Ancient Sports: Off Target Archery

In July, two important sporting events which should have been held in 2020 finally took place. Italy won EURO 2020 on penalties in the final against England on July 12. The Tokyo Olympics started on July 23. Both were delayed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. 
Ancient people did not do much sport. Their lives were determined by the sun, getting up to work at sunrise and sleeping when it got dark. This was the typical traditional lifestyle in ancient China. They did not have much time or way to do sports. 
The nobility had more options. Humans in prehistory period relied on hunting and gathering to survive. When agriculture was developed, hunting became an important sport and entertainment for elites. It often carried military and political significance. 
In 718 BCE in the Lu Kingdom, part of today’s east coast Shandong Province, the king Ji Xi wanted to leave the kingdom’s capital Qufu to go to a village called Tang to see fishing. He heard that fishermen there could catch very big fish. Ji Gou, his uncle and a senior official, tried to persuade him not to go. Ji Gou said it was not proper for a king to do anything that was not related to worshiping or wars, or not in line with the ethical or protocol standards for a king. Everything had to be done according to the rules. Take hunting for example, Ji Gou continued, in the spring, animals’ breeding season, we should only hunt animals which are not pregnant, in the summer we should only hunt animals which could damage crops, in the autumn we should only hunt animals which would prey on livestock, and in the winter we can hunt any adult animals.   
The consequences of not following the rules of hunting could be serious. Nanyuan in the south of Beijing had been a royal hunting ground since the Yuan Dynasty was founded in the late 13th century. Much later, Qing Dynasty Emperor Daoguang, who ruled from 1782 to 1850, led a hunting party to Nanyuan. His fourth son Yining, a poor hunter, did not catch anything. But Yining told his father it was because he had too much sympathy for animals in their spring breeding season to see them killed by arrows. His father believed this son would be a good, kind emperor. Before that, Yining had little chance of being appointed royal heir as he had a much more brilliant younger brother called Yixin, and his leg was lame when he fell off his horse during a previous hunt. But the old emperor changed his mind and decided to appoint Yining as crown prince. Yining became Emperor Xianfeng later. Yixin, his younger brother, lost the crown that people thought was destined to be his. Many historians believe the Qing would not have become weak so quickly and dramatically if Yixin had taken the throne. In 1860, when a British-Franco army attacked Beijing, Emperor Xianfeng was at the Yuanmingyuan, a royal garden in the suburbs of Beijing also known now as the Old Summer Palace. He told his officials that he would go to the Mulan royal hunting ground more than 400 kilometers from Beijing, straddling what is now the border between Hebei Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. But actually he just fled in fear for his life to Jehol, now Chengde, where the nobility stayed in the Mountain Resort for their hunting trips. The Yuanmingyuan was burned down by the invading British-Franco troops, and the emperor died in the Mountain Resort. His concubine, Empress Dowager Cixi moved swiftly to take control and brought the dynasty to further decline in the next 50 years. 
His brother Yixin led the Self-Strengthening Movement in the last four decades of the 19th century, which aimed to get the dynasty out of crisis and humiliation by learning and importing Western technologies. The Movement brought industrialization and modern education to China. But Cixi was wary of Yixin’s growing influence. She showed her power by dismissing him and then restoring him. Conservatives also opposed the movement. The Movement stopped. Historians believe that if Yixin had been chosen as emperor, he would have led the Qing to modernization like Japan’s Meiji Restoration. 
The Mulan royal hunting field that Emperor Xianfeng ran to was built by Emperor Kangxi in today’s Hebei Province in 1681, 180 years before Xianfeng went there. The purpose was to remind his children, Manchu dignitaries and armies of the Manchu tradition of living on hunting, to hold military drills and meet the chiefs of Mongolian tribes. It was actually a kind of royal sports event with political and military purposes. In 140 years, Kangxi and two of his successors organized 105 hunting parties there. They repeatedly stressed that horse riding and archery were crucial to keep the military and spiritual power to sustain Manchu rule. Kangxi could never have thought it would be used by his weak, cowardly descendant as a refuge.  
