Journal of the Philosophy of Sport

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Wushu: a culture of adversaries

Guo-Bin Dai & An Lu

To cite this article: Guo-Bin Dai & An Lu (2019): Wushu: a culture of adversaries, Journal of the
Philosophy of Sport, DOI: 10.1080/00948705.2019.1649599

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2019.1649599

Published online: 06 Aug 2019.

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JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPORT
https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2019.1649599

ARTICLE

Wushu: a culture of adversaries

Guo-Bin Daia and An Lub
a
Wushu College at Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai Shi, China; bHuaibei Normal
University, Anhui Sheng, China

ABSTRACT
Wushu is widely misunderstood and its essentially combative nature is being
challenged in public discussion. Understanding and recovering its essential nat-
ure has become a core issue. This paper first conducts a review of the history of
the Chinese hieroglyphic 武 (Wu) which is the core of the phrase of Wushu, and
explores the word’s two most widely-accepted interpretations: ‘to carry a dagger-
axe to fight with’ and ‘to put away the dagger-axe and stop fighting’.
Understanding these two interpretations of Wu is the key to understand Wushu
which is an art about Wu. Second, this paper, referencing cultural history, analyzes
different methods of Wushu practice: Gedou (free combat), Taolu (compiled
routine) and Gongfa (basic prowess). Third, based on Wittgenstein’s concept of
family resemblance, this paper analyzes the different sorts of opponents, either
real or imagined, in Taolu, Gedou, and Gongfa. Finally, this paper redefines Wushu
as a culture of adversaries where such adversaries implicitly transfer the practi-
tioner’s focus ‘from non-human to human’ and ‘from others to the self’.

KEYWORDS Wushu; Gedou; Taolu; Gongfa; adversary; archeology of knowledge

Introduction
In the years following China’s opening to the global community, Wushu has
become a key symbol of Chinese cultural identity.1 It is even erroneously
assumed that every Chinese person practices the art.2 So, what is Wushu? This
seemingly naïve question is actually quite complicated. To put it simply, Wushu’s
visual aesthetic in not always a reliable indicator of the social implications of its
actual practice. It also seems likely that the conceptual understanding of Wushu
within the global marketplace is far from the vision of Wushu that resides in
native Chinese minds. Some English language scholars believe that terms like
Wushu and Kung Fu are fundamentally irreducible to one another (Yang 1998;
Frank 2006, 5; Lorge 2011, 9; Judkins and Nielson 2015, 11). In most cases these
authors appear to be drawing a distinction between the international competi-
tive sport overseen by the International Wushu Federation (IWF), and other folk
martial arts, including those that originate from Southern China.

CONTACT An Lu luan1999@163.com
© 2019 IAPS
2 G.-B. DAI AND A. LU

However, nearly every Wushu practitioner in China will claim what he or

she practices is, in fact, the most authentic Kung Fu. In a general linguistic
sense, Wushu is a kind of exercise evolved from Chinese martial arts, while
Kung Fu denotes one’s accomplishment in combat training. Therefore, if we
examine Wushu from the lens of internationally accepted concepts of mar-
tial arts and Kung Fu, we are likely to misunderstand Wushu and thus be
unable to give it a just evaluation (Dai 2011).
Cynarski and Skowron (2014) and Martinkova and Parry (2016) have already
analyzed the concept of martial arts in great detail, which is helpful but not
enough to draw meaningful distinctions between the varieties of practices
available in any given cultural context. A concept is the cornerstone of the
theoretical research surrounding it. Undoubtedly, in order to understand and
examine Wushu, the first step is to know its definition. Yet language is never
static and therefore the definition of Wushu is constantly changing. Since the
beginning of modern times, Chinese official and academic authorities have
attempted to stabilize this meaning by employing approximately four methods
of defining Wushu, with two instances of major change.
The first of these changes was from what might be termed a ‘functional
definition’ to a ‘routine-based definition’. For example, the National Sports
Implementation Act (1932) stated ‘Our nation’s inherent physical exercise can,
on the one hand, provide self-defense skills, and on the other, build a strong
body’ (authors’ translation). Such a definition emphasizes the military and phy-
sical functions of Wushu. In contrast, Wushu Teaching Materials for Undergraduate
Students of Sport Universities (1961) states ‘Wushu is the national sport which
consists of fist routines, weapon routines and the related training methods. It can
function as the tool to strengthen marrows and bones, promote health and forge
willpower. It is also a national cultural heritage with a long history’ (authors’
translation). Here Wushu is narrowed down to routines (as in Taolu, meaning a
‘compiled routine’). Moreover, in the General Wushu Coursebook for Physical
Education Departments (1978) the definition focused on core elements of move-
ment, namely ‘kick, punch, wrest, capture, hit and stab’ and compiling a principle
of ‘fence and defense, haste and slow, firm and empty’. This further consolidated
routine-based features.
The second moment of change was from a ‘dichotomous definition’ to an
‘integrated definition’. In 1979, China created Sanda (a kind of fighting
competition where boxing, kicking and wrestling are all allowed) as an
event for which we can use the term Wushu sport. Hence, in The General
Wushu Coursebook for Physical Education Departments (1982) the definition
of Wushu consists of Taolu and Sanda. In 2009 the Wushu Academy of China
State Sports General Administration publicized the following new definition:
‘Wushu is a traditional Chinese sport which regards Chinese culture as its
theoretical basis, takes offensive and defensive techniques as its basic con-
tents, and includes Taolu (compiled routine), Gedou (free combat) and
 JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPORT 3

