long sword and began the dance. Seeing its purpose, another man, Xiang Bo,
drew his long sword and also danced, but he kept himself between Xiang
Zhuang and Liu, preventing the assassination.^13
It is not clear what the sword dance in question was in terms of a
performance. Music is not noted in the account, nor is there mention of
any greater spiritual or ceremonial value. It was an entertainment that a
warrior could reasonably perform as an aesthetic practice, and that another
warrior could also perform when needed. The form was also not set, in the
sense of a strictly ordered series of movements, since Xiang Bo was able to
place himself between Xiang Zhuang and Liu as needed. Xiang Bo elegantly
and decisively frustrated the assassination without directly clashing with
Xiang Zhuang. The matter did not degenerate into a duel, so a multiparti-
cipant sword dance was quite possible, and the etiquette for the practice
did not allow for physical contact between dancers. Xiang Zhuang could
not simply push past Xiang Bo and maintain thefiction that he was inno-
cently doing a sword dance.
The military contest between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu continued, and in
204 bce, while their armies were camped nearby, they parleyed across a
stream. Xiang Yu suggested settling the military contest with a personal
duel. Here again we see Xiang Yu’s self-identification as afighter and
martial artist overwhelming his role as general and contender for the throne.
Liu Bang not only rejected the notion of a duel, something he probably
would not expect to win, but also responded with a ten-point indictment
of Xiang Yu’s behavior. This indictment was not just a polished summation
of Xiang Yu’s faults and the reason he could not be a legitimate ruler, but
was also a very carefully crafted excuse for why Liu would notfight the
duel. He concludes the speech by saying,“I should send an ex-convict to
strike you, sir. How could I trouble myself to duel with you, sir?”^14 Xiang
Yu responded to this by pulling out a crossbow and shooting Liu Bang in the
chest. Liu grabbed his foot and claimed aloud to have been hit in the toe.
Although seriously wounded, Liu was then forced to pretend to be well in
front of his troops after he returned (he later recovered).
The parley between Liu and Xiang Yu does not just reveal Xiang Yu’s
bad character. Liu had to present a very strong case for not accepting
Xiang Yu’s challenge. The substance of that case was that Xiang Yu had
traduced the social mores of the upper class, not only undermining his
legitimacy as a leader but also invalidating his status as an aristocrat. As
such, he no longer had the right tofight a duel with another aristocrat. Liu
could not simply reject the duel based on the likelihood that Xiang Yu
would win. At root, these men were warriors and martial artists, and their
Xiang Yu and Liu Bang 63