ANCIENT CHINESE ARCHERY

Arrows, Bows and Methods of the MANCHUS

Peter Dekker at a Manchu Archery Demonstration.

Badai, a Chinese Archer.

Look at this Chinese archery recorded in art:
Badai, praised war hero of the Western frontiers and Manchu bannerman of the Imperial Guard. Carrying his Manchu bow and arrows, regulation saber in typical 18th century fangshi (angular style) mounts. He also shows his martial prowess by taking on a martial arts stance.

This painting, dating from around 1760, was commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor. The original is now in the Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Badai strikes me as a rather unfortunate name for an archer, as it sounds in English.

The Manchu bow was of composite recurved style. Horse archers are reputed to have used smaller bows. However, the evidence is that the Qianlong emporer's, which he used for horseback archery, was as large as any other Manchu bow. Mongol archers are sometimes depicted as carrying two quivers of arrows, one type specialised for close up shooting and the other for distance. I have yet to verify this. However,this was not the case for Manchu archers.

An Interview with Peter Dekker

QUESTION:
Ancient Chinese archery is a fairly obscure subject. How did you get involved with it?

Peter's first - the bigger one..

PETER:
It didn't take too long in my antiques journey before I got offered an antique Manchu bow. Like most people that see this kind of bow for the first time I didn't quite understand how it worked. I asked Philip Tom about it and he explained to me how they were bent in the opposite direction of their usual c-shape to string up, and how it was made of a lamination of layers of horn and sinew on either side of a wood or bamboo core. I found it intriguing and immediately went forth to buy this antique bow. It was gigantic and quite heavy. It later turned out to be the largest of Manchu bows, used primarily for the strength tests in the military examinations.

Manchu military hunting quiver

The subject wouldn't leave my mind and at some point I got a bow and started shooting, attempting to adhere to the methods described in old manuals that were once written by Chinese archery masters for self-study. Some of these hark back to earlier methods used in China, but I was particularly interested in the Manchus because it was their bow that was eventually used in the Qing armies during the times of their great conquests of the 17th and 18th century. After lots of study of old artwork, early pics and period manuals written by master archers for self-study I attempted to distill the Manchurian archery tradition from the many styles China used to have.

QUESTION:
I would imagine it's pretty hard to find reference material on old Chinese archery. Where did you get it from?

PETER:
I was greatly helped in this venture by Stephen Selby's work, he made a number of important

Thumb ring used by Manchu archers.

manuals from his collection available for a larger audience through his non-profit website atarn.org and his book "Chinese Archery". In there I found a manual describing the archery method of the Kangxi emperor's Imperial Guard, dated 1722. Because all artwork and pictures depicting Manchus consequently show the exact same style described in this manual, I also started to mainly focus on this style and no other. This was a necessity because like with Chinese martial arts, there were a lot of Chinese archery styles as well and they even contradict each-others principles at times. Bede Dwyer can be credited for finally explaining to me the correct way of using a Manchu thumb-ring, which is a lot different from the more standard thumb rings used all over Asia.

QUESTION:
How do people such as yourself train in Ancient Chinese Archery?

Peter Dekker with a Manchu bow.

PETER:
My training and teaching now consists of three distinct part of practice: Form-based, competition-based and tactical-based archery. I guess all cultures that used archery for warfare once practiced all three aspects of the art. In our day, only competition-based archery made it into a sport. A rare exception is Japanese Kyudo where mainly the form-based meditative aspect survived. The tactical aspect disappeared altogether in all cultures, being revived by some re-enactment groups. In short, the form-based practice focuses on stance, technique and mind intent. Results are not so important, and extensive training in this will make one a very constant archer. Competition-based archery is the other way around, only results count no matter how one's technique is. Needless to say, they both greatly compliment each other and would be empty without their counterpart. Tactical archery takes this training to another level. This time your target is moving and is shooting back at you. It covers shooting arrows in rapid succession, nocking the arrow while keeping both eyes fixed at the target, shielding parts of your body with the bow, and shooting in different positions while running.

QUESTION:
That sounds like a lot of fun. Are you documenting your study in any way so that the time you've spent lives beyond you?

PETER:
I am now slowly but steadily working towards a book on Manchu archery, but am still quite busy studying as many texts, antique objects and artwork as possible before I write down the final words on that. In any case, there is still lots to be done.

