The Revival of Wudang Daoist Martial Arts

In this paper, we seek to write the recent history of the revival of Wudang Taiji Boxing from the perspective of individuals closely involved with that revival. In 20th-century China, first reformers, then communists stigmatized traditional martial arts. But after China's leaders, led by 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 form of boxing he had learned at Wudang at a national sports event. In so doing, he helped spark a revival that led to the formation of the Wudang Taoist Martial Arts Academy in 1989, and the formation of other academies and performance groups. Modern narratives of martial arts history often simplify that history and their heritage, describing orderly lines of master-student relations that transmit ancient practices in an unbroken line. But the modern history of Taiji Boxing is not only the history of a martial arts form, but also the history of the secularization of Chinese ideology and suppression of religion, the reworking of traditional practices of self-cultivation as exercise and competitive sport, and the commercialization and commodification of martial arts for a global audience.