China is a huge country, and its land area is densely packed with villages and towns - most modern maps do not give a true impression of this as all but the largest places are omitted. This is true on maps of other countries as well, but modern Chinese maps take this practice to a more extreme degree than will be found elsewhere - even fairly large towns may be omitted. There are certainly many thousands of towns and villages in China, and a high proportion of these may have very small groups of martial artists practicing their own particular arts in a more traditional way. Group sizes taught by the more traditional teachers tend to be small, often with only one to three students per teacher, a far cry from the hundreds of massed ranks easily seen doing modern wushu. At the very least the "unknown" martial arts of China dwarf the well known ones in terms of numbers of arts, although obviously not in terms of numbers of practitioners. As a direct result of this situation, no one can say for sure what is and is not practiced in China today. There is much that is known only to small groups of people within China of which there is no general knowledge whatsoever among the general population within China, let alone in the outside world.
Having accepted these points, when reviewing "average" current practice among contemporary practitioners of Chinese martial arts some clear issues relating to the nature of contemporary weapons usage can be identified. That is, if one were to make an objective (purely statistical) survey of what passes as "martial arts" in China today, taking the most common type of practice as the "norm", three particular differentiating factors relating to weapons usage may be noted that contrast contemporary practice with that of the practitioners of former times:
1. Weapons practice now has a lower priority than unarmed (bare-hand) practice
2. The range of types of weapons employed are greatly reduced
3. Those weapons that are used today exist in different forms (often smaller, less robust and more standardised in format)
However, these apparent differences arise from a more fundamental issue, namely that what is generally categorised under the term "martial arts" (wushu) in the China of today differs materially from what the practitioners of pre-modern times termed "martial arts". To put it another way, the very meaning of the term "martial art" has significantly changed in the popular consciousness of most Chinese people, as well as in that of the average martial arts practitioner. Where once the term "martial arts" would have certainly related heavily to the usage of weapons practices, archery being a good example, today it generally does not. This is to the extent that most contemporary Chinese people would not consider the bow to be a martial arts weapon.
Before examining the historical process through which this situation has arisen, it is first useful to make some straightforward comparisons between what may be considered a typical martial arts "class" in the China of today with one of the late Ming Dynasty (c. 1600). The following table illustrates the main differences:
While the precise figures and information given in the table are guesstimates and open to debate, and there are obviously some teachers in China today who teach in a more traditional way, few would contend the gist of what is indicated - that is, that when we discuss martial arts practice as defined by its "average" modern adherents we are really talking about something very different from what went on in former times. A very clear issue that does not require percentages or degrees is that in former times there were no martial artists who did not study weapons at all, but today there are many.
3. Women. We have accounts of female Generals, Bandit leaders, wuxia performers.
The expression, "Gongfu" really meant "meritorious action!" It was more or less (in the sense that Chinese culture is not going to fit even into this box) the definition of being a human.
Over all these are good lists. But I would ask the opposite question. Who did not practice martial arts? I mean when you think about it, the three or four groups least likely to practice martial arts actually did practice.
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