could be found leading the Fengtian Second Army which aided in the victory at Longku, and in November his troops occupied Tianjin, whose management he would oversee for several years.  Li’s regime is not remembered fondly.  His occupation of Tianjin was notable for its thuggish and predatory nature.  Like other Warlords Li was a member of the Green Gang and he went to extreme lengths to extort and squeeze the city’s merchants.  He even managed to clash with elements of the US 15^th Infantry Regiment that were stationed in the area.

These years were also a critical period in Li’s development as a martial figure.  One wonders if this is when the previously avid wushu student blossomed into a fully-fledged “sword saint.”  While Li consolidated his political/military base, he also turned his attention to the construction of a martial legacy.

A photograph from Essentials of the Wudang Sword Art by Huang Yuanxiu (Beijing, 1931). Source: Brennan Translation Blog.

The first step in this process happened back in 1920 when Yang Kui-shan became his first disciple while in Tianjin.  Yang personally attended to Li and served as his bodyguard for years.  Li later sent him to study with a variety of instructors and relied on Yang to handle much of the instruction of new students and disciples.

Later, in 1922, another officer who had been quartered in the house of a local martial arts enthusiast brought his landlord, a sword master named Song Weiyi, to meet Li.  In some accounts this was the first time that the men met, and Li invited Song to live in his residence as his personal fencing instructor.  This was the beginning of the master/disciple relationship that would eventually see Li become the 10^th inheritor of the Dan Pai Jian tradition and a tireless proponent of the entire Wudang tradition.

In another version of this story the two had first met in the old Qing Youth Corp and were surprised to be reunited after many years.  Song gave Li a copy of the Wudang Jian manual that he had authored making him the 10^th generation inheritor of the tradition.  While the details of the stories differ, both accounts suggest that Li (who had previously studied other sword traditions) devoted himself to the Wudang style during the early 1920s.

Other accounts of the period note that Li ran a very busy martial household.  In addition to his own practice, he also instructed his three children (two sons and a daughter, born to a wife and two concubines) in the new Wudang sword method.  Many of his top officers were students as well.

The 1920s were also a period of substantial innovation.  Song’s jian curriculum lacked any set forms, though it did contain additional neigong and empty hand exercises.  The Wu Jian (sword dance) “set” which was passed on by Song was really a type of free play or shadow boxing in which the artist freely flowed between each of the system’s 13 techniques in an improvised pattern.  Other aspects of the system came down to technical practice and fencing.  As such, Song’s sword method relied heavily on personal instruction.

To make the Wudang Jian suitable for mass dissemination in “modern China,” Li came up with a number of sets that could aid in instruction.  The first of these was Xing Jian (continuous stepping sword) which borrowed directly from the footwork of Bagua.  Dui Jan was a two-person set that focused on the central lessons of Wudang combat.  A longer Six Section Sword form was also created.  Following Li’s premature death other students subsequently adapted and constructed a number of Wudang sword sets.

Not content to rest on his theoretical laurels, Li appears to have sought out opportunities to test his mastery.  He extended an open invitation to China’s swordsmen to visit his home, share his hospitality, and test his skill.  The folklore of many lineages contain accounts of masters who either beat, or were bested by, Li in these exchanges.  What is clear is that Li was assembling a vast network of contacts throughout the Chinese martial arts community that would later become very important.

The creation of the modern Wudang sword tradition took another step forward in 1923 when Song’s sword manual was published in Beijing.  So far as I can tell this was the first ever publication on the topic of Wudang sword.  Around that time Li also seems to have gained Song’s permission to begin to more widely promote what had previously been a closely held fencing system.

Li retired from active military service in 1927 after a falling out with Zhang Zuolin.  Initially Li moved to Shanghai (and later Guangdong) where he continued to devote himself to the martial arts and grow his network of contacts and disciples.  For instance, both Chen Weiming and Chen Zhijin studied Li’s Wudang sword method shortly after he arrived in the South.

What might have been a productive and quiet retirement was disrupted when the country was hurled back into conflict by the 1928 Northern Expedition.   Li threw his support behind General Chiang Kai-shek and after the conclusion of hostilities was rewarded.  In 1928 Zhang Zhijiang invited Li to join the KMT’s Military Council.

