A Study on the Inheritance and Transformation of Meihua Stake Martial Arts—A Case Study of Yan Zijie’s School
Abstract
Meihua Stake Martial Arts regards "Using the Illusory to Convey the True" as its core inheritance philosophy. Its intergenerational transmission heavily depends on long-term, high-density bodily interaction as well as fictive kinship ethics between masters and disciples. When the inheritance venue moves from traditional rural communities to modern universities, this inheritance model encounters systematic challenges. Taking Yan Zijie, the 17th-generation inheritor of Meihua Stake, and his university inheritance network as research objects, this paper conducts research on the five-stage morphological evolution of Meihua Stake Martial Arts on the basis of long-term participant observation and in-depth interviews. This study finds that the key to living inheritance does not lie in replacing inheritance itself with institutional rules, but in maintaining a dynamic balance between "institutionalization" and "bodily embodiment".
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