internal Chinese practice? In a martial arts story an old man might man-
ifest dramatic and overwhelmingfighting skills based upon internal mar-
tial arts. The true power and value of a martial artist who practiced the
esoteric internal martial arts was not obvious in his external appearance.
Westerners with their larger and more powerful bodies exhibited only
external strength.
With the intellectual separation of the martial arts from the military
skills of the modern soldier, the place of the martial artist changed pro-
foundly. This change was not only military but also political, social, and
geographic. Among the intellectuals and martial artists debating the place
of these skills there was much less discussion of the martial arts practiced in
rural areas and much more concern with the place of the martial arts in the
major cities. Chinese modernity was contested in the major cities by
educated elites and some less-educated martial artists. For the most part,
the bodies being contested were urban and educated. These urban, edu-
cated, white-collar workers were the Chinese vanguard of modernity (if
one may expropriate a concept from Lenin), and many martial artists
struggled to somehow attach the martial arts to these new Chinese. The
other urban group of martial artists was rural men who brought the
martial arts with them to their modern factory jobs in the city, and then
hired instructors and set up schools in their new environment.^4
Practicing Chinese martial arts became a way for a white-collar or
factory worker to maintain a Chinese body while engaged in a Western
lifestyle. This was particularly important for overseas Chinese who
struggled to maintain a sense of Chineseness while not actually living in
China. There was to be no free market of martial arts ideas, however, as
the government saw the control over the martial arts as a way both to
impose discipline on society and to control the meaning of Chinese phys-
ical culture. This was played out in the conflict between public martial arts
organizations, private promoters of the martial arts, and the Nationalist
government’s assertion of control over the martial arts. The Nationalist
government subsequently attempted to reform the diverse practices of the
Chinese martial arts into a unified“National Art.”
Western influence in China, both economically and intellectually, gave
rise to the idea that Chinese (and indeed other Asians and non-Westerners)
were physically less robust, disciplined, and manly. The respective eco-
nomic and military places of Western and non-Western states and cultures
in the early twentieth century were a direct reflection of the physical
condition and physical culture of the people in those societies. If this was
true, then the way to improve a country’s economic and military place in
220 Post-Imperial China