Theater, Ritual and Exorcism in Chinese Martial Arts (Rough Draft, please do not cite)

Scott P. Phillips Abstract Chinese martial arts have been the subject of highly politicized controversies which are rooted in the major conicts of the 19th century. In the 20th century the controversies surrounding Chinese independence, the Boxer Uprising, the New Life and the Guoshu Movements, two World Wars, the Chinese civil war, the Revolution and the Cultural Revolution have done much to obscure the cultural and social context in which Chinese martial arts were created. Since the Cultural Revolution, qigong fever, various marketing schemes, and popular martial arts lms have further confused the way we view this tradition. Drawing from the practical experience of the author, who has spent over 30 years as a performer and teacher of Chinese martial arts, dance and theater, this paper outlines some of the theatrical, ritual and exorcistic elements embedded in the movement training of taijiquan, baguazhang, and northern shaolin. We examine the following key elements: Intent, use of the eyes, stepping, visualization, emptiness, exorcism, mime. In formulating the context for these metaphors and methods, we draw from studies of Daoist religion, popular religion, history, anthropology, ethnology and theater studies. Hopefully this approach will open up new lines of inquiry into the conuence of theater, ritual, and martial arts, and give a basis for considering martial efcacy, ritual efcacy, and performance efcacy as mutually supportive categories.
1

Throughout this essay the general term theater and Chinese theater are used rather than the conventional Chinese Opera. Apologia Having been a student of Chinese martial arts for over 30 years I have managed to accumulate a pile of books on and about martial arts. Inevitably these books begin with a bit of history and with few exceptions these histories are a disappointment. They tend to be narrow, vague on important details, and give priority to what my teacher told me. After nishing this essay it dawned on me what I had written. In order to begin writing about martial arts in practice, I had to compile a brief history of martial arts which took into consideration the ubiquitous existence of theater and ritual in Chinese daily life. The third section of this essay is where my original material begins, the rst two sections are the history section of the martial arts book I will some day write. Structure of this essay: 1. The History of Martial Arts 2. The Big Changes at the End of the Qing Dynasty and the Beginning of 20th Century 3. Sources of Kinesthetic Knowledge Embedded in the Arts

Part 1
Classical Movement Arts In the beginning there was some form of movement: training for battle, for ghting, displays of martial prowess, dance, physical storytelling and ritual action. What it all looked like in the past will always be a guess. We have sources to inform those guess: Written descriptions, oral history, and living practitioners. As a living practitioner of Chinese martial arts, who has practiced a wide range of movement arts from different

parts of the world, there are a few things I can say about excavating history from the body. Movement training is subject to change over time. It can change in purpose, context, meaning, and value. It can also change in harder to dene ways such as style, quality or design. While all movement traditions change over time, there are methods of transmission which encourage innovation and those which resist change. Our primary interest in this essay is in what we will refer to as classical movement arts, those methods which encourage innovation only after some essential component has been transmitted. Arts which are passed down from teacher to student with a high degree of exacting specicity over many years. The martial arts of China clearly fall into this category as do professional theater arts and some ritual lineages. Classical arts allow an individual in a lineage to spend many years working on one very particular aspect of renement and to then pass that detail on to a student in a much shorter period of time than it took to develop. By this method enormous amounts of kinesthetic knowledge can be accumulated, stored and passed on. This is the dening process of classical arts and is key to the notion of gongfu-great quality which takes time to develop. It is in these rened details of movement that the problem arises. The problem is simple, there is a great deal of movement information in Chinese martial arts which has the potential to inform our understanding of the role these arts once had in Chinese society. There is information which has been passed on from generation to generation but, because it is movement and not language, has generally been overlooked in the discourse of history, ethnology and religious studies. This essay proposes that the movement training of Chinese martial arts, specically northern shaolin, baguazhang, and Chen style taijiquan are closely related to ritual and theatrical traditions, and that perhaps they were in fact the same arts at sometime in the past. Whether one sees this thesis as controversial depends on where they stand. Douglas Wile for instance, takes the position that there is no evidence of religious Daoism in any pre-20th-century texts about taijiquan, but that learning taijiquan is a
3

superb way to gain insight into the centrality of ritual in Chinese society (Wile 2007: 37). Others like Michael Saso have suggested that there may have been a single ritual culture at some point in the past which unied all these movement arts.1 Adam Hsu, a writer of popular books on Chinese martial arts, describes the style of northern shaolin practiced by the author as having been degraded by the addition of opera kicks--the presumption being that there was a purer martial art at sometime in the past (Hsu 2006: 51). Dr. Laura, the popular talk radio psychiatrist, promotes the view that martial arts are a great way to transmit discipline and moral values. While there is a signicant overlap between martial arts skills focused on ghting and the stage combat skills of a Jackie Chan, to the average Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) enthusiast, Chans skills are not real. For the most part taijiquan and baguazhang practitioners have denied any links to theater or ritual. Meanwhile the expression so tai chi has become a clich for being obsessed with health and relaxation. It all depends on where one stands.

The Milieu Although it is easy to identify the Chinese martial arts as classical in their method of transmission, it is not so easy to locate the milieu in which these arts emerged. In short a lineage is not enough to produce a classical art. Such depth requires a milieu which fosters its continuous development and innovation. My problem as a student from the beginning was that I could not see how the milieu of my teachers could have produced the type of content they were teaching me. In that sense, the clich that todays martial arts descended from some greater art in the distant past has always seemed plausible to me, it was the context of that art that did not compute.2 Was it for performing or ghting or both? In what situation? The answers I received to these questions were never satisfactory. George Xu, one of my teachers, did a lot of ghting in the streets of Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution, and he used his martial arts extensively for that. On the other hand his brother also did a lot of ghting during the Cultural Revolution and he had very little martial arts training. Or Kuo Lien4

ying, my rst teachers teacher, who performed the role of monkey in Beijing Opera, used superlative rope dart skills to tie people up when he worked as a bodyguard in Shanghai, and fought in Guomindang sponsored competitions, all presumably with the same basic training. Which has led me to ask the following unwieldy question. What was the milieu which fostered the creation of martial arts during the Ming and Qing dynasties? Pervasive Violence No one knows just how predominant martial arts were, but we do know that violence was something everyone had to concern themselves with. In David Robinsons Bandits, Eunuchs, and the Son of Heaven, Rebellion and the Economy of Violence in Mid-Ming China he includes this list of some of the many words in Chinese for rebel-bandit: (W)ulai (local tough), liumang (hooligan), youshou (loafer), xianshou (idler), wangming (desperado), guanggun (bare sticks), and wuji zhi tu (unregistered ones) on the one hand, and [there are] more ambiguous appellations, such as haojie (unfettered hero, haojun (unfettered hero), renxia (knight errant), and youxia (wandering knight errant) on the other (Robinson 2001: 2). The middle of the Ming Dynasty (around 1500) is considered a time of relative peace, but Robinson shows us how totally violent it was. His broad approach included examining a wide net of men and women, powerful, and not so powerful. His particular interest, however, is the unfettered man of force and his ability to transcend and traverse all levels of society. Illicit violence was an integral element of Ming society, intimately linked to social dynamics, political life, military institutions, and economic development. Nearly everyone in Chinafrom statesmen and military commanders to local ofcials and concerned social thinkers, from lineage heads and traveling
5

merchants to farmers, transport workers, and peddlers in the streetgrappled with the question of how to use, regulate, or respond to violence in their lives (Robinson 2001: 2). The role of marital arts, martial ethos, and military institutions in late imperial society forms an important if still little-explored facet of Chinas economy of violence. Violence in theater, literature, and the visual arts provides valuable insight into the economy of violence, as does the role of physical and symbolic violence in religious practice, doctrine, and imagery.and popular concepts of honor, justice, and vengeance in various parts of China (Robinson 2001: 2). Robinson focuses on violence closest to the capital, exploring the idea that it would be more likely that the government would have some sort of monopoly on violence nearer to the capital than in far away provinces. If thats true, and the 40,000 pirates off the southern coast at the time would suggest that it was, then violence was everywhere because the capital was teaming with bandits and rebels. .[P]rohibitions forbade bearing arms in certain contexts, most notably the strict laws against arms in or around the capital, especially the imperial palace. Despite the extra security measures taken in Beijing, the prohibition against bearing arms in the capital was not observed. Gangs of lahu, or urban gang members, brandishing knives, metal whip-chains, cudgels, swords, and various other weapons were frequently reported on the streets of Beijing during the fteenth and sixteenth centuries. The violations certainly owe something to Beijings enormous and very mobile population (between 800,000 and one million by 1500). (Robinson 2001: 93) Robinson argues that it was common for bandits and various sorts of highway robbers to be part of patronage networks which included civil authorities, military leaders, and village headmen. These networks protected the bandits to some extent but also meant that local magistrates or other types of ofcials or men of power were getting a cut of the loot. This allowed for complex negotiations which might mean that a particular
6

group of bandits lived in one region and robbed in another. The Ming Dynasty was enormously wealthy and probably the best commercial environment on earth at the time. It may have also been the most crime ridden, it seems like nearly everyone was on the take in one way or another. This ts well with Joseph W. Eshericks description of Shandong province during the late Qing Dynasty in The Origins of the Boxer Uprising. Esherick describes a situation where it was common for bandits to rob neighboring towns across provincial boarders but to play the roll of protector for their own villages. During the Ming Dynasty these martial leaders of these bandit patronage networks permeated the society right up to the eunuchs surrounding the Emperor and even the Emperor himself. (Robinson 2001) The Banquet Before the triumph of industrial commerce, hunger was common and most people lived with food insecurity on a daily basis. Without further study it is pure speculation, but banquets and feasts could have been an important way of establishing condence in the social networks which would provide food to everyone. Each person attending a banquet represented not only themselves but lineages, ancestors, big families and many other types of social networks. These networks necessarily involved men of marital prowess who fought both to gain food resources like land, water, livestock, money, equipment, and safe roads, and to protect the network from bandits, rebels or other types of raiders. The volatility of food resources was in constant play with wide spread violence and ever changing power dynamics. Banquets may have been a way of establishing patronage alliances, or mending them when they went sour. The large size of the Chinese empire, its cities, and its wealth, required the constant mobility of men at arms. The diversity of mutually incomprehensible languages in China meant that communication was often a problem. The banquet ritual was probably a way to make sure, as we like to say, everyone was at the table.3

