The Forest

殊途而同歸*

All roads lead to Rome

They are a lot of ways to call martial arts in China, one of them being 武林, often translated as martial arts circles. 武meaning martial and 林circle(s) of people by extension, its original meaning behind wood, forest. However, because 林 is the combination of two 木 (wood, tree), it has also conveyed the meaning of various, a multitude, as in the expression 林林總總 (numerous, multitudinous). That is exactly what this term, 武林, is also conveying.

Nowadays, controlling remotely a drone neither needs the same kind of training nor does it follow the same principles as being a jet fighter pilot, and commandos and regular troops are very different kind of soldiers. Also, navy commandos are not really made for missions in the high mountains... There are a multitude of martial professions with a multitude of related training, some better, some worse. In the old days, it was exactly the same.

If it is indisputable that we are all humans and, whatever we do, stepping still requires to put one foot in front of the other while maintaining balance, that there are some principles common to a lot of practices, martial arts are also a generic term for a lot different kind of professions requiring various and different skills, hence 武林. 

Since they are so many, one may try to classify martial arts in order to add clarity to one's own training. Knowing where you come from, what your training was made for originally, what are the strong points and more importantly the weaknesses, is always an advantage. Martial arts can be classified in two ways, according to their goals and according to their methods of training. Below some examples, not an exhaustive list.

Different Goals, Different Principles

Profession and Leisure

Any formation leading to soldiering, policing or protecting people or valuables was professionally orientated while self-defense or demonstrative arts were considered leisure or "martial arts for civilians", like flowery forms, fake fightings and other impressive power demonstrations performed during Chinese New Year's festivities in various temple fairs, 廟會. The equivalent of self-defense, targeting civilians, often had a modified training in order to be less harsh and less time consuming, adapting like nowadays to the different consumers needs. That is why some difference between styles of the same school are sometimes attributed to whom the training was given to. It is also why a trained fencer writes in the same way that he fences while a scholar fences the same way he writes. The same for outsider, a world of difference actually, the basis of the difference between firm and soft, 剛 and 柔.

Regular and Elite

Regular troops don't need a heavy and extensive training while elite ones obviously do. Hence, a foot soldier just had to train to block, parry and thrust with a rigid spear. And the extensive use of the spear in the armies during certain periods in China, being a weapon for both the infantry and the cavalry, could explain that it was considered as the king of weapons, "槍為百兵之王". But this basic army training had not a lot to do with the one of an old spear master who trained with a spear so flexible that he could use it as a belt, explaining why traditionally spear was viewed in some schools as the weapon of deceit "槍為百兵之賊". Indeed, blocking, thrusting and paring, 攔, 拿, 紥, the three basic moves of the short spear, becoming overturning, piercing and bending upward, 翻, 鑽, 翹.

Specialisation

Like in medicine, being a surgeon, a generalist and a cardiologist requires different skills, and it be would quite amazing, if not impossible, to master the three fields. The same applies to martial arts, light archers cavalry and heavy infantry spearmen are very different type of martial training. This has even led, in some cases, to two opposite methods of training, the known 輕功, lightness mastery, and the less known 地功, grounding mastery, as it will be further explained below.

Different Methods, Different Principles

正門和邪門 Regular and Abnormal

Regular practices insisted on trying to reach a void through the annihilation of emotions and desires while the abnormals ones were amplifying those ones in order to harvest their power. The former tended to monastic training, far from society, with a simple diet and away from any thoughts, while the latter used drugs, depravation and visualizations to force the mind to reach a modified state, and also supposedly black magic, animal and human sacrifices... The abnormal trainings were branded as evil, another meaning of 邪, and their influence nowadays seems to limit itself to nice stories in Chinese martial arts novels and movies. Still, some of their methods of training are actually topical, like using rage to become berserk, as opposed to reaching a thoughtless and emotionless state in order to become like a machine. They also sometimes even reappear in the modern world, such as the debate around the fashion for amulets coming from the "Buddist Brand", "佛牌", from Thailand. Its detractors are saying that there are anointed with an oil made of dead bodies and involve calling ghost and spirits, and not the protection of Buddhas, bringing more disaster than anything else.

有形和無形 Form and Formless

While some schools considered that fighting was a series of linked techniques, others thought it was a total chaos in which anything would go. Thus, at one extreme, a routine was made of linked techniques to be used in a precise situation in combats, routine with applications and very precise choreographies involving two or more students. As to the other, routines were just a way to improve the body, the search of certain qualities, very similar to someone doing the splits to improve his/her flexibility, routine with no application whatsoever and any two or more persons exercises hardly following any choreography, fighting being taught while fighting.

內和外 Internal and External

The first one insists on vigour as a main mean of power while the second uses more the body. The vigour is this invisible thing that makes the body reach peak performance, or the opposite, without any visible change (like muscle mass). It is generally linked with our lifestyle (rest, food...) and can change swiftly during the day. The main work for the internal practices concerns the one on the organs and the emotions. Of course, our body being a whole, both internal and external practices train the body as well as the vigour, the difference is in how they approach their training. That is why their use of muscles is different: elasticity, extending or retracting in internal arts while external are about contraction or loosening.

地功和輕功 Grounding and Lightness

This difference, as it was mentioned earlier, comes from specialised professions. That is why thieves and assassins and guardians and bodyguards were not only professionally in opposition but also in training. The first needed lightness to move swiftly and decisively while the second needed all the grounding they could get to become a wall one cannot pass through. This led to the famous difference between the schools that push with the feet, calling themselves sometimes the pillars (grounding), and those which forbid it, calling themselves sometimes boxing without gaiters (lightness).

Of course, not only those distinctions apply only to those who find a qualification opportune, a way to understand more the principles governing their respective training, but also they have to be understood as trends, darker or lighter, but certainly not just black or white. Furthermore, they were sometimes not that obvious, practices often influencing each other. To make things more complicated a great many practices came from the people in China, through temples (Buddhist, Taoist...), training schools, secret societies, villages trying to protect themselves... Those practices were so widespread that they sometimes became an opposed power conflicting with local authorities and were banned (that's why, to avoid persecution, it was forbidden in some schools to mention the name of your master). Those were the times of the knight-errants, 俠客, and the itinerants, 江湖, a very important part of the martial arts circles, 武林.

*易·繫辭, Book of Changes, Copulative