QUESTION:Thank you for sharing with us, Peter, and thanks for sharing these wonderful pictures.

If you readers would like to know more, contact Peter at his site Mandarin mansion

Antique bows used in Chinese archery

Limbs of two antique bows.

In the picture to the right, you can see the limbs of two antique bows used in Chinese archery. They are decorated with lots of buddhist symbols and rare white buffalo horn, probably from an albino water buffalo. Manchu bows were complex in construction. Different parts of the bow might be made of

• waterbuffalo horn lined with rattan
• bamboo or wood
• horse, deer or waterbuffalo sinew covered with birchbark
• fish bladder glue

Draw strengths of Manchu bows ranged between 40 -240 lbs.

Highly decorated later Qing bow.

Compare the decoration of these two bows. The one above is from the later Qing. It is highly decorated with symbols and white buffalo horn. The character means "longevity". The bat stands for luck, and the two swastikas sound like "10,000" in Chinese. Because they are connected, the rebus can be read as: "ten thousand times not cut off". Similar to late Qing ranking badges, late bows are often full of rebuses and hidden meanings, often to provide a little extra luck while the dynasty was in decline. Earlier bows had more natural, camouflage-like appearances - see the bow decoration below.

Camoflage like decoration on an earlier Qing bow..

The picture below shows a bow ear covered with rayskin. These ears work as levers to help bend the massive limbs, the effect is very similar to the effect of cams on modern compound bows.

Rayskin covered ear of a Qing era manchu bow.

Arrows

This bowman from the 1800s gives us a real look at Chinese archery of the time. Click on the thumbnails in this small photo gallery for different views of Manchu
arrows. See the numbered notes underneath for more information.

1.Arrowheads 2.Fletching 3.Nock 4.Manchu arrowheads

1. Variety of arrowheads
   The condition of these is probably too poor for restoration but it's interesting to see the different shapes. Some Manchu arrowheads were made of folded steel. Hunting arrowheads were often shaped to make them spin better in flight. Broad arrows like these were used in hunting large game and in warfare.


2. The Feathers
   Note the large amount of twist in the top arrow's feathers, meant to quickly stabilize the large flat heads.


3. The Nock
   This is a high quality nock. They weren't all so decorative. This arrow might be fired once and never found again, but the armourers took pride in their work. When I made my 11th century reenactment arrows, I fixed the feathers on by hand. That was enough work. The nock was commercial plastic. Those options weren't available in the Qing Dynasty. Equipment for Chinese archery all had to be hand made.


4. Two Manchu Arrowheads
   These two arrowheads are Qing military examples.

1.Whistling 2.Comparison 3.Small game 4.Manchu Archer

1. Whistling arrowhead
   The whistling arrowhead pictured next to the ordinary one, was carved out of bone. It was not very common for soldiers to carry whistling arrows but it is known that some officers used them for communications purposes. This particular whistler, without a sharp point, was used for a target shooting game. There were other whistling arrows that had a sharp arrowhead and the whistle behind it. Their purpose was to stop the intended prey in its tracks to find out where the sound was coming from - just long enough for the arrow to arrive where it had stopped, and shoot it.

   Additional information written by Peter Dekker on the GRTC forum: "Bone Arrow Whistle", exquisitely crafted and decorated, with eight holes around it leading to the whistling chamber. There are many such arrow whistles listed in the Huangchao Liqi Tushi but I haven't yet came to translating them all
   

2. Comparison
   Compare these two arrows. A 19th century Manchu hunting arrow compared to a very standard Western target arrow. The feathers of this arrow are about 34 cm long. Eagle feathers were used if they could be found. The wing feathers were preferred since tail feathers didn't come long enough for the intended use in Chinese archery. Crane feathers were used as well, and the feathers of other birds.


3. Small game hunting arrows.
   These arrows were used for small game such as rabbit. Heads were usually horn or bone and teeth were iron, or sometimes wood. The combination of a whistling head and the teeth was made to distract the rabbit into a moment of stillness so the arrow could reach him where it had aimed.


4. A Manchu archer.
   This picture was sold by Sotherby's. It is the portrait of an officer. It was one of a series of such portraits commissioned by the Qianlong emporer.

This page on ancient Chinese archery has been built with the help of Peter Dekker. He supplied all the photos, much of the information and I gathered the rest of it from his posts on forums and his websites. You can find him at Mandarin Mansion

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