A year earlier Zhang, Li and Zhang Shusheng had began to plan the creation of a new martial arts association.  While the effort would be national in scope (similar to the now defunct Jingwu movement) the new organization would be backed by the KMT and carry a distinctly statist, rather than a simply nationalist, flavor.  Like its civilian predecessor it would seek to reform and strengthen the traditional martial arts (stripping out any sign of secrecy or feudal superstition) as a precondition for strengthening the Chinese body politic in their quest for national unification and an end to imperial threats.  In March of 1928 the KMT controlled government passed Decree #174 creating the “Guoshu Research Academy.”  Zhang Zhijiang was named the director of the ambitious new organization, and Li was named deputy director.

We have discussed the Guoshu movement in many other posts, so it is not necessary to review its structure or strategy here.  Yet it should be noted that Li was active in its early years.  In 1928 he helped to organize the (now famous) first national martial arts examination.  In 1929 he followed this up by promoting the Zhejiang Guoshu Performance Gathering.

This was not his only achievement. That same year Li cooperated with Yang Chengpu to produce the Shandong Guoshu Academy manual containing the simplified Taijiquan set and 88 movement set still promoted in China today.  Li left a notable mark on both the Taijiquan and the Wudang communities.

On a purely speculative note, I have always wondered whether the division of the initial Guoshu program into “Wudang” and “Shaolin” sections (rather than a scheme that would have made more administrative sense) reflected Li’s heavy proselytizing of the Wudang concept during this period.  While Wudang is mentioned in some late Ming and Qing era literary texts, Li seems to have more or less been responsible for its sudden explosion in the modern era.

During these years Li’s network of personal disciples is reported to have grown to a prodigious size.  Li is reputed to have had thousands of disciples with hundreds more joining him after major events in the Guoshu period.  Given Li’s political status one suspects that most of these people were not looking for fencing instruction.  Still, this is an interesting reminder of the many ways in which martial and political networks were expected to reinforce one another in Republican China.

Other disciples of note did begin to study with Li during this period.  He took Li Yulin as a disciple in Hangzhou (who later went on to teach Dan Pai sword in Beijing).  In the same year Li accepted Huang Yuanxiu as a disciple.  Huang had already studied the Wudang sword system and took extensive notes during his brief period of instruction.  Li approved these for publication and they were later released as the Essentials of the Wudang Sword Art.  North Atlantic Books titled their translation of the text Major Methods of the Wudang Sword (2010).

Students who studied with Li at various periods of his career worked on, and received, different things.  Indeed, the field of Wudang Jian is vast.  But Huang’s efforts provide students with a detailed snapshot of Li philosophical and technical thinking towards the end of his career.

In 1930 Li was once again tasked with organizing military attacks in Jinan in support of the KMT’s conflict with Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang.  That same year he helped to found the Shanghai Guoshu Institute.  Then, in 1931, the seemingly unstoppable “sword saint” fell ill.  He returned to Jinan and died shortly thereafter at the comparative young age of 47.  It is hard to think of many other individuals who had such a profound effect on the development of the Chinese martial arts in such a brief time.  Nor would the Wudang sword tradition exist in its current form without his pioneering efforts.

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If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to see: Five Moments that Transformed Kung Fu

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Given that it is a holiday weekend, I will be keeping this research note brief.  Still, the subject matter is quite interesting.  China’s Republic era dadao, or big knives, generate a good deal of interest among both historians and practical martial artists.  They also played a role in the development of General Ma Liang’s career as a martial arts reformer.

In some ways that is a bit surprising.  The general’s troops were often Muslim and hailed from impoverished areas of Northern China.  Of course these were exactly the sorts of individuals that would win fame as they faced down the Japanese army along the Great Wall in 1933, or slightly later in famous Marco Polo Bridge incident.  Stories of such exploits went a long way towards explaining the general enthusiasm for the dadao among China’s civilian martial artists during the early 1930s.

Yet the dadao itself was not really part of General Ma’s highly structured “New Wushu.”  One may skim his four textbooks (published in their final form in Shanghai in 1918) and not see any hint of his eventual big knife movement outlined below.  Ma was certainly interested in swords, and fencing was an integral part of his system.  For reasons which I have never completely understood his training method seems to have focused on the jian (traditional straight sword) rather than the more militarily accessible dao (saber).  Yet that did not stop the enterprising general from heavily promoting the dadao as he searched for a route back into the center of China’s martial arts community during the 1930s.

