Junya Bai

Handan University

This presentation starts with the practice of combining the Ming Dynasty Boxing Classic and pre-modern Chinese martial arts books with illustrations, aiming to explore the experience of Chinese martial arts illustrations and provide a historical mirror for the practice of contemporary martial arts textbooks with illustrations. The Research has found that: 1) The Ming Dynasty Fist Classic Manual inherited the tradition of Chinese painting, and its graphic grammar exhibited the characteristic of ‘intertextuality between graphics and text’; pre-modern Chinese martial arts books, on the other hand, mainly continue the tradition of ancient Chinese Cartography, and their graphic and textual rules exhibit the characteristic of ‘mutual imitation of graphics and texts’; (2)The graphic and textual methods in current martial arts textbooks are mostly inherited from pre-modern Chinese martial arts books. This method has had a huge impact on the dissemination and teaching of martial arts in pre-modern times, but it has shown many limitations in the current era of video flooding; 3) It is necessary to reintegrate the traditional experience of Chinese painting and graphic studies, and to carry out new practices in Chinese martial arts ‘images and text’ from the aspects of using images to stimulate interest, enhance emotions, and cultivate morality in the ‘image age’.

Keywords: Chinese Martial Arts; Illustrated Text; Chinese painting; Chinese Cartography; Image Age