Recently, eight foreigners from Pakistan, Russia, Bangladesh, Columbia, Peru, Niger and Tanzania participated in ‘Touch Shandong’ activity Chinese traditional archery in Ni Shan Academy in Daming Lake of Jinan, Shandong Province. As we all know, Chinese archery has played a pivotal role in Chinese society for millennia. As one of the Six Arts of ancient China, archery skill was considered as a virtue of Chinese people.
Master Wang, an archer of Ni Shan Academy, displayed some rites and detailed the history and development of Chinese traditional archery. Under the guidance of Wang, the foreigners gave the salutes to the Confucius figure.
Wang taught the foreigners the Eight-trigram Boxing, a kind of Chinese martial art, to help them warm up before the learning of archery. Though the foreigners didn’t quite understand the pithy formula from the mouth of Wang, they just followed the teacher’s action and did it very well.
After the warm-up, Wang taught the foreigners how to practice the Chinese archery. From drawing the bow to releasing the arrow, Wang taught them step by step. The arrow flied out of the string and hit the target, which surprised the foreigners. They applauded loudly and praised the teacher for his excellent skills.
The foreigners cannot help practicing by themselves. After the repeated practice, they finally reached the stage where they could carry out actual operations with real bows and arrows. Though it is not an easy work for them, but they finally got the vital essence of Chinese archery and almost all of them could hit the scoring zone.
In historical times, Chinese people used archery for hunting, sport, rituals, examinations, and warfare. Archery is also taken as the most important skill among Chinese traditional skills in wielding the 18 kinds of weapons.
