in places like Da Fo village are able to use martial arts to challenge, deflect,
and undermine local government authority. Not only can the government
be effectively challenged with martial arts skills but it can be fully displaced
by more admirable localfigures who have broken the authorities’monop-
oly on force. And we should be very clear that the farmers in Da Fo village
were not learning Wushu to resist the government. Thus ordinary Chinese
continue to define the martial arts in their own way in defiance of the
government.
Shaolin, the invented source of Chinese martial arts, is now, more than
ever, an arm of the government. The ability of Abbot Yongxin to physi-
cally separate most of the martial arts schools from the immediate environs
of the temple was based upon his connections to the central government in
Beijing. The principal form of martial arts being taught in Dengfeng, where
the schools were relocated, is Wushu. This is the government’s version of
martial arts and the only one that opens up the possibility for a practitioner
to teach in public schools as a physical education teacher. Shaolin has once
again gained the emperor’s patronage, but with patronage comes control.
Of the other modern styles of Chinese martial arts, Taiji seems to be the
only one tofind international acceptance and to escape government con-
trol. Ordinary people can practice Taiji without regard for a strict set of
rules for competition and judging. Wing Chun (Yongchun) has also pene-
trated the foreign market, but it was fortunate in having teachers escape
into Hong Kong and Taiwan. The story of Chinese martial arts in the post-
imperial era is a narrative reflected and distorted through both domestic
and foreign encounters with this particular physical culture. Chinese indi-
viduals, governments, and movies have described martial arts in one way,
only to have distorted or misunderstood versions of those descriptions
come back to them from abroad. And then the process begins again as the
individuals, government institutions, and movies respond to those
reflected descriptions. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the
practice and meaning of Chinese martial arts is now global.
Conclusion 237