trained forces roamed the countryside with secondhand, old weapons;
unreliable and limited ammunition; and little in the way of military organ-
ization. These ragtag units deteriorated very quickly into bands of bandits,
and these changed into criminal organizations and groups of petty thugs.
At the local level wherefirearms were still rare, the traditional martial
arts were still extremely effective if afight broke out. The martial arts
practiced in towns and villages probably went on mostly unaffected by the
political chaos of the time.
The urban environment was more modern and guns were more avail-
able in cities. But the problem of where tofit the traditional martial arts
into the new Chinese culture was unresolved. For reasons of modernity or
Westernism perhaps, a clear conceptual break had formed between
Chinese martial arts andfirearms. The martial arts comprised unarmed
combat and the use of archaic weapons. Firearms somehow stood apart
from the martial arts, as if the use offirearms did not require any training.
The closest the martial arts came tofirearms was in the inclusion of
bayonetfighting as a martial art. This conceptual break also separated
illustration 24.Two men in Republican period army uniform demonstrating
bayonetfighting. From the Jingwu (Pure Martial) Anniversary Book, Republican
period.
218 Post-Imperial China