Kinship, Ritual and Manipulation in Chinese Martial Arts

A Case of Contagious Legitimacy: Kinship, Ritual and Manipulation in Chinese Martial Arts Societies Author(s): Jeff Takacs Reviewed
work(s): Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Oct., 2003), pp. 885-917 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3876531 . Accessed: 05/03/2012 07:52
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Modern Asian Studies37, 4 (2003), pp. 885--917. ? 2003 Cambridge University Press DOI:10.1017/S0026749X03004074 Printed in the United Kingdom
A Case of Contagious Legitimacy:
in Kinship,Ritual andManipulation Chinese MartialArts Societies

JEFF TAKACS Ming ChuanUniversity, Taipei When he wrote his oft-cited work, LineageOrganization in Southeastern China (Freedman 1958), Maurice Freedman could say little about the nature of Chinese martial arts societies. 'The boxing and music clubs were, as their names imply, groupings of recreation. The structural significance of these associations is not altogether clear' (Freedman 1958:93). This paper aspires to make that situation somewhat less opaque. Chinese martial arts students under the same teacher are brothers. I don't mean this in a metaphorical sense, that they are 'like' brothers. They, at least in some Chinese martial arts groups, consider themselves to be kin. This assertion is based not only on statements in Chinese martial arts literature but also from natives' statements and most convincingly from direct observations of their behavior. Taken together, it is apparent that their self-styled 'lineages' are no more metaphorical for some Chinese martial arts societies than for any agnatic group of Chinese. Though a full exploration of this topic is outside the scope of this paper, I have argued elsewhere (Takacs 2oo1) that members of the Baguazhanglineage, one Chinese martial arts tradition, have organized themselves, not into a fictive kinship network, as has been argued by some (Freedman 1958, Ownby 1996), but into an actual, functioning lineage. Members of the Baguazhang lineage, like all Chinese martial arts lineages, are not born into it. Instead, they are inducted in initiation rites. Therefore, because they accumulate members through recruitment and behave as do agnatic lineages, I have described (Takacs 2oo1) the social organization of Chinese martial arts groups as an 'aggregated lineage'. This paper relates to a central piece of my aggregated lineage
argument, namely, that members behave as agnates. The discussion in this paper has four parts. The first is that at least some Chinese
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martial arts lineage members behave as if they are biological descendents of a lineage founder, particularly with respect to ancestor worship. Second, that status (in the society of martial artists) and legitimacy (in the same society) are passed from teacher to students just as property is passed from father to sons in Chinese families, and thus form a large part of the lineage 'estate'. Third, that attempts at appropriating status and legitimacy are as common in martial arts societies as attempts to swindle any other form of inheritance. Fourth, due to the non-physical nature of status and legitimacy, the latter are susceptible to acts of contagious magic. In the first section I will describe a ceremony that took place in April 2ool in northern Taiwan. On the surface the ceremony appears to be a rite of ancestor worship. In the second section, I will show why this is a reasonable interpretation, applicable to both schools of Chinese martial arts and biological lineages. The second section will focus on rites and obligations of Chinese kinship relations and Chinese martial arts lineages, paying particular attention to the practice and organization of Baguazhang. The third section will examine ancestor worship and the multivocal symbolism of Chinese funerary documents. In the final section I will show why the ceremony in the first section is not a rite of ancestor worship and why it is in fact an act of contagious magic. I. Mr Zhao's Stele Ceremony Mr Zhao (a pseudonym') has a Baguazhangschool in Taibei. Baguazhang, literally 'Eight Trigrams Palm' is one of the three well-known systems of Chinese 'internal' martial arts.2 In the spring of the year Mr Zhao hosted a stele raising ceremony at the grave site of 2001, a famous Chinese martial arts instructor, Zhang Jungeng. Zhang taught Baguazhang and Xingyiquan in Taiwan from 1948 to just before his death in 1974. Three brothers, Hong Yiwen, Hong Yimien and Hong Yixiang were Zhang Junfeng's best-known students, and had more students than any of Zhang Junfeng's other students. In 2001, Zhang Junfeng would have turned 100oo years old by Chinese reckoning.3
' A journal article published by Mr Zhao is cited as 'Zhao X' below. is 'Mind Form Boxing' and is the second of the three internal styles. The third is Taijiquan, 'Grand Ultimate Boxing'. 3 Chinese are believed to be 1 year old at birth.
2 Xingyiquan
A CASE OF CONTAGIOUS
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Your author has lived and studied Baguazhang in Taiwan for five years under a student of Hong Yixiang and Hong Yimien. In the spring of 2ool word came around the Baguazhang grapevine in Taiwan that Mr Zhao was organizing an 'event' during Tomb Sweeping Festival, described below, and that the students of Hong Yixiang, namely Mr Luo Dexiu and his classmates, were invited guests. Mr Luo decided to attend, and asked some of his current senior students, including your author, to attend with him. Zhang Junfeng's grave site in southern Taibei county, near the Wulai reservoir, faces south over the reservoir, and a mountain rises up behind it. This makes the place a good site for generating positive
fengshui for the Zhang family (Freedman 1970, 1979). The Chinese
believe, under a set of ideas called 'wind and water', orfengshui,that the bones of patrilineal ancestors, both male and female, interact with the natural topography of their gravesite and produce a beneficial energy for their living descendents. This magic of the earth is usually called 'geomancy' in English. The better the location, in terms of its geomantic properties, the more benefit, in terms of health and prosperity, accrue from having your ancestors in it. A well fengshui-ed spot, for a house or grave or both, has 'water before and mountain behind', according to the Chinese proverb. The presence of thousands of other gravesites on the same hillside as ZhangJunfeng's indicates that many Taiwanese also perceive this site's potential to aid them. ZhangJunfeng's personal plot is about 4 meters wide and 5 meters deep. The north end is cut into the hillside, and contains a picture, taken in the 1950s, of Zhang in a suit. To the left and right of the photograph are stone plaques mounted on the wall that tell a standardized version of his life story, beginning with the poetic phrase 'crouching tiger, hidden dragon'. This phrase, the same as the title of a recent movie, is generally taken to indicate that Zhang was a man of hidden talents, or that his talents were never appreciated and not developed to their fullest. It is frequently said in Baguazhang circles in Taiwan that Zhang Junfeng, though 72 at the time, 73 in Chinese reckoning, died young. On the floor of the gravesite is a thick red granite slab that covers the actual tomb. It is about 3 meters long, 2 meters wide and projects about 15 cm up from the ground. The remainder of the floor is made of flagstones (See Figure 1).
A low brick wall, running on the south and west sides, which are partially cut into the hillside, marks the outer boundary of the
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4 Stele
ZhangJunfeng'sgrave
4
North 1= Earth God Shrine 2=entrance 3=Zhang's picture 4=retaining wall, boundary of plot
Figure 1. The Tomb of ZhangJunfeng
gravesite. The entrance to the site is marked by a 1 meter wide break in the low wall, located on the south side (directly opposite the picture on the wall). Thus Zhang's picture, and therefore his spirit, can 'see' out through the opening in the wall (it can also 'see' over the wall, but the wall is symbolic) to view (or absorb the positive energy from) the water in the valley below.4 Standing in the entrance, facing the tombstone, one sees to the left a low brick altar to the Earth God, whose function here is to protect the grave from ghosts and evil influences. Nearly all of the gravesites have an altar to the Earth God. To the right of the entrance, opposite the Earth God altar, stands Mr Zhao's stele. At the beginning of the ceremony, it was covered with a red cloth and hidden from view. To prepare for the ceremony, the grass and weeds were cut away from the area around the gravesite. That is, the tomb had already been 'swept'. The stele was moved into place and covered. Loudspeakers and power sources (car batteries) were carried in.5
main altar, on which are mounted tablets bearing the names of ancestors or their likenesses, faces the main gate (see Freedman 1966,Jordan 1989, Takacs 2oo0). 5 It is a good 20 minute walk into the cemetery on steep and winding paths to the grave from the road.
houseshave the same layout,where the 4 ManyChinesetemplesand traditional
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Mr Zhao and his very capable wife arranged his guests carefully. Zhang's children and grandchildren (5 or 6 of Zhang's 8 children attended, along with several of their children) were placed on the eastern slope above the gravesite. Mr Zhao's students were arrayed in the space closest to the grave entrance, immediately to the south, outside of the low wall. Other guests, including Hong Yixiang's students (and Mr Luo's students) were left to find their own space to the southwest and western portions of the site. First Mr Zhao gave a short speech welcoming everyone, and announced that he had called everyone together to honor ZhangJunfeng according to the 'ancient rites'. Next Xu Baomei, Zhang Junfeng's widow, came forward and offered incense to the gods of heaven to come and attend the ceremony. Then she offered fruit and flowers to the same gods. Next, Mr Zhao performed the same ritual. Third, Zhang's oldest living student, Cai Wencheng, who is 103 years old, came up and did the same. Then this group came into the actual gravesite and offered the same offerings in the exact same order to the Earth God. Finally, one by one, in the exact same order, they turned and made the three offerings to Zhang's picture and tomb. As they placed the flowers and fruit at Zhang's tomb, each made a speech. Mr Zhao began by saying how great Zhang was as a martial artist and that his martial arts descendents should work hard to pass on his tradition. Xu Baomei's was more personal, concerning family and children who missed their father. Cai Wencheng started a long and interesting monologue about how Zhang taught him Xingyiquan, and how their training had been very harsh, but that Zhang had been a good teacher and was very missed. He had been speaking for a long time, about three minutes, when Mr Zhao's senior student, the Master of Ceremony, began checking his watch. At about 4 minutes, the MC signaled Cai Wencheng's granddaughter or nurse to stop him. She tried, but he was clearly enjoying having the mircrophone and everyone listening to him. After another minute or two, a different senior student politely but firmly took the microphone away from Cai Wencheng. Mr Zhao then introduced himself and told a brief summary of Zhang Junfeng's life. Then he recited his own history, which was considerably longer. He described how he had gone to the mainland to study martial arts and then later met ZhangJunfeng's widow, Xu Baomei. Now Mr Zhao's students had decided to erect a stele at Zhang's grave to honor the late master. He emphasized several times, including in the inscription on the stele itself, that it was at
