Chinese Martial Arts: Wushu And Chinese Traditional Culture

Chinese traditional culture is broad and profound, and martial arts inherited from traditional culture not only has the traditional Chinese medicine’s way of maintaining health, but also has the influence of Taoism and Confucianism. The theory of five elements is a kind of material view with unity of opposites and development as the core in Taiji philosophy. The five elements give birth to the relationship of mutual generation and mutual restraint in the movement and change of Yin and Yang of all things in the universe, while traditional Chinese medicine and Qigong have the same origin. The ancients called Jing, Qi and Shen the “three treasures” of human beings.

There was a saying in ancient times that “the essence, Qi and spirit are the basis of human life”. Traditional Chinese medicine uses the theory of viscera and meridians to reflect the phenomenon of life – disease and injury. Qigong uses the theory of meridians and essence, Qi and spirit to discuss the function of life health preservation. Qigong is a technique to transform essence, Qi and spirit into each other. Traditional Chinese medicine holds that “kidney stores essence, lung stores Qi, heart stores spirit, liver stores blood, and spleen controls transportation and transformation”. Traditional Chinese medicine’s “theory of essence, Qi and spirit” adopts the coordinated way of action, idea, and breath to consolidate essence, Nourish Qi, and regulate spirit, so as to achieve the goal of double cultivation of life. The original meaning of Tao is road, which can be extended to law or formula. China is a farming society. It has been living in one place for a long time, thus forming a completely different cultural feature of “family”, opposite to the “individual” in western society.

It has become a feature of Chinese people that “what our ancestors left behind can not be easily discarded, but should be handed down from generation to generation.” The reason why the ancient martial arts practitioners summarized and refined some regular things in the actual combat, and arranged them according to certain principles, thus forming a simple routine is actually a kind of program, and also a concrete embodiment of the pursuit of “Tao” in Chinese traditional culture. In ancient times, all schools had strict requirements and rules for practicing martial arts and teaching morality. Shaolin Temple had “Ten Commandments in vain”, much like Wudang, which stipulated that all those who committed adultery, theft, evil, prostitution and gambling were in violation of the commandments and were not allowed to teach their skills. Under the influence of traditional moral concepts, these strict martial rules and precepts combine attack and defense techniques with life cultivation, and gradually form the idea of advocating martial arts and morality, which is the folk characteristic and fine tradition of Chinese martial arts. The essence of practicing martial arts is to cultivate the moral sentiment of traditional martial arts ethics, respecting the teacher and respecting the way, being polite and trustworthy, valuing justice over benefit, being lenient with others and being strict with oneself. According to the theory of Chinese Wushu, human body, mind and morality are inseparable.

Mental cultivation and cultivation of martial ethics are extremely important contents of Chinese martial arts. In different historical periods, martial spirit had not only affected the development of martial arts practice, but also played an immeasurable role in promoting and shaping the spirit of the Chinese nation. Wushu, as a cultural phenomenon, has both progressiveness and limitations. The individuals and groups who practice Wushu in China have fully accepted the Confucian ideas of “benevolent people are benevolent” and “seeking benevolence and getting benevolence is nothing to complain about”. And these thoughts are closely related to the carrier of Wushu culture.

As a result, the development process of martial arts is more embodied in “dogmatic, conservative, and archaic” elements, which occupy the main position. This kind of ancient Confucianism just restricts the development of martial arts in thousands of years. In a word, the martial virtues advocated by Chinese martial arts are closely related to the idea of “benevolence” as the foundation and valuing justice over benefit in Confucian culture. In other words, the ideological essence of Confucian culture is systematically and completely passed on to the people in the Wulin, so that Chinese martial arts and Confucian culture also complement each other and remain in perfect harmony.


He Zhong is a master of traditional sports in Beijing Sport University. She won the national second level athlete of Wushu and the national first level referee of Wushu routine. She loves martial arts, and hopes to carry it forward and share the love for the discipline with others, so that more people are introduced to, appreciate and practice martial arts.