the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

everything wrote:How did the Mongolian horse riders with bows/arrows defeat these armored spear users?

Well, like we said in the podcast, only the officers and generals had this armour - your average soldier had whatever he could get his hands on. Also Mongol bow technology meant that their arrows could pierce most armour:



But that wasn't how the Song fell.

We haven't got to this yet in our podcast, but long story short, the Mongols, (through their conquests of other nations and incorporation of their weaponry), became experts in seige warfare.

The fall of the Song was tied to the defence of their walled capital in Xiangyang. All the details are here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_co ... ng_dynasty

The last battle was actually a naval battle:

"when 1000 Chinese warships faced a fleet of 300 to 700 Yuan Mongol warships at Yamen. "

Had no idea it was a naval battle!

PART 12 - ROCKS AND BAMBOO

We pick up our series on Xing Yi with a new dynasty, the Yuan, examining the social changes that Mongol rule brought to China and their implications for the martial arts through the lens of the artwork of the period.

https://www.spreaker.com/user/9404101/7 ... and-bamboo

Damon also covers a bit on Marco Polo and covers one of the central points of the podcast, that he's building the historical case for the connection between Xing Yi and Yue Fei - essentially the idea that it's not a fiction, joke or a legend - it's just that people are framing the question in the wrong way.

Gongki's Horse painting, which he uses as an example of Chinese political art from the period:

#71 Xing Yi (part 13) The Water Chestnut Mirror

This episode explores the connection between the martial arts of the great Song generals' tradition and Chinese theatre, which emerged during the height of the Yuan Dynasty. (44 kB)

https://www.spreaker.com/user/9404101/x ... tnut-mirro


I would also recommend this short, funny and smart crash course on Chinese Theatre as background 'reading':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzAdZDK4XKA

a lot of the "x number of shoes, y number of hairdos" regulatory stuff was added later by the Confucians from the Ming onwards. in the Yuan it was much more Vale Tudo



* A mural from a temple in the Shanxi province, dated 1324. It shows zaju actors and musicians. The Archives of Finland–China Society

from https://disco.teak.fi/asia/the-yuan-dynasty-1279-1369/

An early 14th century temple mural shows a troupe of actors from the Yuan period. The stage has a silken back curtain and the actors wear handsome costumes reflecting their social status. The costumes are, however, not as pompous as the later Peking Opera costumes. The mural also depicts musicians among the actors, a flautist and a percussionist with his clappers.