In our ongoing series, we have already reviewed a number of Ma’s accomplishments.  A basic overview of his life can be found here, as well as more specialized discussions of his role in promoting the martial arts as part of educational reform and the organization of the first national Wushu tournament.   Most of the General’s great successes came in the late 1910s and early 1920s when public enthusiasm for the martial arts was at its peak, and it appeared that there was a decent chance that his New Wushu program would begin to appear in school curriculums around the country.

However, international and domestic politic trends attenuated these early successes.  After the explosion of the New Culture Movement, martial artists of all stripes struggled to articulate how their practices might contribute to the development of a modern, strong China.  Yet the wheel of fate is always turning.  Other geopolitical developments would breath fresh life into China’s martial arts community and the General’s flagging career as a martial art reformer.

The 1931 Mukuden incident was the event that cast doubt on the New Culture Movement’s prior attacks on the martial arts and their role in educational reform.  This social shock was further compounded in 1932 when the Japanese installed a puppet regime in Manchuria, touching off a wave of nationalist fervor in China.  The latent associations that had been forged between the Chinese martial arts and notions of nationalism in the 1910’s were reawakened.  This led advocates of the “National Essence” approach to call for the promotion of modernized and militarized versions of the martial arts (both in schools and the general civilian population) as a counterweight to the fear of further Japanese aggression against China’s cities and economic centers.

General Ma, while still discussed in newspaper articles, found himself to be increasingly marginalized during the late 1920s.  This became clear with the formation of the KMT’s new Guoshu (National Boxing) Institute.  While Ma was eventually asked to join, he played a comparatively minor role as an “educational reform” expert.  The sudden swing in public opinion in the early 1930s presented him with an opportunity to restore a measure of public leadership.

The following articles illustrate two of his activities during this period.  First, Ma seems to have become more involved with the promotion of the KMT’s Guoshu program.  Secondly, Ma began to formulate his own plans for the creation of a civilian network (or militia) armed with dadao, capable of repelling the advance of Japanese infantry through cities (or at least making it costly).  It should be noted that Ma was far from the only martial arts reformers in the 1930’s to have this same “good idea.”  Many individuals, at both the local and national level, were spreading similar schemes.  During the 1930’s the dadao became something of a defacto symbol of the state and Chinese military strength, and the nation’s answer to the more famous Japanese katana.  Multiple specialized manuals were published, and a huge number of local martial arts instructors began to assemble their own systems to teach the weapon.

I have yet to discover the ultimate fate of Ma’s dadao network.  Maybe it never got off the ground.  Still, it is interesting to read a somewhat detailed outline of how one of these groups might have been organized.

It should also be noted that these efforts were well enough known that they began to attract the attention of the English language press.  Indeed, the stories that appeared in these newspapers during the early 1930s set the stage for China’s “Kung Fu Diplomacy” efforts after 1937 as the country appealed for military aid in the face of a much broader Japanese advance.

Art of Self Defense Urged by Ma Liang

Genera Ma Liang, Mohammedan leader in China, urged every Chinese citizen to learn and practice Chinese boxing and swordsmanship which he said is necessary for the building of a strong China in the future, during a lecture at a [illegible] party given in his honor by General Chang Chih-chiang, director of the National Boxing Training Institute at 24 Weihaiweai Road yesterday at noon.

Following the lecture, performances in Chinese boxing and swordsmanship were given by 20 students of the Mohammedan general which won applause from the audience.

“The Art of Self Defense Urged by Ma Liang.” The China Press, Feb. 18, 1933. P. 8

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Wide Training in Big Sword Use is Planned

Students to be enlisted from all nation for Nanking course

Many already applying to join movement

Nanking, March 23. –(special)—People from the whole country will be trained in the use of the “big sword” which has proved its usefulness as a weapon against the Japanese, according to a move just started by General Ma Liang, Mohammedan Leader of China.

The move aims at the organization of a “National Big Sword Army” to begin at Nanking.  The idea of the Mohammedan leader has met with enthusiastic response as scores of young Chinese have registered their names with the central Boxing and Swordsmanship Training Bureau asking to be members of the Big Sword Army under organization.

According to the scheme laid down by General Ma, Nanking will be divided into eight districts, each to have one company of the Big Sword Corps.  All who join the organization will be required to undergo boxing training in the Central Boxing and Swordsmanship Training Bureau before being taught the use of the big swords.

The organization of the Big Swords Corp will gradually spread to all cities and the countrysides throughout the nation until people of the whole country are equipped with and thoroughly trained in the use of the big sword as an effective weapon.

“Wide Training in Big Sword Use is Planned: Students to be Enlisted” The China Press. March 24, 1933.

