Abstract
Chinese Martial Arts as a powerful attraction has been transformed from a national symbol to a multi-functionally transnational floating signifier, closely linked to the mythology of tourism [According to Li et al. (J Sports Res 35(5):96–102, 2021), the three terms “Martial Arts”, “Wu Shu”, and “Kung Fu” were replaceably used with slightly different meanings in the English-speaking countries since the 1920s.]. The meaning of Martial Arts is less of an autonomous rational subject of objective knowledge than a construction matter involving myriad forms of participants such as Buddhist literature writers, film-makers, Shaolin monks, local residents, tourists, and tourist promoters, together with media representations and appropriations. This chapter attempts to reveal how the myth of Martial Arts has been created and appropriated through interpretations and reinterpretations at different stages of the development of the Chinese tourism industry by drawing upon Roland Barthes’ analysis of myth. Our argument, in brief, is that the influence of Martial Arts on the Chinese tourism industry is strongly ensured by a wide participation of various actors in continuously changing forms.
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Notes
- 1.
Jesuit missionaries were earlier travelers to China, some of whom showed interest in Chinese Kung Fu. Most scholars like Zhang (2014: 18) and Li et al. (2021: 97) regard the French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718–1793) as the first traveler who coined the term “Cong-fou” to describe Chinese Taoist Kung Fu in Mémoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences, les arts, les murs, les usages, etc. des Chinois. Par les missionnaires de Pé-kin (1779), however, Calvert (2002: non.pag.) and Collani (2015: 46) tend to believe Pierre Martial Cibot (1727–1780) should be the first one.
- 2.
The popularization of Chinese martial arts can be understood from the French film director Christophe Gans's Le Pacte des loups (2001), “where one could see a native American in eighteenth-century Europe using perfect Chinese kung fu” (Vigneron 2010: non. pag.).
- 3.
On 16 September 2022, I visited the Dharma Cave and met a monk in his 50 s who dedicates his life to religious service and serves as the narrator of the Cave. Essentially, he assumed the role of the tourist guide. According to him, “Dharma left Jian Ye (Nan Jing), touring the Central China, came to Five Peaks of Song Shan Mountain, finding a hole beneath the central peak named Fire Dragon Hole where an immortal-Fire Dragon had been practising. It is all mystery inside, 24-section main keel centers clearly with two dragons on both sides correspondingly protecting the doctrine. Stars, moon, colorful clouds, the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, high mountains and flowing water all appear inside, looking like ‘a mini universe’. The second generation ancestor stands on the right”. He even claimed that a long stone built into the rock wall appears like the long arm that the second-generation ancestor had cut down. His interpretation was more of an imagined fiction than a historical reality. Apparently, the monk as a tourist guide has become a part of the Bodhidharma myth creation.
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Funding
This work was jointly supported by the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of Zhengzhou University under the grant [273048], the Youth Teacher-training Program of Henan University of Technology under the grant [20212018069], and Henan Provincial Social Science Foundation under the grant [2019CWX030].
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Meng, L., Teng, C. (2023). The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study of the Shaolin Temple on Multiple Dimensions. In: Jiao, D., Li, D., Meng, L., Peng, Y. (eds) Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts. New Frontiers in Translation Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8425-9_2
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