In January 1979, the National Sports Commission issued the circular on mining and sorting out wushu heritage. In May of the same year, the First National Wushu Exchange was held in Nanning, Guangxi. Some 284 athletes from 29 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, as well as Hong Kong and Macao, staged performances involving more than 510 performances. Then the concept of the traditional wushu began to appear in the wushu domain. From 1983 to 1986, the work in this regard branched out around China to make a top-down survey of the folk wushu, and find traditional wushu techniques. The work was fruitful: 129 boxing varieties were discovered in various places with explicit sources and rules, and unique styles and systems; 6.51 million Chinese characters of theories and books in various provinces and municipalities; 395 hours of video recordings of veteran masters and techniques, as well as a lot of other literatures and ancient weapons.
In early 1982, the first domestic private wushu organizations —Beijing Baguazhang Research Association—was established. Upon its establishment, the association mined the Dong Haichuan tombstone and moved the tomb, causing great influence at that time. Later, it organized reports to enable Baguazhang of various schools to display their own techniques, set up tutoring stations in various parks to teach Baguazhang free of charge, carried out memorial activities to show respect for teaching, and organized domestic Baguazhang competitions.
Since then, almost all of the schools of Chinese boxing established research societies, for example, Yang Style Taijiquan Society, Chen Style Taijiquan Society, Wu Style Taijiquan Society, Sun Style Taijiquan Society, and Xingyiquan Research Society in Beijing, Yang Style Taijiquan Association and Xingyiquan Research Society in Shanxi, and Jianquan Taijiquan Society and Chin Woo Athletic Federation in Shanghai. These folk wushu organizations play a great role in the dissemination of folk wushu and promotion of a national fitness campaign.
With the development of folk wushu, international wushu festivals and wushu invitational tournaments emerged, including the Zhengzhou International Shaolin Wushu Festival, Yongnian International Taijiquan Association, Henan Wenxian International Taijiquan Annual Summit, Shanxi Traditional Yang Style Taijiquan International Invitational Tournament, Cangzhou Wushu Festival, and Shanxi Xingyiquan Invitational Tournament. At present, the World Traditional Wushu Festival is the most influential. Starting from 2004, the festival has run three sessions. All of these play a positive role in promoting the spread of folk wushu.
Development Tendency
The following period of history will be a prosperous time for Chinese Wushu and also an era of large-scale competition, with a lot of weeding out and merging—both are part of historical inevitability, and also follow the trend of the times. It is anticipated the 21st century will turn over an unusual leaf for Chinese Wushu history.
Chinese Wushu holds a unique national culture pattern, which integrates body-building, combating and aesthetics. Its future growth will be based on the national culture traditions and follow the inherent laws of Wushu to move forward. The body-building, combating and aesthetics are the basic social functions of Wushu, which pays attention to different historical periods. Between the 1950s and the mid-1980s, Wushu gave profound attention to its aesthetics and presented many new set exercises (mostly Changquan). Since the 1980s, Wushu has given top priority to its combat techniques, which is closely connected with the promotion of free-style combat and the frequent exchanges between China and foreign countries. However, great importance has always been attached to the body-building function by the populace. Especially after the early 1980s, the Taiji craze is a typical example.
In the future, more importance will be given to the functions of body-building and combat. Chinese Wushu will grow quicker and become more practical under the guidance of the commodity economy. The aesthetics function is also very important as it is still a form of mental enjoyment, or consumption.
Among various schools of Quan, the Neijiaquan (internal martial arts) is most vigorous. The internal martial arts closely integrate combat with body-building, and exercises with healthpreserving. Apart from apparent health-preserving and body building functions, it allows a smaller force to beat a larger one by using combat techniques. It has swept across the country quickly, between only one and two centuries. It is not the casual result of history. In view of the aesthetic value, besides the Baguazhang, the internal martial arts have no advantage. For example, Taijiquan is weak in aesthetic value, while the Xingyiquan almost has no such value. Meanwhile, the Yiquan has neither set exercises, nor aesthetic value. However, those schools of Quan without aesthetic value grow fast and spread wide.
According to the writer, Chinese Wushu will still continue to grow in simple and practical styles for a long period of time in future. Wushu will highlight its practical value at the expense of part of its aesthetic value. Of course, that does not mean Wushu will eliminate the “dance” element completely, as it depends on it to form the uniform rating criteria to practice Wushu globally, and enter major competitions such as the Olympic Games.
In the future, all schools of Quan of the Chinese Wushu will face severe tests. A large number of set exercises will be eliminated during actual combat. Some will be simplified or improved. Some schools of Quan will face the grim problem of existence. Under the combination of various schools of Quan, some new schools and set exercises will come on stage. They will be featured by simple and practical styles, highlight combat and give away its aesthetic value.
Getting rid of the stale elements and taking in the fresh ones is a universal law. Chinese Wushu is no exception. If Chinese Wushu remained untouched and unchanged over the past several hundred years, it would only demonstrate a loss in vitality. The competition and evolution of the martial art instill new energy and spirit into Chinese Wushu.