Gongfa (basic prowess) as its main forms of movement’ (Zhou 2010, authors’
translation).
The aforementioned definitions represent an authoritative understanding of
Wushu in China. Yet they are becoming less helpful, especially in a global
context, as they are increasingly unable to present the sport’s dynamic and
complex connotations. The anthropologist and Taijiquan practitioner Frank
(2006, 243) noted ‘Wushu is the term for “martial arts” in Mandarin Chinese,
but it has acquired a complicated association with performance-oriented mar-
tial arts that have little or nothing to do with combat training’. In contrast we
would argue that Wushu is a culture premised on the notion of an adversary
and, even in performance, it remains adversary-based. Hereafter, we draw upon
the terminology of Michel Foucault’s ‘archaeology of knowledge’ and Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘family resemblance’, in order to extract the respective
cultural characteristics of Taolu, Gedou and Gongfa.

The archaeology of knowledge of Wushu

The archaeology of knowledge is a term put forward in 1969 by Michel
Foucault, the French philosopher and social theorist. In his book,
Archaeology of Knowledge (2002), Foucault informs us that researchers
should comb the history of human knowledge by using his methodology
of ‘archaeology’ and deepen the understanding of a given concept through
the investigation of the relationship between discourse and practice.
The present Chinese expression for martial arts is 武术 (Wushu). It is
believed that ‘the specialist terminology of a sport or martial art comes
from the language of the country of birth of the sport or martial art’
(Cynarski and Skowron 2014). In order to understand the historical develop-
ment and practice of the Chinese martial arts we cannot avoid a discussion
of etymology. Therefore, hereafter we use the expression Wushu instead of
Chinese martial arts, which is helpful to make their historically Chinese
characteristics more targeted and understandable.
The character 武 (Wu) appeared in the Chinese language as early as the
Shang Dynasty (1600 BC-1046 BC). As a fixed phrase, 武术（Wushu）first
appeared in the proposition of ‘yan wu xiu wen’ (stop military action, promote
civilization) in the Northern and Southern Dynasties（420 CE – 589 CE）(Xiao
1986, 967). The Liang prince Zhaoming Xiao Tong, in Xiao Tong Anthology,
excerpted one of Yan Yannian’s poems in which a line is ‘yan bi Wushu, chan
yang wenling’. The meaning of this line is ‘stop military action, advocate
literary education’. If we follow Michel Foucault’s research approach to the
archaeology of knowledge, to acquire the meaning of Wushu from the root of
historical culture and to deepen the understanding of the concept of martial
arts by investigating the relationship between practice and discourse, then
we can, based on the connotation of the Chinese character 术 (originally
4 G.-B. DAI AND A. LU

meaning ‘pick up plants and tracks’, later extended as ‘methods and techni-
ques’), define Wushu very literally as ‘The art of Wu, i.e. the method and
technology of Wu’. Thus, the key point is to define 武. After turning to the
related Chinese classics, we find that the Chinese have historically compre-
hended 武 in the following two ways, and the shift from the former into the
latter suggests that practitioners are stepping from violence into civilization.

