Chung-Hua Institute

In the summer of 1999, I traveled to Inner Mongolia with Master David C.K. Lin to do some research on Chinese martial arts history. Master Lin was invited to attend the Mongolian-style wrestling division of the annual Minority Peoples' Athletic Tournament in Tongliao.

China is made up of a number of ethnic minorities and is not the homogenous race that many people think it to be. The Han ethnicity is considered the majority, but, over the centuries, China has incorporated a number of different tribes and peoples through conquest. For example, there are a large number of Chinese Muslims, known as the Hui ethnicity, who made some of the most outstanding contributions to Chinese martial arts. Manchurians, Hakka, Tibetans, Uighurs, Koreans, and Mongols all make up ethnic groups in the People's Republic of China. These groups enjoy a great deal of central government support and sponsorship financially, and their ethnic traditions are treated with increasing favor from Beijing's bureaucracy. The annual minority sports festival is an example of this policy. This year's festival was held in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region within China.

The Mongolians are noted in Chinese history for their martial prowess. A great deal of lore about the exploits of Genghis Khan lives on to the modern era. Their athletic festivals usually focus on the "Three Manly Sports" - archery, horsemanship, and wrestling. All of these "sports" were skills that Mongol hordes needed for their conquests throughout Europe and Asia.

While archery had changed with the times, and the contestants shot with modern crossbows, the traditional trick riding and racing that the young Mongols performed was impressive. They rode Mongolian horses, which are shorter than the type of horses we see here in the West, and the same mounts that carried Mongol cavalries throughout the Eurasian plain. Almost all the jockeys rode their horses bareback, holding on to the manes instead of a bridle in some cases.

The Mongolian wrestling competition, our real objective, was still fought in the traditional way. Mongolian wrestling, called "bokh" in their native tongue, was said to have heavily influenced Chinese Shuai-Chiao wrestling. The uniform worn by the competitors consisted of a hard leather jacket adorned with metal studs and other embellishments, and a loose pair of pants. The rules of the bout are simple. The hands and arms attack only the torso (anything above the belt), and the feet and legs are free to attack the lower body. This meant that wrestlers who favored leg picks were at a severe disadvantage. The first person to touch the ground with any part of their body above the knees lost the bout. There was also a 30-minute time limit. Two contestants, especially the men, were often seen locking up in a clinch, barely moving from that position, with no throw or takedown resulting. The wrestler who showed greater aggression was declared the winner by the judges. Competitors of both sexes fought separately with no weight divisions.

At the beginning of each match, the two fighters would leap into the ring, mimicking the flight of eagles, which are highly respected by the Mongols for their dignity and bravery. The match would end as soon as one fighter was thrown or taken down, and the fighters would immediately shake hands, and leap out of the ring in the same manner as they leapt in, exhibiting sportsmanship that any referee would be proud of.

The male contestants were rather large, and watching many of their matches brought to mind two powerful bulls butting heads. The females were also quite large in general. Their matches were surprisingly fierce, more so than the men's fights, and displaying a greater reliance on technique. Powerful kicks and leg hooks swept many an opponent, and the occasional hip throw sent a few contestants crashing into the turf on which the matches were fought.

The larger male fighters seemed to know each other quite well, and hung out near a large tractor nearby, awaiting their matches. As Inner Mongolia is still a parcel of Chinese territory, almost all Mongols spoke Mandarin Chinese fluently, thus allowing me to converse with them comfortably. They amiably answered my questions about their training. Unlike many Asian martial arts that are rigorously systematized, bokh was merely a game that many Mongol boys played as they grew, for the most part without progressive training or recognized masters, and learning techniques haphazardly from the elders. With very little exception, the larger, stronger fighters manhandled their competition, and went home as champions. In the absence of technique, raw force rules the day.

When I return to Inner Mongolia on my next trip, I'll be heading to the outer villages to see whether any of the old timers have a more complete understanding of bokh, both from a technical standpoint as well as a historical standpoint. Just as the Cultural Revolution is blamed for destroying many of the great masters of traditional Chinese martial arts, it'll be interesting to see if any of Mongolia's great wrestlers survived that turbulent era and still live on in the rural villages of the Mongolian plains.