主题：【原创】怕老婆的戚继光 -- 黄河故人

The inventive talent and technological skill of the Chinese people might have put an end to the bow and arrow in the battlefield had it not been for the rise of the Huns in Central Asia. The Chinese army, skilled in fighting in the plains with infantry and war chariots, were confronted with skilled archers on horseback. Just as the crossbow started to become a significant weapon of war, the enemy moved the goal-posts. King Wuling of Zhao realised that the Chinese army had no choice but to abandon their traditional infantry formations now armed with crossbows, take off their flowing Chinese robes, don the short tunics worn by the Hun horsemen, and learn to shoot with a bow from horseback.

But some Chinese authors advocated what they called the real ‘Chinese Release’ in which the string was held by the thumb (protected by a ring), and supported by the middle finger, with the forefinger pointed upward along the string. (This might sound eccentric, but after I tried it, I could never go back to any other position.) After the release, the string hand naturally falls back and out, so that the end of the firing procedure leaves the archer with both arms extended, and in the next movement, the archer takes his next arrow ready to nock it on the string like the picture on the left.

After the Japanese occupation of China in the Second World War, the art of traditional archery had died out, despite some efforts by the Nationalist Government (1912–1949) to revive it. Now there is no-one in China practising the art. I am preparing a book on all aspects of Chinese archery to be published next year. I hope that the people of China will once again take pride in the three-thousand-year-old tradition of Chinese archery.