Suzhi (human quality) and individualization amongst short-term Kung Fu students in China

This paper examines how the discourse on suzhi (human quality) has been imagined, reconstructed, and negotiated by short-term martial arts students and their parents in Dengfeng, a county-level city in central China. Dengfeng was home to 48 Shaolin martial arts schools and more than 70,000 full-time students in 2012. Aside from the full-timers, who board throughout the year, short-term students are provided martial arts learning for several weeks to months. They are sent to learn martial arts for several reasons: for example, misbehaviors, obesity, or poor people skills. Their parents want them to either get fit or improve their social skills. Highlighting such diverse motivations and expectations, this paper suggests that sending children to learn martial arts is rooted in the widely influential discourse on human quality (suzhi) in China. This social discourse provides both parents and students narrative structures, through which people create their own strategies of and meaning system for legitimizing their decisions, expectations, and desires.