124 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation
treatise in 1742 after he had retired to his native Balizhuang village, in Nei-
huang County, northern Henan (map 4).^30 Several decades later, the technique
was mentioned in official reports of rebellious activities in the province: Mem-
bers of the failed 1813 Eight Trigrams uprising in Hua County, northern
Henan, studied the Plum Flower Fist.^31
One reason for the relative wealth of information on Plum Flower history is
the method’s association with the late nineteenth-century Boxer uprising (Yihe
quan). By that time, the term “Plum Fist” designated not only a technique, but
also an organization. The north China plains witnessed the spread of military
brotherhoods with religious overtones, which were sometimes referred to as
“Plum Flower Fist Associations (quanhui)” and sometimes as “Plum Flower Fist
Religion (quanjiao).” Members of these groups—which combined martial prac-
tice with religious veneration of valiant deities such as the Journey to the West’s he-
roic Sun Wukong (Monkey)—played an important role in the early stages of the
anti-Christian Boxer revolt, arousing the attention of scholars, whose fieldwork
has unearthed Qing period sources on the Plum Flower Fist.^32
We may conclude our brief comments on Hand Combat Classic and Xuanji’s
Acupuncture Points with Cao Huandou’s 1784 introduction to the latter. Cao’s
autobiographical preface sheds light on his social background, which was
probably shared by other literate martial artists. The Shaolin practitioner was
born into a family of small landowners belonging to the lower echelons of the
local gentry. The clan was prominent enough to have its own school, which
Cao attended, and the immediate family was sufficiently affluent for his father
to hire him a private martial arts instructor, with whom the boy practiced after
Map 4. Some Henan sites associated with the Qing martial arts: Taiji Quan originated
at Chenjiagou; Wang Zongyue, author of Taiji Quan classics, taught at Luoyang and
Kaifeng; Chang Naizhou composed his martial arts treatises at Sishui; Yang Bing
compiled his Plum Flower manuals at Neihuang County; and Bagua Palm figured in
the Bagua Uprising at Hua.