Archery is not just a Manchu tradition or a practice of soldiers. Students of Confucius between the late 6th century BCE and early 5th century BCE had to learn archery skills. Confucius himself learned it when he was young. It was a must-have skill for dignitaries since the Zhou Dynasty set up protocol standards in about the 11th century BCE. Bows were made of wood and horn at first, and later longbows were made of bamboo. Students learned not only how to shoot at targets with a certain dynamic and precision, but also how to behave properly in the process. When practicing archery with a single bow, a player had to concentrate and should never hate his competitors.  
Confucius explained that a gentleman should not compete with others except at archery. The two competitors should bow to each other before and after the match, and then drink together.  
This shows that archery for ancient scholars and dignitaries was more about education to make gentlemen, not training for soldiers on the battlefield. We can see this in a famous example. One day in 1075 during the Northern Song dynasty, Su Shi, a great literati in ancient China, wrote a verse about his hunting experience as the mayor of Mizho, today’s Zhucheng City in Shandong. It is one of his most famous works. He referred to himself as an old man who was in the mood for hunting like a young man. He compared himself to two famous ancient people known for their bravery. One was Sun Quan, founder of the Wu kingdom during the Three Kingdoms Period who liked to shoot tigers. The other is Wei Shang, a general who won many battles in wars against the Huns in early 2nd century BCE during the Western Han dynasty. Wei was deprived of his title for some time, and but got it back after another official called Feng Tang persuaded the emperor to reinstate him. Feng Tang was then assigned by the emperor to send a pardon to Wei and Feng was appointed as a military officer.  
It is unlikely that Su Shi was a highly skilled warrior or hunter like Sun Quan or Wei Shang who were battlefield commanders. Su Shi, although middle-aged at 38, described himself an old man because he was depressed in a dark time of his life. He had been the vice mayor of Hangzhou before the new appointment. But Hangzhou was a prosperous, beautiful city, while Mizhou was poor and was struck by severe drought and locust plagues when he arrived. And he could not bring his family there as it was far from the capital and his hometown. Normally officials who were out of favor with the emperor were sent there, similar to being in exile. It means he would have little hope of returning to the capital and participating in the top policymaking process. He was punished because he opposed the reform supported by the emperor. If he could never return to the capital, he would never be able to block the reform measures which were causing harm to the people. 
But he was confident that, like Sun Quan, he was strong and brave enough to achieve something big. He hoped the emperor would call him back like the Han emperor did to Wei Shang. If the emperor would do so, he would draw his bow “to the utmost like a full moon and shoot at Sirius to the northwest in the sky.” In ancient China, Sirius was a symbol of invasion from outside. Su Shi wrote this to show his aspiration of serving the country. Literary works mostly expressed soft, delicate sentiments at that time. But Su Shi was the vanguard and leader of an important genre of ancient Chinese literature known for expressing vigor and passion. This verse is a typical example of his style. 
However, scholars normally have long been described as “elegant and weak” in China. The tradition of archery training may have started to decline during the Han Dynasty founded in late 3rd century BCE. First, as we have stated previously, the purpose of archery training for scholars was mainly to make gentlemen who followed protocols and behaved decently. The skill itself was not so important. Second, dignitaries who were the main group receiving education including archery lost their dominance in society during the hundreds of years of wars that started in the Spring and Autumn Period in the 8th century BCE. Scholars who only studied books appeared and rose as an independent group in society. Also in this period, the crossbow, a more effective weapon than other types of bows, came into use. As a result, the importance of archery was reduced even on the battlefield. Then after Confucianism was endorsed as the imperial orthodox during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han in the late 2nd century, scholars were more eager to study how to interpret Confucianism scriptures. They did not want to practice archery. From the early 7th century, the imperial exam became the most important way for scholars to seek success. Archery was not part of the exam. 
On July 24, the first gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics went to Yang Qian, the champion of the women’s ten-meter air trifle. She is a student of the prestigious School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University. A few days later, Anna Kiesenhofer from Austria won the women’s cycling road race. She holds a PhD in math. Both athletes attracted applause from Chinese netizens for their athletic and academic prowess.