Gymnastics 157
the flow, never attack frontally. Mastery of this art allows one to match a
hundred, and a hundred to match a thousand. If your Highness would
like to test it, I can demonstrate for your edification.^65The story of the Yue swordswoman suggests that fencers espoused breathing tech-
niques. It might indicate, furthermore, that sword training was considered by
some a method of spiritual cultivation. Just as the concepts of yin and yang could
facilitate the study of swordplay, the practice of fencing could illuminate cosmo-
logical principles. It is instructive, therefore, that medieval fiction associated
swordsmanship with the Daoist immortality techniques. The Tang story “The
Old Man of Lanling” (“Lanling laoren”) celebrates a sword master whose demon-
stration of the art is preceded by a penetrating discourse of “nourishing life”
(yangsheng). The swordsman—the narrator hints that he is a Daoist priest—
performs a sword dance with seven blades which he effortlessly throws and catches
in mid-air. He concludes the demonstration by throwing the swords down, plant-
ing them in the ground in the position of the seven stars of the big dipper.^66
When we turn our attention from fencing to bare-handed fighting, our in-
vestigation is hampered by the dearth of evidence. Warring States and Han liter-
ature allude, for example, to an unarmed technique called shoubo (literally: hand
combat), which is regarded by some scholars as the predecessor of quan fighting.
Shoubo evolved partially in the context of a daring sport of empty-handed wres-
tling with wild animals. Athletes vied bare-handed with tigers and bears, whose
teeth and claws were said to have been removed prior to the contest. By the first
century CE, shoubo was likely highly developed, for it figured as the subject of
what must have been an elaborate book. In his History of the [Former] Han (Hanshu),
Ban Gu (32–92) mentions a work titled Shoubo, in no less than six chapters.^67
Unfortunately, the Shoubo book listed by Ban Gu is no longer extant, and
in its absence the available information on the art is meager indeed. To the
best of my knowledge, the existing references to the empty-handed style do not
associate it with daoyin gymnastics. However, had we possessed the now-lost
manual the picture might have been different. We have seen that recently dis-
covered Han manuscripts have shed invaluable light on ancient gymnastics. It
is not impossible that future archaeological or textual research will likewise
unravel new information on hand combat. We may still learn that the connec-
tion between bare-handed fighting and therapeutic and religious gymnastics
extended further back in time than we are currently able to establish.
The Illustrated Exposition of Internal Techniques
Equipped with information on daoyin gymnastics, we may return to Wang
Zuyuan’s Illustrated Exposition of Internal Techniques (1882), which demonstrates
the tradition’s influence on the Shaolin martial arts. Even though Wang was
under the impression that the Shaolin methods he studied originated at the