Banquets were places where people were often asked to tell stories, to play music, to sing songs, or to perform feats of martial prowess, such as forms (taolu), breaking bricks, breaking chopsticks on their throat, or even accepting a friendly challenge match. Lineage families of entertainers were often hired to perform at banquets, presumably bolstering the status of party who hired them and they were on call to perform for local yamen (Johnson 2009 : 230). If we view banquets and feasts as key Chinese religious and social institutions essential to creating alliances between powerful martial leaders, local ofcials, rebels, bandits, secret societies, and other stake holders, especially in times of food insecurity, then martial arts forms may have played a key roll in sealing agreements. A public exchange of forms would have shown a willingness to take risks on behalf of others. Displaying ones gongfu was a way of showing a virtuous upright, self-sacricing nature (wude).4 Ritual Theater In the midst of all this violence and negotiation we see a proliferation of ritual theater throughout Chinese society over a period of several hundred years. If the density of professional and amateur theater troupes in Shanxi is an indicator of the over-allpicture, theater was extremely wide spread. David Johnson in Spectacle and Sacrice tells us that before the Cultural Revolution there were 10,000 stages in Shanxi and that during the Qing Dynasty the number must have been considerably higher. The following quote is from a scholar native to Shanxi recalling the situation before 1949. Every village, large and small, had nonprofessional performances of its own operas. The farmers called this family opera (jia xi). Virtually every village had this. After libration a single county (xian) could have had over 200 nonprofessional troupes....I remember that in my home town, Yishi, and its suburbs, there were over eighty stages, ad it was only an ordinary small town. Larger villages usually had ve or more stages, and the smallest ones had at least two (Johnson 2009: 146-147). Here is a quote from History in Three Keys by Paul A. Cohen:
8

Some of the conclusions derived from the serious study of Chinese popular culture in the postwar decades are relevant to our understanding of the embeddedness of Boxer religious experience in [Northern Chinese] culture. One such conclusion is that, at the village level, the sharp boundaries between the secular and the sacred, to which modern Westerners are accustomed, simply did not exist. The gods of popular religion were everywhere and ordinary people were in constant contact with them. These gods were powerful (some, to be sure, more than others), but they were also very close and accessible. People depended on them for protection and assistance in time of need. But when they failed to perform their responsibilities adequately, ordinary human beings could request that they be punished by their superiors. Or they could punish them themselves. If the god does not show signs of appreciation of the need of rain, Arthur Smith wrote toward the end of the nineteenth century, he may be taken out into the hot sun and left there to broil, as a hint to wake up and do his duty. This everydayness of the gods of Chinese popular religion and the casual, matter-of-fact attitude Chinese typically displayed toward their deities doubtless contributed to the widespread view among Westerners, both in the late Imperial period and after, that the Chinese were not an especially religious people. It would be more accurate, I believe to describe the fabric of Chinese social and cultural life as being permeated through and through with religious beliefs and practices. But not always with the same degree of intensity and certainly not with equal discernibleness in all settings. This is another facet of Chinese popular religion that, because it does not entirely square with the expectations of Western observers, has occasioned a certain amount of confusion and perplexity. Sometimes religion appears to recede into the shadows and to be largely, if not altogether, absent from individual Chinese consciousness. But at other times it exercises dominion over virtually everything in sight. Thus, the martial arts, healing practices, and the heroes of popular literature and opera often inhabit a
9

space in Chinese culture that seems unambiguously secular. But it is not at all unusual, as clearly suggested in the accounts of Boxer spirit possession..., for these selfsame phenomena to be incorporated into a fully religious framework of meaning (Cohen 1997: 102). It is possible that just as the boundaries between sacred and secular did not exist, at some point in history the distinction between performing martial theater and training martial arts may not have existed either. The most widespread religious experience in China prior to the 20th Century may have been attendance at a theater performance. Theater roles are divided roughly into civil and martial, with the martial roles requiring more athletic training. Thematically speaking, scenes of a historical or fantastic nature requiring stage combat were extremely widespread. Performing this type of theater required physical training and that training was martial arts. I realize that some will nd this statement controversial and I hope to address those concerns but for the moment consider that Chinese theater for the most part is what we call a physical theater, meaning the performers are not trained to conjure up emotions for the stage. Instead emotions, like characters, are expressed through precise physical action. In the Western theater tradition we have both physical and emotional theater. Mask work, for instance, because it hides all facial expression, relies extensively on physical training. The Chinese theater artist is not trying to express a feeling, he or she is performing an action which communicates a feeling or some other tangible human experience.5 In her book Chinese Theater Jo Riley describes the experience of learning jingju (Beijing Opera) as disassembling of the the body into its component parts so that each is training individually. This is followed by a reassembling ...into a harmonized, synchronized articulate whole (Riley 1997: 93)Taijiquan practitioners will recognize this as a dening principle of taijiquan. The seasonal ritual events in a Chinese village or town were inclusive whole-village art projects. Martial arts were included in these festivals through martial displays, demon troops accompanying deity statues to the festival area, processions through the village,
10

scripted theater performed on stage, and total theater that involved large scale audience participation. Johnson describes villagers as both participants and creators, who, in the climax of the New Year ritual in Guiyi act out chasing down, capturing and then disemboweling an actor dressed as an offending demon while masked gures roam about: Those mysterious and unsettling gures also strode through the streets of the village and observed the disemboweling of the Yellow Demon. Deities that the villagers had seen in temples since they were children came to life and walked among them, appeared on the stage while their lives and deeds were recounted with pomp and circumstance, and even took roles in some performances (Johnson 2009: 134). There were many different types of ritual performance throughout the calender year and every single village handled things differently. It is important to note that amateurs performed important roles in rituals and theater, as did Daoist priest, Buddhist monks, Yinyang masters, military personal, local elites, children and even high ofcials. In fact, I think it is fair to say that some village rituals had a role for everyone. Just how extensively martial arts were used in these rituals is hard to know. Each region had its own styles of gongfu and its own styles of theater. While the extent to which any particular style of training overlapped between theater and gongfu is unknown, it is important to recognize that the basic training for both theater and ghting could have been the same. In which case the style could have been rened for either ghting, performing, or both, depending on the purposes of the individual. Amateur actors were extremely common and they appear to have studied with professionals (Scott 1983: 120). They learned singing, reciting and acting, no doubt, but amateur or not, this was a physical theater and martial arts were the basis of that physical training (Riley 1997: 13). However, to the extent that a signicant portion of the village only practiced seasonally they would not qualify as classical artists. There were

11

professional actor troupes as we have noted, and I believe these artists, being classically trained, would have had formidable martial prowess. Any given ritual probably had a good deal of formal stillness, processional walking, offerings, mask work, and dances. Daoist priests are trained for jiao rituals from a young age (see Schipper, Lagerwey, Saso). David Johnson has pointed out that Yinyang masters, lineage holders who performed rituals for a group of villages, and family lineage ritual experts, who performed rituals only for their own village, were trained for various seasonal and sai rituals from a young age (Johnson 2009: 35). Given the extensive training periods, it seems plausible that we can consider the training classical in its depth and rich in layers of accumulated detail and renement. PURE MARTIAL ARTS TEACHERS? Who were the teacher of martial arts schools? Where did they come from? Some of them we know were actors, like the teachers of the Red Junks who toured the south performing and secretly teaching wingchun shaolin. These actors were members of secret societies and sworn brotherhoods. These organizations sometimes ranked members by martial arts skill, and once they reached a certain size developed ties with local clerks, runners, policemen, and soldiers (Ownby 1993: 49-50). There are also accounts of itinerant monks and Daoists and even beggars who took up residence as martial arts teachers. This population was also known for its performance skills. Many family martial arts lineages emerged during the Qing dynasty, Chen family taijiquan for instance, but how these families came by the arts in the rst place is a source of contention. Meir Shahar offers this description: Temples offered martial artists not only shelter, but also space to demonstrate their art. Temples, writes Susan Naquin, Were overwhelmingly the most important component of public space in Chinese cities in the late-Imperial era. Martial artists often made a living by giving public performances on temple

12

grounds. Like other rivers and lakes artists--actors, singers, and storytellers-they traveled from one shrine to another, performing on such holidays as the local gods birthday. A seventeenth-century pilgrim discovered at the Shandong Temple of the Eastern Peak some ten wrestling platforms and theatrical stages, each attracting hundreds of spectators who clustered like bees or ants. In every city temple fair, observed the late Qing Yun Youke, there are martial artists demonstrating their arts. Martial artists performed in temples on holidays and temple fairs. After their show they would collect money from the audience or sell pills and ointments, which were supposed to make their clients as strong as they, the sellers physique proving the efcacy of his medicine. In addition, some military experts led classes in temples on a regular basis. To this day, Taiwanese martial artists teach in neighborhood and village temples. Likewise, the seventeenth-century Wang Zhengnan taught his internal martial arts at the Ningbo Iron Buddha (Tiefo) Temple because, we are told, his own house was too small. This rare glimpse into an unlettered martial artists life is given us by his literati student, Huang Baijia. (Shahar 2008: 76).

Plum Flower Fist is sometimes held up as a pure martial tradition. (Hsu 2006: 82) Plum Flower Fist (emeihuaquan), gets its name from the seasonal gatherings in early spring to celebrate the plum blossoms. At these gatherings people would share food, perform their martial arts, have friendly matches, watch musical theater and practice story telling. Here is a quote from The Origins of the Boxer Uprising, by Joseph W. Esherick: As the conict escalated in 1897-98, and the pendulum swung from boxer to Christian ascendancy, important changes were occurring in the Plum Flower Boxers. For one thing, Zhao Sanduo was joined by a certain Yao Wenqi, a native of Guangping in Zhili and something of a drifter. He had worked as a potter in a village just west of Linqing, and had taught boxing in the town of Liushangu,
13

southwest of Liyuantun on the Shandong-Zhili border, before moving to Shaliushai where he lived for about a year. Though Yao was apparently senior to Zhao in the Plum Flower School, and thus ofcially Zhaos teacher, his inuence could not match that of his student. Yao did, however, serve to radicalize the struggle, and even introduce some new recruits with a reputation for anti-Manchu-ism. This began to bother some of the leaders of the Plum Flower Boxers: Other teachers often came to urge Zhao not to listen to Yao: He is ambitious. Dont make trouble. Since our patriarch began teaching in the late Ming and early Qing there have been sixteen or seventeen generations. The civil adherents read [sacred] books and cure illness, the martial artists practice boxing and strengthening their bodies. None has spoken of causing disturbances. For a long time, Zhao seemed inclined to listen to such advice, but as the conict intensied, he found that he could not extricate himself. In the end the other Plum Flower leaders agreed to let Zhao go his own waybut not in the name of the society. He was, accordingly, forced to adopt a new name for the anti-Christian boxers, the Yihequan [United Righteous Fist, know to history as "The Boxers"] (Esherick 1987: 152-153) The Plum Flower School of Boxing (Meihuaquan) always had a civil (wen as opposed to the wu, martial) component, a wing of the school which read scripture and cured illness using religious means like exorcism and talisman. The concern of the Plum Flower Boxer leaders quoted above in bold lettering is that the whole organization was rolling down the slope toward illegal, heterodox cult. The purpose of an organization could be multiple: banditry, rebellion, training, health, crop guarding, military prep-school, village defense, religion, fundraising, alliance building, inter-village conict, and/or entertainment. While it is outside the scope of this study, redemptive societies dened as having a charismatic leader, a transcendent or salvation claim, and a code of conduct (Ownby 2008: 25-26) must have overlapped with martial arts often, they may have been indistinguishable in an earlier era. The apparent

