Body · Experience · Imagination: The Collective Memory of Chinese Martial Arts

Abstract

In order to understand Chinese martial arts (CMA), people had better find out how native Chinese people picture these ancient arts. Maurice Halbwachs’s theory on collective memory is helpful to cognize the panorama of CMA. In the term of social framework, the contributors of the collective memory of CMA are mainly well-experienced inheritors, shallow-experienced mass practitioners and highly educated intellectuals. They respectively perceive martial arts more or less through bodily practicing, imagination, or fantasy. Among these three contributing groups, inheritors seemingly observe martial arts from the top of the mountain, ordinary practitioners at the foot of the mountain, while intellectuals overlook from the clouds. Inheritors, with professional skills, establish the technique systems of martial arts; mass practitioners, from non-professional perspective, test and verify the various functions, and intellectuals, from transdisciplinary perspective, enrich the connotation and extension of the martial arts. The shared concrete approaches they draw upon to shape such a collective memory are repetitive corporeal experiencing, mental experiencing, and active imagination. Eventually, they build the spectrum of CMA memory which is primarily filled with unique technique paradigms and chivalric spirits. In this way, CMA or Wushu, as an indigenous sport, is provided for consumers in the world.