China's ancient swordsmen were motivated by revenge while Western knights were driven by pride. But both shared some characteristics.

Straits Times , 19 Jan 2003

by Gentle Wisdom

Part man, part superman and all-righteous, the swordsman has slashed a path into the heart of folklore as righter of wrongs, defender of the weak and champion of the needy. But his place in history very much depends whether he was from Chinese or Western side of civilisation's fence.

In his book, The Chinese Knight-Errant (1968), historian James J.Y Liu traces the origins of Chinese swordsman to the Warring states era (475 - 221 B.C.). Liu tells of how, bereft of property and stripped of their jobs in the civil war, impoverished nobles and socially-displaced talents became restless wanderers. They simply took justice into their own hands and did what they thought necessary to redress wrongs and help the poor and distressed," he writes.

In his book, By The Sword (2002), writer and Olympic fencer Richard Cohen notes that swordsmen in the West had their roots in mercenaries and gladiators of Assyria and Rome. These men fought for pride and profit, not vengeance. But Cohen is quick to note: "The old English poem Beowulf makes a crucial distinction between a soldier and a warrior. The warrior distinguishes himself from a hired killer by what he will not stoop to."

Still, while a knight owed his loyalty to the king, lord or whoever was paying his salary, a Chinese knight-errant would only pledge allegiance to zhiji (one who appreciates you), regardless of rank and file. Liu says: "The knights-errant had a rather limited conception of justice. They thought in terms of individuals, not society as a whole."

That made Chinese swordsmen outcasts in the society, in sharp contrast to their Western counterparts who often rose to cushy positions at court, as in the case of Charles D'Artagnan of France. Liu says it did not help that they were disruptive influences who roamed the countryside and meted out justice as and when they saw fit.

Cohen says that by the 12th century, swordsmen in the West had evolved their own formal code of conduct for swordplay based on chivalry. Thus, it was common, among other things, for swordsmen to duel to win a lass' hand in marriage.

But this romanticism of swordplay was absent in Chinese knight-errantry. Says Dr Song Geng: "There is no woman in the wuxia's life. The sexual dimension is totally missing. So, until the Qing dynasty in the 19th century, men in Chinese culture were either effeminate scholars in romances or physically over-powering martial arts exponents in political epics." Dr song, 29, is an assistant professor at the Centre for Chinese Language and Culture of Nanyang Technological University. He is now writing a book on Chinese masculinity.  Liu explains this anomaly thus: "The attitude may have been influenced by the popular belief that sexual abstinence would help to preserve one's vitality."

In a nutshell, the knights of Western folklore were generally conformists while China's knights-errant were not. Yet, for all these cultural schisms, East met West more often than many might suppose. Both Cohen and Liu point out that swordsmen everywhere were relegated to the lower rungs of society.

Cohen writes: "No matter that dexterity with a sword made one more valuable to one's king on the battlefield, and would help frighten off idle challenges: skill at fencing implied a shady character and would continue to do so well into the 18th century."

This was also the case in China, albeit for different reasons. Dr Song says this was because there was "a Confucian disdain of might" and consequent delight in mettle. "It's the classic Chinese dichotomy between wen (intelligence) and wu (might). Young women in old China wanted husbands who could compose poems, play the zither and excel in scholarly debates, compared to women these days, who want men who are physically strong."

Still Liu says that scholar and good knight-errant epitomised Mencius' definition of a great man, that is, one whom "wealth and rank cannot corrupt, poverty and humble position cannot change, and authority and power cannot bend."

Both Eastern and Western swordsmen also prized glory and so had a cavalier attitude about death. In this Cohen points out that they were like their Japanese cousin the samurai, who equated suicide via hara-kiri with makoto (sincerity).

Liu says, " All these ideals reprensent universal human aspirations and create a spiritual bond between them across space and time - despite their differences.

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