Wushu History of China (From prehistoric age to the middle of the 19th century)

1. Contents

　This book is an academic work which portrays the overall course of development and change of Chinese wushu in a systematic way from its prehistoric birth to the time before the Opium War (1840-1842).
　The full text is divided into 11 chapters. The first ten chapters expound the sequence of Chinese historical periods. The order is prehistoric period, the Dynasties of Xia, Shang and Western Zhou, the period of Spring and Autumn and Warring States, Qin Dynasty and Han Dynasty, the period of Wei, Jin Dynasty, Northern and Southern Dynasties, Sui Dynasty and Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties, Song Dynasty, Liao Dynasty, Western Xia, Jin Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty and the first period of Qing Dynasty (before the Opium War.) The 11th chapter analyses the formed characteristics of Chinese wushu and Japanese martial arts and their main differences with a comparative viewpoint. The text is followed by three appendices("Illustration catalogue", "Chronicle of wushu", and "Reference documents").

2. Characteristics

　As one of the traditional physical activities of the Chinese nation, wushu has a long history and substantial contents, but for a long time in ancient China wushu was influenced by the tendency of valuing civilian matters above military matters and the records about wushu are few and far between. It is not easy to find historical materials of wushu in the tremendous amount of documents and historical materials available, which greatly limits the efforts of researchers.
　This text describes objectively the course of development and change of wushu, so it collects not only the documents, historical materials and the data of ethnology, but also collects the data about Chinese wushu from all sides, at home and abroad, such as the unearthed cultural relics, frescoes, carvings, portrait stones and bricks. The text uses these directly perceivable illustrations, the documents and historical materials to confirm each other and to reveal the real formation of the development and change of wushu in each historic period.
　The development and change of Chinese wushu were closely related to the social background of the politics, economy, military affairs, culture, education and so on at that time. They were also closely related to the mixing movement of nations in every period, natural geographical environment, customs, and religious beliefs in every place. In this book the writer tries to put wushu in the aforementioned social background to analyse and objectively show the characteristics of the development and change of Chinese wushu in different historical periods.
　The contents of Chinese wushu are fairly rich and can be roughly divided into two systems: military wushu and folk wushu. This book explores the change of the two systems, while touching upon other topics in each historical period, such as free-standing boxing, weapons, important figures, wushu writings, wushu systems and groups, competitions, training, education, national wushu and Chinese-foreign wushu exchange, in order to draw the outline of wushu development and change in every historical period.
　At present, there is little study on Chinese wushu history, and there are different views on wushu phenomena appearing in every era. The past works on “ Wushu History of China” have many defects including my book with the same name published in 1994 by Beijing Sport University Press, and another work of mine published in 1996 by Taiwan Hualian Press. This book not only collects various documents and picture data but also absorbs as far as possible the new study achievements in recent years. In addition, this book deletes farfetched wording in order to supplement this work with new data and revise the shortcomings in my former books.

3. Readability

　This is a work of specialized history, but it also gives certain explanations about fist position, sabreplay, swordsmanship, cudgel play, spearmanship, wushu schools and some specialized terms in different eras for wushu enthusiasts’ needs. In particular, the work gives more detailed explanations about the keen competition appearing in folk wushu of the times of the Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty, original wushu skills and everyday terms.

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