from hundreds of martial arts movies that perpetuated and amplified the
myths of Shaolin’s central role. Taiji, on the other hand, is much more
widely practiced outside China. Where Shaolin’s martial arts is external,
Taiji is an internal art. The two martial arts traditions can also lay claim to
China’s two great religious traditions, Buddhism and Daoism. This mod-
ern construction of the place of martial arts and religion in Chinese society
is sold both domestically and internationally.
As a living tradition, however, the practice and meaning of martial arts
continues to change in China. This has been true in virtually every aspect of
the martial arts. Some of these changes amount to revivals of earlier
practice, but most highlight the dynamic interaction between popular
perceptions and martial arts practice. The martial arts in China now
react to foreign and domestic demands, globalization, commercialization,
and nationalism. With the partial opening up of the economy and some
aspects of society, the government of China now has very limited control
over the practice of the martial arts. Martial arts practice has been outside
government control in Taiwan, of course, for more than half a century, and
in Hong Kong for over a century and a half. Even with Hong Kong’s shift
to rule from Beijing, the martial arts in the former British colony have been
unaffected. The examples of Taiwan and Hong Kong argue that the place
of the martial arts in mainland China will eventually stabilize when the
society itself stabilizes. As has been true for all of its history, the martial arts
follow and reflect the nature of Chinese society. Chinese society in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is in considerableflux, and so is
the martial arts.
The lifting of intense government control at all levels of society has
allowed the practice of martial arts to return at the local level. Ralph
Thaxton’s study of Da Fo village charts the reemergence of the martial
arts in the post- 1978 period. In the absence of martial arts practice in a
village previously, at least in the Republican period, known for its martial
artists, the communist authorities had been able to enforce government
rule through physical beatings and intimidation. As the economy began to
improve, however, villagers were able tofight back against the Communist
Party officials on several levels. The most direct and immediate response to
greater freedom was arson attacks on the homes of party officials and their
collaborators, followed in at least one case by cutting down the crops of
one of the men who had mistreated the villagers during the Great Leap
Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Revenge and counter-intimidation
were the main reasons for those acts, but the villagers also turned their
efforts to regaining their martial arts skills. Interestingly, one of thefirst
1978 to the Present 231