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his student's instigation, not his own, that the stele bearing his name was being erected. At this point Mr Zhao invited his own students forward to pay their respects to Zhang Junfeng. This they did, lining up smartly in matching uniforms and on command bowing three times towards the grave. Before Mr Zhao could move to the next phase of activities, Mr Luo Dexiu, one of Hong Yixiang's students, approached Mr Zhao. Mr Luo asked Mr Zhao if Hong Yixiang's students could have an opportunity to pay their respects to Zhang Junfeng. Mr Zhao responded by inviting all of the guests to come and pay their respects. When Mr Luo's students hesitated, Mr Zhao encouraged us with a hearty 'everyone is equal!'. After everyone had paid their respects to ZhangJunfeng, Mr Zhao gave another series of speeches which culminated in the unveiling of the stele. According to Mr Zhao, Mr Zhao's students decided to commemorate the formation of a new 'martial arts research association' by donating this stele to ZhangJunfeng's tomb. The new society, it was pointed out, is led by Mr Zhao and is composed of his students. That said, the stele, a piece of black granite, about 4' high and 2' across, mounted on a 2' high square base, was unveiled. The characters carved into the stele are painted gold. On the stele it is written: Master ZhangJunfeng,6 also named Fengkun, was born in Zhouping county Shanxi province. He was clever, liked martial arts and had a great level of internal martial arts skill. Due to the uncertainty caused by the civil war he came to Taiwan from Tianjin and settled down. Later he did some rice commerce but he decided to expand his martial arts. He founded associations and started teaching disciples his Baguazhang, Xingyiquan and Taijiquan. He was known far and wide and had thousands of students. Many people wanted to study with him. It was a pity that I (Mr Zhao's real name) couldn't learn martial arts from him. I've studied martial arts for several years under Mr Zhang Youliang, a student of Zhang Junfeng's wife, and I've traveled a lot in order to find the roots of martial arts. Due to my sincere desire to learn martial arts, Xu Baomei decided to teach me in person and let me pass down the martial arts. I feel grateful for her significant favor and her high regard for me. I think I have the obligation to Grandmaster Zhang Junfeng's martial art and that's why I founded the [martial art society name]. For the sake of memorializing Master Zhang's great virtue, benevolence and contributions to society, I am honored to set up this stele.
6 Junfeng is the name given to Zhang Fengkun when he became a disciple of Gao Yisheng. This naming system is described in more detail elsewhere (Takacs oo2001).
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The inscription contains 13 sentences. Seven of these concern Zhang Junfeng. The other six take Mr Zhao as their subject. Below this inscription are the names of the members of Mr Zhao's martial arts research organizations, namely, his students, and the date. Following the unveiling of the stele, the closing ceremonies began, which essentially reversed the opening ones. First Mr Zhao, Xu Baomei and Cai Wencheng offered incense, fruit and flowers to Zhang Junfeng's image, then to the Earth God, then to the god of heaven. The formal part of the ceremony was over. Then Mr Luo and the other students of Hong Yixiang arranged themselves and Mr Luo's students into two ranks, the elder generation in front, the younger behind, and all bowed, formally, three times to ZhangJunfeng's tomb. A ten minute flurry of picture taking took place next, the results of which were reproduced in Mr Zhao's journal several months later. Following that, Zhang's own children and grandchildren come down from their eastern slope to line up, with their mother organizing them, by generation and birth date, and pay their respects as a family unit. Following that, the crowd dispersed. How are we to understand this event? Is Mr Zhao simply paying his respects to Zhang Junfeng and nothing more? Certainly the ceremony Mr Zhao organized was far from unique. The sons and grandsons of Chinese men have been doing identical or similar rituals for more than looo years. Graveside worship is a fundamental part of the Chinese extended family. Is Mr Zhao then a member of Zhang Junfeng's extended family? There are several ways in which to interpret Mr Zhao's stele ceremony. One of them is to view the ceremony as a spectable (Klens-Bigman 1999) staged with the goal of recruiting more students into Mr Zhao's 'martial arts research organization'. This does not at first glance appear to be a fruitful line of thought, as it was a private ceremony limited to invitation-only guests. But perceiving the ceremony as a spectable does force one to ask the question 'For whom was the event staged?', to which I will return during the discussion of multivocal symbolism. Another approach would use the notion of 'appropriation', arguing that Mr Zhao was co-opting the rights and duties of ZhangJunfeng's biological son for his own benefit. This
raises the obvious question of 'what benefit?'. In this article I hope to address both of these questions, by making the argument that the stele ceremony is an act of contagious magic.
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Contagious magic is simply the belief that a magical object can transfer its magic to a second party through physical contact. In this case, I will argue that Mr Zhao hopes to acquire some of Zhang Junfeng's status through having his stele sit in Zhang Junfeng's gravesite. One of the earliest examples of contagious magic in western civilization is found in Chapters 2 and 3 of the Book of Genesis. God plants, in the middle of the Garden of Eden, two trees. One is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the other is the Tree of Life. Eating the fruit of this first tree imparts the ability to discern good from evil, clearly much more than the normal vitamins and fructose associated with mundane fruit. Eating this fruit is forbidden, but the first couple are beguiled by the trickster character, the serpent, into breaking God's first and (at that point) only law. Contact with the magical item, in this case, consumption of the fruit, bestows upon the consumer the named ability, and their 'eyes were opened'. The Knowledge of Good and Evil is magically contagious, it spreads with contact from the fruit to the humans. Contagious magic is usually contrasted with 'sympathetic magic', wherein whatever is done to A also happens to B, because there is a sympathy between them. Sticking pins in dolls to cause pain and injury to the person represented by the doll is precisely this kind of magic, as are rain dances that mimic falling rain and thunder. In this article I follow the presentation and analytical style of the Manchester school of British social anthropology. The Manchester school developed to a fine degree the art of the anthropological 'case study', using a specific problem as the venue through which to explore different aspects of a social system. Victor Turner, a student of that school, wrote on the rituals of initiation and social cohesion in Central Africa (Turner 1967). Bruce Kapferer used this method to explore exorcisms in Sri Lanka (Kapferer 1991). Most recently, T. M. S. Evens has published a study of democracy and generational conflict in an Israeli kibbutz (Evens 1995) that used this approach as well. Here I intend to examine the social structure of a Chinese martial arts tradition, Baguazhang, through a case of contagious legitimacy. To interpret the dynamics of the ceremony described above in
anything more than superficial fashion, we must briefly look at two things:
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1. the nature and social organizationof Chinese martial arts in general and the Baguazhang taught by ZhangJunfengin particular; and 2. the nature of Chinese ancestorworshipand kinship. II. ZhangJunfeng There are hundredsof styles of Chinese martial arts, each with a unique evolution. Prior to the mid-2oth century, Chinese martial arts in general developedin the context of civil wars, foreignwars, rebellionsand very high rates of violent crime. Prior to the Maoist it was a tool of violence,designedfor survivalin a culture revolution, of violence,not a methodof self-cultivation. Baguazhang'sdevelopment can be taken as typical: there is a founderof the traditionto whom extraordinary powersand abilities have since been attributed,both through simple story telling and through what Freud called 'family romance'.The students of the founderinterpretwhat they learned and themselves,if they teach, found sub-traditions. Membersof a martial arts traditionare, like Chinese families,organizedaccording The proto their 'generation'. cess of teaching and interpretationgoes on with each succeeding generation. Baguazhangwas created in northernChina in the early to midnineteenth century. This martial art system was founded, most believe,by a northernChineseman namedDong Haichuan(c. 1813is outside the scope of this 1882). The full evolutionof Baguazhang workbut is a topic that has been sketchedelsewhere(see Sun 1935, Liang,YangandWu 1994, Takacs 2001, Miller 1992). In the Baguazhang school, Dong Haichuan is widely recognizedas the first generation.He taught manystudents,two of whomwere namedYin Fu and Cheng Tinghua. They are the two most importantsecond generationstudents (See Table 1). Cheng Tinghua had many Baguazhangstudents, including his XingyiquanclassmateLi Cunyi and the large ZhangZhaodongand they three taught a man namedGao Yisheng.ZhangJunfeng,living in Pianjin,in northeasternChina, studiedwith Gao Yishengand Li Cunyi'sson. Baguazhangwas largely unknownin Taiwanbefore it was broughtto the islandin the post-World WarII periodby a small
group of mainland Chinese, one of whom was Zhang Junfeng.
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1 TABLE
Partial Baguazhang Lineage Generation First Second Third Fourth Members Dong Haichuan Yin Fu, Cheng Tinghua Li Cunyi, Zhang Zhaodong Gao Yisheng Hong brothers, Xu Baomei Mr. Luo Dexiu and classmates Members
Fifth
Sixth Seventh
Gao Yisheng*
Zhang Junfeng
Liu Fengcai
Wang Shusheng Mr. Zhao
