whose activities were of a‘predatory’nature, local elites who organized
forces to protect their communities from the depredations of the bandits,
and local Sui officials, who now enjoyed unaccustomed freedom of maneu-
ver as a result of the weakness of the center.”^1
Despite the brevity of the Sui Dynasty, and the intensity of the struggle
for power that followed its disintegration, China did not fall back into
divisions of the Six Dynasties period for very long. It only took about a
decade for Li Yuan, posthumously known as Tang Gaozu (r. 618 – 626 ), a
member of the northwestern aristocracy and former Sui official, to establish
the Tang Dynasty and destroy all his rivals.^2 Violence and martial arts were
everywhere, as vast numbers of men were recruited or drafted into armies
and armed bands of all sizes. The contest was a massive military contest
won by Li Yuan. One of his most important generals was his second son, Li
Shimin, posthumously known as Tang Taizong (r. 626 – 649 ), who would
exemplify the martial traditions of both the steppe and the Chinese.
Li Shimin had begun his career as a military commander as early as 617
when he was in his late teens. He was both literate and trained in the
martial arts, as would be expected from someone of his aristocratic back-
ground. These were necessary skills for administration and leadership in
battle. On the literary side, he was familiar with the Confucian Classics
and some of the histories, could compose functional poetry, and could do
reasonably good calligraphy (being particularly known for the“Flying
White”style, a style characterized by speed and energy). On the martial
arts side, he was quite capable in riding, shooting, and fencing. Moreover,
he was an apparently enthusiastic participant in combat,“fighting until
his sword was broken and his sleevesfilled with blood.”^3 Li Shimin later
claimed that he had personally killed more than a thousand men over
the course of his military career.^4 This may have been an exaggeration,
though not necessarily a gross one, but it does make clear the sort of
martial values an aristocrat and ruler thought valuable in legitimating his
political power. The early Tang rulers were men who had directed battles
and took part in them.
The Tang imperial family was itself partly non-Chinese, both culturally
and through marriage. Tang culture was also the product of centuries of
cultural intermixing between Chinese and various steppe practices. This
was true of martial arts as well. The ruling house of the Tang dynasty
initially exemplified this hybrid martial culture, and it is during this time
that civil oriented elites began to formulate a clear split between civil and
military values (a split that may also have had ethnic undertones). At the
same time, the middle Tang saw the collapse of thefubingsystem as the
The Sui and Tang Dynasties 95