The development speed of the Boxer Rebellion exceeded the imagination of foreigners and the Qing government. Boxing circles have been set up everywhere, people practice boxing everywhere in the street, people wear red cloth on their heads and hold broadswords in their hands, and even women with small feet have begun to be obsessed with Shenquan.
The most fundamental reason why the Boxer Rebellion has such a large scale and influence is that the imperialist invasion deepened the national crisis in China, but there is another reason that historians should not ignore, and that is that the Boxer Rebellion is called "impeccable".
What happened to the Boxer Movement? Although there are feudal superstitions here, we can't ignore some information about "folk magic"
There is an iron cloth shirt in China Wushu, which is extremely difficult to practice. The training method of iron cloth shirt is mainly through the direct collision between various hard objects and the body, so that the bones are often tempered by hard objects, and the bones and muscles will gradually become solid over time. Then directly use hard objects such as iron to continuously beat the body of the practitioner. If we persist for three to five years, the iron cloth shirt will achieve a little success. ?
Even if you practice the iron cloth shirt, you can only resist the general cold weapon, and you can't stop the musket. Boxer originated in Shandong, the hometown of martial arts. It is said that Xin Chenggong, the famous boxer leader at that time, practiced iron shirts. When Empress Dowager Cixi sent someone to check whether the Boxer Rebellion was invulnerable, she met a master who performed iron shirts. Tiebu shirt is so difficult to practice, how many people know this kung fu?
Shandong Broadsword Club is an important branch of the Boxer Rebellion. According to legend, Ruan Zutang, a Taoist priest in Xuzhou, went to the broadsword club for a field trip and practiced the "golden bell jar". His report is like this: those practitioners usually do it at night. They often light candles and recite spells, and then the master who teaches kung fu will cut the practitioners with a knife, which really won't hurt them. But he found that when cutting, masters often change their angles when cutting to the body. ?
Of course, there are also some boxers with martial arts background. They have a good mental state and the guidance of qigong masters, and their potential is stimulated. Naturally, they will jump higher and run farther than usual. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you will occasionally get hurt while cutting the knife, making them think that they are possessed by gods and invulnerable.
Because the people who participated in the Boxer Rebellion were mixed, some acrobats also performed in the Boxer Rebellion, which was more real. According to the records at that time, when the Boxer Rebellion performed on the altar, there were often cases of "missing knives" and "missing guns", that is to say, when performing "invulnerability", it was unfortunate that the fake play was really done. ?
During the Boxer Rebellion, a county magistrate wrote in his Chronicle of Guan Yu: "At that time, there were rumors in the streets and the people saw them. They used guns to pick up foreign guns and fill their pockets. The Boxers stood a hundred paces away, hitting each other with guns and playing marbles, but they didn't enter. Surprisingly, they can hold them in their hands and show them to the public. The performance didn't succeed in the end, because a master exposed the trick on the spot.
It is said that there were many stubborn people at that time who had to try their hand under foreign guns, and the result can be imagined.