* Gao Yisheng is listed twice to make it clear that ZhangJunfeng and Liu Fengcai were both his students, but that Mr. Zhao is not in the ZhangJunfeng sublineage, as will become apparent below.
Zhang came to Taiwan in 1947 to oversee a grocery business. He was trapped in Taiwan by the retreat of the Nationalist Army to the island from the mainland in 1949 which cut off travel to the mainland for the next 45 years. He found a new career as a martial arts instructor. Zhang Junfeng taught Taijiquan, along with Xingyiquan and Baguazhang, for two and a half decades in Taiwan before his death in 1974. He taught all three as fighting systems. Starting in the early 1950s, Hong Yixiang, his two older brothers Hong Yimien and Hong Yiwen studied Xingyiquan and Baguazhang under Zhang Junfeng. Between the three Hong family sons, they learned more of Zhang's martial arts, particularly the fighting applications, than any other of his students. In fact, Zhang made an audio tape on which he declared that if anyone wanted to learn the whole of his martial arts, they must seek out the Hong brothers.
I. Rules of Inheritance
When a Chinese man dies, all of his sons and daughters inherit equal shares of his estate.7 That is the law of the Republic of China, enacted in the early decades of the 2oth century. Prior to that, however, only a man's sons would inherit, with the eldest son typically receiving a double share and the responsibility for caring for the widow. Indeed, even today, it is not uncommon for families in Taiwan to force their daughters to give up their inheritance rights. They do
7 Normally, an estate is a tract of land, buildings or a business operation. Recent research has shown, however, that Chinese estates also included access to government posts (Davis 1987) and access to esoteric religious knowledge (Naquin 1987).
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this on the grounds that the son-in-law may force the daughter to break up the family estate to claim her share. A significant datum for our present study is the fact that the Chinese do not now nor did they in the recent past, commonly practice primogeniture. Rather, all of the sons are legally entitled to a share of their father's estate
(Cohen 1976).
Chinese martial arts traditions operate on the same principle, but with somewhat greater complexity, given the nature of 'sons' and 'estate' particular to Chinese martial arts. A Chinese martial arts instructor may have many students. If these students go forth and teach what they have learned, they can tell their own students that they have studied under a particular instructor. Frequently the teacher takes a portion of his students, normally his best or wealthiest, and makes them, in an initiation ceremony, into disciples. These students now have been accepted as full members of the martial arts lineage. They are not only allowed, but expected, to pass the tradition on. It is they who literally claim to have 'inherited' the master's knowledge, knowledge which forms a large portion of their 'estate'. Conversely, the master acknowledges the rights of disciples to take their own students. He recognizes, indeed, creates, their legitimacy as bearers of the tradition. 'Even if a disciple teaches poorly', one master informed me, 'I will not criticize him in public, but I will feel shame in my heart for failing to teach him properly'. I have argued (Takacs 2001) that the discipleship initiation is, in fact, a rite of passage wherein sons are adopted into an aggregated lineage, and become inheritors into the 'estate' of the martial arts lineage, where the estate is precisely the technical knowledge of martial arts and the sanctioned right to teach it to paying students. Conferring discipleship onto a student allows the student to possess not only the knowledge of the instructor (some of which the student already has) but moreover, a portion of the legitimacy and status of the master. Legitimacy and status in the Chinese martial arts world are largely achieved. A man or woman makes his or her own reputation, usually as a skilled fighter, but occasionally as a martial arts scholar or skilled teacher. Possession of such a reputation generates status and the respect of other martial artists who accept one's knowledge as genuine, and thus legitimate. That reputation also attracts students, who are not infrequently a major source of income for the teacher. Reputation is symbolic capital which can be transformed into an economic resource, either as a teacher or, in
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contemporary times, as an author and producer of instructional videos.8 From all of these sources, status in the hierarchy of Chinese martial arts and legitimacy as a martial arts instructor are produced. Reputation, status and legitimacy are thus sought after. From the point of view of the martial arts instructor, one's estate has two portions. The first portion is the knowledge itself: the physical movements and the verbal lore of the tradition, passed from teacher to student. Once an individual has some status and a measure of legitimacy in the martial arts world, these become the other portion of his or her martial arts estate. I suggest that status and legitimacy are part of one's estate because he or she can bequeath a measure of status to his or her associates ('I'm a friend of X') and more importantly for our purposes, to his or her students ('X is my teacher'). If the source of the status is a strong, positive reputation, such an association may well be the difference in, for example, getting hired to teach martial arts for the government or when convincing new students to join. In this regard, the difference between 'student' and 'disciple' is a matter of degree. While the student inherits some of the teacher's status, the disciple receives much more.' Dividing an inherited estate that has been assigned a strict dollar value is a zero sum game: if I get more, you get less. On the other hand, in theory, an estate composed of knowledge and another's status and reputation is not necessarily a zero-sum game: two disciples of the same teacher may both benefit equally from the teacher's status. At the same time, trying to convert 'status' and 'legitimacy' into economic resources is an uncertain game. In practice, converting legitimacy and status into economic assets causes episodes of tension and schism that are easily imagined. Much of this tension comes of competition for legitimacy and status between the various parties. Because status and reputation in Chinese martial arts society are marked by various signs of respectcommonly subsumed under the notion of 'face' among the Chineseit is possible to observe the relationships in action. Disciples often vie with one another to possess the so-called 'true' version of the master's teachings. Disciples frequently accuse mere 'students' of not being legitimate or qualified to teach. Members of
8 Interestingly, this also often works in reverse: that a producer of books and videos gets a reputation up to which his martial arts ability does not measure. 9 Not only martial artists, but also Buddhist and Daoist teachers, as well as Chinese medical doctors, painters and massage therapists are known to take disciples in Taiwan.
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both groups accuse others of lacking key, frequently 'secret', information, and of therefore possessing incomplete or inferior knowledge. These assertions are followed, naturally, by assertions that only the accuser possesses the 'true', complete, superior or secret knowledge. It is not hard to see why martial arts lineages typically fragment into bickering segments in a matter of a few generations following the death of the lineage founder. Another observation I have made is that there is a transformation in many martial arts schools from an emphasis on achieved to ascribed status. While the founder or famous master typically gains his or her reputation and status through personal skill and ability, as well as charisma, members of succeeding generations are often ascribed their status by virtue of their relationship to the master. They then become more interested in the preservation of orthodoxy or the master's doctrine than in developing their own skill. Occasionally, as is said to be the case of Yin Fu, Dong Haichuan's first student (see Table i), the teacher adopts a policy of 'monogeniture',10taking only one disciple who will inherit the entire martial art system. The other students are said to have received only parts. This is not to say that they possessed inferior martial arts nor that they could not be skilled and therefore earn their own reputations. Many of Yin Fu's students in fact did have great skill and great reputations. However, they were not endowed with the status of Yin Fu's inheritor, and thus are said to have not received the 'complete teachings'. My point is that in these cases, the master's legitimacy becomes a resource to which access is limited. In making an audiotape announcing that the Hong brothers were inheriting the entirety of his martial arts, Zhang Junfeng created a situation wherein only one small group had inherited his legitimacy. It is not too different from the cases of 'monogeniture', in that Zhang Junfeng closed off access to the highest level of his legitimacy and status from all of his other students. This will become important later. Zhang Junfeng was short tempered and quick with his fists. One day in the late 1950s, Chiang Kaishek, the president of Taiwan, chairman of the Nationalist Party and a combat veteran, held a party
0oMonogeniture is similar to primogeniture. However, is not true primogeniture in that the instructor who takes this option, does not necessarily choose the first student to be the 'only' inheritor. It is more akin to the case of Isaac, Esau and Jacob (Genesis 27), where the youngest tricks the elder out of his birthright. But the principle that from among many students, one is chosen to receive the inheritance, is the similar to primogeniture, so I call it 'monogeniture'.
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at his mountain villa in Shrlin, a northern suburb of Taibei. To this party he invited all the well known martial artists in Taiwan, including ZhangJunfeng. At the party, Zhang overheard someone making fun of Taiiquan. 'Taijiquan is useless for fighting! All you do is stand there in Single Whip!," said the boxer. ZhangJunfeng became enraged. 'Taiji is useless? You think Taijiquanis no good for fighting? Let me demonstrate. This is Single Whip, right? (Zhang struck the posture) I'll use Single Whip, and hit you with my left hand on the right side of your face. You defend yourself.' Zhang used his right hand, struck the opponent on the left side of his head. Then he used his left hand, and struck the startled man on the right side of his face. Slap slap. Zhang settled back into the Single Whip posture. 'You see! Even when I tell you what I am doing, you are incapable of defending yourself. Now, don't say that Taijiquanis not good for fighting!' (related by Mr Luo Dexiu)
III. Zhang Junfeng's Baguazhang