14

distinction between redemptive societies and martial arts schools may be more a result of political repression than actual practice. Though it is no doubt a suspect source, a cursory glance at Plum Flower Fist videos on Youtube will reveal hoards of two-person ghting routines (duifangtaolu) which would work perfectly as stage combat. In Qing Dynasty China, the traveling theater sometimes functioned as a subversive organizing tool and a way to hide martial arts training. It was a religious devotional act, watched by the gods. The theater was also the source of most peoples knowledge of history, and its characters were both gods and heroic ancestors. The following quote is from a website in Singapore. I have not been able to identify its sources. I include it here because it conveys an intriguing view of the relationship between martial arts and theater arts. There are various versions of the origins of Wing Chun Kuen but no-one knows for sure as there are no written records as the legend was passed down verbally from master to student. During the Qing Dynasty period Southern China was in turmoil and many rebellious groups hid there and concealed their true identities from the ruling Qing government. These rebellious groups where supporters of the old Ming Emperors and their descendants, and they sought to overthrow the Qing. Many of them were the survivors of the armies, trained in Shaolin Kung Ku, that were defeated by the Qing. These rebels formed Unions / Associations / Societies as a cover for there activities. One of these Associations was called Hung Fa Wei Gun. This group had a large northern element, including the Hakka people, it was these that started an Opera Troop so they could travel around the country without causing suspicion. They taught the southern people Opera and their Shaolin Kung Fu. After a time the Qing government found out about this and closed the Association down forcibly. It was many years before the people dared to start an Opera Troop again. They eventually did and called the
15

Association King Fa Wei Gun. This became a centre for Opera and Martial Arts training. After a few years the King Fa Wei Gun purchased two Junks for the Opera troops to travel around the country.6 Everywhere I have looked martial arts appears to be combined with performance and ritual so perhaps we should ask: WAS SHAOLIN TEMPLE A THEATER SCHOOL? In his landmark book Shaolin Temple, Meir Shahar asked why bare-handed combat came into existence in the written record during the Ming Dynasty: Why the late Ming? Why was a martial arts synthesis created at that period? The sixteenth century witnessed remarkable economic and cultural creativity, from the growth of domestic and international commerce to the spread of womens education, from the development of the publishing industry to the maturation of new forms of ction and drama. Hand combat [quan] evolution could be seen as another indication of the vibrancy of late Ming society. More specically, the integration of Daoist-related gymnastics into bare-handed ghting was related to the ages religious syncretism. A climate of mutual tolerance permitted Shaolin practitioners to explore calisthenic and breathing exercises that had been colored by Daoist hues, at the same time it allowed daoyin acionados to study martial arts that had evolved within a Buddhist setting. Intellectual trends were joined by political traumas as the Manchu conquest of 1644 convinced the literati of the necessity to explore the folk martial arts. As scholars trained in bare-handed techniques, they rewrote them in a philosophical parlance. The broadening of the martial arts into a self-conscious system of thought was largely due to their practice by members of the elite. Here, I believe Shahar is quite correct in noting that daoyin and hand-combat combined to create the Shaolin system but daoyin had a much larger inuence on theater. The
16

most complete daoyin system I have seen comes from a performing lineage of Monkey Kungfu. (See the section on daoyin below.) This self-conscious system we know today as martial arts rst developed during the Ming Dynasty partly as a result of laws. Chinese notions of law, even today, use the metaphor of a downhill slope. This is distinctly different from Western jurisprudence which uses the metaphor of a line or a wall. The question in the West is, Did he or didnt he do it? To break a law means to step over a line. In China, when one goes afoul of the law, all of the incremental improper actions leading up to the point when the law was broken can be considered part of the crime. The failure to condemn rebellious behavior in a child could implicate the whole family in a crime later committed by that child as an adult. (needs citation--Chinese Law?) Drawing again on Eshericks work, what Shahar is calling the ages religious syncretism was also a set of laws declaring it illegal to make sacrice to heterodox deities. The positive side of these laws, or the uphill side in keeping with the metaphor of a slope, was the practice of the three religions (sanjiao) Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism. The government declared these three different religious traditions compatible, mutually supporting, and good for the nation. Rolling slowly down the slope towards heterodoxy, we get the mass of Chinese people participating in, as they always have, a hugely diverse range of cults to local and national deities. Two factors tended to bring the label of heterodoxy down on these cults: predictions of catastrophe and seeking new converts. The most common punishment for religious heterodoxy was death for the leaders and dispersion for the followers. Many cults were divided into two parts, the martial and the civil, wu and wen. The wu, practiced physical movement like, dance, theater, movement based trance invocation, conduct regulating movement (qigong-like), and ghting techniques. The wen part of the cult practiced, chanting, spells, talisman making, meditation, and other sorts of channeling and trance. This sometimes blurry division developed because it allowed a certain defense against the charge of heterodoxy. An organization could claim that the
17

martial component was a sort of auxiliary club which did not participate in religious activities. The difcultly in discerning what the rule was, may itself have been a characteristic of Qing Dynasty law. (Esherick 1987: 42-53) The idea of self-cultivation, or what Shahar here calls self-conscious systems of thought emerged because it was not considered heterodox proselytizing to teach, or encourage people to practice, self-cultivation techniques. Self-cultivation was the government approved way to be religious! But Chinese law being a downhill slope and not a line or a wall, meant that people never knew exactly when they were crossing the line into heterodoxy. (Teaching self-cultivation in which one visualized oneself as the Emperor walking on all fours covered in mud would surely have been punishable by death; but an Emperor from another dynasty in a nightie, might have engendered leniency.) Shahar continues: The spiritual aspect of martial arts theory was joined by the religious setting of martial arts practice. Temples offered martial artist the public space and the festival occasions that were necessary for the performance of their art. Itinerant martial artists resided in local shrines, where the peasant youths trained in ghting. The temples role as a location for military practice leads us to a topic we had only briey touched upon: the integration of the martial arts into the ritual life of the village. Future research, anthropological and historical alike, would doubtless shed much light on peasant associations that combined military, theatrical, and religious functions. Preliminary studies of such local organizations as lion-dance troops and Song Jiang militias (named after Water Margins bravo) reveal that their performances have been inextricably linked to the village liturgical calendar. The very names of some late imperial martial arts troops betray their self-perception as ritual entities; in the villages of north China, congregations of Plum Flower martial artists are called Plum Flower Fist Religion (Meihua quan jiao).
18

This is not to say that all martial artists were equally keen on spiritual perfection. The traditions of hand combat are extremely versatile, allowing for diverse interpretations and emphases. Whereas some adepts seek religious salvation, others are primarily concerned with combat efciency; whereas some are attracted to stage performance, others are intent on mental self-cultivation. Various practitioners describe the fruits of their labors in diverse terms (Shahar 2008: 201). Shahar helps us place Shaolin Temple and all temples for that matter in the much larger context of popular theater/religion/culture. Esherick does the same thing for the Boxer Uprising: Anthropologists have often stressed the link between ritual and theatrical performance. In the case of Boxer ritual, the link was particularly direct. Spirit Boxer rituals were always openly performed, and people were attracted to them by the same hustle and bustle (re-nao) that drew people to the operas of temple fairs. When they left behind their mundane lives and took on the characteristics of the god that possessed them, the Boxers were doing what any good actor does on stage. It is probably no accident that it was in the spring of 1899, after the usual round of fairs and operas, that the Boxers anti-Christian activity really began to spread in northwest Shandong; and in 1900 it was again the spring which saw the escalation of Boxer activity in Zhili. On some occasions the Boxers even took over the opera stage, and performed from the same platform that provided their gods. There is no strict functional division between religion and theatre in Chinese society. (The Chinese would certainly not have understood the opposition between the two that the English and American Puritans saw.) Not only are operas lled with historical gures deied in the popular pantheon, but they provide the primary occasion for collective religious observances. Most Chinese folk religion is an individual or at most a family affair. There is no sabbath and people go individually to temples to pray when they have some particular need.
19

The main collective observance is the temple fair and operanormally held on the birthday of the temple god. The term for these on the north China plain is inviting the gods to a performance (yingshen saihui). The idols are brought out from their temple, usually protected by some sort of tent, and invited to join the community in enjoying the opera. Thus the theatre provides an important ritual of community solidaritywhich is of course one reason the Christians refusal to support these operas was so much resented (Esherick 1987: 330). In his book Tai Chis Ancestors, Douglas Wile had this to say about an earlier era: The Mongol dynasty, although short-lived by Chinese standards, nevertheless lasted three generations, long enough for a man to be born and die of old age within its span, Of the three arenas in which martial arts were normally practiced military, theatrical, and privatethe military and private were banned to Han Chinese during this period of foreign rule, and as a result, theatrical martial arts reached unprecedented heights. The civil service examinations being abolished, theatre also became one of the only outlets for literary talent. Literature and martial arts, traditional rivals, now found themselves in the same boat, or should we say, on the same stage (Wile 1999: 7). Such descriptions lead me to think that each temple had a martial arts group the way every school in America has a basket ball team. The same public space appears to have been occupied by theater, that does not make the two the same, but it does suggest that performers could move between arts or that they taught each other. It seems plausible that the popularity of theater is responsible for the development of open-hand combat and visa versa.7 In briey reviewing what we know about martial arts, theater, and ritual it is not hard to imagine that there was enormous overlap between these elds, or that at times they were one and the same, and practiced by the same individuals. Martial artists participated in ritual, ritualists had reason to ght, and actors participated in ritual and
20

probably had teacher student relationships with martial artists. There was a rich environment for cross fertilization and there were good reasons for it. Part 2 BIG CHANGES Imagine that during the 1800s it was common for individuals to take on three or more of the following roles: * Performing theater as an amateur or a professional * Practicing Martial Arts * Devotees of Martial Deities or other heterodox cults or redemptive societies * Bandits (Because bandits rarely robbed their own villages and their home villages often defended them, in places like Western Shandong province people often thought of neighboring villages as being full of thieves.) (Esherick 1997: 102) * Ofcially organized volunteer militias * Anti-bandit gangs (These were created because ofcial militias could not cross provincial boundaries, much like American sheriffs cannot cross state lines.) (Esherick 1997: 138-140) * Political Rebels, Secret Societies and Revolutionaries (Boxers, Taipings, Tiandihui, etc...) 20th Century Chinese who wanted to create revolution, preserve religion, train martial arts, or perform opera, all had incentives to coverup the interconnectedness of these historic endeavors. They began to claim that these spheres were always separate. And they set out to reform traditional practices so that they would appear to have always been separate. The Boxer Rebellion of 1898-1900 was a bloody uprising in northern China against native Christians and foreign missionaries and at times Ching Dynasty Troops. They
21

