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Because of the multinational interactions, and the cultural differences generated among various regions, Chinese archery also produced out some other archery related activities, such as crossbow, slingshot, Touhu, willow shooting, bow pulling, etc. Some of these games were nearly as old as the bow itself, such as slingshot. Some were born in Southern China, later brought to other regions of China, such as crossbow. Some were created by different nationalities other than Chinese and popular among nobles, such as willow shooting.
| A very important phenomenon is that, Chinese people really like archery, and the nation used it as an examination, and as a significant education institution. Many people composed books for Chinese archery, trying to summarize and spread the culture. There are more than one hundred kinds of Chinese archery books still remained today, they are the most valuable literature and reference for today's study in ancient Chinese sports. Also we have found out that these writings and books have produced unprecedentedly eminent impact upon the peripheral countries' archery tradition, especially Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
Actually, during 1920s to 1950s, Chinese archery could still being seen on the Chinese sports stage. Unfortunately, since 1959, when China formally embraced international archery as an official sport in the national games, Chinese archery was gradually abandoned and finally fated out from our sights. Now most of the techniques and traditions of Chinese archery are lost, the sophisticated production of Chinese composite bows is holding its last breathe, a similar destiny to almost all traditional Chinese sports.Since 1982, China has been holding the National Minority Nationality Games regularly, and some national archery games are included. Though they are quite different to the traditional Chinese archery, still, this gives us a sigh of hope. Nonetheless some scholars have started studying and attempting to recover Chinese archery, we hope Chinese archery could one day re-appear in front of the world. |
