were a rich target for bandits. Thus on one occasion the Song government
was able in an emergency to draft the tea merchants’protection force into a
Tea Merchants Army. These guards would have had a high level of martial
arts skills because merchants would have stressed, and paid for, quality
over quantity.
Society and martial arts were rather different in the Liao, Xixia, and Jin
states. Steppe society in these states remained relatively stable in terms of
martial arts practice. Riding and shooting were still both the everyday and
military campaign skills of most of the adult populace, male and female.
Where in Song society the army was a quite separate entity, a professional
force of paid martial artists, in steppe society most of the army was simply
drawn from the ordinary populace. Steppe leaders needed to prove their
legitimacy by going on military campaigns and demonstrating an interest
in warfare. Archery contests were held at steppe courts as basic to culture.
Such contests fell out of favor at the Song court by the early eleventh
century, if not earlier. They were revived only briefly when the dynasty’s
military fortunes declined and it was hoped that a return to more martial
pursuits at court might somehow improve things. In the steppe, martial
arts was nearly universal and skills in war highly valued.
Song society and culture was far more reticulated and specialized than
steppe society. The rise of a professional bureaucratic class of highly edu-
cated civil service exam graduates who did not, with very few exceptions,
practice martial arts or lead in war brought about a concomitant subordi-
nation of warriors in government and in overall status. With the exception
of the highest-ranking military families, national-level Song elites did not
practice martial arts. Physical skills were, by definition, markers of low
status. The shift away from the martial arts required of the founding
emperor and generals of the Song was extremely rapid. By the reign of the
second emperor, the younger brother of thefirst emperor, posthumously
known as Song Taizong, poetry competitions were more valued in court
than martial demonstrations. When Cao Han, a general, asked to take part
in a poetry competition since he had had some formal education as a youth,
he was laughed at and told he could use the rhyme“sword.”
Local society in north China was dominated by elites who often prac-
ticed martial arts themselves and maintained well-armed retainers and
tenants. The countryside in most of Song China was controlled by manors,
large areas of land owned and dominated by powerful landlords with
immense authority over the population. The north’s constant exposure
to steppe raids required a general familiarity with the martial arts. This
often created problems for public order as the highly militarized
118 The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and the Song Dynasty