The circulation of Qi and the Media and Culture

[GrahamB]

https://www.academia.edu/9777824/The_Ci ... nd_Culture

An interesting read:

"With this evocation of the historical and political context of the times and places of the figures who were key in the articulation of taijiquan as a very particular kind of Chinese martial art, Wile sets the scene for a more complex (non-allochronic) understanding of the cultural, ideological and political context of the emergence and development of taiji. Indeed, Wile’s explicit proposition is that this ‘watershed period in the evolution of the art and theory of t’ai-chi ch’üan did not take place in spite of larger social and historical events but somehow in response to them’; and that even though the classic texts of taijiquan ‘have a timeless, art-for-art’s-sake tone, this should not prevent us from asking who were the Ch’ens, Yangs, Wus, and Lis, why did they involve themselves in the martial arts, and why did they create this kind of martial art?’ (Wile 1996: 3-4)

His answer is that, during the 19th Century, Chinese intellectuals and thinkers felt increasingly besieged by foreign forces. These were not just the military challenges of former times, but also intellectual, scientific, religious and cultural onslaughts. Thus, China saw many ‘anti-foreign’ uprisings, culminating in the Boxer Uprising of the late 19th and early 20th Century (Esherick 1987). The intellectual elaboration, codification and popularisation of a self-consciously and deliberately Chinese practice of taijiquan, with explicitly Taoist principles, can consequently be regarded as a very particular kind of ‘response’ to the Western invasion."