China Archery

ORDOS, Inner Mongolia, Aug. 12 (Xinhua)
They all come from Nujiang, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, but represent different teams to compete here at the ongoing 10th Chinese Ethnic Games. For these shooters of ethnic Lisu, crossbow is life.
“Our group of people love crossbow, especially the men,” said Yu Siyi,coach of Team Yunnan, the favourite of the traditional crossbow shooting at the ethnic games. “We bring the crossbow along no matter where we are going to and play crossbow shooting almost every weekend.”
Taking aim, firing and competitors trying to hit the bull’s eye, the game of crossbow shooting is similar to archery, but the shooters don’t need to pull the bow while they put the arrow in a slot to fire it with a trigger.
At Nujiang, ethnic Lisu account for almost 70 percent of the 540,000 population. “There are men and women, young and old playing crossbow shooting. Boys even begin to shoot at the age of five and their crossbows are made by their parents,” said Yu.
The traditional crossbow is made of wood and the arrow is made of bamboo. Zhong Xingcai just makes crossbows for living.
“I’m good at making crossbows. I can earn 80,000 to 90,000 yuan every year,” said the craftsman competing for Team Yunnan. Read more…

An athlete competes in the crossbow archery event at the sports games in Rongshui Miao autonomous county in South China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Sept 24, 2010. The second ethnic minority sports games were held in the county on Friday. More than 2500 athletes from 21 ethnic minorities, including the Miao, Yao and Dong groups participated in the games this year.

Source: Xinhua

Archaeological discoveries proved that archery in China dates back 20,000 years. Practical archery takes three conditions: a bow strong enough to propel arrows, arrows that are sharp enough to kill, and a technique to ensure the stability of arrows in flight. The bow and arrow in ancient China fully met the three conditions. Archaeologists have unearthed finely made arrowheads in a site of the Paleolithic Age in Shanxi Province. Made of stone, the arrowheads were sharp and pointed, and could be mounted on a shaft. No bow was found at the site, since bows were usually made of wood,  bamboo and perhaps tendon of animals and could not remain intact for so many years. But the arrowheads were enough to prove the existence of bows.

As for how to keep the arros stable in flight, Kao-Gong-Ji, the earliest work on science and technology in China, writes under the item of THE ARCHER: “Decide the proportions of the shaft to install the feathers.  The feathers at the end of the shaft are installed in three directions, and then the arrowhead is mounted. An arrow thus made will not lose its balance even in strong winds.” It also says, “When the feathers are too many, the arrows will slow down; when the feathers are too few, the arrow will become unstable.” Later on, ancient Chinese developed bronze arrowheads and the crossbow, upgreading archery to a new height.

Picture of using archery with feet in ancient China: