THE HISTORICAL & SOCIAL BACKGROUND
OF TAI CHI DEVELOPMENT
 

China and the World

When Chen Wangting was born possibly in the years around 1600, “the empire of China,” the Yale Historian Jonathan D. Spence remarks, “was the largest and most sophisticated of all the unified realms on earth. The extent of its territorial domains was unparalleled at a time when Russia was only just beginning to coalesce as a country, India was fragmented between Mughal and Hindu rulers, and a grim combination of infectious disease and Spanish conquerors had laid low the once great empires of Mexico and Peru. And China’s population of some 120 million was far larger than that of all the European countries combined.” (Spence, 7)

“Rulers in Europe, India, Japan, Russia, and Ottoman Empire were all struggling to develop systematic bureaucracies that would expand their tax base and manage their swelling territories effectively, as well as draw to new royal power centers the resources of agriculture and trade. But China’s massive bureaucracy was already firmly in place, harmonized by a millennium of tradition and bonded by an immense body of statutory laws and provisions that, in theory at least, could offer pertinent advice on any problem that might arise in the daily life of China’s people… China’s cultural life was in an ebullient condition that few, if any, other countries could match.” (Spence, 8, 9) Urban and commercial life were spreading to new levels of prosperity, while Chinese skills in printing and the manufacture of porcelain, furniture, and silk exceeded anything that could be found in Europe at the time.

Nonetheless, it was not the starting point of modern China. While Newton and Galileo were laying the ground of rationality for materialistic and mechanistic Western modernity as the West was transforming from the medieval world into the utilitarian, capitalistic hub of global explorations, the Ming emperors had drawn back from the knowledge, wealth, and power that might have come from the overseas ventures, and had developed a ever-closed and sophisticated dynastic culture. Consequently, China had begun a pattern of self-defeating behavior that within fifty years brought their dynasty to a violent end by the year 1644. By forming a successful system of military, adopting the Chinese administrative units and the nucleus of a bureaucracy, and adapting fundamental parts of the Chinese way of life, the next successors of China, the Qing dynasty, Manchu tribesmen from across China’s northern frontiers, invaded, consolidated, and entrenched the empire to rule China until 1912.

The European praises of China in the eighteenth century were prompted by Catholics, “especially the Jesuits, who saw in the huge population of China a potential harvest of souls for the Christian faith.” (Spence, 132) The European admirations of the industry of China’s population, the sophistication of the country’s bureaucracy, the philosophical richness of its cultural traditions, and the strength of its rulers, whether intellectually, aesthetically, or politically, faded quickly when Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Baron de Montesquieu questioned whether the Chinese seemed to enjoy true liberty, especially George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s idea that “Freedom was the expression of the self-realization of the World Spirit,” and this “spirit was reaching its fullest manifestations in the Christian states of Europe and North America.” (Spence, 135) From this standpoint, Asiatic states, for instance China, did not share the ideas or practices of Freedom. Hegel stated: “(China’s) relation to the rest of History could only exist in their case, through their being sought out, and their character investigated by others.” (Spence, 136)

Among the Asiatic states, Tibet and China certainly posed a challenge to this Euro-centric outlook. They took steps to transform themselves in the precisely opposite direction. While the Fifth Dalai Lama and other great Tibetan Lamas were preparing the way for Tibet to demilitarize the nation and complete the monastic revolution and to realize the Buddhist ideology of self-conquest, or what Robert A. F. Thurman calls “an alternative modernity,” the internal modernity in contrast with the Western external modernity that we are familiar with (Thurman, 31), the Ming emperors of China had already achieved the height of their glory announcing to the world of the order and connectedness of things personified in this human being the emperor, the Son of Heaven symbolized the significance of the earthly life.

It did not take too long for Hegel’s ambiguous question—by whom or how China was sought out—to be answered by the Western powers with their ships, diplomatic missions, opium, and firearms. By the eighteenth century, “the growing demand in Europe and America for Chinese teas, porcelain, silks, and decorative goods had not been matched by any growth in Chinese demand for Western exports such as cotton…clocks and other mechanical curiosities…the result was a serious balanced-of-payments problem for the West.” Spence wrote, “silver flow (from the West) into Qing China exceeded 3.0 million taels, and by the 1780s, 16.0 million taels…” (Spence, 129)

Pyramidal ceiling was decorated with Chinese blue and white porcelain plates in Santos Palace during 1661-87 in Lisbon. The craze for Chinese porcelain led to the construction of "porcelain rooms" from the late 1600s on, which prompted a fashion of interior design with things Chinese all across Europe.

