200 Conclusion
the literary elite. Whereas the strategic maneuvering of armies—the so-
called “art of war” (bingfa)—had been investigated by Chinese authors as
early as the Zhou period, the humble techniques of the individual peasant
had rarely been deemed worthy of documentation. Our history of the mar-
tial arts is strictly speaking a chronicle of the scattered literary references to
them. New information, deriving from archaeological discoveries or textual
revelations, may alter our understanding of martial arts evolution.
Bearing this reservation in mind, the available sources do indicate that
the traditions of hand combat underwent a significant transformation during
the late Ming and the early Qing. This development was twofold. First, during
the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the quan techniques of bare-
handed fighting grew in popularity, becoming more prevalent than they had
ever been. Shaolin monks, who had trained for generations in the arts of the
staff, began turning their attention to hand combat in the sixteenth century.
Secondly, those bare-handed styles with which we are familiar today—such as
Taiji Quan, Xingyi Quan, and Shaolin Quan—can be traced back to the Ming-
Qing transition period. We have seen that their emergence in the seventeenth
century was accompanied by the creation of a novel martial arts mythology.
The new bare-handed styles were attributed to obscure Buddhist and Daoist
saints who had supposedly created them centuries earlier.
Thus, in the case of many late Ming martial artists—Shaolin monks in-
cluded—specialization in unarmed fighting had followed the mastery of armed
techniques. New bare-handed styles emerged during a period when the manip-
ulation of weapons, including firearms, had already been highly developed.
That bare-handed fighting should follow armed warfare contradicts not only
the accepted mythology of the martial arts (itself a product of the seventeenth
century) but also common sense. The natural progress of warfare, we would as-
sume, would be from less dangerous to more dangerous, from bare-handed
fighting to armed combat. Why did Shaolin monks, who had successfully tested
their weapons in battle, turn their attention to bare-handed techniques, useless
in battle?
The answer suggested by this book lies in this seeming contradiction itself.
Late Ming hand combat was not created for fighting. The bare-handed styles
with which we are familiar today had not been narrowly designed for warfare,
but had been broadly conceived for healing and spiritual realization. They
were created by integrating calisthenic and breathing techniques—originally
intended for therapeutic and religious goals—into unarmed combat. The re-
sult was a synthesis of fighting, healing, and religious self-cultivation. Shaolin
monks did not study hand combat because they considered it militarily effec-
tive. They were intrigued, rather, by the therapeutic benefits and religious ho-
rizons of the novel bare-handed styles.
Transforming hand combat into a self-conscious system of thought, late
imperial martial artists drew on diverse sources: Daoist manuals of gymnastics,
medical treatises of acupuncture, cosmological interpretations of the Classic of