dressed in Chinese Opera costumes and claimed to be invincible to bullets. Using swords, spears and magic, they took to burning large parts of Beijing, Tianjin and other cities. The boxers were nally put down by foreign troops who took the opportunity to demand concessions and loot the imperial palace. The Taiping Rebellion (1850 to 1864), with 20 Million dead over a twenty year period dwarfs that of the Boxer Uprising with tens of thousands dead over a year or two. Taiping was led by a man claiming to be the brother of Jesus Christ. These two events are framed in China as enormous national humiliations. (Cohen 1997) The Boxer Uprising was a unique event, but its dening characteristics were far from rare. Theatrical presentations were the most widespread form of religious activity in China. Accounts of trance based forms of conditioning against bladed weapons are found throughout the Ching Dynasty. Possession rituals were much easier to do and more common in the north than they were in the south (Cohen 1997: 113-114 & 329). The Boxers were viewed by other Chinese at that time in complex and interesting ways. However, it is safe to say that belief in their magical powers and martial prowess was widespread. Ideas which connect religious devotion, theatrical characters, magic, and martial arts were not only widely held, they were the stuff daily life was made of. The Boxers regularly attributed the casualties they suffered in ghting with foreigners in Tianjin to the latters placement of naked women in the midst or in front of their forces, which broke the power of the Boxers magic. The story was also circulated and widely believed by the populace that a naked woman straddled each of the many cannon mounted in the foreign buildings in Zizhulin, making it impossible for the gunre-repelling magic (bipao zhi fa) of the Boxers to work properly.(Cohen 1997: 131) Dirty water, as a destroyer of magic, was unquestionably related in Boxer minds to the most powerful magic-inhibitor of all: women, and more particularly uncleanness in women, a category that, for the Boxers, included everything from
22

menstrual or fetal blood to nakedness to pubic hair. Water was of course a symbol of yin, the primeval female principle in China, and there was a long-held belief that the symbolic representation of yin could be used to overcome the effects of such phenomena as re (including gunre), which was symbolic of the male principle, yang. Several groups of rebels in the late Ming had used women to suppress the repower of government troops. During the insurgency of 1774 in Shandong, Wang Luns forces used an array of magical techniques, including strange incantations and women soldiers waving white fans, in their assault on Linqing. The Imperial defenders of the city were at rst frustrated by the effectiveness of the rebels ghting tactics. An old soldier, however, came to the rescue with this advice: Let a prostitute go up on the wall and take off her underclothingwe will use yin power to counter their spells. When this proposal was carried out and proved effective, the government side adopted additional measures of a like sort, including, as later recounted by Wang Lun himself, women wearing red clothing but naked from the waist down, bleeding and urinating in order to destroy our power. Such magic-destroying strategies were clearly well established in Chinese minds. The nurse who took care of the famous writer Lu Xun when he was a little boy once told him the following story about her experience with the Taiping rebels: When government troops came to attack the city, the Long Hairs [the Taiping] would make us take off our trousers and stand in a line on the city wall, for then the armys cannon could not be red. If they red then, the cannon would burst! (Cohen 1997: 129-130) Here is an excerpt from an online article about a famous martial artist whose martial arts family were leaders of the Boxers. In addition to being Traditional Chinese Medical doctors, bodyguards and caravan guards, these martial artists performed magical spells to protect themselves while killing Chinese Christians, all while dressed in Chinese opera costumes, possessed by hero-gods of the theater.

23

Pei Xirong was born in 1913 in Raoyang county in Hebei province. His father was a core member of the Yi He Tuan [the Boxers], and his mother had also participated in the Red Lantern movement [the female part of the Boxers movement]. His uncle, Qi Dalong, was a bodyguard in the caravan agency established by Li Cunyi who guarded caravans traveling between Tianjin and Gubeikou. When the Allied Forces invaded Tianjin, he and Li Cunyi battled against the invaders at Laolongtou Train Station. He fought courageously, sustaining several wounds.8 In the period directly after the Boxer Uprising, my rst teachers teacher, Kuo Lien-ying studied the role of monkey in Beijing Opera as a teen-ager. (I was told by my teacher that he performed as well, which as we will see raises questions about his caste status) The character/god of monkey was one of the most common gods to possess the Boxers during battle. Kuo also competed in leitai ghts (staged on a platform), he could still sing Opera parts 70 years later, and he was still doing drunken monkey gongfu too. Kuo was part of the pure martial arts movement, and an early student of the famous modernizer and inventor of Yiquan, Wang Xiangzhai. He worked as a bodyguard as well. Here is a satirical note by Lu Xun (probably the best known intellectual of the New Culture movement) comparing the martial artists of his day to the Boxer Uprising, published in New Youth, 1918: Recently, there have been a fair number of people scattered about who have been energetically promoting boxing [quan]. I seem to recall this having happened once before. But at that time the promoters were the Manchu court and high ofcials, where as now they are Republican educatorspeople occupying a quite different place in society. I have no way of telling, as an outsider, whether their goals are the same or different. These educators have now renamed the old methods that the Goddess of the Ninth Heaven transmitted to the Yellow Emperorthe new martial arts or
24

Chinese-style gymnastics and they make young people practice them. Ive heard there are a lot of benets to be had from them. Two of the more important may be listed here: (1) They have a physical education function. Its said that when Chinese take instruction in foreign gymnastics it isnt effective; the only thing that works for them is native-style gymnastics (that is, boxing). I would have thought that if one spread ones arms and legs apart and picked up a foreign bronze hammer or wooden club in ones hands, it ought probably to have some efcacy as far as ones muscular development was concerned. But it turns out this isnt so! Naturally, therefore, the only course left to them is to switch to learning such tricks as Wu Song disengaging himself from his manacles. No doubt this is because Chinese are different from foreigners physiologically. (2) They have a military function. The Chinese know how to box; the foreigners dont know how to box. So if one day the two meet and start ghting it goes without saying the Chinese will win. The only thing is that nowadays people always use rearms when they ght. Although China had rearms too in ancient times it doesnt have them any more. So if the Chinese dont learn the military art of using rattan shields, how can they protect themselves against rearms? I thinksince they dont elaborate on this, this reects my own very limited and shallow understandingI think that if they keep at it with their boxing they are bound to reach a point where they become invulnerable to rearms. (I presume by doing exercises to benet their internal organs?) Boxing was tried once beforein 1900. Unfortunately on that occasion its reputation may be considered to have suffered a decisive setback. Well see how it fares this time around. (Cohen 1997: 230-231)

25

Humiliation and Modernity9 In the early 20th Century Chinese people, particularly urban people, were deeply humiliated. For 300 years they had been under foreign Manchu rulers, forced to wear their hair in a queue as symbolic slaves. The Chinese people saw themselves as collaborators in their own oppression. They were unable to work together to overthrow a weak, corrupt government until a group of nine foreign powers allied to bring China to its knees. All the foreign powers were Christian, except Japan, and all were promoters of modernity. Scientism, rationalism, relentless quests for purity of form, and transparent clarityswept the country like wild re. China turned on itself. Anything old which required oral transmission, anything mysterious, secret, difcult to learn, or regionally particular, was viciously attacked as the cause of Chinas past failures and humiliations. Thus it was claimed, Martial arts were practiced by dirty herbalists, religious nuts, and desperate performers who gather up ignorant crowds and blocked trafc. Martial arts were to be replaced by tiyu (physical culture) which generally meant Western Sports tness and Olympic style competitions. Physical Education Departments opened up in schools all over the country. Huge swaths of martial arts culture were probably wiped out, never to be seen again. Imagine having spent your life developing an extraordinary spirit st only to be surrounded by ridicule on a national scale. Most probably chose to take their secrets with them to their graves. Those martial artists who resisted the onslaught of hysteria did so in the name of modernity! The rst powerful voice for making gongfu part of modernity was called The Pure Martial Society (Jingwu Hui). They argued that martial arts could be a sport like any other sport. All the other sports in physical education departments came from the West, having a sport with Chinese roots would be a great source of pride which would
26

help build the nation. For gongfu to be a sport it had to be totally open, accessible to women, have a clear standard curriculum, have a health and tness component free o traditional body cosmology terms like jing, qi or shen, and be competition oriented. Jingwu swept the country and Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. As political fortunes changed it was surpassed by the Guoshu (National Art) movement. The Guomindang government of Chang Kai-Shek founded Guoshu schools all over the country, and used the competitions along with academic testing to pick ofcers in his government and armies. Those who taught martial arts started calling it Guoshu, signifying that they were partisans of the modernizing project. They tended to argue that in the past there was a pure ghting art that had been corrupted by theater and superstition which could now be extricated from the ruins of history by being simplied and mixed with tness training. There were multiple variations on the argument, for example it was argued that martial virtues (wude) had been lost and needed to be reasserted. This was also a period when people began making up lineages and publishing teaching manuals.10 The lineages allowed people to pretend they came from a great and pure martial line of masters dedicated to nothing but martial virtue and pure technique. Inventing the lineages allowed people to write religion, rebellion and performance out of history. Some of the lineages may have been real, but they were not pure. By claiming a lineage, martial artists were also renouncing the past, both real and imagined, and they were saying in effect, Now this art, which was unfortunately secret for many generations is now totally clear and open! Anyone with four limbs and two ears can learn it! Chu Minyi, a minister for the Guomindang, invented Taijicao (Taiji Calisthenics) and in 1933 wrote a book called Tai Chi Calisthenics Instructions and Commands. Whereas traditional tai chi was simply too difcult for any but the most dedicated martial artist to master, tai chi calisthenics were pleasingly easy to learn and practice. They could be done in a few minutes and they used a counting formula like jumping jacks. He also gets credit in the book for inventing the Tai Chi Ball practices.
27

Chus Tai Chi Calisthenics were performed on stage at the 1936 Olympics. Fortunately or unfortunately he was a peace activist who supported the Japanese when they invaded. Later he was executed for treason, but not before performing one last taijquan set in front of the ring squad. (Morris 2004: 223-227) This is all great background for understanding the great modernizer Wang Xiangzais challenge to every martial artist in the country to either ght him or sit down and explain their art in plain language. He advocated discarding forms, performance, philosophy, theory, religion and he criticized many famous styles by name. Though he was known as a superlative martial artist, all this discarding was not good for continuity, his students went in three divergent directions: 1) some promoting standing still as a pure health practice, 2) others single-mindedly pursuing ghting skills, and 3) another group concerned with the ability to knock people over by blasting them with qi from a distance.
11

During the 20s and 30s the stage was set for the Communist inspired transformation of guoshu into wushu with its pure stage elements and integration of ballet technique. The stage was also set for the emergence of qigong fever, which has been so well documented by Nancy N. Chen, David A. Palmer and David Ownby. Hated Castes The existence of hated castes, both theater performers and yinyang masters, as well as other ritual experts, could explain a great deal about both the origins of martial arts and the process by which they have changed. David Johnson in Spectacle and Sacrice explains that entertainers (yuehu) were a degraded caste in China. An entertainer had to move off to the side of the road to let good people pass.

