the Internal School of martial arts. Acquiring even a smattering of this art is
sufficient to overcome Shaolin.^4
No author before this time presented or created this kind of dichotomy
between respective martial arts practices. Absent the political context, it
would just appear that the Huangs werefinally putting brush to paper
either to describe a centuries-old distinction in styles or were creating a
fictitious historical background for a new paradigm. We will discuss these
two possibilities later in the chapter. Here it is critical to note Huang
Zongxi’s background.
Huang Zongxi’s father was a prominent Ming official and member of
the Donglin faction of Confucian reformers. His father was executed in
1626 on the orders of the dominant eunuch faction at court, which was in a
life and death struggle with the Donglin faction. Huang received an exam
degree under the Ming and fought against the Qing with Ming holdouts
until 1649. He then retired to study and write for the rest of his life, refusing
to serve the new dynasty. His many intellectual pursuits would subsequently
earn him considerable fame, particularly after some late Qing Chinese
reformers like Liang Qichao rediscovered his writings. Huang was a native
of Zhejiang, and he returned there after he gave upfighting the Qing.
The facts of Huang Zongxi’s Ming loyalism are particularly important
when we examine his epitaph for Wang Zhengnan. Douglas Wile has argued
that the Huangs, father and son, made a political statement against alien
rule through the medium of Wang Zhengnan’s biography.^5 Meir Shahar has
extended this argument to point out the exact symmetry that Huang Zongxi
created with Shaolin and Bodhidarma, the legendary founder of Chan
(Zen) Buddhism, by attributing the founding of the internal school to the
Daoist saint Zhang Sanfeng. Of course, the illiterate martial artist teaching in
Zhejiang was also an interesting reflection of Huang Zongxi himself. Wang
is described as refusing to serve after the fall of the Ming, despite repeated
requests. Rather than accept the new dynasty, he turned to farming and
concealed his skills. The same could have been said of Huang Zongxi.
Of course, Wang Zhengnan did not completely turn to farming. He
trained Huang Baijia in the martial arts. And Huang Baijia did not study
martial arts with Wang for self-cultivation but in order tofight the Manchus.
Thus what Wang’s internal school of martial arts in fact was or how it was
distinguished from the external school of Shaolin is not explained. In practical
terms, it served to train an individual tofight effectively. The military officials
who sought to entice Wang into service surely did so because of the effective-
ness of his martial arts in combat. His internal style was manifestly more
Ming Loyalists 193