Carrying a dagger-axe
The first interpretation of 武, ‘to carry a dagger-axe to fight with’, suggests the
struggles of the practical world. According to the research by Yang Bojun
(1981, 744), a Chinese linguist, the shape of the character 武 on oracle bones
looks like , the headpiece of a weapon called a ge (戈, or dagger-axe) and
the underpart zhi (止) means toe. He thus interprets 武 (wu) as ‘carry a ge to
move, or carry a dagger-axe to fight with’. Thus, the meaning of wu in its
original Chinese context refers to military activities which required the use of
violence to rule the country (Dai 2015, 167–169). We can thus understand why
Confucius’ saying ‘The governing principle used by both kings of
Zhouwenwang（1152 BC―1056 BC) and Zhouwuwang（？―1043 BC）is
to keep alternating tension with relaxation’ is still ubiquitous in China today.
Based on the governing principles of Zhouwenwang and Zhouwuwang,
Confucius classified governance into civil authority and military power, deem-
ing the ideal pattern as alternating between the two. Therefore, it is under-
standable that a great number of people understand the essence of Wushu as
combativeness and translate Wushu as ‘martial arts’ in English, even though
the imagination of carrying a dagger-axe to fight with has become obscured.
Since fighting is usually regarded as the fundamental feature of Wushu,
and the Chinese word for fighting is 技击 (jiji), what is the definition of this
term? Lorge (2011, 10) once used the English word ‘boxing’ for jiji, but he
noted that we cannot insist on any single foreign language term for the
Chinese martial arts. As such, we must return to etymology and the Chinese
classics for help. Within Xunzi: On Military Action, a philosophical writing from
the pre-Qin period of China, we read ‘the soldiers of Qin fight against enemies
bravely, which is called jiji’.3 Another Chinese classic Records of Han · Criminal
Law (Hanshu)4 quotes Meng Kang’s interpretationof jiji as ‘The skills of military
commanders. Commanders exercise their limbs and weapons, getting ready
for any offensive and defensive victory’ (authors’ translation). Chinese martial
artists assert that jiji is the essence of Wushu. Their various interpretations
intend to further confirm the military trait of Wushu. In their opinion, Wushu is
the techniques of using force to defeat the enemy.
 JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPORT 5

Putting away the dagger-axe and stop fighting

The second interpretation of the Chinese character 武 is based on the considera-
tion of the ideal society, meaning to ‘put away the dagger-axe and stop fighting’.
The earliest interpretation of this kind appeared in the Zuo Zhuan of Spring and
Autumn, the author of which is Zuo Qiuming, an official historian of Lu in the
Spring and Autumn period (770 BC – 476 BC) of Chinese history. In Zuo’s book we
find the following story:

In 597 BC, after Chu Zhuangwang defeated Jin forces, his ministers suggested
him to collect and put the corpses of Jin soldiers together in order to make a
show of Chu’s strength. Chu Zhuangwang refused the ministers’ suggestion,
saying ‘the character 武 encompasses 止 and 戈; 止 means 停止（stop）, 戈
refers to a dagger-axe, a weapon used to fight with. So Wushu as a whole
means “put away a dagger-axe and stop fighting”. Besides, Wushu system has
seven virtues’ (Zuo 2001, authors’ translation).

Chu Zhuangwang said, ‘How can a person with no virtue make every
means to get an official post? Even if he gets it, it’s hard to imagine that
he is able to maintain it’ (authors’ translation). In Chu Zhuangwang’s
view, Wu is the virtue-holders’ action to fight for the official post. That
is to say, ‘to stop fighting’ does not mean giving up fighting, but instead
means to fight ethically, sparingly and justifiably. Here we can see that
the Chinese interpretation of Wu has gone through a process from foot-
related fighting into hand-related non-fighting.5
Interpretations of Wu as ‘to put away the dagger-axe and stop fight-
ing’ can be traced back to the Shun period (ca. 21st Century BC – 11th
Century BC). The records in the Chinese historical classics Hanfeizi: Five
Moths and Shangshu: Da Yu Mo, say ‘Miao didn’t agree to put down
weapons, then Shun trained his army and had his soldiers drill with Gan
and Qi in hands. Seeing these soldiers drilling, Miao was moved and
surrendered’ (authors’ translation). Two books described and interpreted
this event with slight differences. One says that what Shun’s soldiers held
in their hands were shields and axes;6 the other says what Shun’s soldiers
held shields and feathers.7 In any case, the end of the story stated the
same. Miao was not defeated by military action, but was moved while
seeing Shun’s soldiers drilling with axes or feathers in hands. What’s
more, interpreting Wu as ‘to put away the dagger-axe and stop fighting’
is often seen in various other Chinese classics, such as Zuo Zhuan (the
first historical annals in Chinese history), Yi Zhuan (compiled in Warring
States period) and The Arts of War (written by Sunzi).
Mccarthy (2008) once devoted a few remarks to the philosophy of
Chinese martial arts, explaining that the sense of Wu is not a victory or
defeat, but rather patience, sincerity, honesty and kindness. However, we
6 G.-B. DAI AND A. LU

argue that the sense of Wu is always found within victory and defeat. Even
patience is a matter of overcoming precipitousness.