From the mid 1970os to the early 198os, Mr Luo Dexiu, one of Hong Yixiang's students, went to each of the three Hong brothers, as well as ZhangJunfeng's wife, Xu Baomei, and any other of Zhang's students he could find, to learn ZhangJunfeng's Baguazhang. In 199o, Mr Luo journeyed to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Sichuan, Henan and Shandong in mainland China, to investigate the development of Baguazhang there. What he discovered, over those two decades of study in two countries, was that ZhangJunfeng's Baguazhang is a system of three integrated parts, the tiangan, xiantian and houtian.
I. Tiangan Like many other names in Baguazhang, the phrase tiangan is taken from the Daoist (Taoist) divination text called the Yijing (I-Ching). In that book, the tiangan, literally 'heavenly stems', are part of the rudimentary structure of the universe and are used in casting Chinese horoscopes. In ZhangJunfeng's Baguazhang, the tiangan are lo pairs of isometric body building exercises. Bending and stretching exercises performed from a wide legged stance, the tiangan isolate specific body
" One of the characteristic postures of Taijiquan.
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regions and muscle groups. For each of the lo, there is a 'little' and a 'big' exercise, wherein the 'little' one is generally easier. Performed in matched sets, i.e. ten or twenty repetitions on the left side, followed by the same number on the right, tiangan go a long way to building up the strength and flexibility that make Zhang Junfeng style Baguazhang a powerful fighting system. Mr Luo Dexiu prefers the tiangan to be done deep and low to work the legs and lower back, or higher with a longer, horizontal upper-body stretch. Often students are expected to practice the tianganon their own, but when practiced as a class, beginning students start at about 80orepetitions, advanced students are expected to do 200 or more.
2. Xiantian
In Zhang Junfeng's Baguazhang, xiantian is the name given to the circle walking palm changes, the best known characteristic of Baguazhang. Although xiantian is another Yijing phrase that literally means 'before heaven', in the context of Baguazhang it may be used interchangeably with 'palm changes', the 'forms' of Baguazhang. 'Forms' are pre-established routines of punches, kicks and other movements that embody the principles of a martial art. Forms are normally created by the founders and great masters of a martial art system and are passed down as oral or written tradition to later generations of practitioners with as little individual variation as possible. Forms are therefore a ritual in the anthropological sense of a 'performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers' (Rappaport learning to transcend the ritual aspects of the art, namely forms practice, and master the combat skills which the forms encode. In this style of Baguazhang, the xiantian are not combat techniques, rather they are principles of movement that are used to create combat techniques. Mr Luo Dexiu teaches several sequential sets of xiantian, each more difficult than the last. The principles of the beginning set includes, 'drilling, rising, falling and overturning'
(Sun 1916:16, Craig 1999:72) both on the horizontal and vertical planes. In the ZhangJunfeng school of Baguazhang, there are three sets of xiantian, and every set of xiantian contains ten palm changes. 1999:24). One of the major difficulties of martial arts training is
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TABLE 2
TheXiantian of ZhangJunfeng 2. Snake Smooth Movement Palm 3. Dragon Piercing Hand Palm* 4. Turn the Body Back and Strike the Tiger Palm 5. Swallow Overturning, Covering Hand Palm 6. Turn the Body Over the Back Palm 7. Twist the Body, Lean from the Horse Palm 8. Swing the Body and Insert from Behind Palm, and 9. Turn the Body, Pull and Hook Palm io. Black Dragon Swings Tail * This is often called, in other Baguazhang styles, Double Palm Change.
i. Simple Change Palm
All of the palm changes are named. First is an introductory palm change, known as Simple Change Palm.'2 As mentioned above, xiantianis an Yijingphrase which means 'preheaven'. In the Daoist classic, xiantian refers to the period of time at the beginning of the universe before Heaven and Earth, and all other manifestations ofyin and yang, became separated. As such, xiantian is seen as a time of unity, of undifferentiated wholeness. This symbolism is carried into Baguazhang, where the xiantianexpress the fundamental principles of motion in the martial art.
3. Houtian
In the Yijing,xiantianrefers to the time before the division of heaven and earth, and houtian is the time after that division. In the sense that houtianis the time of the differentiation of the universe into its various parts, the same symbolism is found in Baguazhang. In Zhang Junfeng's Baguazhang, the houtianare linear exercises that express, as combat techniques, the basic principles embodied in the xiantian. Each of the eight core xiantianis associated with a set of eight houtian. There are sixty-four houtianin total. Like the xiantian, the houtianare named. The names refer to the principle that the houtiantechnique utilizes, such as Pull Down, Lift or Carry. The first one, for example, is 'Open', and contains two vertical circles and a lunging palm strike. The application of this houtianinvolve creating openings in the opponent's defenses.
12 It is also often called Single Palm Change and is found, in more or less the same shape, in most styles of Baguazhang.
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Mr Luo tells his students that in the 'old days', a student would not learn all sixty-four of the houtian.'Even Gao Yisheng only taught one or two houtianto most of his students. His purpose was to help them attain high levels of fighting ability, not teach his entire martial art to every student.' Zhang Junfeng spent twenty-five years studying with Gao Yisheng, and learned all of the houtian.Evidently Zhang Junfeng carried on his master's teaching methodology, because when Mr Luo decided to learn all of Zhang's Baguazhang, he had to travel to many students to learn the sixty-four houtian, including Xu Baomei, Zhang's widow.
4. Fighting applications Of course, contemporary health-exercises-based-on-Asian-martialarts aside, martial arts are primarily about fighting. Some styles, such asjudo and kendo,are more stylized, with numerous restrictions regulating what constitutes a 'legal' attack, while other styles teach what resembles street-fighting among gangs. Mr Luo Dexiu's school, for example, teaches a Baguazhang which lies closer to the latter extreme than the former, which he says is more the 'applied' attitude with which Zhang Junfeng taught in post-war Taiwan. In this section I have laid out some relevant details of social organization and behavior in the Chinese martial art subculture. These details will become important as my argument develops in the following sections. IV. Chinese Ancestor Worship and the Symbolism of Documents 'Rites', the anthropologist Maurice Freedman wrote 'are a variety of
heightened behavior ... linking the poetry of symbolism and religious belief to the prose of social institutions' (Freedman 197o:163).
The argument I wish to present is that in organizing a stele unveiling ceremony during Tomb Sweeping Festival, Mr Zhao appeared to be performing an act of ancestor worship. Indeed, I argue in the final section, that is precisely what Mr Zhao wanted the witnesses to
think. In my analysis I will make use of a drama metaphor, following Victor Turner (Turner 1966). This is a convenient method to divide