The British had developed an alternative product to exchange in China for Chinese goods: opium. Within a short time, like all the great drug traffics, the British were able to develop the narcotic so it was available in large quantities, a means of consuming it, enough people want to smoke it to make the trade viable, and the ineffectual prohibitions from the Chinese government. In the year 1832 alone, the British opium shipment to China was 23,570 chests. In 1838, the opium smuggling quantities was almost doubled, each chest contained between 130-160 pounds. “Opium revenues played in British international balance-of-payment strategy, made the opium trade a central facet of that nation’s foreign policy.” (Spence, 129,139)

Meantime in China, the Qing court, believing the spread of opium addiction to be a domestic crisis, decided to ban the drug. The Chinese opium dealers were treated as “Chinese traitor,” the opium smokers were punished with 100 blows of the bamboo staff with public wearing of the heavy wooden collar for a month or two. At the same time, in the West, “the British empire could not survive were it deprived of its most important source of capital,” “as long as its consumption was restricted to Chinese and did not cross whites.” (Brook, 6)

Thus the British responded with force of arms, and led the “Opium War” in 1839. Defeating the Qing easily with modern weaponry in 1842, the British imposed “the Treaty of Nanking 南京條約.” Signed August 29th, the Treaty extorted China Hong Kong, five seaports, extraterritoriality, a war indemnity of $ 21.0 million, and missionary access. Still not satisfied with Chinese concessions, in 1856, 1858, 1860, 1872, 1880, 1883, and 1894, not only the British but also French, Russian, and Japanese, were excited by the scent of blood from the wounded empire, attacked China continually and started the international race to get a slice of the China pie, or to “cut up the China melon.” China accordingly joined “the rest of History, Freedom, or the World Spirit,” but suffered substantial loss of sovereignty. The precursors of modern taiji quan, thus witnessed, “the Sun of the Central Kingdom was setting down the west,” repeated military defeats and reduction of the empire to semi-colonial state. The Chinese had developed full of rancor against the West and Japan in general.

Ruins of Summer Palace. On October 18, 1860, Britain's Lord Elgin ordered his troops to destroy the Summer Palace that was designed by Jesuit architects. Photograph by Thomas Childe in 1875

Northern Plain and Bandits

The recorded history of Taiji quan often divided into four phases by historians: legendary, Chen village, Yongnian, Beijing and beyond. Both Chen village and Yongnian Counties are located at the alluvial flood plains in opposite sides of the Yellow River. Swedish archeologist J. Gunnar Anderson who was credited as the explorer of “Peking Man” remarks in his book Children of the Yellow Earth: “Huang T’u, the yellow soil, and Huang Ho, the Yellow River! Listen to the two names, so like in sound. Just as the yellow soil covers the whole of Northern China under its immense carpet, so the mighty river with its many tributaries rules over the same land, from its sources in icy Tibet to its mouth on a desolate strand of the Yellow Sea. Both river and sea take their names from the yellow soil, which tings everything: earth, river, sea and sky.” (Andersson, 142)

The Yellow River stretches flat for hundreds of miles across between Hebei 河北 (the place north of the Yellow River) and Henan 河南 (the place south of the Yellow River) provinces. Flatness means flooding, and flooding means loss of corps, and loss or split of the land. The Northern Chinese Continental climate brings cold, dry winters and hot, humid summers, which could carry again flood or drought. Anthropologist Fei Xiaotong remarks: “Chinese society is fundamentally rural.” (Fei, 37) Economically, the locals depended on survival grains such as wheat, corn, millet, and sorghum. The cradle of Chinese civilization, capitals for many dynasties, the Northern Chinese plain now was struck by annual flood, drought, famine, and becoming much more backward in commercialization, urbanization, and transportation in the nineteenth century.

