What is the history of archery in China

Archery is one of the skills developed along with the creation of human beings, who invented the bow and arrow for hunting and fishing a long time ago. For a long time, bow and arrow was one of the weapons used in war, and now archery exists mainly as a favorite sport and recreational activity. Folk archery is very popular in China, especially in ethnic minority areas, and many ethnic groups have archery performances and competitions during their traditional festivals. The more famous ones are the traditional horseback archery and shooting competitions in Inner Mongolia's "Nadamaku" conference, and the long-distance shooting competitions, bow-drawing competitions and shooting competitions organized by the Tibetans in Qinghai Province.

Archery has a long history in China, with archaeologists discovering a 28,000-year-old stone arrowhead in Shanxi. During the Xia Dynasty, there were people who specialized in teaching archery, as well as institutions for practicing it; and during the Spring and Autumn period, the recurve was invented, which had a longer range and greater power than the bow.

Entering the Han Dynasty, with the popularization and development of iron, bronze arrowheads were gradually replaced by iron arrowheads. The earliest professional archery competitions appeared in the Wei, Jin, and North and South Dynasties. In the Tang Dynasty, Wu Zetian set up a system of martial arts examination, archery items occupied five of the nine examination items, which can be seen archery in the importance of the degree of attention at that time. During the Qing Dynasty, the Manchus brought their traditional archery activities to the Central Plains, and archery was more widely practiced. However, in ancient times, archery was more of a military sport. With the emergence and popularization of Western firearms in China, archery gradually withdrew from the military field, evolved into a purely recreational activity, and developed into a sports competition.

Before the founding of New China, archery had already appeared on the Chinese playing field as a performance in the martial arts program, and in 1956 it began to be listed as an official competition.