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the ceremony into periods or 'acts', where different people, or 'actors' are 'performing' various 'roles'. My analysis of the event that Mr Zhao arranged at Zhang Junfeng's tomb will examine two aspects: 1. Chinese ancestor worship and the central role played by male patrilineal descendents in the public performance of rites of ancestor worship; and 2. The significance of the stele itself, the primary prop at the center of this drama.
I. Chinese ancestorworship and patrilineality Chinese traditionally organized themselves into segmented agnatic groups, which the Chinese call 'lineages'. Typically these segmented agnatic groups lose contact with one another and forget their relations after several generations. Occasionally one or more of the segments is motivated, for a variety of reasons (Sangran 1984, Ebrey 1987, Hazelton 1987, Hymes 1987, Naquin 1987) to organize and maintain the relationship between different groups of agnates. One of the main mechanisms for this maintenance is the worship of common ancestors. Ideal behavior among Chinese agnates is prescribed in the Confucian classics. Two of these books, namely the Book of Odes and the Book of Rites, are over two thousand years old. The rituals of funereal mourning, called the Five Grades of Mourning, which refers to the five kinds of mourning clothes, are carefully laid out in these texts (Freedman 1958:41-6). Including the immediate family, rules of behavior for first, second and third cousins are detailed, describing the type and style of clothing to be worn, the length of the mourning period and other specifics. As one might expect, the closer the relationship to the deceased the longer the signs of suffering must remain visible. Sons are expected to pay the longest and highest price for the deaths of their parents. Fourth cousins need not mourn and were not considered by the classics to be kin (Ebrey 1987:18). As with mortuary customs, so too the heaviest burden for worshipping deceased ancestors technically fell on the sons. In theory--and the theory formed the background of enacted law until the end of the Manchu [Qing (1644-1911)] dynasty--the duty of offering ... [ancestral] sacrifice was not only transmitted though the male line of des-
903 cent but was concentrated in one person in that line, namely the eldest son by the wife (Henry McAleavy cited in Freedman 1966:7 n.2). Chinese ancestor worship is conducted in three primary places. Most ubiquitous are the domestic shrines found in nearly every home (Freedman 1970,Jordan 1989). It is here that recent ancestors, specifically paternal ancestors and their wives, are worshipped and commemorated (Freedman 1979:407) in twice-monthly rites. The Confucian classics make it clear that it is the responsibility of the eldest son to conduct the rites of ancestor worship. When a Chinese man dies, his eldest son is expected to organize a large funeral. Thereafter, in semi-monthly and annual holidays, the son is expected to perform acts of worship at the domestic altar. In practice, however, it is his wife who maintains the domestic shrine, and who is, Freedman suggests, exposed to the wrath of displeased ancestors (Freedman 1970). These rites include burning incense and 'ghost money', paper currency to be used by the deceased in hell. Lacking this money, and regular offerings of fruit, meat and rice, and normally alcohol and cigarettes as well, the ancestral ghosts join the ranks of the unmourned dead and are transformed into 'hungry ghosts'. Hungry ghosts, which are euphemistically called 'good brothers', may wreak havoc among their descendents."3 This chaos typically takes such forms as child death, recurrent illness, crop failure, business difficulties or any other of a host of (super-)natural disasters. The second set of ancestral worship sites are ancestral halls. In these corporately (by the lineage) owned, privately funded temple/ offices, shrines hold tablets on which are written the names of the relevant ancestors. The tablets which hold the names of temporally more distant ancestors become the focus of larger groups of agnates. These halls often become the loci of meetings at which lineage business is conducted (Freedman 1958, Ebrey 1987). In these relatively public places, women move to the background and both the worship and lineage business are normally conducted by lineage males, particularly elder males. As one would expect, the expense of constructing and maintaining a building dedicated to non-residential,
13 Technically, there are two classes of hungry ghosts: one that is composed of ancestral ghosts that have been ignored, and another that are not ancestral but are also unmourned. For this study, I am only interested in the former. Either class of hungry ghost may attack the living, and divining which type of ghost is afflicting one requires an expert in these matters, such as a Daoist priest.
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non-commercial purposes is a limiting factor, and only a small percentage of lineages built them even in classical times. The third locus of Chinese ancestor worship is the ancestral tomb. The tombs of patrilineal ancestors are cleared of overgrowth in annual spring rites known as 'Tomb Sweeping Festival'.'" On this day, and the several weeks prior and post, millions of Chinese families pick their way to the gravesites of their ancestors. Once there, they cut down the accumulated brush and grass and burn the detritus. They offer incense to the gods, especially to the Earth God whose responsibility it is to guard cemeteries. The tombs of recent ancestors are naturally cleared, but in addition, tombs of more remote ancestors are also commonly swept. As with rites in ancestral halls, the more remote the ancestor, in terms of generational distance, the broader the agnatic group that can be drawn into the ritual group. Only my brothers and I, for instance, are obliged to clean my father's tomb, but we and our cousins are responsible for cleaning our grandfather's. Thus the performance of ancestor rituals becomes a dramatic stage on which agnatic groups can form or maintain themselves (Ebrey 1987). Conversely, by neglecting their prescribed obligations to the deceased, individuals and agnatic subgroups can reject their own membership in the agnatic group. Pierre Bourdieu points out a similar dynamic process of identity formation or manipulation with respect to African groups: In all cases of genealogically ambiguous relationship, one can always bring closer the most distant relative ... by emphasizing what unites, while one can hold the closest relative at a distance by emphasizing what separates. What is at stake in these manipulations, which it would be naive to consider fictitious on the grounds that no one is taken in, is in all cases nothing other than the definition of the practical limits of the group, which can be redrawn by this means so as to go beyond or fall short of an individual one wants to annex or exclude (Bourdieu 1993:41). According to Confucian tradition, sons are expected to maintain domestic shrines for twice-monthly worship, come out annually to patrilineal tombs to offer incense and paper money, and construct and maintain ancestral halls where the entire agnatic group can gather and worship. Chinese ancestor worship clearly requires male descendants. Conversely, those who are obliged to perform ancestor
14This is the Qing Ming Festival, held 105 days after the winter solstice (Ebrey 1987:21), around 5 April. It is now commonly called Tomb Sweeping Day in English.
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worship are male descendants. However, in modern practice, the performance of these rites is not guaranteed, and precisely who actually performs them, and who does not, is a matter of complex dynamics. This variety, and its manipulation, is influenced by many motives, only one of which is the desire to fulfill one's filial duty.
2. MultivocalSymbolism Cemeteries of Stele in Chinese