Such environmental and economic conditions exacerbated by polygamy and excessive wedding expenses on the groom’s side, as a result, North China produced an excessive number of unemployed and unmarried males. These “marginalized men” inevitably became prime candidates for beggars, smugglers, gamblers, and kidnappers. For survival, these men practiced “social banditry” by illegally expanding their resources at others’ expense. The reaction to this bottom of what Wile calls “vertical violence” was the village militia, private vigilantes, family feuds, bodyguards, and armed with swords escorts from the top. (Wile, 8) Nevertheless, without the knowledge and employment of firearms, martial arts practice became indispensable to both of the parties.

This vertical violent conflict along class/sectarian sectors must be reconciled with a more pervasive pattern of horizontal violence coming from rebellions and secret societies. Yihequan 義合拳, or the Boxers were the most notorious example to Westerners, but bailianjiao 白蓮教, or the White Lotus, baguajiao 八卦教 , or the Eight Trigrams, jinzhongzhao 金鐘罩, or the Armor of Golden Bell, shenquan 神拳, or the Magic Boxers, Nianjun 捻軍, or the Nian Army, taiping tian guo 太平天國, or the Great Peace of Celestial Kingdom were more known to Chinese. Those who were involved in these movements have been classified as rebels, revolutionaries, or bandits depending on the perspective of the observers over the times. However, martial arts association and secret practice were the deep-rooted fundamentals for them.

Thus taiji quan as we know it today was born not only in the time of national crisis of repeated military defeat, but at the geographical epicenter of the most intense rebellions and revolutions in Chinese history. Evidently, the Northern Chinese plain, China’s most fertile breeding ground for martial arts, boasted more “martial spirited men” than the rest of the empire. Despite the “martial” rebels and bandits, in the 112 Imperial Military Metropolitan Examinations (wuju 武舉) that were held between 1646-1898 in the Qing dynasty, Hebei province won more of the first three places (zhuangyuan 壯元, bangyan 榜眼, tanhua 探花) than any other of the sixteen provinces combined. In fact, there were 32 out of 92 recorded first place winners who were from Hebei province. (Ma Mingda) All the major taiji quan style founders after the Chens, Yang Luchan, Wu Yuxiang, Hao Weizhen, Wu Jiangquan, Sun Lutang, were all from Hebei province.

Literati and Boxers

The word literati, an English transliteration of the Chinese word shi 士 , is from the Latin word litterātī. In the Chinese context, literati or shi describes three types of people: the philosophers and the professionals with knowledge or special skills in the early Chinese time, persons who were well cultivated in Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and the cultural practices in the Chinese medieval time, and the Confucian scholars in the late imperial time.

Regardless the subtle definitions of the ideas of literati throughout Chinese history, the essential idea about literati are often credited to Confucius. He was the first Chinese sage/philosopher clearly avowed xianzhang wenwu 憲章文武 , “to model oneself on civil/letters and military/martial arts,” (ZS, 1634) and zhiyudao youyuyi 志於道 遊於藝, “set the heart upon the Way, sojourn with the six arts.” (ZS, 2481) The six arts follow the orders of li 禮, the “ritual,” yue 樂, “music,” she 射, “archery,” yu 御, “charioteering,” shu 書, “reading and calligraphy”, and shu 數, “mathematical calculation and astrological or numerological divination.” (ZS, 731)

According to the Bronze Inscription, and Shuwen, the earliest etymological dictionary of graphs, shi is the male who works in the field. During Zhou and the Warring States times, shi became a class below the nobilities and above the common people. These individuals are sometimes also known as sages who were able to see or understand the Way, or the ultimate truth, for instance, Laozi or Confucius were all shi.

Although literati as a cultural tradition can be traced back to more than two thousand years ago, in actual practice, it has been a loosely articulated symbolic apparatus. By the Chinese medieval and the late imperial times, the idea of being literati becomes remarkably paradoxical. On one hand, one relies on the Confucian idea of an inclusive and unified empire, to serve the state and the public. One becomes conscious at the quickness of nature to destruct human physical and emotional existence, and his refusal to compromise. On the other hand, one relies on the reclusive haven of Taoism and Buddhism. A literati who responds to the world as an exile can range from the sorrow or indignation of a Confucian official whose capacity to serve society has been denied him, to the Buddhist observation of the vanity of human aspirations, to the Taoist celebration of natural simplicity of man freed from the artificiality of the social sphere. The notion of literati stresses the limits of knowledge, the inevitability of uncertainty, and thus embodies a worldview, in which ideas like zi ran 自然, or self-so-ness, or spontaneity, and wu wei 無為, or non-purposeful action, become the ultimate goals of life and art.

