General Introduction to Martial Arts Culture

Author: Wang Li
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: This book primarily analyzes the cultural connotations and evolution of literary motifs, examining the essence of the spirit of the wandering knights in the Qin and Han dynasties, the origins of their revenge mentality, the three tendencies in the evolution of knightly revenge stories, legends of animals mourning and dying, Tang Dynasty descriptions of shooting and fighting tigers, the tradition of withdrawing from martial arts competitions and the worship of traditional martial arts ethics, the of weapons and the props used in ancient popular fiction to portray martial arts, women resisting violence with intelligence, and the five major revenge modes in and Hong Kong/Taiwanese martial arts novels that break traditional revenge concepts. It also explores the mutual influence of literary motifs between China and the world, explaining the didactic significance of stories about wild animals in Buddhist texts, the relationship between martial arts competitions and wits motifs and Buddhist stories, the Buddhist textual origins of the gambling theme in Ming and Qing popular fiction, the deep anthropological connotations and religious roots of the taboo of knight-robbers stealing flowers, the Buddhist textual origins of the Feng Yan motif, and the theme of corpse disposal in's novels, as well as the foreign cultural origins of the of the great eagle. The appendix also reviews the works on the history and theory of Chinese martial arts in mainland China during the 1990s.