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If you enjoyed this research note you might also want to read: Bridges and Big Knives: The Use of the “Big Knife” saber in the Chinese Republican Army by Brian Kennedy

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Looking over my posts from the last few months I realized that it has been too long since we discussed new (to us) images of the Chinese martial arts.  In this post our friend Sidney Gamble will help to rectify that oversight.  Regular readers may recall that Gamble was an American sociologist who documented daily life in Republican China’s major cities.  His observations were recorded in several academic books.  Yet Chinese martial artists are likely to be more familiar with his passion for photography and amateur film making.  Some of this material found its way into Gamble’s various publications.  But he left behind a much larger archive of images, most of which was only discovered after this death.  We have already discussed the importance of his recording of the “Five Tiger Stick Society” and the Miaofeng Shan pilgrimage.

While northern China’s martial artists were never a subject of sustained study, Gamble’s interests in urban sociology seems to have brought him into frequent contact with such individuals.  Both his professional and personal interests ensured that he would spend a great deal of time exploring, and photographing, China’s marketplaces and festivals.  These were also great places to find martial artists, opera performers, patent medicine salesman, soldiers and a wide variety of other colorful characters.  From time to time such figures would make it into his books.

The photographs discussed in this essay explore the nexus of his encounters with marketplaces and the martial arts.  As part of his effort to document China’s changing cityscapes, Gamble took many pictures of Beijing’s shops and storefronts.  Some of these buildings were quite humble.  Others featured elaborately carved wooden screens and bright tile work.  He was particularly taken by the almost universal habit of fashioning shop signs from the objects that one sold.

Its hard to think of a better way to advertise one’s wares, and such signs might appeal to customers with limited literacy.  Still, a number of these signs also featured written descriptions, and various trades seem to have had their own stylized approach to signage.  Nowhere was this more evident than in the shops selling swords and knives.

Gamble photographed at least three different sword shops during his survey of Beijing’s markets.  Each sign was constructed of seven to twelve wooden sword replicas suspended one above another.  Perhaps the shape of the sign was meant to remind patrons of blades of various sizes and shapes on a rack.  Most of these wooden replicas portrayed the single edge dao, but occasionally other weapons appeared including spears heads, daggers or short and sturdy dadao.

I was somewhat surprised when I first came across these images.  The commonly heard troupe is that the Qing dynasty outlawed the civilian ownership of weapons as well as the practice of the martial arts so such things could only be found in secret societies.  Still, period accounts of the final decades of the dynasty (when the countryside was littered with militias and awash in traditional arms) would strongly suggest that those regulations were often observed only in the breach.  While researching accounts of the Boxer Rebellion I ran across one ominous note recounting how all of the storefronts in Beijing put up signs advertising swords and knives as the displaced Yihi Boxers streamed into the city during the spring of 1900.

Period observes noted that the market for swords and other traditional weapons had been in serious decline from the final decade of the 1800s onward. I assumed that the industry would have basically collapsed by the 1930s.  Apparently that was not the case, and a variety of weapons continued to be created, collected and sold in the sorts of small shops that Gamble frequented.  Indeed, as the following quote indicates, they continued to be indicative of the types of handicraft manufacturing that dominated much of Beijing’s economy.

In the northeast corner of the district was a group of streets, Kung Chien Ta Yuan (Bow and Arrow Street, that was as interesting as any we found in the city.  There, away from the bustle and traffic of the highway, were grouped the shops of the bow and arrow makers, some making long bows and others feathered-tipped arrows, others making cross bows to shoot clay marbles.  And many a boy can be seen bringing home a string of small birds that he has shot with one of these cross bows.  Then there are gold and silver shops where men, sitting on benches like saw horses and working with simple tools, make dishes of elaborate pattern.  In one corner is a shop where the men are busy cutting out saddle trees and making material for boxes, while just next door they are making copper kettles, dishes and pans, starting with the sheet copper and gradually beating it out with hammer and anvil into the desired shape and thickness.  There are stores occupied by the curio dealers with their assortment of porcelain, bronze and other things, wonderfully interesting places to spend an hour and keen men with whom to make a bargain.  Besides these there are cloth and tea shops, pipe stores, shops where they make reed mats, another for paper clothes, silk thread stores, a sword shop and one that deals in pig bristles. (Sidney David Gamble, John Stewart Burgess. 1921. Peking: A Social Survey. New York: George H. Doran Co. P. 322)

After reading this excerpt from Gamble’s survey, the next question must be, who patronized these sorts of shops?  Unfortunately, his writing gives no indication of who was buying traditional recurved bows in the 1920s-1930s.  But the patrons of the various sword shops do make the occasional appearances in his work.  Most often they can be spotted on the more vibrant market streets closer to the highway or at local festivals.