I have examined the issue of patrilineal kinship in Chinese ancestor worship. In so doing, it has been shown that a man's son is of central importance in public ancestor worship ceremonies, and the son's wife or the deceased's widow is central in domestic worship. Now I will turn and examine the significance of stelae. In having a stele made, Mr Zhao was following a tradition already well established in the Baguazhang community. Dan Miller (1992:8io) has described the history of Dong Haichuan's tomb in some detail. Dong Haichuan, the most widely recognized founder of Baguazhang (see Table 1 above), died in 1882. In 1883 a group of his students had a stone stele carved and placed over his tomb.'" The stele possessed an account of the Baguazhang master's life and a list of 66 of the master's students. One clear aspect of the stele, then, is its role as a written document. Emily Ahern discusses the significance of writing and written documents in several Chinese rituals. She found that in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), gifts for ceremonial occasions were detailed in writing. People might prepare a gift list of the number and the name of all items to be sent, place it in a special box, and send it along with the gifts. After the recipient decided which gifts he would accept, he returned an appropriate thank-you note which indicated whether he had accepted all, part, or none of the gifts and noting what sums were given as tips to the porters (Ahern 1981:20). The practice of writing out inventories of gifts did not end with death. In southern China during the Qing dynasty and in modern Taiwan the practice carried over into funerary rituals. Regarding the practice in modern Taiwan, Ahern writes that
15 It is not clear whether Dong had any biological sons or not. There are no Dong surnames listed on the stele aside from Dong Haichuan. Indeed, some accounts state that Dong was castrated as an adult.
JEFF TAKACS 906 as essential part of every funeral ceremony in San-hsia [a town in northern Taiwan] is the reading of the sacrificial essay. It is a written document addressed to the deceased and read to him, usually by affinal kinsmen [those related by marriage], though others may do so as well ... The [sacrificial essay] 'tells the dead man what has been offered to him' by the person
reading it (Ahern 1981:21).
This document is followed by two others. The second set of documents, Ahern believes, is much like a petition to government officials for their assistance, except that it is directed to minor gods. In San-hsia, [Daoist] priests help prepare certain documents for the 'merit ceremony' ... The pronouncement states the place of origin of [our kinsman] on the mainland ... and instructions to [minor gods to beseech greater gods to] eradicate the wrongs of the dead (Ahern 1981:21). A third document is read to the deceased, reminding him or her of all the effort that has been put into their ceremony and by whom: At the end of the [merit ceremony] a document much like the [sacrificial essay] is read, listing all the ceremonies performed on behalf of the deceased and all the descendants whom the deceased left behind (Ahern
1981:22).
Here I have noted three contemporary Chinese funerary documents. In one, the deceased is informed about what ceremonies and offerings have been done for him and by whom. The second records the man's ancestral home and requests the gods to remove the deceased's sins. The third lists his descendants. After the documents are read aloud to the deceased they are burned to send them to the deceased in the underworld. Ritually, immolation is a commonly recognized Chinese method of sending material objects, or their effigies, to the underworld. The Chinese say that the dead receive offerings of incense, money and material goods when these, or paper effigies of the latter two, are burned. This single act has many symbolic voices. Notifying the deceased of the activities undertaken on their behalf is one clear function of these documents. At the cosmological level, burning the document demonstrates the integration of the world of the living and the world of the dead. Socially, the act of sacrificing to the ancestors speaks to the dependence of the deceased on the living, of the old on the young and the continuity of Chinese civilization in general. Funeral documents have other symbolic voices, as well, however. The fact that they are read aloud in public, as opposed to the Qing era gift inventories, which were presumably read silently in private, points towards another symbolic voice. Reading these funerary docu-
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ments aloud transmits their contents not only to the dead, for whom immolation is sufficient, but also the living. The narration of these funeral documents turns a private religious ceremony into a public spectacle, which can generate prestige. The prestige, of course, goes not to the audience as much as to those mentioned in the document, those who hosted the event. Their sacrifice for the sake of the deceased is now a matter of public record and comment: praise for the extravagant, criticism for the stingy. This leads to yet another voice: Reading these documents aloud serves to draw a public boundary between those who have contributed to the welfare of the deceased, and who have not. I assert that the stelae erected at Dong Haichuan's tomb are petroglyphic equivalents to these funerary documents. They record the life of the deceased and list his students just as a man's family would document the same. I conclude that Dong Haichuan's students conducted a funerary ritual for him in 1883, just as biological sons should do. Cheng Tinghua and his senior classmate Yin Fu, both direct students of Dong Haichuan, are prominent names on the stone. It seems safe to conclude that Dong's students acted as one might expect sons to, building a monument and making sacrifices to their father/teacher. Succeeding generations of Baguazhang students have copied their example. In 1905, a second stone stele was erected by more of Dong Haichuan's students. In March 1930, a third generation student led a third group of Baguazhang practitioners to Dong's tomb and erected two more stelae. These third and fourth stones are inscribed with more stories of Dong's life, including a poem ostensibly written by Dong Haichuan himself and the names of many Baguazhang practitioners of the time. During the Cultural Revolution in China, Dong Haichuan's tombstones were knocked down and buried and the site given over to agriculture. In the late 1970s, 'the Chinese National Sports Committee put out a directive encouraging martial arts enthusiasts to conduct research' (Miller 1992:11) into their cultural heritage. In 1980, a group of Baguazhang practitioners found, excavated and relocated not only the stelae, but Dong Haichuan's casket. The stelae were placed on display at the Beijing Physical Education College's martial arts arena, but were later moved, along with Dong's casket, to a public cemetery in western Beijing. In 1981, nearly loo years after Dong Haichuan's death, new stelae were erected, in addition to the four old ones. These new stelae were inscribed with the names of current Baguazhang practitioners who
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had helped, physically or financially, in relocating and reconstructing the tomb. In addition to mainland Chinese, these stelae list many overseas Chinese and even non-Chinese who contributed to the fund
(Li 1993:2, Miller 1993:11).
In the 199os the stele raisings continued. A stele was planted at

