Guoshu - national education for the Chinese people.
In Hong Kong, many martial arts studios include the words "Guoshu" in their name, especially those that were established earlier on. We usually use the words "Guoshu", "Wushu" and "Kungfu" inter-changeably. There are even those who think that Guoshu is Wushu or is another name for "traditional martial arts". However the there are few who have done much dedicated detailed research into the relationship between the two terms. This is an article by Hing Chao, published in the 2312th Issue of the Ming Pao Weekly in Hong Kong.
Until now, many people's conception of the words "Guoshu" is quite muddled. In recent years many new martial arts studios have started to reuse Guoshu in their names, like a light wind blowing the old flag of the Chinese Republic. These studios who label themselves as Guoshu Halls, mainly promote traditional kung fu and differentiate themselves from the "new Wushu" developed in 1957. Thus it seems that Guoshu is another name for traditional martial arts in many people's minds, and they do not know that once Guoshu represented the entire system of Sports Education for the Chinese people and that Wushu was only part of that system and underlying the word is a period that involved the life and death of a nation, and a song that represented the tears and hopes of a people.
So what is Guoshu and what does it have to do with the Wushu that we talk about now? What is the story of the development of Guoshu in Hong Kong? This is what this article seeks to deal with.
The Definition of Guoshu.
The term Guoshu first came about during the sixteenth year of the Republic (1927), when General Zhang Zhi Jiang officially applied to the Republican Government to change Wushu to Guoshu. In March of the following year, the Government announced that the motion had officially passed.
According to Professor Ma Mingta:
Guoshu is overarching term, which the Republican Government applied to the People's Sports Education - what was once called the Sports of the Soil - and this was official terminology.
... if one refers to Wushu in the early Republic, the national arts, etc. these terms lacked clear definitions and delineations, thus, when Zhang Zhi Jiang suggested Guoshu, this was a clearly defined term like Guohua (Chinese painting) or Guoyi (Chinese Medicine). The Guoshu that Zhang Zhi Jiang promoted was not a singular project, but was a sports system based upon competitive combat using bare hands or weapons.
Guoshu had many sources for content and forms of competition, and through a sports format preserved the many types of martial arts passed down from antiquity. Apart from Boxing and weapons taolu, there were empty handed and long and short weapons events, and also included arts that had an intimate connection with Wushu, such as wrestling, archery, catapult 弹弓, kicking the shuttlecock 踢毽, and other events. In terms of practice, Guoshu Academy's had a complete set of requirements, a marital artist needed to be proficient in boxing, weapons sets and fighting, wrestling, archery and had to pass a series of tests. On top of this foundation one had to have sufficient academic cultivation before once could be treated as a Guoshu practitioner. When on compared with the present day practice someone who is proficient in one art a Grandmaster, it is as different as night and day.
A Part of National Education.
The definition of Guoshu is the whole of Chinese People's Sports Education, it was a short preliminary experiment from 1928 to the beginning of the war, with a great deal of room to develop. It was an independent subject and cultural field under the National Studies System, Guoshu is a the only recent systematic attempt to study ancient Chinese body culture, it tried to excavate and systematize. Apart from inheriting the specific sports from traditional Chinese body culture, more important was the crystallization of the culture of the Chinese spirit. From the beginning Guoshu was the centerpiece of national education, and the famous Guoshu artists, they were all experts in sport as well as education.
The establishment of Guoshu Academies mainly happened at the beginning of the 20th century. During the period when western sports were rapidly developing in China, a group at the forefront of national sports education saw the importance of preserving the value system of Chinese culture and its humanist philosophy.
Chinese People's Sports Education demonstrated the wisdom and creativity of Chinese people and contains the Chinese people's special sports culture and value system. For example the spirit of politeness during competitive events, the mixing of hard and soft in attacking and defensive techniques, and nourishing both the body and the spirit to improve health, and the seeking of balance and harmony, etc.
There is no doubt that in those days the Guoshu Academies were trying to establish a Chinese sports system akin to that of Japan but for various political reasons this important cultural project was put aside. As the centerpiece of the national education, Guoshu was left orphaned, until there are only a few lineage holders left of an important cultural heritage.
