riding and shooting. Wu Zetian’s formal exam hadfive aspects:firing an
arrow for distance, mounted archery, mounted spearfighting, foot arch-
ery, and verbal responses. Some of these areas were important for ranking,
and there were a number of other areas, like height and strength tests,
which were also used. Once again, we see the centrality of archery as a
military skill, as well as riding and mounted spearfighting. The men being
recruited through this system were to serve as officers, not common soldiers,
and would have been expected to be able to ride. Of course relatively few
Chinese men outside the elites would have been horsemen, so this exam was
aimed squarely at elites and possibly non-Chinese men. The verbal response
was not only a test of intelligence but also of basic language skills. It is likely
that this required the applicant to speak the Chinese court dialect. Any non-
Chinese attempting to use the exam system, or even provincial Chinese,
would have had to have had enough education to at least speak to the elites.
Thus, the exams were really about recruiting Chinese, or culturally hybrid
Chinese-Türkic elites.
Conclusion
Warfare and martial arts practice continued to change during the Sui and
Tang dynasties, though perhaps not as radically as during the Six Dynasties
period. Some of the changes that began during the late sixth century reached
maturity during the Tang and then receded. The armed forces moved
between more and less professional soldiers, and between more and less
culturally Chinese commanders. While in many senses these shifts were
caused by politics, they cannot be fully separated from cultural and social
changes, or from the effects shifts in one area had on the others. War and
martial arts were, as always, intimately tied to society, culture, and politics.
The ethnic divide in martial arts was straddled by many elites, the most
prominent of these being the Tang imperial family itself. It was not easy
to maintain two sets of fully developed cultural and martial skills so that
one could choose among these identities when desired. Most individuals
were naturally better at one or the other set, either through inclination or
upbringing. In thefluid and chaotic times of the Six Dynasties, Sui and
early Tang dynasties, it was particularly useful for even culturally Chinese
elites to develop some non-Chinese military and political capabilities, and
for steppe elites to develop Chinese military and political capabilities. Once
the Tang Dynasty was established and the wars within China settled down,
the need to work in both environments diminished. It became easier to live
in one world, and martial arts and the military began to separate from the
Conclusion 111