28

[Performers] were known as jianmin, mean people: they could not marry commoners, could not sit for examinations, and could not change their status. In some cases they were required to be on call to the local yamen to entertain at banquets and other occasions. (Just what their responsibilities were is never made clear, but they may well have included sexual services.) They were treated with contempt by the general population.(Johnson 2009: 219) While there were two major categories of entertainers, there were also castes within castes. The basic categories were coarse (cu) and ne (xi), generally it appears that the coarse played music and the ne played music and acted. (Johnson 2009: 220) Mean people were used for everything from entertaining visiting dignitaries, to weddings, to the most sacred rituals of a region. Opera Families were profane outsiders who lived in separate districts or separate villages and yet were paid to entertain and purifyto bring order and expel evil. Jo Riley also describes them: In the past, the Chinese performer was socially disregarded; no person from an acting family could rise to an ofcial post, and actors were listed on the social scale below beggars and thieves. The actors lived and worked in separate entertainment quarters outside the city gates as social outcasts. Before 1920, the jingju troupes were made up of either all male or all female performers. The female troupes performed in brothels and were mostly prostitutes.12 (Riley 1997: 15) People belonging to hated castes had a twofold reason to hide their origins. First the combination of modernity and migration gave them an opportunity to change escape their status, and secondly as experts in the old ways, they were targets for destruction. However, imagine for a moment being a person trained in a classical movement art; it is what you are--your body has been remade to a certain end. The incentive at the
29

beginning of the 20th-century to claim martial purity must have been enormous. Obviously some did survive as performers. I must confess, as a person from a society without an entrenched class or a historic caste system, my inability to comprehend relegating people to separate castes, and suggest this as a much needed area of further study.13 It has been difcult to ascertain how strict the caste boundaries were. Were all itinerant performers tainted with caste prejudice? Should we understand the arguments of the New Life Movement as a form of caste prejudice blended with modernity? Were antiperforming caste sentiments strong enough to limit artistic exchange between professional and amateur performers during an earlier era?

Part 3
Knowledge Embedded in the Martial Arts Intention (Yi) The standard way of teaching martial arts is to teach the movement itself and then to teach a ghting application of the movement. The movement is then supposed to be done solo with the intent, the yi, of that application. The application is imagined both as a sensory experience and as a visualization, yi refers simultaneously to both. The student might begin learning single applications of shuai (throwing), na (joint breaking), or da (striking), but for any given movement there are enormous numbers of applications and variations to be learned. Over time, as more and more applications for each movement are learned, the imagined experience becomes deeply layered. To an outside observer, the yi can appear to focus on a single application, or it can reveal a layered quality. Because the experience is both sensory and visualized, it is not contained with in the body. To use a mathematical analogy, what begins as a point, becomes a line, a plane, and eventually develops the embodied complexity of three

30

dimensional space. Internal martial artists develop the ability to form the yi into abstract shapes, like a sphere, a cylinder or a pyramid. This process of developing the yi can be based on abstractions, like geometric shapes. But the process works just as well if one imagines applying ghting techniques on a notorious villain and imagining oneself as a great hero with gleaming armor performing in an epic drama. As the layered yi of many applications develops it can resemble the visualization process of Daoist ritual. For instance, while sparring one could imagine oneself as an intermediary deity subduing demon troops, bringing chaos into order. Although Daoist ritual and internal martial arts14 differ in meaning, function and purpose, the two methods are quite similar. Internal martial artists use precise yi to makes movement more efcient and naturally efcacious. Someone who has not gone through this process might ask if all this visualizing is mentally taxing? The answer is that this process develops slowly over a long period of continuous practice and is virtually effortless. The visualization is widely used by actors.15 An actor in the process of learning a part embodies specic movements while imagining most of the set, the props, the era, the context and the scene. An actors yi must be very clear and specic in order to communicate all these things to the audience. In the case of ritual theater performed for the gods, the importance of precise yi may be even more important. My personal experience with deity invocation in Daoist meditation is a nearly identical process. For instance visualizing the deity Ziweis skin as black as the night sky lled with stars is the same process as softening the edge of ones yi. Walking the circle in baguazhang or doing a taijiquan form with this same softened yi allows qi to circulate in and around the body in much the the same way as a Daoist priest might visualize the night sky drawing into his body and then being danced back out into space. One type of felt experience in movement appears to function in the same with a variety of different visualizations and contexts. Similarly, neidan16 (inner alchemy), as a felt experience, seems to transcend any particular context, or visualization. Once it is established in experience it is possible to practice in theater, ritual and martial arts. The Eyes
31

Use of the eyes is an extremely important part of ghting. There are many martial strategies and tricks which make use of the eyes, an opponent may decides how to attack based on where a person is looking. Eye movements are also a key part of the often violent social/anti-social process of jockeying which happens in bars ghts and stand-offs, in essence, the movement of dominance and submission--which of course is a major subject of the stage and actor training (Johnstone 1987). With the higher levels of martial arts, a distant unfocused use of the eyes is part of effortless power training-- a seeming parallel to what people involved in law enforcement sometimes call the 1000 yard gaze--a sort of fearless ghting trance. (Miller 2008) One of the things which can happen in a state of fear or during an attack, is that ones vision narrows down like a tunnel and memories become distorted, which is a reason victims are notoriously bad at identifying perpetrators in a police lineup. This is just one of a variety of effects produced by the hormone cocktail released into the blood stream when a person is in danger of losing life and limb (Miller 2008: 59, 63). Deity possession can perhaps be understood as a non-scientic explanation of the effects of this hormone cocktail. This could also explain what is happening to a tangki in Taiwan or Singapore when he becomes possessed by a deity and has no memory of what happened afterwards. (Chan 2006 & Boretz 1996) In learning Shaolin, the rst instruction I received about eyes was what to do even before moving. Bring qi down and then allow the spirit to rise, slowly extend your gaze from your own body far into the distance and then gradually bring the gaze back to where you are standing, now begin the movement. Interestingly, this is a good exercise for mime. With mime one has to have control over exactly where one is gazing, given that what one is gazing at is generally imaginary. The basic practice of baguazhang is walking in a circle, sometimes around a tree or a pole, with the palms facing outward and toward the center of the circle with one arm
32

high and one hand low. When changing direction on the circle its called practicing palm changes. There are eight basic palm changes, corresponding to the bagua (eight symbols), and each one uses the eyes differently.17 For the rst palm change (qian) look into the distance with relaxed eyes. If one does this with ones hand up while walking around a pole, one will see two illusions. First the hand will appear double, and secondly, the pole will look like it is turning on its own. For the second palm change (kun) the eyes relax and draw in, sometimes described as predator eyes. If one uses this type of gaze while moving toward someone it feels as if the person is being drawn in. This is a subtle but important distinction. Usually when one walk towards someone they have a sense of their body getting closer to them, predator eyes are intrusive. (This effect/technique was described in the best seller Chi Running, which is a practical book about running inspired by the teachings of George Xu, who was major reference point for this essay as well). In the third palm change (xun), while spinning relax the eyes so that they do not catch or focus on any one thing, even when one stops spinning abruptly, or changes direction. With this method on is practicing becoming at ease with the whirl or blur of the world passing by. The moment one locks on to something with their eyes they will get dizzy. When dancers and acrobats spin they generally use a quite different technique something called spotting, which means they focus intently on a point and then whip around to see that point again. They can also whip around from a point to another prechosen point. In Kathak North Indian classical dance the dancer will spot on all four walls, spinning one and a quarter turns in split-second succession. This virtuoso effect is sometimes used to create the illusion of a multi-armed, multi-headed deity. Normally our eyes are changing all the time. It is easy to imagine meeting someone whose eyes are continuously suspended in one of these patterns. People have described they eyes of suicide bombers immediately before a bombing as gazing off
33

into the distance as if they are already seeing paradise. This yang use of the eyes seems to be associated with heroic martyrs. (qian) The yin eyes of the second palm change are the frightening look of the brutalized assassin. (kun) Everyone is familiar with the eyes of the third palm change, it is what happens when we drink too much alcohol. Drinking alcohol and spinning, or dancing in a circle, until one falls down is a staple method of shamanic practice used to contact spirits in many parts of the world. (xun) (Paper 1995) In the fourth palm change, the eyes transition smoothly back and forth between looking far off into the distance and zeroing in on a point close at hand, like clouds forming and then dispersing and then forming again. (zhen) (Again, it is a technique useful for mime, an elaboration of the Shaolin technique described above. Like all of these techniques it seems useful for creating stage characters, in this case someone who is suddenly focused, suddenly distracted, a child perhaps or someone trying to forget a tragedy.) In the fth Palm Change (li) the eyes are trained not to respond to or get drawn off when arms come in and out of the eld of vision. This is done by circling the arms in the coronal plane, while turning and walking. It is also used for training us to not blink when bursts of air or hands come suddenly toward the eyes. In the sixth palm change (kan) the eyes do the same thing they do in the third palm change, but instead of spinning the body, the head looks spontaneously from side to side, creating a similar blur or whirl effect but with a different rhythm. The sixth, taken to extremes is what people who are manic look like after a few days of insomnia. Its also the way toddlers move at a certain stage. The head turns away from

34

the direction the body is moving. Ive seen this type of movement in lms of West African deity possession. It is also used for comic effect in clowning. Each of these palm changes also has a visualization. A visualization is not a use of the eyes per se, but a well established visualization can engage the eyes as if they were really seeing. Seventh and eighth palm changes (gen and tui) integrate or harmonize eye techniques with visualization and movement.

What is the purpose of this eye training? 1. The hormone cocktail that effects us when we are in a ght can dramatically change our visual perception, it may be that this training is to familiarize us with these possibilities. [A more detailed accounting of the stress response can be found in Selye, Sapolsky, LeDoux, Levine---citations not available in time for this draft.] 2. It may be good training for what Sgt. Rory Miller calls the monkey dance, the sometimes violent maneuvering of dominance and submission in physical and social space. (Miller 2008: 42-49) 3. It may be a form of physical theater, the famous dan Mei Lanfang (1894-1961) created 48 photographs of all they different sorts of eye expression he used in performance.18 (Available on Youtube) 4. It may have a ritual purpose, some years ago I did a series of workshops in Oakland California with Chris Ray Chappell19 who claimed to have learned a Tibetan style of baguazhang in Australia called Lungta, each of the 8 palm changes he taught was associated with a deity invocation each with its own movement style, way of perceiving and whispered invocation. The palm changes were directly parallel to the Chinese baguazhang I learned. For instance xun (wind) was the invocation of a wind horse, zhen (thunder) was the invocation of the jealous goddess Kali Durga, etc... Perhaps these uses of the eyes characterize different types of deity possession.

