Many practitioners of Wushu dream of following that most famous of
Wushu practitioners, Jet Li, into the movies. The performative emphasis of
Wushu forms practice is simply the latest expression of martial arts per-
formance, amplified by the global reach of Chinese martial artsfilms.
Jackie Chan, a martial arts movie star whose fame is equal to or greater
than that of Jet Li, trained as a Peking Opera performer, and so his martial
arts is also performance martial arts, but of a different lineage. Even so, the
distinctly Chinese pedigree of a certain kind of martial arts performance
and the commercial possibilities of it have convinced a number of main-
land Chinese directors who had previously made dramaticfilms to also
create martial arts movies. Directors like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige
followed in the footsteps of the Taiwanese director Ang Lee (who directed
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) to createHeroandThe Promise, respec-
tively. Martial artsfilms make money in the international box office, and
they are also as Chinese as the Western is American.^19 When a Chinese
director wants to make an unequivocally Chinese movie that will make
money internationally, he makes a martial arts movie.
Conclusion
Chinese martial arts in the twentieth century was battered by all the same
changes that Chinese society endured in a generally difficult century. This
has continued unabated into the twenty-first century as mainland China
continues to change at a rapid pace. As a living tradition, martial arts has
defied successive governments’attempts to control, direct, and define it, all
the while persisting among the Chinese populace. The current government
of China would like to define wushu as the officially sanctioned Wushu
that is a Chinese cultural treasure, available to the world, but of course
always done better by the Chinese themselves. As a direct expression of
“Chineseness,”Wushu can be properly performed only by a real Chinese
person, though foreigners are encouraged to try and be judged by the
Chinese. The Chinese government must control Chinese culture, including
physical culture, in both the domestic and foreign environments. As the
Pure Martial organization found out in the early twentieth century, the
Chinese government was not content to allow the private definition of
Chinese physical culture.
Government efforts to control the martial arts have only been partially
successful. Since martial arts practice is no longer a direct threat to the
existence of the central government, the authorities in Beijing are not
worried about practitioners leading rebellions. At the same time, farmers
236 Post-Imperial China