As A Traditional Village Of Plum Blossom Boxing

This paper aims at integrating traditional Chinese martial arts, Plum Blossom Boxing, sorting out and interpreting the relationship between it and village traditions, in Guangzong county, Hebei province. After contrasting history and current condition of Plum Blossom Boxing, the paper gets a viewpoint that Plum Blossom Boxing has been very popular in Guangzong as a village tradition. However, in recent years, the lifestyle of the village has been changed by the social structure reform and the heritage of Plum Blossom Boxing has been experiencing an unprecedented crisis. On the one hand, the internal Dual Organization structure of Plum Blossom Boxing, Wenchang and Wuchang, are facing the challenge of separation or combination. On the other hand, the internal gender binary structure shows a tendency towards imbalance.The paper consists of six parts. The introduction part states the reason of this topic, sorts out the relevant academic history and introduces research methods and framework. The first chapter presents the context of the village, including regional geography and cultural ecological environment, the history and village space of Qianwei village, the production and life of the village and so on. The second chapter focuses on the relationship between Plum Blossom Boxing and village life. It presents them from personal life, blood relations and regional identification. The third chapter introduces different living circumstances of Wenchang and Wuchang. The changing social environment and lifestyle have impacted on Plum Blossom Boxing’s inheritance system and environment, as a result, Wenchang and Wuchang have suffered from the fate of combination to separation. The fourth chapter is the highpoint of this paper, based on the gender perspective, pointing out gender differences in men and women’s participation, contrasting Plum Blossom Boxing and Dajiao, this paper focuses on analyzing women’s participation, women’s status, and women’s self-worth that are obtained in Plum Blossom Boxing participation process. The conclusion shows an argument about the significance of the study of Plum Blossom Boxing in village tradition to the survival of traditional Martial arts.