The cultural history of Wushu

It is now necessary to turn to the cultural history of Wushu and analyze the
different types of practice which have emerged from competing concep-
tions of Wushu. Donohue underlined the importance of a comprehensive
understanding of the cultural significance of the martial arts:
On a cultural level, to approach the study of a culture’s fighters is also to draw
nearer to a more complete understanding of the ideas that motivate people
toward (and through) combat. From a broader perspective, such an examina-
tion also sheds light on society itself. To discuss a martial system is to
investigate a particular type of social institution and the constellation of
cultural as well as technical forces which animate it (1994, 20).

We might present a social survey of Wushu in the following way: Chinese

people’s interpretation of Wushu can be categorized as focusing on aggression,
aesthetics, violence or, to use Barry Allen’s term, beauty (Allen 2015, IX). These
categories of interpretation have influenced the practical development of
Wushu, and consequently pushed the cultural development of Wushu towards
‘combat sport’ and ‘dance’, resulting in the subsequent formation of Gedou,
Taolu and Gongfa (Cai 1957). The historical evolution of this discursive process is
illustrated in Figure 1.

The aggressive interpretation of Wu and Gedou culture

Chinese Wushu transmitted the connotation of ‘carrying a weapon to
fight with’ through the development of Gedou. Gedou bears militaristic
features embedded within its requirement ‘to strike and destroy’ as
remarked upon by Master Cai Longyun (1928–2015). Here ‘to strike’
suggests that ‘once you take action, you must hit the target accurately’,
and ‘to destroy’ means ‘once you hit the target accurately, you must
destroy it’ (Cai 2007, 302).
Gedou thus came into being as an attempt to realize the same practical
and combative goals shared by other martial arts of other countries. In this
sense, Gedou, as one modern version of Wushu, can easily be understood
and integrated into international combat competitions.

The aesthetic interpretation of Wu and Taolu culture

It is through the development of Taolu that we see an expression of ‘put
away the weapon and stop fighting’. Taolu practitioners must devise and
 JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPORT 7

Wushu Development

Military Interpretation Developmental

Cultural forms
Pathway

Gedou
Oracle
effective
Character Carrying A Weapon to
fighting
of Wu Fight Combat
Gongfa
using force
physical

fitness training

To Stop Fighting
Taolu
to stop using force, or Dance
new aesthetic
use force symbolically
fighting

Figure 1. The relationship between the classical military interpretation of Wu and the
development of modern Wushu.

work with imagined adversaries. Indeed, all of their movements are

designed to fight against these imaginary adversaries. While practicing
Taolu, the practitioner is, in some senses, not really acting alone. To be
properly purposeful his eyes are required to fix on an opponent and his
mind must focus on how to fight cleanly and beautifully. Taolu encompass
many diverse movements including standing on ground or elevated poles,
kicking, forward or sideways strikes, short hand and leg extensions, full-
extended strikes, spinning strikes, even seemingly off balance drunken or
breeze-like movements. Of course, it must be pointed out that these move-
ments tend to be so idealized that they can hardly be useful in any real
fighting situations (Dai and Chen 2009). Yet that is not their purpose.
The culture of Taolu has forged a new fighting system which is
characterized in Chinese as both unique and sensuous. Taolu culture,
highlighting the ideal military understanding of the character ‘Wu’, is
the main vehicle of Wushu’s cultural heritage (Dai 2016). In this sense,
Taolu cannot be understood easily by fighters from other countries as it
pursues a unique idealization of combat and a specific aesthetics of
fighting movements. For example, Taolu practitioners usually end perfor-
mances with a calm-down posture (raising palms upward from both sides
of the body and then pressing downward in front of the body, so that Qi
returns to Dantian, an elixir field below the belly button); while Karate
8 G.-B. DAI AND A. LU

performers usually end performance with ‘zanshin (残心), a relaxed

awareness that maintains intent and alert posture after a successful
strike, plays’ (Ilundáin-Agurruza 2014).

