Defending the Nation 57
zong) (hereafter Shaolin Staff Method), it was compiled around 1610 by a military
expert named Cheng Zongyou (Style: Chongdou) from Xiuning, Huizhou
Prefecture, in the southern part of today’s Anhui. The Cheng family belonged
to the local gentry, and its late Ming members included several noted scholars
and degree holders. However, Zongyou’s interests, like those of several broth-
ers and nephews of his, were not in classical learning but in the military arts.
We possess a description of the entire Cheng household—Zongyou and his
brothers—demonstrating martial techniques at the local yamen, as well as an
account of an eighty-man military force, trained by Zongyou and made up en-
tirely of members of his estate.^4
Cheng Zongyou was neither a bandit nor a member of the Ming heredi-
tary military, two groups we might expect to have mastered the martial arts.
Rather he was of literati background, and his acquaintances included re-
nowned scholars.^5 Still, martial arts were his passion, which was shared by
some other members of his class. The earliest extant manual of the “internal
school” (neijia) of fighting, for example, was compiled by Huang Baijia (1643–
?), son of the renowned scholar Huang Zongxi (1610–1695), and seventeenth-
century methods of spear fighting were recorded by Wu Shu (1611–1695),
who was also a poet and a literary critic. These literati were often trained in
fighting by instructors of lower social status. Their contribution to martial
arts history lies in recording techniques that, having originated among the
unlettered classes, would otherwise have been lost.^6
In addition to his Shaolin Staff Method, Cheng Zongyou compiled an ar-
chery manual titled History of Archery (She shi) (preface 1629), as well as trea-
tises on the techniques of the spear, the broadsword, and the crossbow. In
1621 he issued the latter three, together with his manual of the Shaolin staff,
in a combined edition titled Techniques for After-Farming Pastime (Geng yu sheng
ji).^7 The relative length of the manuals included in this handsomely illus-
trated book leaves no doubt that, as Cheng himself acknowledges, the staff
was his weapon of choice. Indeed, the Shaolin Staff Method is as long as the
other three manuals combined.
Cheng’s familiarity with staff fighting was due to the lengthy period he
spent at the Shaolin Monastery. According to his own testimony, his apprentice-
ship there lasted no less then ten years. His description of the training he re-
ceived reveals that the monastery rendered late Ming society the unique service
of martial education. The Shaolin establishment emerges from his writings as a
military academy, where clergy and laity were trained together in staff fighting.
Just how big this academy was we gather from General Yu Dayou, who was given
a demonstration there by a thousand fighting monks.^8 Cheng writes:
The Shaolin Monastery is nestled between two mountains: that of culture
(wen) and that of fighting (wu). Indeed this monastery has transmitted
the method of staff fighting and the doctrines of the Chan sect alike, for
which reason gentlemen throughout the land have always admired it.