The Difficult Birth of the Guoshu Academy of the two Guangs.
In 1928 the Central Guoshu Academy was established in the then capital, Nanjing. Most of the founding members came from northern China, this was for historical and geographical reasons; but for whatever reason, this led to the Guoshu Academy to be located in the North. After the central Guoshu academy was established, Hebei, Henan, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Shenxi, even the far north west - Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia -- proactively set up their own regional Guoshu Academies. This was the direct result of the efforts and planning of several individuals such as Ma Fengtu and Sun Lu Tang from the Central Guoshu Academy. Conversely, the development of Guoshu in the South lagged behind, especially in the border regions of Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian.
In October 1928, the first national examinations were held in Nanjing, after the Chairman of Guangdong province Li Ji Shen 李濟深 analyzed the results of the exam, he decided to promote the set up of academies in Guangdong and Guangxi. And he invited the prizewinners from the first examination - Wan Lai Sheng 萬籟聲 and Li Xian Wu - to follow him back to Guangdong to set up the Academy of the Two Guangs. After the provincial government approved the motion in February 1929, and was validated by the Education Bureau, the Liang Guang Guoshu Academy was officially established. And Wan Lai Sheng was the first headmaster and Li Xian Wu was Director of Education.
Unfortunately, due to infighting in the KMT, the Academy was dissolved not long after it was established, in May Wan Lai Sheng was imprisoned in Tangshan in Nanjing, with the Commander of the 8th Road Army -Chen Ji Tang overseeing internal affairs. In May of that year he ordered the academy to be dissolved, having lasted barely four months and was the shortest lasting of all the academies in the country.
"The Five Tigers head South" - Northern boxing is spread to the South
The Guoshu Academy in Guangdong was but a brief flowering, but during the process of set up a number of prominent martial artists were invited to teach, especially well known were the "Five Tigers" - Li Xian Wu, Fu Zhen Song 傅振嵩, Gu Ru Zhang, Wang Shao Zhou, who remained in south to teach. At the same time they brought the North's Shaolin Boxing, Bagua, Taiji, Cha Quan and Tan Tui to disseminate to the South. This is the second event in the recent history of Guangdong, after the setup of Jing Wu Athletic Association, that there was an organized transfer of Northern boxing to the South.
The Liang Guang Guoshu Academy only survived for 4 months, but the "Five Tigers" left a deep impression on the South. First of all, as Wan Lai Sheng and the others were relatively young, Wan Lai Sheng set up an open competition for those southern Sifus who were not convinced of their efficacy, and after a period of competition, he suppressed all complaints before opening his own school.
After the Academy was dissolved, Jing Wu invited Li Xian Wu to act as their director of education, and Gu Ru Zhang and Wang Shao Zhou set up the Guangzhou Guoshu Society. According to accounts of the time, "Iron Sand Gu Ru Zhang" had a very good reputation in Guangzhou, and he even developed a strong friendship with Choy Li Fut's Tam Sam, and their students exchanged techniques. An the developer of Fu Family Taiji, Fu Zhen Song also remained in Guangzhou to teach, and lived on until the beginning of Liberation. Amongst the Five Tigers, Fu Zhen Song's influence was the greatest, the Guangzhou Taiji Lianyi Society 廣東太極聯誼社 had a profound impact on the development of that province, with its lineage holders having a leading position in Guangdong.
Amongst these people Wan Lai Sheng spent the least time in Lingnan, after liberation he went to Shanghai, Henan and Wuhan to develop his skills. Thus it can be ascertained that the number of students he had in Guangdong were not many. But what the Guoshu Academy and its instructors left behind were not only fighting techniques but also the spirit of "Strengthening the Country and Strengthening the Race" Wan Lai Sheng in his book, "Wu Shu Hui Zong" 《武術匯宗》，wrote:
Chinese Wushu' essence can be described as an extremely profound, on a small scale it is only a form of self defense, strengthening the bones and tendons, on a large scale it can defend against the humiliation by outsiders, and save our country, it can make a sickly person strong, a fearful person stand up for himself, and is not empty bluster.
