Chinese martial arts culture has been a great source of fascination in China, and it has had a powerful influence on global popular culture. Taught in English, this course aims to kindle students’ enthusiasm for this unique, significant, and highly relatable cultural form for critical inquiries. This course explores Chinese martial arts culture through literature and film. The first half of the course is a historical survey. We will investigate the origins of Chinese martial arts culture in early historical records, examine the process by which it grew out of classical literature and folk history into a full-fledged cultural form, highlight its flourishing state in modern literature and film, and touch upon its recent developments online. In the second term, each lecture will introduce students to a special issue using an array of theoretical approaches. The issues include the key ideas of martial arts culture, treatment of genders, what martial arts culture can tell us about China, and the globalization of martial arts imaginations. Together, these issues cover major themes in the field and pave the way for students to conduct their own inquiries. In addition, students will learn a simple 24-stance taiji to gain a sense the bodily experience that is central to martial arts.
Through the course, students will develop comprehensive literary and historical understandings of Chinese martial arts culture. Students will be able to approach it as a distinct cultural form with a whole set of concepts, motifs, and conventions including the “rivers and lakes” (jianghu), schools, self-cultivation, chivalry, brotherhood, romance, Taoist philosophy, Chinese medicine, and national mythology.