The corporeal philosophy of Wu and Gongfa culture

In his three books Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (1991), The
History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge (1998), and The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1969), Michel Foucault made great
efforts to explore micro politics by analyzing the interaction of knowledge,
power and body, even though he did not state this directly. For Foucault,
both knowledge and power directly or indirectly relate to and serve the
body. In terms of the cultural practice of martial arts, these two interpreta-
tions of Wushu produced two different cultural forms: Gedou and Taolu. At
the same time, these two forms emphasize Gongfa, repeating the well-
known aphorism that ‘if you practice Wushu without doing Gongfa, you
will find that whatever you practice is just in vain when you get old’.
In fact, Gongfa is inherent throughout Taolu and Gedou. Gedou and Taolu
construct their respective training methods and evaluation criteria. When
discussing Taolu Gongfa one might hear ‘If you practice Wushu without
paying attention to the training of your waist, it dooms your art to a low
level’. Notions such as the ‘prowess of the legs’, and ‘the waist is agile like a
winding snake, a step must be firm and stable’ constitute the essence of the
Taolu Gongfa system (Cai 1958). Meanwhile, such methods as ‘to beat the
sandbag and stake’ (commonly known in the West as Iron Palm training)
and an emphasis on ‘to strike and destroy’, constitute the Gedou Gongfa
system. No matter what Gonfa it is, it ultimately contributed to bodily
prowess.

The family resemblance of Taolu, Gedou and Gongfa

Wushu, having covered the journey from violence (to carry a dagger-axe to
fight with) to civilization (to put away the dagger-axe and stop fighting), has
recently evolved into three cultural expressions (Taolu, Gedou and Gongfa)
which correlate with family resemblances, as understood by Wittgenstein in
his posthumous masterpiece Philosophical Investigations (2009).
Wittgenstein did not think that it was either possible, nor should it be the
goal of philosophical research, to find an essential definition that comprised
universal common features. He thought that things which could be thought
to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected
by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all
of the things. Thus, Wushu family members (Gedou, Taolu and Gongfa) may
share no identical features but are connected by a certain overlapping
 JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPORT 9

similarity. In this case that revolves around the notion of adversaries. The
historical evolution of Wushu culture begins with ‘nonhuman adversaries’,
along with ‘human adversaries’ and ends with the formation of ‘the culture
of adversaries’ (Dai 2011, 267–313).

The system of non-human adversaries

In order to reduce the harm to adversaries, military training chose non-
human objects as a substitute for adversaries to fight against. These sub-
stitute adversaries may also be animals. For example, documents (Yao 1981)
tell us that hunting was used to train soldiers as early as the West Zhou
period (1046 BC – 771 BC) of Chinese history. Hunting practices were also
recorded in the Book of Songs (shi jing), the first Chinese poetic anthology
which contains 305 poems written during the early West Zhou and the
Middle Spring and Autumn period (1100 BC – 600 BC).8 Additionally, non-
human adversaries can be inanimate objects as even when practicing with a
wooden dummy, one still imagines an opponent.9 Concrete or wooden
adversaries have been used in military training since the Historical Records
(shi ji), the first biographical volume written by Sima Qian, a famous histor-
ian in the West Han Dynasty (202 BC-9). Other types of targets are still used
for bayonet and marksmanship training. Wushu has inherited the conven-
tion of non-human adversaries in military training and advanced its devel-
opment in three aspects.
First, Wushu practitioners try to improve their combat ability by playing
with animals. In 1932, based on these historical facts, a martial arts novel
Chivalrous Heroes was completed by Pingjiang Buxiaosheng, the pseudonym
of Xiang Kairan (1889–1957), who was a Chinese martial artist and wrote
martial arts themed novels. Chivalrous Heroes describes two strong brothers
who played with dogs and oxen as ‘practicing adversaries’ (Pingjiang 1984,
382–387). It is said that Bruce Lee used to play with animals in order to
improve his stamina, for example, playing with a dog in order to improve his
speed (Bruce and Uyehara 1988, 52–53).
Second, Wushu practitioners use animals as sources of their cultural
production. Based on the observation of animal movements, Wushu masters
advance in three directions: to produce Taolus by imitating animals’ attack-
ing movements, to produce a physical health regimen by imitating animals’
longevity, and creating games by imitating animals’ manners (Dai 2009).
To take the first direction as an example, many Taolus were created on
the basis of the observation of animals, such as the legendary Taijiquan
created by Zhang Sanfeng after he observed a fight between a sparrow and
a snake (Yang 1988, 276), and Tanglangquan created by Wang Lang after he
observed a mantis fighting against a cicada, and Baihequan created by Fang
Qiniang after she observed the movements of a white crane (Kang 1990,
10 G.-B. DAI AND A. LU