the grave site in 1991 (Miller 1993:12) that lists the Korean and
American students of a Baguazhang practitioner who went to Korea during the Second World War and eventually settled there. In 1994, another stone was added to the growing collection, this one dedicated to a prominent Baguazhang teacher in Taiwan and Japan (Miller 1996:30), sponsored by that late master's students. Fifty people attended that dedication ceremony. Previous research has shown that the dedication of written documents to deceased ancestors is an established part of Chinese ancestor worship. Baguazhang students have, for the last 120 years, erected stone monuments that contained much of the same information. Although the Baguazhang practitioners are technically not agnates, they clearly behave as if they follow the same rules as a Chinese lineage would with regards to worship at their ancestral tomb. Indeed, I argue that the pilgrimages and erection of monuments at the tomb of their lineage founder, Dong Haichuan, are unmistakable acts of ancestor worship. Like the funeral documents in Taiwan, these stone monuments also possess multivocal symbolism. They are, most obviously, markers of ceremonies directed to the dead. Dong Haichuan can rest assured that he is remembered, honored and that periodic sacrifices are made to him, even more than loo years after his death. The stelae symbolize the connection of the world of the living and the underworld. They also symbolize the continuity of the living to the dead. In addition, barring revolutions, stelae last a very long time. To have one's name inscribed on a stone monument is to be more or less permanently associated with the martial art lineage. Indeed, lacking any evidence to the contrary, having one's name inscribed on such a stele is a claim of membership in the lineage, that is, it is a claim to discipleship status. Currently, there are two sources of knowledge about Dong Haichuan's students. One is oral tradition, the other is his stelae. Of the two, the stelae are unquestioned. Inasmuch as past and present generations of Baguazhang practitioners of sufficient wealth have added their names to the growing
collection of monuments, Dong Haichuan's tomb has become a shrine and source of legitimization for Baguazhang members.
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Erecting a stele not only publicly marks one's devotion to the founder of the martial arts tradition, it also creates legitimacy for those listed upon it and proclaims that legitimacy to the living.
V. Interpreting Mr Zhao's Stele To this point I have outlined aspects of the organizationof and dynamicsin Chinese martial arts societies, and Baguazhangin particular.I have also reviewedcommonpracticesof Chinese ancestor worshipand noted its primaryactors.I have made some attempts to recordthe multiplesymbolicvoices of certain kindsof behaviorand the items associated with Chinese ancestor worship, namely, the symbolicfunctionsof funeraldocumentsand stelae. In this final section I will tie togetherthese somewhatdisparateelements to analyze the Tomb SweepingFestivalceremonyorganizedby Mr Zhao. of the Tomb By now it shouldbe clear howMr Zhao'ssponsorship Sweeping Festival ceremony functionedwith regard to the social structureof Chinese martialarts. He was acting as a dutifulstudent of ZhangJunfeng,based on the model of the filial son. At the same time he was creating a sourceof his own legitimacyas an inheritor of ZhangJunfeng's martialarts. In doingthese things,he was clearly whose stelae he the of his Baguazhangforefathers, behavior copying doubtlesssaw when he visited Dong Haichuan'stomb in Beijing. The only difficultywith this interpretationis that Mr Zhao does not teach ZhangJunfeng's martial arts. Therefore, he cannot be structuralson, discipleor inheritor.I have two genZhangJunfeng's eral observations that I wish to use to criticallyexamine Mr Zhao's apparent claim of legitimacy in the ZhangJunfeng school of Baguazhang.The first observationis of inconsistencybetween various statements he has made in the last severalyears,both orallyand in print. The second observationis of contradictionsin his behavior with regardto his relationshipwith ZhangJunfeng. I have five sourcesof informationabout Mr Zhao.I met him personally in the course of my research several years ago, and interviewed him at that time about his martial arts experience.At that time, he told me that my teacher did not really understandBaguazhang, and that I needed to read Mr Zhao'sbooks. Later, another foreignerinquiredabout studyingwith Mr Zhao, was refused, and
passed on a summary of their conversation. Mr Luo Dexiu, a 30 year member of Taipei's Baguazhang community, also knows Mr Zhao,
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and provided some clues that I investigated further, and confirmed some conclusions that I drew from other sources. I was also present at the stele ceremony on the Tomb Sweeping Festival, and so observed it first hand. Last, but not least, an account of the Tomb Sweeping Festival event, written by Mr Zhao's students, was published in a magazine owned by Mr Zhao's martial arts research society (Zhao 2001). It is from these several sources that the following analysis is drawn. In 1990, Mr Zhao traveled to mainland China. There he met many and studied under several martial arts teachers, including Wang Shusheng, one of the students of Liu Fengcai. Liu Fengcai was another of Gao Yisheng's students, and was one of Zhang Junfeng's younger classmates (see Table 1, above). Mr Zhao stated in the magazine article that Wang Shusheng instructed him in the xiantian, houtian and weapons of Baguazhang (swords and spears) and gave Mr Zhao access to a copy of a Baguazhang manual written by Gao Yisheng.16 It was two years after he had begun studying with Wang Shusheng in mainland China that Mr Zhao met Zhang Junfeng's widow, Xu Baomei. The published account of the stele event states that he learned from her some of the mnemonic songs associated with the xiantian and houtian and discussed the importance of meditation. Rather than teach him herself, Xu Baomei encouraged Mr Zhao to seek the roots of ZhangJunfeng's martial arts in mainland China. Both at the Tomb Sweeping Festival ceremony and in the magazine article, Mr Zhao described in great detail what Wang Shusheng taught him, but wrote absolutely nothing of what he learned from Xu Baomei and her student, Zhang Youliang (who is no relation to Zhang Junfeng). While acknowledging the principle that 'negative data is not data', I am nevertheless driven to conclude that the material Mr Zhao learned from the Zhang Junfeng branch of Baguazhang was negligible. If it were otherwise, then why would he both fail to mention it at a ceremony honoring Zhang Junfeng and in the published article, yet describe in detail what he learned from other teachers? In the text of the stele (transcribed above), however, Mr Zhao leaves out all reference to Wang Shusheng, except a vague 'I traveled far to find the roots of martial studies'. On the stele, instead, he says
6'" This is ostensibly
esoteric knowledge,
but is in fact widely available to the
public. Indeed, your author owns several versions.
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that Xu Baomei 'taught him personally' and gave him permission to 'pass on the art'. This is very close to saying 'Xu Baomei took me as a disciple and sanctioned my right to teach and take my own disciples'. In fact, to a Chinese martial artist, the statement 'taught me personally' implies discipleship status without actually claiming it openly. Of course, were it openly proclaimed, she would deny it. In fact, as he admits in the article about him, she suggested that Mr Zhao seek to study in mainland China, where he had previously. This is a polite way of refusing to accept someone as a student. I have seen other martial arts instructors use similar stratagems to dissuade unwanted students. Were he actually her disciple 'taught me personally' would be a modest admission of their relationship. As it is, what he wrote is not untrue: very likely Xu Baomei did 'personally' instruct him about the importance of meditation, and it is possible that he asked her if he could teach Baguazhang. While the statement itself is technically true, what it implies about the relationship between Xu Baomei and Mr Zhao, namely, a master-disciple relationship, is not. It is important to note that if he were Xu Baomei's disciple, Mr Zhao would be a 3rd generation member of ZhangJunfeng's sublineage. Nevertheless, the stele which bears this implication will be standing on the hillside in loo years, and future generations will see the implied relationship, and not be aware of its actual nature, nor Mr Zhao's more modest admissions made in print. This was, in my cynical opinion, Mr Zhao's plan. Thus the first inconsistency lies in of whom exactly is Mr Zhao claiming to be a student: here it is Wang Shusheng, there Xu Baomei. This speaks to a larger matter of identity: is Mr Zhao an instructor of 'Chinese' martial arts or 'Taiwanese' martial arts? By associating himself with Zhang Junfeng, when he could have easily constructed a stele in Beijing (as others have), Mr Zhao can be interpreted as establishing himself as a Taiwanese martial arts instructor. But raising this question brings in a basket of others, including issues of national identity, that lie outside the scope of this paper. Let us now turn to the matter of contradictions in Mr Zhao's behavior. Chinese social groups, including martial arts organizations, have very clear boundaries of who is 'in' and who is 'out'. I have already shown the degrees of proximity to the martial arts teacher, as marked by the categories of 'student' and 'disciple'. For a Chinese martial arts instructor, there exists a clear division of public and
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private, exoteric and esoteric. What is said to disciples is considered very private, students less so, and what is said to non-students is public knowledge.'7 While he was in mainland China, Wang Shusheng taught Mr Zhao. In the interview with the non-Chinese prospective student, Mr Zhao said that Wang Shusheng imparted him a 'secret' Snake Smooth Movement Palm, one of the Xiantian (see Table 2, above). Naturally, this secret palm change has not yet come to the public eye, and Mr Zhao does not teach non-Chinese, so I cannot verify its existence, or even describe it. Nevertheless, Mr Zhao claimed that it is superior to anything possessed by the Zhang Junfeng school.'8 The significance of the 'secret palm change' has to do with the nature of Chinese teacher-student relationships. Specifically, a Chinese student will never publicly criticize his teacher.'9 Privately perhaps, but never publicly. To do so would destroy the teacherstudent relationship, inasmuch as no Chinese teacher would retain a student who had made him suffer the loss of face that would result from being told by a student that one's information was incomplete or inferior to anyone else's. Moreover, public criticism of one's teacher undermines one's own authority, inasmuch as your teacher is the source of your information and prestige and in addition, sanctions your right to teach. By criticizing ZhangJunfeng's martial arts to a foreigner who was not Mr Zhao's student, Mr Zhao was publicly comparing his own martial arts to ZhangJunfeng's and finding his own superior. Obviously, for a Chinese martial arts instructor to be so compared would cause a loss of face. In this matter then, Mr Zhao was not acting as if he were a student or admirer of Zhang Junfeng. He was instead acting as a competitor. It was quite surprising then, that about a year after the 'secret palm change' came into this somewhat Stygian light, that Mr Zhao performed the stele ceremony described above. In erecting a stele at Zhang Junfeng's tomb, Mr Zhao clearly wanted to be thought of as comparable to the second generation students of Dong Haichuan, namely Yin Fu and Cheng Tinghua (see Table 1 above). These men paid their respects to Dong Haichuan, their master, as a dutiful son ought. However, the Baguazhang students who placed stelae at Dong
17 This makes doing anthropological fieldwork extremely challenging. 18 I have detailed the secret palm change incident elsewhere
(Takacs
19 The Cultural Revolution was revolutionary precisely because students criticized their teachers, that is, the old system of relationships was broken.
20oo01:44,45).
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TABLE 3
Generations from Zhang Junfeng First Generation Second Generation Zhang Junfeng Zhang's sons, students, wife, (Mr Zhao-acting)
ThirdGeneration
Fourth Generation
Mr LuoDexiu and classmates

