Cao Shijie
Lineage & School of Heritage
Cao Shijie began studying martial arts with his father at the age of six, and by the age of twenty-five had mastered all of the Cao family's hereditary skills; he has been teaching apprentices ever since.
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Male, of Hui ethnicity, born in 1967, a native of Tianjin. Heavy saber (zhongdao) is the original name of the large saber, a traditional weapon of the Beijing-Tianjin region with thousands of years of history in China. The Hui heavy saber of Tianjin became famous in the early years of the Yongle Emperor in the Ming dynasty. Legend has it that a Hui general from Jinling habitually used a large saber weighing 30 kilograms; when he later moved his whole family to Tianjin, the Cao family heavy saber of Tianjin came into being and was passed down from generation to generation. The Cao family's saber techniques combine hardness and softness and unite movement and stillness, integrating strength and skill. As the saying goes, when the saber is whirled it moves like the wind and is still like a pine; lifting the saber feels like a thousand jin, yet wielding it is as light as a feather; when the saber flies its steel rings ring out, and when it falls there is silence. At present Cao Shijie still leads the Tianjin Hui Heavy Saber Team, transmitting the Hui heavy-saber martial art; more than four hundred people have now learned the Hui heavy saber and related skills.
Honors & Recognition
A representative bearer of Hui Zhongdao Martial Arts, a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. Building on the martial skills inherited from his ancestors, Cao Shijie has also created new moves such as qingting dian shui (dragonfly skimming the water) and han di ba cong (pulling a scallion from dry ground), and has repeatedly won prizes in various competitions.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
Profile
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。