Furthermore, Literati denotes the dichotomy of Confucian ideal of man that is embedded in the Confucian orthodox from its beginning. Inevitably, Confucian idea “to model oneself on civil/letters and military/martial arts” is undermined by his immediate successor Mencius: “these who work with their mind powers rule, and these who work with their physical powers are ruled.” (ZS, 2705) Thus, the Confucian ideal man of letters and martial arts has been greatly diverged in Chinese history. The terms such as wenshi 文士 or “Confucian or literary literati” vs. wushi 武士, or “martial literati,” exemplified the divergence. Wenshi depicts civil/letters association while wushi suggests military/martial arts expertise.

Mastery of ten thousand characters, memorization of Confucian canon, and essay composition in baguwen 八股文, or the metered and rhythmic “eight-legged” style, participation in distant and endless rounds of local, provincial, and national examinations was the only life of a Confucian literati. Wu Chengqing 武澄清, the brother of Wu Yuxiang, a Tai Chi enthusiast was 52 years old when he received his jinshi 進士, or the highest degree.

Interesting enough, the Military Metropolitan Examinations were inaugurated by the famed Tang Empress Wu Zetian 武則天 as early as 700 AD. (Xin Tangshu, vol. 45, 1170) However, they were not completely established until the Qing dynasty. The Qing of Manchu were time-honored “iron raiders,” they boasted more “martial spirit,” conquered China and became the new rulers of China. However, in adopting Chinese administrative units and the nucleus of a bureaucracy, and adapting fundamental parts of the Chinese way of life, the Confucian emphasis on the mind powers relegated the physical powers throughout the Qing history, the Martial Literati and the Confucian Literati were regarded significantly different in the Qing dynasty.

Jinshi timingbe 進士題名碑, or the “Engraved Monuments for the Confucian Literati,” (can be seen in gouzijian 國子監 or “the Imperial Academy” in Beijing) and many other official documents regarding the Confucian literati throughout Qing dynasty still can be found easily today. On the contrary, there is nothing explicit in official documents or modern scholarship that offer much insights, or references about the history or significance of the Martial Literati in the Chinese society. Apparently, the Confucian emphasis on the mind powers seemed to downplay martial arts in the course of Chinese history, fighting skills were often associated as much with criminal activity as with health, or spiritual cultivation.

Conclusion

Like all matters and events, China can be perceived as the manifestation of undifferentiated energies into the Yin Yang polarity of existence, the endless play of diversity in unity. While the dynamic unity of one polar represents the Yin China as a sacred and mysterious state, a sanctuary under the cloud of Confucianism for great thinkers, scholars, artists, and a meeting place for wandering monks who pass on the traditions of a civilization thousands of years, the opposed Yang China as a complexity of primitive consanguinity and patriarchal clans that reflects a collective force of fierce contending for hegemony.

In view of the conditions of attaining a harmony of man and his fellowmen, of adapting to the mundane given world, of rising above man's sense of his own exclusivity as well as of the nature's domination became the highest human approaches for Chinese. A hope of the civilization was built for calm strength and contentment of life rather than youthful vigor and romance, for vitality and endurance rather than progress and reform. Accordingly, the precursors of Tai Chi like Chen Wangting and Li brothers were creating this radically new system, some argue, “without self-consciousness,” i.e., idealists to dismiss Chen Village as a hick town and Chen Wangting as a lowly militia battalion commander, and materialists to minimize the perennial influence of Taoist ideas. (Wile, 116) In reality, Tai Chi still accomplished the harmonization of Confucian and Taoist tendencies by being external active but internally quiescent, and the traditional civil/martial dichotomy was also transferred to the sphere of self-cultivation.

Ironically, as the admired Chinese cultural elites such as thinkers, scholars, artists, and monks led their people and indulged themselves in pursuance of a rustic simplicity, and a peaceful, carefree mode of life rather than a mode of progress and reform in the society, to their disappointment, their efforts had not brought about strength, vitality, and endurance to the society, but resulted in the sapping of national strength, and the conquest of China by the "barbarians", and the full-scale occupations by Mongolian (1297-1368), and by Manchu (1644 -1911).

