Zhou Tong (archer)

Zhou Tong was the archery teacher and second military arts tutor of famous Song dynasty general Yue Fei. Zhou has appeared in various forms of media such as novels, comic books, and movies. He was portrayed by three different actors in a string of black and white Yue Fei films produced in the 1940s and 1960s. He is also linked to Northern Praying Mantis boxing via Lin Chong and Yan Qing.

About Zhou Tong (archer) in brief

Zhou Tong was the archery teacher and second military arts tutor of famous Song dynasty general Yue Fei. Zhou has appeared in various forms of media such as novels, comic books, and movies. He was portrayed by three different actors in a string of black and white Yue Fei films produced in the 1940s and 1960s. Various wuxia novels and folk legends have endowed Zhou with different kinds of martial and supernatural skills. These range from mastery of the bow, double broadswords, and Chinese spear to that of Wudang hard qigong and even x-ray vision. Because of his association with the outlaws, he is often confused with the similarly named outlaw Zhou Tong. He is also linked to Northern Praying Mantis boxing via Lin Chong and Yan Qing. However, the oldest historical record that mentions his name only says he taught archery to Yue Fei, and nothing is ever said about him knowing or teaching a specific style of Chinese martial arts. Zhou’s mention in Yue Lin’s memoir was only briefly in the Yuan dynasty’s History of the Song Dynasty under the title Biography of Yue Fei. It reads, ‘He learned archery from Zhou Tong, He could fire everything and right hands and death could be a fire and death”. He can also mean ‘night errant in poetic translation, or in prosaic terms a professional strongman and bodyguard’ This means Zhou was a local hero from Tangyang County, Anyang prefecture, Henan province, which will be explained below.

Historical sources and scholarly sources spell his personal name as ‘So’, meaning’same or similar’ in present sources, which differs from the present spelling in fictional sources. He also represents a knight-errant with supreme swordsmanship in a folktale by noted Yangzhou storyteller Wang Shaotang. The tale also gives him the nickname ‘Iron Arm’, which he shares with the executioner-turned-outlaw Cai Fu, and makes the outlaw Lu Zhishen his sworn brother. His rare 20th century biography, Iron Arm, Golden Sabre, details his adventures decades prior to taking Yue as his pupil. This was later adapted into a ten volume Lianhuanhua comic book. He also appears in a novel concerning one of his fictional martial arts brothers. He can be summarized as ‘Zhou Hao hao hao’ or ‘Zhong Hao zhong zhao’ in the Chinese version of the novel Iron Arm,. He was also portrayed as a widower and military Arts tutor who counted two of the fictional 108 outlaws on which the Water Margin is based, among his former pupils. He died in 1203, some sixty years after the general’s political execution, but was not published until 1234. He would regularly visit his tomb twice a month and perform unorthodox sacrifices that far surpassed that done for even beloved tutors. He later taught what he had learned from Zhou to his soldiers and they were successful in battle.

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