215). Jiang Rongqiao (1936, 365), a Chinese Wushu master, summarized this
creativity as ‘people learn the shape of animals’ attacking movements and
extract the effectiveness from these movements. Then people apply what
they learn to the combat with enemies’.
All of this has contributed to the development of a uniquely materialist
turn within some elements of Chinse martial culture. For example, many
Wushu movements are named after animals’ behaviors, such as ‘a wild horse
parting its mane’ in Taijiquan, ‘a great hawk spreads its wings’ in
Baguazhang, ‘a golden rooster standing on one leg’ in Shaolinquan, and
countless others. The normalization and evaluation of contemporary Wushu
movements also reflect this long history of animal representation. For
example, techniques may be classified as ‘snake twine’, ‘tiger swat’, ‘eagle
clutch’ and so on; the qualities of movements are described as ‘upward like
an ape, downward like a bird, firm like a rooster, fluent like a hawk’;
technical skills are labeled as ‘cat flee, dog dodge, rabbit roll, eagle somer-
sault’, to name just a few (Dai 2015, 55).

New exploration of human adversaries

Wushu not only inherited military traditions of working against non-human
adversaries (whether training dummies or animals), but it also cultivates
practice against human adversaries. The culture can be expressed in the
following ways: visible symbolic adversaries, visible factitious adversaries
and invisible imaginary adversaries.

Visible symbolic adversaries

In Wushu practice, training partners are used to improve the protagonist’s
combat ability. At the same time, in traditional Wushu pedagogy system,
masters tend to cut each posture apart into minimal movements and tell
disciples the usage of each posture, and then the master serves as the
opponent and deliberately provides chances for the disciple to make use
of the movements. This is called ‘decompose and feed tricks’ which are
implemented in order to help practitioners to experience and understand
better the practical use of each movement, and simultaneously raise the
practitioners’ interest and performance effect. In this way, each movement
of Taolu is analyzed in terms of offense and defense, so that practitioners
can perceive the action time, reaction method and real effect. Thus, human
adversaries in Wushu culture include both the ‘I-win-you-lose’ adversaries of
Gedou practice as well as the more cooperative, ‘all-that-I-do-facilitates-your-
victory’ adversaries in symbolic paired Taolu practice.
 JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPORT 11

Visible factitious adversaries

Factitious adversaries function in choreographed martial arts sparring. In
order to practice specific offense-defense sequences, and highlight the
attacking techniques, Wushu masters compiled many thrilling sparring rou-
tines. In these routines, the players are fighting against one another. All the
movements, offensive or defensive, are fixed beforehand and unchangeable
while sparring. The participants are, by necessity, more cooperative than
competitive. Therefore, we call such pairings ‘cooperative adversaries’. Such
factitious sparring allows practitioners to experience and improve their
combat skills. Yet it is also a means for expressing their combative aspira-
tions with an idealized Wushu. Thus the moment of ‘either-you-or-I-must-
suffer-defeat’ is culturally formed.

Invisible imaginary adversaries

In the case in which there is no training partner, the practitioner can imagine an
adversary to fight against. It seems that singular practice is just an individual
work without any rivals. However, the creators of Wushu must have designed
an adversary for every movement. That is to say, when you are practicing
Wushu singularly, you are in fact fighting against an adversary or adversaries
even though they are invisible. Practitioners generally cannot ‘see’ their adver-
sary until the master explains the application of movements. A single Taolu
requires the practitioners to put themselves in a totally imaginary combat
situation where they fight alone against one or more adversaries.

New ways to compete

Understanding Wushu’s adversaries allows us to take a fresh look at its
culture of competition. Very often direct person-to-person competition is
decentered and reframed in more material and less directly violent ways,
because the persons involved rather choose material substitutes for the
personal, violent interaction. Consequently, the structure of competition
among Wushu practitioners is no longer only people-to-people, but often
people-substance-people. For example, in Matsuda Takachi’s A Brief History
of Chinese Martial Arts we read:
A Wushu master from Shandong, a province in east China, heard of Chen Shan,
another Wushu master, and desired to compete with him. Chen Shan treated
him politely and generously, so the Shandong Wushu master thought it
improper to compete on that occasion. However, when they went out for a
walk, the Shandong Wushu master punched purposely against a wall and a
hole appeared in the wall. Seeing this, Chen Shan punched his fist against the
wall, and half of the wall collapsed; then Chen Shan kicked, and the corner
12 G.-B. DAI AND A. LU

stone collapsed. The Shandong Wushu master felt shocked and left away
shamed (Matsuda 1984,127, authors’ translation).