35

Baguazhang may have come from a ritual tradition now otherwise lost in which ritual experts were trained to use their eyes in these very specic ways. The claim attributed to Dong Haichuan that he learned baguazhang from two hermits in the mountains may in fact have been true. (Allen 2007: 4) It at least opens up the possible origins of the art beyond known Daoist or pure martial lineages to include theatrical and ritual sources. Other Elements of Theater There are some uncontroversial elements of theater in Shaolin: sudden looks, sudden head turns, sudden changes of direction, stamping as a fake hitting sound (called naps in the theater), opening the curtains or the doors (kaimen), and general stage presence. Reading Jo Rileys Chinese Theater I was struck by the description of her jingju teachers emphasis on rhythm and detail when teaching kicks--it sounded just like me when I am teaching! And then reading her description of the basic warm up moves I realized that the rst three warm ups in my shaolin practice are character types in jungju; the scholar (sheng) represented by tight hip circles with the feet together and the arms behind the back, the general (jing) represented by wide hip circles with the feet apart and the elbows akimbo, and the comic (chou) represented by hands on circling knees, chest out, and feet together. Stances: The basic stances, horse, bow, monk clears his sleeves, falling, and cat (also called empty stance), are similar in all martial arts and theater. Holding each stance for some period of time (anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours) is the most wide used basic training for both traditions. The stances are also used by songzhen troops in Taiwan. There are perhaps as many as 200 stances if we include arm positions. In western physical theater stances are an important part of training as well. Comedia Dellarte for instance uses similar stances. The ability to take a shape, move, and them come back to the same shape is a useful tool for creating a characters movement. Jingju (Beijing Opera), like Taijiquan can be described as a sequence of postures and
36

transitions (Riley 1997: p???). The exacting nature of posture correction by a teacher creates a kind of certainty about where one is in space, such that if an actor goes to mime patting a child on the head, the hand is always at the same level each time she does it. The reasons given for holding stances in martial arts training are: structural integrity, relaxation, emptiness, explosive power, and healing. Admittedly the justications given for using stances in theater and martial arts are not the same, but we should take this with a grain of salt because teachers in both traditions are more likely to say, Just do it! than to give a reason why. Movement vocabulary is a common expression used in American modern dance which may prove useful for explaining the signicance of stances. Vocabulary is movement a particular lineage or choreographer which is recognizable even when it is not in any particular order or orientation. For example one dancer might say to another, I nd it easy to choreograph with you because we both know the Martha Graham movement vocabulary. We could say that martial stances were the vocabulary of Chinese ritual and theater. The Seven Star Step (Chixingbu) The seven star step is used by bajiajiang troupes in Taiwan for home or business exorcisms. These are either amateur or professional devotees of a martial god. They escort statues of deities in procession while wearing the costumes and makeup of demon generals. The exorcism begins with a general stamping once on the ground outside the house, then he opens the door, crosses the threshold and takes six more steps into the house, with the last step being a stamp making a total of seven.20 (Sutton 2003, Boretz 1996: 172-173) The seven stars are The Big Dipper, which points to the North Star. The North Star is the star which all other stars circle; it is the star which controls fate. After the seven star step the exorcist demon generals run in and out of the rooms. I had been counting the opening of my northern shaolin forms by the rhythm 2, 3, 4, but when I counted the actual steps they numbered 7 with a stamp on the rst

37

and a stamp on the 7th, and a kaimen (opening the door) movement corresponding to the step across the threshold. Its got to be more than a coincidence. I realized that every one of my northern shaolin forms begins with a Seven Star step. They begin with a stamp on the ground and a sinking into cat stance, which is like stepping over a threshold. Then the hands shoot out and break apart, as if breaking through double doors or the opening in a curtain, and run three steps, as if running into a building or onto a stage, followed by the monk clears his sleeves action and another stamp--exactly seven steps.

Mime in Taijiquan and Baguazhang In the North Indian classical dance tradition of kathak, there are three types of mime: Image mime, which uses symbolic gestures to communicate well known images, like the banks of a river, lighting a lantern or playing a ute. Because the audience can easily guess what is being mimed, the gestures can become stylized. Illusion mime: This is most familiar to western audiences, it is creating accurate illusions of objects. Mudras, these are a sort of sign language only insiders will understand, usually associated with divinity, like three ngers held up to signify Shivas trident. Chen style taijiquan and baguazhang could be superb training for all three types of mime, but the training would require a change in articulation and the usage of the eyes. For instance, to mime pulling a needle and thread one has to focus there eyes close to the ngers, to mime shooting an arrow one has to focus the eyes on a distant target. In her book Chinese Theater Jo Riley gives numerous examples of exorcistic elements in jingju. In her chapter on Roundness (also a key concept of internal marital arts) she describes the importance of the cloud hands (yunshou) movement, a horizontal locomotive action which punctuates transitions. Cloud hands is also found in the
38

taijiquan form and is performed repeated to transition from one side of the performing space to the other.21 In my many years of study I never had a teacher talk about cloud hands in terms of its function in theater, but clearly it has one. Similarly, movements like lazy about tying ones coat already function as articulated image mime. Movements like Lohan pounds the mortar or fair maiden works the shuttles have the quality of iconic character representations. Many of the hand movements in Chen taijiquan appear designed to punctuate movement by icking long sleeves. If indeed long sleeves were worn. It also plausible that at some point in the past, secret mudras were done inside long sleeves at key locations in the form, perhaps something akin to the dances done with mudras seen in Patrice Favas Daoist ritual documentary Han Xins Revenge.

Exorcism and Taijiquan The movements peng (ward-off), ji (push), lu (rollback), and an (press), are known in the Taijiquan Classics22 as the primary expressions of jin (power). They are in a sense the boundaries which dene what is and what is not correct taiji power in all styles of taijiquan and they repeat in various sequences throughout any given form. Wayne Hansen a commenter on a now defunct blog offered this wonderful linguistic explanation of peng, the most basic and pervasive form of taijiquan power (jin). Peng is the lid on a quiver. Imagine a cane laundry basket with the lid just caught in the lip at the top,by pressing the two sides the lid springs open. I am told this is how the Chinese quiver worked. With a press of the back muscles the top, which was covering the feathers from the rain, sprung open. Peng jin works with the same slight rounding of the back.
39

Great archers had to be able to hit deadly moving targets and hit static targets while galloping on horseback. They also had to be able shoot arrows in rapid succession. Popping the lid off a quiver with a little rounding motion might have been a very threatening act. In fact one might translate it into words by saying, Back off! The standard translation of peng is Ward-off! I imagine Im riding along on a mountain path and I sense something threatening. My rst instinct is to pop my quiver lid, which would in fact make a peng sound if it were water tight. Even if I have not seen an actual threat, I can prepare myself, and I can let who ever is lurking know that I am aware of them. This sort of communication could easily be translated as ward-off. Common exorcist rituals begin with re-crackers. The purpose is to ward-off ghosts. Ghosts and demons who are strong enough to need an exorcism, do not usually leave when they hear re-crackers, but their groveling sidekicks and entourages do take to the hills. The re-crackers are meant to give mediocre ghosts who are lost a chance to get away. But particularly malicious demons, the ones that feed on chaos, will actually be attracted to explosive sounds in hope that they will nd suffering and death. (The sequence of exorcistic actions in this section is an abstraction of a description in Donald Suttons Steps of Perfection p.130-138). The next ritual action in an exorcism would be the offering of spirits. In both Chinese and many African traditions this is done by drinking from a bowl of strong alcohol and then suddenly forcing it back through pursed lips to create a spraying which turns into a mist. The mist attracts mischievous spirits. Alcohol is spilled on the ground too. In the beginning of the taijiquan form, peng leads directly into ji. Ji is a small quick burst of force, sometimes described metaphorically as liquid spraying out of the ngers. Ji by itself is weak, it doesnt do much, but it can be used for a throw if ones attacker has rst uprooted themselves pushing against peng jin. (Of course ji directly in the eye would hurt!) I was taught to inject ji into the opponents empty spots, those places where they
40

are unaware, because it will stir them to attack and thereby make them more vulnerable. The opponents attack naturally leads into lu, the next move in the taijiquan form. Lu is a gathering and a drawing-in of your opponent (usually translated rollback). Lu defuses the attackers force. After the offering of spirits, the next ritual act in an exorcism is the drawing in and capturing of demonic forces. For instance offending demons can be drawn into a vessel, like a pickle jar, and trapped there. The nal movement in the taijiquan beginning sequence is an. An is usually translated press, or even press down. It is very much like resting your hands on a rounded pickle jar lid, weighting it so that whatever is inside can not escape. The nal ritual act is called applying the seal. The seal is like a piece of tape that holds the lid on the jar and records the date the spirit was trapped, what type of spirit it is, and when it can be released. Some captured ghosts are starved to death, some are transformed in biannual rituals, others are freed after serving time. In the following quote Louis Swaim is describing a preset two person sequence (a type of push-hands or tuishou): If the opponent wants to change hands in ...[the sequence] I... extend and open my right hand, pulling it toward my thorax to the point where the two palms are facing in and diagonally intersect like an oblique cross-shaped sealing tape (fengtiao), preventing the opponents hands from getting in. It is just like closing the door against a robber. This is why it is called like sealingThe image used of sealing tape refers to fengtiao, which were strips of red paper pasted across parcels, doors, crime scenes etc, as seals. These other uses of seals are akin in purpose and cosmology to the exorcists seal.
41

Daoyin as a performing art I have often heard that daoyin is synonymous with qigong. My experience studying daoyin from American Daoists Liu Ming and Paulie Zink suggests that daoyin is a distinct subject characterized by a combination of meditation techniques, some of them unusual like balancing on only knees and elbows, along with stretching, folding, rolling, bouncing, rubbing, explosive movement, pounding and scrapping. Meir Shahar writes convincingly that daoyin was combined with hand combat techniques to create Shaolin. However, I believe that the inuence of daoyin has been much better preserved in the theater arts. For those of you not familiar with Paulie Zink, he was the worlds preeminent practitioner of Monkey Kungfu. He dominated the California tournaments and exhibitions in the 1980s and I have yet to see a better performer of Monkey Kungfu (Tai Shing Pek Kwar). There are better acrobats out there and there are better contortionists, and there are possibly people who act a little more like monkeys than he doesbut there is no one else who put it all together the way he did. He credits his ability to years of training in the daoyin system which he learned along with the Monkey Kungfu. His system has all the components of meditation and movement I mentioned earlier inside of a much larger system of animal imitation. Each animal has a whole series of meditations, postures, and forms of locomotion. It is the forms of locomotion that really set it apart from a yoga class. Some of the postures are similar to yoga postures; the difference being that his frog eats ies and hops, his bunny wiggles its tail, and his downward-dog, scampers around the room and tries to lick people. Its a very lively theatrical movement system. San Francisco is blessed with several circus schools. The Chinese/Mongolian contortionist program I have observed has many of the elements of Paulie Zinks
42

tradition, however, the students are only allowed to specialize in an animal after two years of basic training in strength and exibility. In the 1990s when acrobats from the former USSR and the PRC came to San Francisco there was a clear difference between the two styles. The Russians were training for competition and expected acrobatics to be done on mats. The Chinese were training for the stage and expected acrobatics to be done on a wooden oor, which required both softer and more precise technique, qualities which extend the life of the performer, and which may come from daoyin. Liu Ming explains daoyin primarily as a Daoist hermit practice done in conjunction with long periods of meditation. It increases and harmonizes physical and energetic capacity as a method of revealing the freedom, spontaneity and limitlessness of our true nature (de). In Zinks lineage daoyin was merged with an intensely physical, theater tradition. How did this happen? The most common and widespread form of religious experience in China was public, physical, ritual theater. There were quasi elite23 performing families which were part of a designated caste. These families lived the paradox of being both hated outsiders and enthusiastically desired performers. Zinks teacher may have been from one of these families. I speculate that he taught a single outsider (an American) because he wanted to free the art from the tradition. He then quit performing himself and has taught no one else since. There is no direct evidence in Paulie Zinks book The History of Monkey Kungfu that his teacher Cho Chat Ling came from a hated caste. Zink and other practitioners of Tai Shing Pek Kwar (Monkey Kungfu) maintain it was invented in Shandong when a man, Kou Sze who was already a martial arts master, spent eight years in jail watching monkeys at the end of the Qing Dynasty. The main problem with this story is that the Monkey King theater role was widely performed for a couple hundred years before Kou Sze. An article in Inside Kungfu (2001) explained that some teachers of this system teach the Pek Kwar martial forms rst and only after years of dedication will they teach
43

