---
title: Timeline (年表) — Chinese martial arts at a glance
---
The whole story on one line — the **documented** milestones of the Chinese martial arts, from the first surviving manuals to the modern diaspora, with the famous legends placed where they actually enter the *written* record rather than where tradition puts them. For the narrative behind these dates, see [**A Short History of Chinese Martial Arts**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/history).
**How to read this.** Dates are for the **written record** — when something was first set down — not for when a practice "began," which is usually unknowable. Legendary dates are marked **[legend]**. The pattern to notice: **weapons are documented before empty hands, and most "ancient" styles are written down only in the 1800s–1900s.**
## Deep roots & legend (pre-1500)
- **c. 527 [legend]** — Bodhidharma (達摩) is later *said* to have come to Shaolin and originated its boxing. This is a Republican-era story, not history; the [Yijinjing](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/yijinjing) prefaces that seeded it were forged a thousand years later.
- **Antiquity** — wrestling (角抵 *jiaodi*), the ancestor of [shuaijiao](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/four-gates), and the spear, saber and bow as battlefield arts: genuinely old, but undocumented as *systems*.
## The Ming military record (1500s–1600s)
The deepest surviving *systems* are military, written by officers.
- **1560s** — [**Qi Jiguang (戚繼光)**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/qi-jiguang) records 32 boxing postures in his army manual 紀效新書 — the textual ancestor of much that follows, Taiji included.
- **mid-1500s** — [**Yu Dayou (俞大猷)**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/yu-dayou) writes the *Sword Classic* (劍經), the oldest surviving Chinese stick-and-staff treatise.
- **1621** — [**Cheng Zongyou (程宗猷)**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/cheng-zongyou) publishes the first Shaolin manuals — the [staff](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/shaolin-staff-method), the [long saber](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/long-saber-method), the spear — **weapons, not fists**. Mao Yuanyi's vast 武備志 appears the same year.
## The internal idea & the Qing (1600s–1700s)
- **1669** — [**Huang Zongxi's epitaph for Wang Zhengnan**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/wang-zhengnan-epitaph) gives the **first written 內家／外家 (internal/external) distinction** — the textual root of the whole [internal-arts idea](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/internal-vs-external).
- **1630s → 1784** — bare-handed Shaolin boxing enters the record with the monk Xuanji, surviving in Cao Huandou's 1784 [Hand-Combat Classic](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/hand-combat-classic).
- **c. 1724–1783** — Chang Naizhou (萇乃周) writes the deepest pre-Taiji theory of internal body-mechanics (documented in depth on the [sister Taiji wiki](https://taiji.openmindspace.org)).
## The styles crystallize (1800s)
Most of what people now practice is written down — and largely *formed* — in the nineteenth century.
- **mid-1800s** — [**Li Luoneng (李洛能)**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/li-luoneng) consolidates modern [**Xingyi**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/xingyi); [**Dong Haichuan (董海川)**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/dong-haichuan) teaches the first systematic [**Bagua**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/bagua) in Beijing; **Yang Luchan** brings Chen-village boxing to the capital as Yang **Taiji**.
- **19th-c. Shandong** — the documented [**Praying Mantis**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/praying-mantis) lineages crystallize around Laiyang; the **Wang Lang** founder tale is older but [legend](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/wang-lang).
- **1881** — Li Yiyu's "salt-shop manuscript," the earliest written witness of the Taiji classics.
## The Republican reorganization (1900s–1930s)
The arts become public, institutional, and printed for the first time.
- **1910** — the [**Jingwu Athletic Association**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/jingwu) is founded in Shanghai — mass publishing, a cross-style curriculum, branches across the diaspora.
- **1915** — [*Secrets of Shaolin Boxing*](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/secrets-of-shaolin-boxing) — the most influential and least reliable Shaolin book — appears; [**Sun Lutang (孫祿堂)**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/sun-lutang) begins the book series (1915–1925) that frames Taiji, Bagua and Xingyi as one "internal" family.
- **1928** — the [**Central Guoshu Institute**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/central-guoshu-institute) is founded in Nanjing and stages the bloody, chaotic [**First National Examination**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/national-examination-1928).
- **1930** — Tang Hao's [*Shaolin–Wudang Study*](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/shaolin-wudang-study) founds the critical, evidence-based history of the field — and demolishes the founding myths.
- **1933** — the modernized **Second National Examination** (weight classes, referees, protective armor).
## Diaspora & modern wushu (1949–)
- **1949 onward** — after the civil war, lineage-holders carry their arts abroad: [**Liu Yunqiao**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/liu-yunqiao) and Baji to Taiwan, [**Wong Hon Fan**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/wong-hon-fan) and Seven-Star Mantis to Hong Kong, Cheng Man-ching and Taiji to Taiwan and then New York (1964). See [**Diaspora**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/diaspora).
- **1950s** — the People's Republic codifies modern competition **武術 (wushu)** — the standardized routines most of the world now sees as "kung fu" — while traditional lineage transmission continues in parallel everywhere.
## See also