Obviously, Chen Shan did not fight against the Shandong Wushu master
directly, yet they still engaged in a high-stakes competition. They chose a
cob wall as the medium to judge their respective prowess (Dai 2011,
292–293).
Second, the culture of human adversaries in Taolu exercise necessitates
the involvement of the whole body including ‘hands, eyes, steps; spirit,
sense and strength’, and sets new criteria for Taolu competition: speed
and strength. In other words, the aforementioned requirement to strike
and destroy an adversary has been transformed to an evaluation of the
practitioner’s own speed and strength. This is to say, while practicing single
Taolu, the practitioner has to look inward with the awareness of ‘speed and
strength’, so that he actually enjoys the competition where you play your
role and I play mine.
Third, as a new ideal for combat, Chinese Wushu also came up with a
‘touch is enough’ competitive orientation which is the role prescription of
superior Wushu competitors. ‘Touch is enough’ requires that those superior
Wushu competitors, during the competition, should exhibit their prowess of
‘to strike and destroy’, and that at the same time they should exhibit self-
control and ethics. In other words, the method of ‘touch is enough’ reflects
not only the real competition of ‘to strike and destroy’, but the ideal combat
as well. The rule of ‘touch is enough’ usually makes the competition come to
a friendly end, avoiding repetitive and even endless struggle. Wushu com-
petition used to be endless, because ‘once one party was defeated, the
defeated might demand to fight again, or he might let a representative of
his school continue to fight’ (Dai 2011, 219–226, authors’ translation). Thus,
the ‘touch is enough’ rule of competition is the reflection of Chinese
people’s understanding of both a pragmatic military and an ideal military,
which results from Chinese Wushu’s evaluation from ‘barbarism to civiliza-
tion, from controlling others to self-control, from pragmatism to idealism’,
and is also the principle of ‘effectiveness and ethics’ of Gedou techniques.

Redefining Wushu
What is Wushu? On the one hand we must be able to make clear the
conceptual links between Taolu, Gedou and Gongfa within Wushu competi-
tion. Yet on the other we must be able to connect all of this to traditional
physical fitness practices and national folk sports. To accomplish this one
must start with the understanding that within Wushu one must always have
an adversary in combat, either real or imagined. This must be tempered with
an appreciation for the concept of Wu (to carry a weapon to fight with or to
 JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPORT 13

stop the fighting) in the evolution of these practices. Behind these two
understandings exists the fundamental conceptual division of ‘taking others
as the adversary and taking self as the adversary’. The debate between these
two viewpoints has developed Wushu through a series of astonishing
changes. In addition, we define Wushu from the perspective of adversaries
because we must consider the differences among Taolu, Gedou and Gongfa,
while also finding their overlapping similarities. See Figure 2 below:
Based on the figure above, we derive the following definition: Wushu is a
culturally complex amalgam of various adversaries as well as combat with
different kinds of adversaries.
The adversary is the collective assembly of nonhuman and human oppo-
nents. It is a cultural complex integration that includes not only real adver-
saries in practical combats but also symbolic adversaries in training,
factitious adversaries in already-designed sparring, and imaginary adver-
saries in single exercises. Additionally, one can also compete against
abstract notions. We have adversaries of prowess in Gongfa training, adver-
saries of diseases in Wushu exercises for health promotion, ethical adver-
saries in Wushu education, and ‘swifter-higher-stronger’ adversaries in
Wushu competitions.
Thus, Wushu culture involves both visible and invisible adversaries, and
Wushu activities can be classified according to the different kinds of adver-
saries involved. For example, when you take a certain disease as an adver-
sary, the Wushu you practice is health; when you take ‘swifter, higher and
stronger’ as an adversary, the Wushu you practice is Olympic competition;
when you take ethic as an adversary, the Wushu you practice is education;
when you take emotion as an adversary, the Wushu you practice is enter-
tainment; when you take the fidelity and innovation of combating paradigm
as an adversary, the Wushu you practice is cultural transmission.
We have to confess that defining Wushu is quite a daunting task, and ‘any
effort to define martial arts in the context of broader human social life is far
more complicated than can be imagined’ (Yang 1996, 8).

