The revival of Wudang Daoist martial arts

Abstract

This paper writes the recent history of the revival of Wudang Taiji Boxing. In 20th-century China, first reformers, then communists stigmatized traditional martial arts. But after China's leaders, under Deng Xiaoping, initiated a new era of reform and opening up in 1978, all that changed. In 1980, a member of the Qing royal family who had spent seven months at Wudang Mountain in 1929 performed the style he had learned at Wudang at a national sports event. In so doing, he sparked a revival leading to the formation of the Wudang Taoist Martial Arts Academy and other academies and groups. The modern history of Taiji Boxing is not only the history of a martial arts form, but also of the secularization of Chinese ideology, suppression of religion, the reworking of traditional practices of self-cultivation as exercise and sport, and the commercialization and commodification of martial arts for a global audience.