The Jingwu (精武體育會 / Chin Woo) — the first modern martial-arts movement

The 精武體育會 (Jingwu / Chin Woo Athletic Association), founded in Shanghai in 1910, was the first great modern, civilian, mass-membership martial-arts organisation — and the model on which the whole 20th-century idea of martial arts as public physical culture was built. Born from the legend of 霍元甲 (Huo Yuanjia) and the "Sick Man of East Asia" challenge, it broke the old secrecy: it taught a standardised curriculum to the public, admitted all comers regardless of style or lineage, published manuals, and spread across China and the diaspora.

Founding

In 1910 Huo Yuanjia founded the 精武體操學校 (Jingwu Gymnastic School) in Shanghai — amid the famous (and, in fact, un-fought) challenge to a touring foreign strongman. Huo died within months, in 1910; the school was carried on and built into a national movement by the businessmen-enthusiasts 陳公哲 (Chen Gongzhe), 盧煒昌 (Lu Weichang), and 姚蟾伯 (Yao Chanbo), who reorganised it as the 精武體育會 in 1916.

What was new

Jingwu inverted nearly everything about how the arts had been transmitted:

• Open, public, civilian membership — anyone could join, in place of the closed master-to-disciple lineage.

• A standardised foundational curriculum — the "ten basic sets" (基本十套), beginning with 彈腿 (tan tui) and 功力拳 (gong li quan), which every member learned before branching to advanced arts.

• The 體育 (physical-culture) framing — health, character, and nation-building (the "三育": moral, intellectual, physical), with a famously inclusive, anti-sectarian ethos.

• Publishing and record-keeping — manuals and journals; the codex holds the 精武本紀 (1919), the association's own annals.

The masters it gathered

Jingwu became a meeting-ground for the northern masters, and the route by which several arts reached the wider world. Most consequentially, 羅光玉 (Luo Guangyu) taught Seven-Star Praying Mantis at the Shanghai and Hong Kong Jingwu — the channel through which mantis travelled to 黃漢勛 (Wong Hon Fan) and out to the rest of the world. Others who taught under its roof included the eagle-claw master 陳子正, the Wu-style taiji of 吳鑑泉, and 趙連和.

The diaspora

Jingwu branches spread across Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia — the codex holds the 1928 雪蘭莪 (Selangor) Chin Woo special issue (精武特刊), a direct artifact of that spread. It is one of the central vectors of the "where the arts went" story.

See also

Foreign Strongmen & the Big-Sword Army — Huo Yuanjia and the 'sick man' challenge

Luo Guangyu (羅光玉) — taught Seven-Star Mantis at the Jingwu

Praying Mantis (螳螂拳) — spread to the world via the Jingwu

Diaspora — the Jingwu branches across Southeast Asia

A Short History of Chinese Martial Arts

Sources

[1] 精武體育會, Chinese Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/精武體育會) — the 1910 founding under Huo Yuanjia, the 1916 reorganisation under Chen Gongzhe, the open civilian model and the basic-ten curriculum, the diaspora.

[2] Codex holdings: 精武本紀 (1919) and 雪蘭莪精武特刊 (Selangor, 1928), in Sources/northern-kungfu-manuals/ — the association's own annals and a diaspora-branch publication.