performance during the event. In short, an aristocrat was expected to be a
violent person.
Our modern standards of violence are very different from those of three
thousand years ago. There were no police forces available to maintain
order, and“justice” was not an absolute concept whereby all people
shared certain theoretical rights unmitigated by power and privilege.
Indeed, power and privilege defined a person’s place in society and framed
the meaning of any interpersonal act. Violence among aristocrats was part
of the system of manners of their intricate social network. Fighting another
aristocrat in the openfield from a chariot in the prescribed fashion was a
noble and praiseworthy act. Stabbing another aristocrat from behind in an
ambush with a knife might not be. We know nothing of the relationship
between violence and commoner society. This effective separation between
the aristocrats and commoners was possible when a relatively high per-
centage of battlefield participants were aristocrats, and when their weap-
ons and skills gave them a distinct advantage over the commoners.
As army size grew during the Western Zhou and into the Spring and
Autumn period, more commoners took part in war, and their martial skills
improved. At the same time, the political ramifications of continual inter-
aristocrat violence became unsustainable. An increasing cycle of violence
was spreading martial arts and weapons to a greater part of society and
changing the significance of violence within culture. Unrestrained martial
arts performed as part of aristocratic identity was becoming a threat to
social order. The Spring and Autumn period would be the last time in
Chinese history that the political authorities accepted the idea that the
private use of violence did not concern them.
Conclusion
This chapter has laid the groundwork for succeeding chapters in several
ways. First, I used the example of Lady Hao to highlight the importance of
martial skills in aristocratic identity and also to show that women could
and didfight and lead troops in battle from the earliest times. Martially
capable women arose with some regularity throughout Chinese history,
though the ethnicity and class of women who did so changed over time.
Martial arts in China, though always gendered and strongly biased toward
men, has also always maintained a place for women. Second, I placed
archery at the forefront of martial arts skills. Archery would retain this
preeminent position in martial arts long afterfirearms became important
on the battlefield. For the Zhou aristocrat, it was not just archery, but
30 Stone Age through the Spring and Autumn Period