Through his films we have already met the 13 martial arts societies that took part in the annual Miaofeng Shan pilgrimage, which was an important social event in the Beijing area during the 1920’s.   Clearly schools and temple societies such as these would have patronized the shops that Gamble recorded on Bow and Arrow street.  And we have already reviewed numerous accounts of the sorts of martial artists, strongmen and patent medicine sellers that one was likely to encounter in more ordinary marketplaces.  Luckily Gamble also recorded some important images of these individuals.

Yet ever the sociologist, he was more interested in the question of how martial arts groups related to society, rather than simply seeking out feats of arms.  That turns out to be an interesting question as a great many martial arts schools in the 1920s-1930s had committees to provide either basic services to their members, or to raise money for community causes.  When we look at the groups that these martial arts schools cooperated with in their charitable work, it’s a little easier to see where they fit in the broader social structure.

Some $300 is annually raised for the chou ch’ang by a three day benefit given on the grounds of the Peking Water Company, outside of the Tung Chih Men.  This consists of an entertainment of singing, acting and acrobatics given by some nine groups of men who not only come and give their services but often pay their own expenses as well.  These men usually belong to some club or secret society and come year after year to make their contributions to the poor of peking.  One of these clubs, the Cloud Wagon Society, sent 40 members for the three days and subscribed $35 for their expenses.  This group sang old Chinese folk songs.  The Old Large Drum Society, founded in 1747, sent a group of 60 dancers and musicians.  The Centipede Sacred Hell Society, with some thirty-five members, gave demonstrations in the use of the double-edged sword, chains, pikes and other implements of combat.  The Sacred Jug Society was a group of 15 men from the village of Tuen Van, who amused the crowd by juggling jugs.  A group of actors gave their plays walking and dancing on four-foot stilts.  The Old and Young Lions Sacred Society made sport for the people with five lions of the two man variety, and whenever the lions moved the drum and cymbal players were sure to call attention to the fact by beating on their instruments. (Sidney David Gamble, John Stewart Burgess. 1921. Peking: A Social Survey. New York: George H. Doran Co. P. 208).

For better or worse, Sidney Gamble never set out to document China’s Republic era martial artists.  Perhaps that is just as well.  It is all to easy to read only the discussions of a single topic that interests us and begin to assume that such practices were omnipresent.  The challenge facing students of Chinese martial studies is not only to reconstruct the history of these fighting systems, but to understand their place in a much broader society where most individuals had little interest in the subject.

Gamble’s work is interesting to me precisely because it never places the martial arts at the center of the discussion.  And yet, these topics and practices are never totally out of view.  Even Beijing’s foreign residents and newspapers followed (from a distance) the developments of the Jingwu or Guoshu associations, and everyone could relate stories of particularly impressive (or pathetic) marketplace performances.  Yet far from being the center of the social universe, these martial organizations and practices remained one social movement among many.  The key to winning influence was in the friends you made, and how the martial arts sought to rhetorically position themselves.

Historians are most familiar with the modernist (Jingwu) and statist (Guoshu) discourses seen in the major reform movements of the period.  Yet in Gamble’s various home movies, photos and written accounts we see smaller martial arts groups continuing to be involved in local events and making common cause with other guardians of China’s performance and folk cultures.  In recent years this pathway (mostly ignored by elites in the 1920s) has come to the fore as China’s “folk” martial artists have attempted to position themselves as the vanguard of attempts to promote the nation’s “intangible cultural heritage” both at home and abroad.  Gamble’s work suggests that perhaps we should also be looking to the fruitful 1920s to locate the origins of this movement as well.

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If you are interested this you might also want to read: Collecting Chinese Swords and other Weapons in late 19th Century Xiamen (Amoy)

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Introduction When we think about the early history of the Chinese martial arts in the United States we tend to focus our discussion on either San Francisco or New York. Los Angles, Chicago and Honolulu also make the short-list of... Continue Reading →

  Old Friends One of the more rewarding things that I have been able to do with this blog has been to showcase previously unseen, or rare, images of Chinese martial arts.  I have tried to keep these photos, engravings,... Continue Reading →