Mr Luo Dexiu's students
Haichuan's tomb were all learning or teaching Dong Haichuan's Baguazhang. Mr Zhao doesn't teach Zhang's system. Rather, Mr Zhao teaches the secret palm change and material of Wang Shusheng. So in what sense is he Zhang Junfeng's student, dutiful or otherwise? The question is begged. Now that we have ground our anthropological lens in a finer and more Chinese fashion, let us reexamine the ceremony with an eye towards discerning Mr Zhao's actions more critically. In his opening remarks, Mr Zhao said that he wanted to honor ZhangJunfeng using the 'ancient rites'. The 'ancient rites' in question, though unspecified, must be the Confucian rites of mourning. In those, the children, especially the sons and wife of the deceased man, must perform the ritual offerings first. They are followed by the grandchildren, nephews and so on. In Chinese funeral customs, generational proximity determines the ritual sequence. As noted above, Mr Zhao carefully choreographed the performance of each actor on the stage formed by ZhangJunfeng's gravesite. After the opening rites, first Zhang's widow Xu Baomei, then Mr Zhao, then two of Zhang's personal students came forward to pay their respects. In this ceremony, a variation on the 'ancient rites', the biological children have been replaced by the second generation students. This is structurally consistent. But Mr Zhao, who is not a member of Zhang Junfeng's martial arts lineage, made his offerings at the same time as those in the second generation. By expressly claiming to be following the 'ancient rites' in which ritual precedence and generational proximity are the same, and then including himself in the set of people that encompasses Zhang Junfeng's wife and second generation students, Mr Zhao is asserting a claim of an equally close relationship to Zhang Junfeng. Mr Zhao was therefore acting as Zhang's second generation student, or even, one could argue, as ZhangJunfeng's son (see Table 3). If we accept Mr Zhao's claim that he is following the 'ancient rites', then we can deduce what should happen in the second act of the drama. Namely, the third generation students should come for-
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ward. Who are they? The Hong brothers, mentioned above, were the most prominent instructors of the second generation. They are now all deceased. Indeed, prior to the start of the ceremony, Mr Zhao asked Mr Luo Dexiu, who learned much of the Baguazhang from Hong Yimien, why Hong Yimien had not attended. Mr Luo informed him of Hong Yimien's recent death. The Hong brothers were Zhang's students, thus the Hong's students, including Mr Luo Dexiu and his classmates, are the third generation. The students form the fourth generation (see Table 3)If paying respect to Zhang Junfeng in the traditional fashion was Mr Zhao's primary goal, as appeared to be the case in the first act, the second act would have had the third and then fourth generation students pay their respects. That is not what happened. What happened was that after Zhang's wife and the second generation students cleared the stage, Mr Zhao invited his own students, who are completely outside of ZhangJunfeng's lineage, both biologically and in the martial arts tradition (see Table i), to step up and make offerings. It was then that Mr Luo Dexiu went forward and spoke with Mr Zhao, Mr Luo realized he was about to be left out of the ceremony, he told me later. Immediately after Mr Zhao announced that Hong Yixiang's students and their students, the third and fourth generations in Table 3 above, should collectively come forward to pay their respects. When Mr Luo's students showed reluctance to join their elders, Mr Zhao declared that 'everyone was equal'. Egalitarianism between generations is not a well known feature of the 'ancient rites' of the Chinese. If Mr Luo had not acted, Mr Zhao would have moved straight into the unveiling, leaving Zhang Junfeng's third and fourth generation martial arts descendants as passive witnesses in a ceremony honoring him. As it was, Mr Zhao did completely ignore the biological family of Zhang Junfeng. It was not until after the closing ceremony that they came down from their hillside perch to pay their respects to their father, on their knees and with passion. By relegating Zhang's biological sons and Zhang's third generation students to the status of witnesses, Mr Zhao was choreographing the ritual so that he and his students were the most important players. What would be the purpose of that? If his goal was sincerely to mark ZhangJunfeng's birthday according to the ancient rites, he ought to have properly arranged the actors according to the grades of mourning: first Zhang's children
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and wife and the second generation students would come forward. Then Zhang Junfeng's grandchildren and the third generation students, and so on. Obviously, such a strictly Confucian arrangement would not privilege Mr Zhao with primacy of place. It would moreover exclude Mr Zhao's students entirely. Instead, Mr Zhao chose to manipulate the stage direction of the so-called 'ancient rites' such that attention first gathered in order to pay respect to ZhangJunfeng, was subtly drawn to himself. Thus this public ceremony, which celebrated Zhang Junfeng's life and contribution to martial arts, in the end served as the setting for Mr Zhao's claim to be a legitimate martial arts instructor. This claim was made via an implied close relationship to ZhangJunfeng, implied through Mr Zhao's actions in the ceremony and more permanently in his vague statements inscribed on the stele. Examining the translation of the stele reveals an interesting fact: of the 13 sentences on the stele, only seven actually refer to Zhang Junfeng. The other six, nearly half, are about Mr Zhao. Moreover, just as in the ritual itself, while the test of the stele begins with praise for Zhang Junfeng, it carefully shifts its focus to self-praise for Mr Zhao. In his time, ZhangJunfeng was among the most famous and most formidable of hand-to-hand fighters in Taiwan. His reputation is still great, three generations later. Being a member of his sublineage would bring an inherited estate of status and prestige to any contemporary instructor. Mr Zhao is not eligible for that inheritance because he is not a member of that sublineage. Nevertheless, it is clear that Mr Zhao wishes to make himself and his school respected and legitimate. By publicly erecting a permanent marker at the master's grave, Mr Zhao expects to become legitimate. How? The grave is Zhang Junfeng's, and he is a powerful source of legitimacy, in fact, in northern Taiwan, Zhang Junfeng is the best known teacher of Baguazhang. It is this status with which Mr Zhao wishes to be associated. More than 'associated with' Mr Zhao wishes to share it, indeed, as the current jargon has it, he wishes to appropriate Zhang Junfeng's legitimacy as his own. Because he is neither ZhangJunfeng's son nor a teacher of ZhangJunfeng's martial arts, Mr Zhao is in fact in no structural position to receive ZhangJunfeng's legitimacy or status. Mr Zhao sought to receive a portion of ZhangJunfeng's legitimacy and status as a great Taiwanese martial artist through the simple fact that his stele is located within ZhangJunfeng's grave plot. Thus,
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in the final analysis, Mr Zhao's act was one of contagious magic. That magical act consisted of organizing a ritual and placing a stele at ZhangJunfeng's tomb.
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A Case of Contagious Legitimacy: Kinship, Ritual and Manipulation in Chinese Martial Arts Societies Author(s): Jeff Takacs Reviewed

A Case of Contagious Legitimacy:

in Kinship,Ritual andManipulation Chinese MartialArts Societies

Figure 1. The Tomb of ZhangJunfeng

houseshave the same layout,where the 4 ManyChinesetemplesand traditional

Wang Shusheng Mr. Zhao

III. Zhang Junfeng's Baguazhang

2. MultivocalSymbolism Cemeteries of Stele in Chinese

reading it (Ahern 1981:21).

In the 199os the stele raisings continued. A stele was planted at

but is in fact widely available to the

public. Indeed, your author owns several versions.

Mr LuoDexiu and classmates

Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China 1ooo-194o. 62-94.

Taipei: SMC Publishing,

1970. Ritual Aspects of Chinese Kinship and Marriage. In M. Freedman, ed.

Family andKinshipin Chinese Society.Stanford: Stanford U. Press, 163-87.

Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China 137-69.

Taipei: SMC Publishing,

Organization in Late Imperial China zooo-194o.

Taipei: SMC Publishing, 95-136.

The Pa Kua Chang of Ch'eng Ting-Hua. PakuachangJournal. 3:2, 3-13.

Taibei: Zhonghua wushu chuban sheyinxing.

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