Conclusion
The process of defining Wushu has evolved from a functional Taolu defini-
tion to a dichotomy definition (Taolu-Sanda), and to a Taolu-Sanda-Gongfa
integrated definition. Literally, Wushu is the combined techniques of Wu and
Shu in a system of technical methods. Accepting this, we must explore the
linguistic history of Wu if we want to understand Wushu.
From the perspective of Foucault’s theory about knowledge archaeology,
Chinese people have developed two different interpretations and discourse
systems about Wu: ‘to carry a dagger-axe to fight with’ and ‘putting down
 14
G.-B. DAI AND A. LU

Figure 2. Sketch map of Wushu under the perspective of family resemblance.

 JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPORT 15

the dagger-axe and stop fighting’. Debates between these two interpreta-
tions lead to three forms of Wushu: Taolu, Gedou and Gongfa.
While practicing Wushu, the practitioners maybe encounter nonhuman
adversaries, symbolic adversaries, factitious adversaries, and imaginary
adversaries. It is evident that these three different forms, just like different
family members, overlap in certain details. Thus, we can define Wushu as a
culturally complex integration of adversaries, and we can regard Wushu
culture as the combat against different types of opponents.
The adversary-oriented Wushu has evolved from taking non-human
objects as adversary to human opponents, and from there to taking the
“self’ as adversary. This is the product of traditional Chinese culture.
It is noteworthy that among those visible and invisible, microscopic and
macroscopic adversaries, the biggest adversary is the practitioner himself. As
Lao Tzu once stated, ‘He who is able to overcome himself is the winner’. In
order to improve their own ability of overcoming the self, Wushu masters
not only created Taolu, but also set a series of ethical norms to overcome
their own instinctive impulse. Taking self as an adversary demonstrates the
self-control and inward-inspection of Chinese culture. Thus, as the culture of
adversaries, Wushu has civilization on the outside and a warrior in the inside.

Notes
1. According to the report of Chinese Cultural Cognitive Investigation among
Foreigners released in 6 June 2015 by Capital Cultural Innovation and
Cultural Communication Institute of Beijing Normal University, foreigners’
favorite Chinese traditional cultures include Beijing opera, Chinese tea,
Chinese martial arts, Chinese traditional painting, and Chinese medicine. See
survey: Panda is the Chinese cultural mark with highest international prestige.
Available at http://www.chinanews.com/cul/ 2015/06-06/7326654.shtml
(accessed 17 August 2017).
2. For example, Wen Jiabao, the former Premier of People’s Republic of China
was once asked 54 questions in a letter written by more than 30 students
from, Kansas, USA. One of these questions is ‘Are you able to do martial arts,
premier’. See Kang G.W., Qiu P.X., Dai G.B. 2004. ‘Cong Wenhua Haoqi Dao
Wenhua Zhanlue [From the cultural curiosity to culture strategy]’. Sports
Culture Guide (6): 12–13.
3. Available at http://www.ziyexing.com/files-5/xunzi/xunzi_15.htm (accessed 12
December 2017).
4. Available at http://so.gushiwen.org/guwen/bookv_3766.aspx (accessed 12
December 2017).
5. In the first interpretation, 止 represents toes, while in the second interpreta-
tion, 止 represents stop or cease, meaning ‘put down and stop’. In this sense,
we say that the former definition is foot-related and the later hand-related.
6. See Hanfeizi: Five Moths. Available at http://wyw.5156edu.com/html/
z3554m2013j937.html (accessed 18 December 2017).
16 G.-B. DAI AND A. LU

7. See Shangshu: Da Yu Mo. Available at https://shici.chazidian.com/shi62063/

(accessed 18 December 2017).
8. Book of Songs (shi jing) is said to have been compiled by Confucius. Available
at http://so.gushiwen.org/gushi/shijing.aspx (accessed 18 December 2017).
9. See Judkins’ academic martial arts blog Kung Fu Tea: https://chinesemartial
studies.com/2018/04/06/sophia-delza-vs-the-black-belt-ethos-post-material
ism-in-the-chinese-martial-arts/.

Acknowledgments
The authors of this paper appreciate all the reviewers’ and editors’ suggestions on
the revision. Special thanks should go to Professor Paul Gaffney for his warm
encouragement in helping us improve the paper. We also thank Dr. Ben Judkins
for his generous help and advice. Any errors are our own and we accept any and all
criticism or correction.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
Key projects of the national social science foundation of China[14ATY005].

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