136 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation
teenth century witnessed the emergence of new bare-handed styles, which,
three hundred years later, were to spread all over the world. The origins of Taiji
Quan, Xingyi Quan, and Shaolin Quan—the earliest vestiges of which are re-
corded in Hand Combat Classic and Xuanji’s Acupuncture Points—can be traced
equally to the Ming-Qing transition era. Their emergence was accompanied by
the articulation of a new martial arts philosophy and mythology, to which we
should now turn.