the Tai Shing monkey forms. The article makes no mention of whole daoyin animal imitation system which Zink considers the basis of his training. Whatever the actual process of merging, transition and development, it is important to note the inuence daoyin has had on theater and performance in general. [Note: Paulie Zink is unfortunately an unwilling informant. He currently claims no interest in performing or martial arts and lives a hermits life in Montana, traveling several times a year to teach Yin Yoga workshops.] Emptiness: Confucianism is founded on the idea that we inherit a great deal from our ancestors, including body, culture, and circumstance. To some extent we also inherit our will, our intentions, and our goals. The Confucian project is predicated on the idea that we have a duty to carryout and comprehend our ancestors intentions in a way which is coherent with our own circumstance and experiences. In practice, it is entirely possible that we have two ancestors who died with conicting goals, or an ancestor who died with an unfullled desire, like unrequited love, or an ancestor who wished and plotted to kill us. Our dead ancestors are like spirits whose intentions linger on inside us to some extent in our habits and our reactions to stress. It is the central purpose of Confucianism to resolve these conicts and lingering feelings of distress through a continuous process of self-reection and upright conductso that we may leave a better world for our descendants. The metaphor is fundamentally one of exorcism. We empty ourselves of our own agenda so that we might consider the true will of our ancestors (inviting the spirits), then we take that understanding and transform it into action (dispersion and resolution). Finally we leave our descendants with open ended possibilities, support, and clarity of purpose (harmony, rectication, unity).24

Martial arts forms (taolu) rarely come with an orthodox explanation of purpose. They are an exact way of practicing, not a way of thinking, they are an orthopraxy. While
44

there is no absolute explanation of purpose, in context a forms purpose can become quite clear. For instance, they can be understood as an inheritance from the ancestors of each style. Practicing a particular form is a process of reanimating the movement of the ancestors who created it. This process of reanimating a form can further be understood as correcting the errors embedded in the form as it was inherited, in a sense healing the ancestors. Practicing a form can alternately or simultaneously be conceptualized as healing ones parents or ones genetic ancestors. In this paradigm gongfu acquired through the process of reanimating a form is conceptualized as a process of perfecting ones body. Since our aws are either inherited through our parents or acquired via our own bad habits, the practice of a form becomes a conduct correcting process. Gongfu can be understood as a process of developing efciency which recties the inappropriate, aggressive, and wasteful movement (jing) and breathing (qi) habits which we learned from our ancestors or acquired through bad habits. All of this is akin to a daily personal exorcism, a sweeping out of lingering inuences of the unresolved dead. I suspect that traditionally this type of practice was understood as an exorcism, which goes a long way towards explaining why, for instance, itinerant monks or priests soliciting money might perform a martial arts routinethey were demonstrating the merit they had accumulated (and shared) through this self-correcting process. There may have been some fear involved as well. Beggars were feared because they were seen as a negative omen and they were in the habit of crashing weddings and other important events if they were not paid off (Kuhn 1990: 117-118). Its not entirely clear how different categories of solicitors were viewed, it is possible that some types of accumulated merit (or anti-merit) were frightening. The important point is that gongfu practice can be viewed both as a personal exorcism and a conduct practice and that both increase the potency of ones actions in ritual, in martial arts, and in performance. A common criticism of Chinese martial arts is that it is full of empty forms. Most schools make an effort to enhance the forms by teaching applications for each movement.
45

Applications are demonstrations of how a conict might transpire but in practice applications have a tendency to fail. The reason they fail is lack of gongfu. Gongfu is a quality of movement which has efcacy regardless of the techniques employed. If a person has gongfu, they have it when they are taking out the trash or setting the table, or even when performing an exorcism. Loss of conceptual continuity between past and contemporary practice has led to many aspects of the arts being discarded. Fortunately these are classical arts and a great deal of material has simply been passed on without explanation. It can be recontextualized through an understanding of, or at least a re-imagining of, the actual historical milieu from which they were born. As gongfu practitioners we are emptying our practice of the inappropriate conduct of our ancestors and our teachers. A common criticism of the martial arts forms is that they are empty in the pejorative sense of meaningless and useless. However, I contend that the forms should be empty. The theatrical exorcistic traditions (nuo) described in Jo Rileys book Chinese Theater begin with a ritual emptying of the performers/exorcists bodies. They remove the three hun and seven po (together ten spirits, which polarize in our bodies and which disperse at death, hun up, po down) and using protective talisman they put the hun and po in vessels for safe keeping. They can then perform the exorcisms while possessed by martial deities, spirits or powerful allied demons, without fear of harming themselves (Riley 1997: 110-116). Jo Riley explains that the physical training of jingju (Beijing Opera) begins with a process of emptying. The movements of Northern Shaolin which I began learning at the age of ten, forms the basis of jingju basic training. Riley posits that the actors have a duel role as exorcists and as performers. In order to fully embody the theatrical and religious rolls they are playing, they must be empty. My experience studying Noh dance/theater at the Oomoto school in Japan in the summer of 1988 directly parallels
46

this. My Noh teacher taught us two slow routines and two songs to go along with them called shimai. When we were performing we were instructed to be as empty as possible. It was explained to me that a seasoned performer is sometimes empty enough that the actual spirit of that particular dance will descend the tree painted at the back of the stage and enter the performer. Daoist meditation takes emptiness as its root, and most Daoist practices arise from this root of emptiness. The main distinction between an orthodox Daoist exorcism and a less than orthodox exorcism is in fact the ability of the priests to remain empty while invoking and enlisting various potent unseen forces (gods/demons/spirits/ancestors) to preform the ritual on behalf of a living constituency, or the recently dead. (See my essay Portrait of an American Daoist) Calligraphy can be understood in the same way. To learn calligraphy is to copy the exact calligraphic movements of a righteous, accomplished ancestor. The rst step is to become empty. From emptiness one meditates on the ink, the blank piece of paper, and then on the piece of writing to be copied. The brush is held by a body empty of tension; the brushstrokes manifest on the page while simultaneously transforming and expressing the heart/mind. It would seem that in the mature expression of calligraphy both as an art and for talisman writing, potency is the direct result of the artists or priests ability to rst empty, and then manifest the characters internally, before committing them to paper. That potency is then transmitted to those who see the writing--inspiring, protecting, purifying or healing them.25 In a similar vein, puppetry performances are sometimes considered the most potent of all forms of ritual exorcism because puppets are truly empty. (Riley 1997: 150-165, Schipper 1993)) Emptiness is a key metaphor of Chinese culture found in the foundations texts of Chinese culture, the Laozi, the Zhuangzi, the Huainanzi, to name a few. A culture which privileges actions over explanations. Actions become embedded with layers of
47

meanings, meanings which can even appear contradictory. There is rarely an orthodoxy of meaning. The meaning of a particular ritual action, in this case emptiness, can change as it traverses through strata of society, time, region, gender, family, or identity. Emptiness is a key metaphor operative in a very wide and varied set of contexts. In martial arts, particularly the internal martial arts, emptiness is the basis, the ground, and the root of action. We should expect the forms to be empty. We should expect to feel nothing, taste blandness, see darkness, and hear silence. Emptiness is the most important concept in martial arts, period. Ones ability to be empty is directly applicable to ones ghting skill. ______________________ Baguazhang Walking When I rst began practicing the complex and detailed training use for baguazhang walking, I thought I was slowly improving as I accumulated skill and acquired facility. Later I realized that each instruction was showing me what not to do; it was a process of discarding my habits and conditioning and consequently re-learning how to walk with each practice. Still later I realized that walking could be reduced to putting my foot down with no agenda at all. An apophatic learning process demonstrating wuwei as ritual action. It is worth considering whether this kind of walking was at one time the physical training for carrying and presenting ritual offerings or implements. Martial Prowess In her book Chinese Theater, Jo Rileys translates of the word qi as an actors presence. The difference between martial prowess and presence may be little more than context. It is not just a coincidence that Mei Lanfang the most famous 20th century Beijing Opera star practiced baguazhang, as did his fellow performer Yang Xiaoluo (Zhang 2008: 54-56) Theater and puppetry were conceived as religious, exorcistic,
48

community healing events infused with martial displays. The deep embarrassment which fueled modernity drove wedges between martial skill, performance skill, and the signicance of both in community ritual. To the extent that we view ritual exorcism as a form of healing either for an individual or a community, the martial prowess of the exorcist is among the factors which give the exorcism ritual potency.26 ...The ghting routines of the nuo performers are often highly skilled, breathtaking displays of martial skill. In Anshun, several villages, such as Yan Qi and Xia Yangchang, perform with real, rather than theatrical, dao (knives) which seems to fuse the exorcist ritual with the theatrical element of this event even more closely. Wu Chungui, from the village of Qilin Dun told me that the ghting routines performed by his troupe are derived from the real military training given to the village ancestors-- soldiers of the Ming dynasty who were stationed in the area and nally settled there (the sufx dun means garrison). Wus claim is not so unlikely, since the area in front of the village temple (also used for theatre) was commonly the largest available space in which to practice military drill. It also echoes the comments made by Qi Rushan,...that village boys were automatically trained in martial arts and admired the theatre for its use of similar patterns. The Chinese character for theatre includes the element ge (axe), the same weapon associated with the Fangxiang exorcist-- reinforcing the close relation between exorcist ritual, acting and martial skill in a space specially designated as a place of worship, place of performance. (Riley 1997: 310) Potency could also be conferred in other areas. The association of a pharmacy with a place where martial arts was taught could confer efcacy on the herbalists. Medicine was profoundly effected by the same modernist movement that redened martial arts. Scientic replaced martial prowess as a signier (think: talisman) of good medicine. Daoist priests from earliest times considered emptiness, non-aggression and the cultivation of weakness to be central mandates for the performance of ritual.
49

(Bokenkamp 1997: 49) These mandates come from the Daodejing, the Huainanzi and other sacred texts. Yet throughout history divergent traditions of ritual existed side by side. Not just tangki who gain their prowess through being possessed by a god, but also many different types of ritual experts (fangshi) whose mandates diverge and converge with Daoist mandates like silk woven into a knotty braid cascading down through history. (Hymes 2002: 44-45) The route to natural potency--to spontaneous, martial prowess expressed in theatrical rituals of exorcistic healing--has been obscured by a continuing history of aggressive visions, real fears and vanity. Fortunately the physicality of this potency has not been lost, it is still waiting to be rediscovered, embedded in the martial arts as they have come down to us. Actors, particularly in Western physical theater traditions, have taken an interest in Chinese martial arts as an a form of actor training. While it is not widely recognized that martial arts training may have at one time been a form of theatrical training, those people who are experimenting with it as a tool are getting good results. For instance Daniel Mroz, a student of Chen Zhonghua, has been using Chen style taijiquan in his teaching and rehearses and has found that it is a particularly effect of way of conveying Grotowskis embodied concept of action.(Mroz 2009) In Phillip B. Zarrellis collection of essays by acting teachers and directors Asian Martial Arts in Actor Training, Robert Benedetti describes the hunger during the 60s and 70s among actors in the physical theater for more training. After trying every somatic discipline which looked even vaguely useful... interest dropped away. Of those which remain of continuing interest, none have better proven their feasibility, humane objectivity, and all-around effectiveness in actor training than have the martial arts. They are certainly no passing fad; contrarily, our interest and understanding of them is continually expanding.