When the whole world was whirled around all the great revolutions and expansions during the last three hundred years, China was not left alone. The nineteenth century European invasions to China shifted fundamental values of the Qing Dynasty drastically. Although the Chinese intellectual and cultural elites were well aware of the new foreign presence that had yielded recognition of the Western rationalism and its contributions to rest of the world, China’s cultural self-image was still one of centrality and superiority. To confront a swarm of new “barbarians from over sea” while the old “Manchu barbarians from north” still sat on the dragon throne was a complex political and psychological ordeal.

By the nineteenth century, the Confucian idea “to model oneself on civil/letters and military/martial arts” only carried affective and rhetorical power as slogans rather than clearly articulated doctrinal positions or social practices. In fact, the idea of military/martial arts was completely subordinated to the idea of civil/letters authority. Thus, the vast agrarian empire ruled by an infinitesimal grammatocracy who lacked martial spirit and military alacrity stuck in the Confucian trappings, the shapers of modern Tai Chi like Wu Yuxiang, Li Yiyu thus witnessed, “the Sun of the Central Kingdom was setting down the west,” repeated military defeats and reduction of the empire to semi-colonial state.

In the light of, what Strickmann calls, “current American ‘liberal’ manias, for example, agonized self-consciousness regarding minority groups,” and the “blatant projections of the Protestant conscience and the American suburban scene,” (Strickmann, xxi) Wile argues that Tai Chi was a male invention. It seems to be troublesome that Tai Chi emphasizing the soft, yielding, empty, and internal typical “feminine” characteristics but was not invented by women to Westerners. According to Wile, the males assumed responsibilities for China’s welfare but in the real world where “they could not compete on the terms dictated by the West.” Consequently, Tai Chi and its training ground like “the pub or playing field in the West, was a space where male psyches wounded” in the real world, will “inevitably engage in some form of compensatory behavior in order to preserve face and hence control over their women,” and “indulge in collective fantasies of power.” (Wile, 27)

At any rate, the history and development of Tai Chi shows more than a question of gender, and it is far from being escapism. Tracing the evolution of Tai Chi from the catastrophic successions of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Manchurian rule and the Republican time and anti-Japanese invasion, and the post Mao spiritual vacuity and present cultural identity crisis, the Tai Chi movement has always represented the movements of the Chinese people being in the dilemmas and the Chinese state being under siege.

In effect, Tai Chi was as a psychological defense against Western imperialism. Rejecting westernization and withdrawing into native tradition thus helps to consolidate Chinese identity, Tai Chi was very practical component of self-strengthening, a supplement to moral education of the examination curriculum, and a revival of the “charioteering and archery” of the six arts. At personal level, Tai Chi complemented Confucian and Taoist conflicting “in the world” and “out the world” tendencies, and thus the civil/martial dichotomy was transferred to the sphere of self-cultivation.

“What is unique about Tai Chi as a martial art,” Wile remarks, “is precisely what has allowed China as nation to endure: to assimilate and sinicize conquerors, to wait in stillness for their energies to peak and decline and then to swallow them.” (Wile, 26)

 

[1] Spence, D. Jonathan. 1990. The Searching for Modern China. New York, London: W.W.Norton & Company.
[2] Thurman, Robert A. F. and Marylin M. Rhie 1991. Wisdom and Compassion, the Sacred Art of Tibet. New York: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and Tibet House, New York in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers.
[3] Brook, Timothy and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi. 2000. Opium Regimes, China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[4] Andersson, J. Gunnar. 1973. Children of the Yellow Earth, Studies in prehistoric China. Cambridge: The MIT Press
[5] Fei, Xiaotong. 1992. From the Soil, the Foundations of Chinese Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[6] Wile, Douglas. 1996. Lost T'ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch'ing Dynasty. Albany: State University of New York.
[7] Ma, Mingda. 2006. Zhongguo wuju shulue 中國武舉述略 “A Concise Analysis on the Chinese Military Metropolitan Examination System.”http://bbs.poposo.com/thread-4163-1-1.html
[8] ZS. Shisanjing Zhushu 十三經註疏 Elucidations on the Thirteen Canons . 1979. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju.
[9] Xin Tangshu 新唐書 the New Standard History of Tang Dynasty, Twenty-four Standard Histories 二十四史. 1979. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju.
[10]  Strickmann, Michel. 2005. Chinese poetry and prophecy, the Written Oracle in East Asia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.