Ancient sword fighting show

During a recent tour to Henan in late March 2015, I visited a them park which was built following the details as depicted in the painting Along A River in Qinming painted during the Song dynasty.

There were many shows performed in the park, shows such as Cock Fighting, battle ships attacking the song capital, man spitting fire and ancient swordsmanship. Of all these shows, I found the ancient sword fighting show very interesting and exciting. You can see swordsmen fighting each other on horses, what you would see in ancient war where generals fighting each other.

Yue Fei was a famous general during the Song dynasty. He defended the dynasty by fighting off the invaders from the north. During that time, two of the Song emperors were captured by the enemies, he went all the way to rescue them. Unfortunately, he was called back by the new Song emperor who executed Yue Fei without any reason.

Here is the show that featured Yue Fei in his early days where he entered the fighting aerna where the winner could get a post in the army. Unfortunately his opponent was a prince, a relative of the emperor. He killed the prince and was about to be punish by the organizer, someone rescued him. Eventually he was taken in as a commander in the army and later became a general who won many wars with the invaders.

 

Just when he was about to fight into the enemies' capital to rescue the captured emperors, the new emperor of Song (the captured emperor's son) had to send 12 decrees to order him to retreat. When he finally returned to the capital, he was imprisoned and later executed (no reason was given for his execution). I believed he was executed as the new emperor was worried that if he did rescued the emperors, the young ruler would have to give up his throne.

If you want to know more abut Yei Fei, please visit this site:

         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yue_Fei