50

References
Allen, Frank and Zhang, Tina Chunna (2007). The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang. Berkeley: Blue Snake. Benedetti, Robert (1993). The forward to, Asian Marital Arts in Actor Training, edited by Phillip B. Zarrilli. Center for South Asian Studies, Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin. Bokenkamp, Stephen R. (1997). Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: UC Press. Boretz, Avron A. (1996) Martial Gods and Magic Swords: The Ritual Production of manhood in Taiwanese Popular Religion. A dissertation, Cornell University. Cass, Victoria (1999). Dangerous Women, Warriors, Grannies, and Geishas or the Ming. Lanham: Rowman & Littleeld. Chan, Margaret (2006) Ritual is Theater, Theater is Ritual, Tang-ki: Chinese Spirit Medium Worship. Singapore: SNP International. Chen, Nancy N. (2003). Breathing Spaces, Qigong, Psychiatry, and Healing in China. New York: Columbia. Chekhov, Michael (1991). On the Technique of Acting. New York: Quill. Cohen, Paul A. (1997). History in Three Keys, The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. New York: Columbia. DeBernardi, Jean (1993). Ritual Process Reconsidered by in Secret Societies Reconsidered, Perspectives on the Social History of Modern South China and South East Asia. Edited by David Ownby and Mary Somers Heidhues. London: M. E. Sharp, Inc. Dreyer, Danny, & Dreyer, Katherine (2004). Chi Running, A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free, Running. Lady Lake: Fireside. Fava, Patrice (2005). Documentary lm: Han Xins Revenge. Directed by Patrice Fava. Distribution: CNRS Images (France). Hsu, Adam (2006). Long Sword Against the Cold, Cold Sky, Principles and Practice of Traditional Kung Fu. Santa Cruz: Plum Publications. Hymes, Robert P. Way and byway: Taoism, Local Religion, and Models of Divinity in Sung and Modern China. Berkeley: UC Press.

51

Johnson, David (2009). Spectacle and Sacrice, the Ritual Foundations of Village Life in North China. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center. Johnstone, Keith (1987). Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. New York: Routledge. Kennedy, Brian and Guo, Elizabeth (2005). Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals, A Historical Survey. Berkeley: North Atlantic. Kuhn, Philip A. (1990) Soul Stealers, The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard. Lagerwey, John (1987) Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: MacMillan. Miller, Rory (2008) Meditations On Violence, A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence. Boston: YMAA. Morris, Andrew D. (2004). Marrow of the Nation, A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China. Berkeley: UC Press. Mroz, Daniel (2009). From Movement to Action: Martial Arts in the Practice of Devised Physical Theatre. Published in Studies in Theatre and Performance. V29: 2. Ownby, David (1993). Chinese Hui and the Early Modern Social Order: Evidence from Eighteenth-Century Southeast China, in Secret Societies Reconsidered, Perspectives on the Social History of Modern South China and South East Asia. Edited by David Ownby and Mary Somers Heidhues. London: M. E. Sharp, Inc. ______ (2008). Falungong and the Future of China. Oxford: Oxford. Palmer, David A. (2007). Qigong Fever, Body, Science, and Utopia in China. New York: Columbia. Paper, Jordan (1995). The Spirits Are Drunk, Comparative Approaches to chinese Religion. Albany: SUNY. Riley, Jo (1997). Chinese Theater and the Actor in Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Robinson, David (2001). Bandits, Eunuchs, and the Son of Heaven, Rebellion and the Economy of Violence in Mid-Ming China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Saso, Michael (1978). The Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang. New Haven: Yale. Schipper, Kristofer (1993) The Taoist Body. Berkeley: UC Press.

52

Scott, A. C. (1983). The Performance of Classical Theater, in Chinese Theater From its Origins to the Present Day, edited by Colin Macerras and Elizabeth Wichmann. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii. Shahar, Meir (2008). The Shaolin Monastery, History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts. Honolulu: Hawaii. Sutton, Donald S. (2003). Steps of Perfection, Exorcistic Performers and Chinese Religion in Twentieth-Century Taiwan. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard. Swaim, Louis (1999). Fu Zhongwen, Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan. Berkeley: North Atlantic. Wile, Douglas (1996). Lost Tai-chi Classics from the Late Ching Dynasty. Albany: SUNY. _____ (1999). Tai Chis Ancestors, The Making of an Internal Art. New City: Sweet Chi Press. _____ (2007). Taijiquan and Daoism From Religion to Martial Art and Martial Art to Religion. Journal of Asian Martial Arts 16 (4): 8-45. Zhang, Jie & Shapiro, Richard (2008). Liu Bin's Zhuong Gong Bagua Zhang: South District Beijing's Strongly Rooted Style. Berkeley: Blue Snake.

53

About the Author

Scott P. Phillips began training in martial arts and qigong in 1977, he has been teaching for 17 years. While he was in his twenties he trained eight hours a day. His students range in ages from 5 to 75. For the last ve years he has been on the faculty of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine (ACTCM). For the last seven years he has been on the faculty of Performing Arts Workshop (PAW). His teachers have included: Bing Gong, a senior student of Kuo Lien-Ying, one of the rst Chinese 'internal' martial artists to begin teaching in the United States. Scott has also studied extensively with George Xu, Zhang Xue Xin, Ye Xiao Long, Kumar Frantzis, and at the Oomoto School of Traditional Arts in Japan. Scott studied religious Daoism for 9 years with Liu Ming the founder of the Five Branches School of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is a lineage holder in Daoist meditation techniques and many other secret and esoteric teachings. He Studied nutrition and the art of Cooking with Chinese Herbs with Nam Singh. Scott is a master teacher of Northern Shaolin as a Performing Art. His many years of training in dance include: Kathak (Indian), Congolese, Haitian (Dunham Technique), Modern, Ballet, and improvisation. He also spent years training with Rebecca Haseltine (Body Mind Centering) and John Ingle (Alexander Technique).

54

From a conversation between Michael Saso and Daniel Mroz, reported by the latter in conversation with the author.
2

This is in large contrast to two other arts the author was studying, Kathak (North Indian Classical Dance), and Congolese Dance, each of which was described as having developed in an explicit cultural context--a context which matched the depth and content of what was being taught.
3

For an overview of the literature on the use of ritual to establish or re-establish social order see Ritual Process Reconsidered (p. 212-233) by Jean DeBernardi in Secret Societies Reconsidered, Perspectives on the Social History of Modern South China and South East Asia. Edited by David Ownby and Mary Somers Heidhues.
4

My approach here based on my own experience with Chinese banquets and would benet greatly from a more systematic study.
5

Daniel Mroz suggested in conversation with the author it is even more distant, Chinese theatre is composed of constructed signs that refer to actions that produce feelings...
6

Ban Chung Zheng Dan Kam Cho Ga Wing Chun http://www.banchungchogawingchun.com/ WCLegend.htm Copyright 2009 C. J. Kennerley
7

Jo Riley makes the point that this overlap of temple, martial arts, and performance still exists in many villages : In 1991 I lmed a wushu club training in the village temple in Zhong Suo village in Guizhou under their master Lu Huamei, who was also the head of the village theatre company. Lu teaches tang quan style, which is the middle level range of skills and over three hundred villagers train regularly with him (nowadays girls included). Six small boys also take part in the training, the youngest of whom is ten years old, and the skills they learn from Lu are also observed from standing on the stage with the village theatre company when they perform. As in many villages, the village temple, martial arts training and performance indivisibly form the cradle of acting in and spectating theatre (Riley 1997:17).
8 9

From: Masters of the IMA http://wulinmingshi.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/pei-xirong/ Yosaku; 2009. The following section draws heavily on Andrew D. Morriss Marrow of the Nation.

10

Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo have collected the manuals from this period in the book Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals.
11

Wangs style of training was given the name Yiquan (mind st). The split into these three different ideas about what he taught is still apparent in teachers of Yiquan today.
12

Victoria Cass, in Dangerous Women, offers a challenge to the view that female performers were prostitutes. She contends that they were artists who had a fair degree of freedom.
13

Chinese Outcasts by Anders hansson deals with this subject but I was not able to attain it in time for this paper, in will have to wait for a later draft.
14

The denition of internal martial arts is a source of great debate, in this case it simply refers to the three arts--taijiquan, baguazhang, and xinyiquan.
15 16

See On the Technique of Acting by Michael Chekhov. For a description of neidan see the authors work Portrait of an American Daoist.

55

17

The baguazhang Im referring to in this study was taught to me by Kumar Frantzis and his students, though Ive also studied with George Xu and others. Frantzis studied with Liu Hung Chieh who was a student of Ma Gui (Ma ShiQing) (1852-1942), who was a student of Dong Haichuan (1813-1882).
18

Available on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4lcfAsGyko&feature=fvsr Eye Expressions of Beijing Opera

19

http://www.realtaoism.com is Chris Ray Chappells website. He is featured in Esoteric Warriors, by Alex Kozma. It is not available for citation at the time of this writing.
20 21

This may not be accurate, they do the seven star step and then run into the house.

Daniel Mroz told me in conversation that the jingju performer William Laus yunshou is very close to Chen taijiquan master Chen Zhonghuas dan bian or single whip movement. This study would benet from a side by side comparison of the various different types of yunshou and taijiquan movements.
22 23

See Louis Swaim for a quality translation.

According to David Johnson (2009) these families often traced their performance caste status to a punishment by the rst Ming Emperor. Because they had aided the previous regime they, along with all subsequent generations, were to be performers. Thus, at the bottom socially, they maintained a high level of learning and an ancient pedigree--quasi elite!
24

This section of the paper is written primarily from the understanding of Daoist ritual I gained from studying with Liu Ming. I was unable to nd adequate citations in time for the presentation of this paper.
25

The author practiced calligraphy everyday during the summer of 1988 at the Oomoto School in Japan and then again at San Francisco City College in the summer of 2000.
26

Terry Kleeman told me in conversation that he knows a Gaogong (Daoist High Priest) who attributes part of his ritual efcacy to martial prowess he attained studying Tai Kwon Do as teenager.

56