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benlehman at 03:49pm on 11/12/2009
benlehman at 03:49pm on 11/12/2009Whatever I'm thinking about #37
These days there are many people doing their utmost to promote martial arts. Recall that this has happened once before, only that time the ones promoting it were the Manchu nobility and vassals*. Now it is Republican educators, and their plans are different. As for their goals, sometimes it's one thing and sometimes it's another. An uninvolved person can't puzzle it out.
These educators have presently taken old styles such as "" and "" and transformed them into "new martial arts" or even "Chinese gymnastics," and taught young people to practice them. I've heard that there are many benefits, the two most important being:
1) It is useful as exercise. I have heard that foreign gymnastics are ineffective for Chinese people, and thus to have any effect we must reform our own gymnastics (that is to say martial arts). In my own experience: my hands hold foreign barbells or wooden sticks, my hands and feet stretching this way and that. Perhaps it would help develop my muscles? Surely it would have some effect. But unexpectedly it had no effect at all! So naturally I had to change to practicing sorts of acrobatics like "Wu Song takes off the shackles." Perhaps the cause of this is that Chinese people have a different physiology from westerners.
2) It is useful for the military. Chinese people can do martial arts. Foreign people cannot do martial arts. If someday we fight, and the Chinese win, wouldn't that be news? Even if we can't beat the stuffing out of the foreigners, if we could get in one "Black Dragon leg sweep" and fall at the same time, henceforth they couldn't crawl their way up. It would not be like when we fight these days, always using rifles and cannons. Rifles and cannons, although China has "had them since ancient days," at this moment we don't have any. We can't even practice with rattan shields, how could we get to rifles and cannons? (They never say that this is our shortsightedness.) If we practice martial arts, we could get to the level where rifles and cannons cannot enter (that is to say, internal techniques.) We've already tried this once, in 1900*. It can be said that that was our most infamous defeat. Read more about what it was like.
* These are both references to the Boxer Rebellion.
These days there are many people doing their utmost to promote martial arts. Recall that this has happened once before, only that time the ones promoting it were the Manchu nobility and vassals*. Now it is Republican educators, and their plans are different. As for their goals, sometimes it's one thing and sometimes it's another. An uninvolved person can't puzzle it out.
These educators have presently taken old styles such as "" and "" and transformed them into "new martial arts" or even "Chinese gymnastics," and taught young people to practice them. I've heard that there are many benefits, the two most important being:
1) It is useful as exercise. I have heard that foreign gymnastics are ineffective for Chinese people, and thus to have any effect we must reform our own gymnastics (that is to say martial arts). In my own experience: my hands hold foreign barbells or wooden sticks, my hands and feet stretching this way and that. Perhaps it would help develop my muscles? Surely it would have some effect. But unexpectedly it had no effect at all! So naturally I had to change to practicing sorts of acrobatics like "Wu Song takes off the shackles." Perhaps the cause of this is that Chinese people have a different physiology from westerners.
2) It is useful for the military. Chinese people can do martial arts. Foreign people cannot do martial arts. If someday we fight, and the Chinese win, wouldn't that be news? Even if we can't beat the stuffing out of the foreigners, if we could get in one "Black Dragon leg sweep" and fall at the same time, henceforth they couldn't crawl their way up. It would not be like when we fight these days, always using rifles and cannons. Rifles and cannons, although China has "had them since ancient days," at this moment we don't have any. We can't even practice with rattan shields, how could we get to rifles and cannons? (They never say that this is our shortsightedness.) If we practice martial arts, we could get to the level where rifles and cannons cannot enter (that is to say, internal techniques.) We've already tried this once, in 1900*. It can be said that that was our most infamous defeat. Read more about what it was like.
* These are both references to the Boxer Rebellion.
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