MT: Chinese women fighting in the 1930s

[Knowledge Bot]

Chinese women fighting in the 1930s By brianlkennedy - Sun, 10 Jun 2007 02:18:26 GMT

=========

I found this photo when I was working on an article for Classical Fighting Arts magazine on the Jing Wu Association and thought it might be of interest. It is a picture taken in China in 1934 of two Chinese female fighters getting ready to "get busy" with the gloves.




What it actually is, is a National Guo Shu match. As part of the Nationalist Government plan to make a stronger, more modern China, they sponsored a nationwide martial arts program (that included womens programs) and as part of that there were city, county, provincial and national matches held.

The idea of Chinese women getting the gloves on and getting busy in the ring is still alive and well. I went to see a friend of mine fight in a boxing tourney held up in Taipei awhile back and there were a fair number of high school and college women fighting.

And this idea of Chinese women being suitable for contact martial sports started with the Jing Wu Associations (精武体育会). The Jing Wu was the first major public martial arts training organization in China. They were the first training organization to target middle class urbanites and they were the first to give women’s martial arts training equal attention. And in a broad sense they were the first to put martial arts forward as a form of “recreation” for adults. The association was a privately created and privately funded group that was established in Shanghai in 1909.

An important aspect of the Jing Wu’s new approach was to put women’s martial arts programs on an equal footing with men’s programs. The Mulin cartoon and the femmes fatales of the sword epics aside, the reality was that martial arts was considered an utterly inappropriate pursuit for women in traditional China and with some very rare exceptions martial arts was “men only”. The Jing Wu attempted to reverse this reality and place the women’s martial arts programs on an equal footing with the mens’.

The Jing Wu women’s program got started in 1917 and within a year the women’s program was operating in several schools in Shanghai. The Jing Wu’s anniversary book contains a number of essays by women involved in the Jing Wu program and the general theme of the essays is that in the new, modern, scientific China; women can and should participate in all activities and that their gender is not a bar to physical development, including martial arts development. And the thing that needs to be underscored, and the thing that was remarkable about the Jing Wu’s women’s martial arts program, was the fact that it was not a token effort or some kind of “window dressing”. The women’s martial arts program was every bit as serious and real as the men’s program. Women participated in the full range of martial arts training including sparring and weapons work.


Take care,
Brian


Read More ... or click reply below.
------------------------------
MartialTalk.com Post Bot - Women's Self-Defense Feed

[Tom Yum]

Interesting find.

The Characters beneath the pic:

Tu 129 Shandong Guoshu kaoshi zhi nuzi san da 1934 nian.

Translation:

Page 129: One of the Shandong (province) lady's gong fu free fight tests of 1934.

Shandong province is located in northeast China and is known for producing alot of military officers; the folks there are characterized as being short-tempered, 'matter of fact' and to the point probably not to far off from the stereotypes of New Englanders here in the states.

The mindset of these people is a natural fit for martial arts training. Shandong province is famous for its fighting arts, as well as its port cities, some cuisine and taoist influences.



What's more interesting is the influence that Arabic and Persian traders and Islam had on Chinese martial arts, particularly during the Tang dynasty when trade/cultural exchange between the middle east and China flourished.

Many northern styles were influenced by Muslim travellers; their styles eventually finding the way up to Shandong province, possibly due to the use of port cities like Qingdao to ship spices and other traded goods.

Tieing this into the previous thread, what styles did the Jing Wu Association teach or practice? Where they shaolin, wutang or muslim in origin?

From wikipedia:
Many sources say that Chin Woo was founded by Huo Yuanjia (霍元甲), the famed challenge fighter who died within months of its establishment. This gives the false impression that only one person founded the entire association when in reality it was founded by a committee of people. Due to Huo Yuanjia's popularity and recent death, the committee had decided that he should be the "face" of Chin Woo, resulting in his strong association with it.

Because Huo was widely admired as a Chinese national hero, a series of other masters agreed to teach at the school including Eagle Claw (鷹爪派) master Chen ZiZheng (陳子正), Seven Star Praying Mantis (七星螳螂拳) master Luo Guangyu (羅光玉), Xingyi (形意拳) master Geng Xiaguang, and Wu Jianquan (吳鑑泉), the founder of Wu style Taijiquan (吳式太極拳).

Accorind to wikipedia, xingyi (and baji) are believed to have muslim origins. Wu-style taijiquan is believed to have been taoist in origin. Praying mantis, founded in Shandong, came from the Buddhist shaolin temple; eagle claw comes from the Buddhist shaolin temple as well.