68 Systemizing Martial Practice
The Piracy Crisis
Late Ming military experts were convinced that Shaolin monks had been prac-
ticing the staff for centuries. Cheng Zongyou, Wu Shu, Yu Dayou, and Qi Ji-
guang concurred that “the Shaolin staff method has enjoyed fame from ancient
times to the present.” Why, then, were they the first to record it? What hap-
pened in the sixteenth century that explains the sudden interest in the Shaolin
fighting techniques?
The late Ming growth of the publishing industry could provide a partial
explanation for the Shaolin martial arts being recorded at that time. Those
printed genres that documented fighting techniques—martial arts manuals
and vernacular fiction, for example—came into their own during the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. This is especially true of a genre that is
critically important for the study of martial arts history: military encyclope-
dias. The late Ming witnessed the publication of large-scale military com-
pendiums, in which a wide variety of martial topics—from cannons and
warships to fencing and sparring—were discussed.^41 These printed compen-
diums provided the stage for the discussion of the Shaolin staff.
Another, more significant, reason for the growing interest in Shaolin fight-
ing was the decline of the regular Ming army. By the mid-sixteenth century, the
army was in such dire straits that “the defense installations of the empire, along
with their logistical framework, had largely vanished.”^42 The situation was so
grave that in 1550, the Mongol prince Altan was able to loot the Beijing suburbs
freely. The deterioration of the hereditary Ming army was reflected in the atten-
tion paid to a large variety of local troops (xiang bing) that could be recruited to
supplement it. Military analysts commented on the fighting skills of such di-
verse groups as mountaineers (from Henan), stone throwers (from Hebei), sail-
ors (from Fujian), and salt workers (from several provinces).^43 As for the Shaolin
monks, particular attention was given to their military capabilities following the
mid-sixteenth-century campaign—in which they took part—against piracy.
The 1540s and 1550s witnessed pirate raids on an unprecedented scale
along China’s eastern and southeastern coasts. The pirates, known as wokou (lit-
erally “Japanese bandits”), included, in addition to Japanese and other foreign-
ers , l a r ge nu mb er s of C h i ne s e, who were i nvolved i n i l leg a l over s ea s t r ade. T hei r
attacks were especially severe along the Jiangnan coast, where they pillaged not
only the countryside but even walled cities. In 1554, for example, the city of
Song jiang was captured and its magistrate put to death. The government en-
countered tremendous difficulties in its attempts to control the situation, partly
because the local authorities were themselves involved in trade with the bandits
and partly because of the decline of the regular military. It was not before the
1560s when order was restored to Jiangnan, partially through the efforts of the
above-mentioned generals Yu Dayou and Qi Jiguang.^44
Several sixteenth-century sources attest that in 1553, during the height
of the pirates’ raids, military officials in Jiangnan resolved to mobilize Shao-