Guoshu in Hong Kong
The Guoshu Academy was a state organization for developing and promoting local sport, and its influence was mainly in Nanjing and the surrounding provinces and major cities, the north and the inland North West. The development in the south was relatively worse, although the Liang Guang Guoshu Academy was set up in 1929, it was dissolved in four months. The British Colony of Hong Kong never formally had a Guoshu Academy, but due to the flow of people between Hong Kong and the mainland, Guoshu spread to Hong Kong through private channels.
From the 1930s onwards, following the large scale movement of people from the mainland to Hong Kong, the concept of Guoshu also naturally spread to Hong Kong, and affected the local people's understanding and definition of Wushu. As the spread of Guoshu was always via the people, and the development of Guoshu in the south being relatively slow, from the beginning the concept of Guoshu in Hong Kong was not clear. And as Jing Wu and other private martial arts associations had a rapid development early on, many people began to mix up the concepts of Guoshu, Wushu, Sport, and Guozhi (national skills). This can be seen from the names of many of the Hong Kong schools, some were called Wuguan, some called Guoshu guan, some were called Gymnasiums 健身學院, Guozhi Guan, etc.
The development of martial history in Hong Kong has been greatly influenced by China. Each incidence of political unrest, cultural revolution, and other trends have all blown into the southern outpost of Hong Kong. But the hurricane from China, has usually died down to a gentle wind by the time it has reached China, and in the special colonial atmosphere of Hong Kong, it is hard to envision the atmosphere and the soil of China.
The interaction between China and overseas from Antiquity until now
As a cultural expression, the appearance of Guoshu was a direct result of a the clash between early twentieth Century China and Western culture. It not only reflected modernization but a reflection on its own cultural identity; on a deeper level it was a product of the interaction between the domestic and the western culture, between tradition and modernity. On one level we can say that was a scream of a China that had just emerged from the shackles of feudalism, and was struggling to defend itself from Western repression.
It was not only a stand in for traditional Wushu, because it did not accept the feudal basis of traditional Wushu, superstition and "the Jianghu" with all its negative practices, but at the same time it was different from Western physical training, with its own theories and competitive methods, and concrete sporting events, it had similarities with the equality of the Western Olympics but retained its own spirit and value system. At the same time its core principles were different from the Jing Wu Association, as it contained a deeper humanistic spirit and tradition within itself, it was a continuation of an ancient Chinese Culture. But at the same time it was an innovation, trying to raise itself to an international and modern stage upon the heavy foundation of tradition culture. The difference between it and traditional Wushu is that it was not constricted by traditional "schools" or men pai 門派. Wushu is inteself developed from the interaction and conflict of man with man and group with group. A Wushu that isolates itself has no vitality and will disappear as a relic of history. The establishment of the Central Academy was to destroy the viewpoint and mechanism of traditional schools, to allow different martial arts to interact and compete on a fair and open playing field.
The Big Melting Pot of the Wushu World
Due to the various restrictions of the time of the Central Guoshu Academy, the exchange between north and south only had limited success. However the spread of northern arts to the south did have a definite achievement through the Jingwu and the Guoshu academy. But Southern arts are still largely unknown in the north.
The exchange between north and south, was most successful in Hong Kong. After the war, Hong Kong collected people from all provinces, which included both northern and southern martial artists. In a new place, in order to set up a new home, they needed to give up their traditional humility, and work together to build a new miracle. In Hong Kong the most symbolic of the melting pot concept, was the Nan Wu Sports Association set up by Hung Kuen Master Lam Sai Wing in 1920. In the 1950s this association was controlled by his nephew Lam Zoe, and at one time had over a thousand students and was one of the most influential martial arts associations in Hong Kong. What was very treasured was the friendship between Lam Zoe and the Pi Gua master Geng De Hai (Gan Duk Hoi), they once were the northern and southern instructors for Nan Wu Sports Association. During this period they encouraged students to learn from both instructors leading to Pigua and Hong Kuen building up joint content and Taolu.
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