The Father of the Olympics and the Grandmaster of Tai Chi 奧林匹克之父與太極宗師 -by Korman Fong

Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937) and Sun Lutang (birth name Fuquan, 1860–1933) never met, and never could have — one lived in France, the other in China. Yet they were two of the outstanding men of their generation, and each, in his own country, became a founding figure of modern physical culture: Coubertin as the father of the modern Olympic Games, Sun as the Tai Chi grandmaster once hailed as "Tiger-Headed Junior Guardian, First Hand Under Heaven."

Sun Lutang and Pierre de Coubertin

Both men's legacies are inseparable from physical education. In 1896, Coubertin brought the ancient Greek Olympics back to life. That same year — the twenty-second of the Guangxu reign — Sun Lutang was founding the Puyang Boxing Society back home in Hebei, gathering gentry and farmers alike to study literary arts and practise martial skills side by side, reviving the old ideal of a life balanced between the field and scholarship.

Each was driven, in his own way, by a sense that his country had lost its footing and needed to find it again. Coubertin grew up in the shadow of France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, at a time when French thinkers everywhere were asking how the nation might recover its strength. His answer was to reform the schools: knowledge alone, he came to believe, was not enough to build good citizens — without physical training and a sound body, there could be no soundness of mind, and without that, no generation of people brave and capable enough to shoulder real responsibility.

In China, the picture was bleaker still. Defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, followed by humiliating treaties forced on Beijing by Russia, exposed a government too weak and too corrupt to resist the powers closing in from every side. It was in this atmosphere that the young Sun Lutang came to believe that training the body and the mind together might, in his own words, "perfect the people, body and spirit, and stir the common man to act."

They came from opposite ends of the social scale, but shared the same restless curiosity. Coubertin was born into the aristocracy, yet had no taste for a life of leisure — he boxed, fenced, rowed, rode, and, following his father's example, painted and played music as well. He idolized English boarding-school life, above all as it was portrayed in Tom Brown's School Days, and the sporting culture depicted there would shape the whole of his later career. His own education was thoroughly elite: degrees in literature, science, and law, followed by a lifetime spent reviving and building the Olympic Movement, twenty-nine years of it (1896–1925) as president of the International Olympic Committee.

Sun Lutang's childhood was far harder. A sickly boy, he turned to martial arts to build up his health, and had only two years of formal schooling before his father's death forced him to leave. He made a living as a brush-maker while apprenticing himself to martial arts masters, studying painting and calligraphy on the side, and immersing himself in the Book of Changes and in Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist thought — enough, in the end, to earn the rank of xiucai (the entry-level degree in the imperial examination system) entirely through self-study. Under the late Qing he served as a county magistrate and prefect; under the Republic, he held posts including military liaison to the presidential office, head of instruction and chief of the Wudang branch at the Central Guoshu Academy, and deputy director of the Jiangsu Provincial Guoshu Academy.

What both men shared, above all, was a stubborn integrity — a refusal to settle for anything less than the truth as they understood it. Coubertin spent years studying the connection between sport and education, traveling across Europe and America to see how different nations trained their young. In the end it was the English model that won him over: its freedom, its liveliness, its sheer enjoyment, which he came to see as the ideal way for young people to develop themselves.

Sun Lutang's search was no less restless. In his youth he spent more than three years crisscrossing China in pursuit of martial mastery, seeking out reclusive masters at Shaolin, Wudang, and Emei, until he arrived at his own guiding philosophy: that the three great boxing arts were, at root, one and the same, and that true boxing was inseparable from the Dao.

Both men lived out what they believed, and both left behind bodies of writing substantial enough to make each an authority in his field. Coubertin was not only a tireless champion of international sport but also a serious educator and historian, and among his works are English Education, The Ideal Psychology of Sport, and his poem Ode to Sport.

Sun Lutang, for his part, is remembered as the great synthesizer of Chinese martial arts and a pioneer of its combined literary-martial tradition, leaving behind works including The Study of Tai Chi Boxing, The Study of Xingyi Boxing, The Study of Bagua Zhang, A True Account of the Meaning of Boxing, The Study of Bagua Swordsmanship, and On the Distinction Between the Internal and External Schools of Boxing.

The deaths of great men are rarely simple; they tend to carry both sorrow and a touch of legend. Coubertin gave away his entire fortune to the Olympic cause and spent his last years living simply and largely alone, until his heart finally gave out in Lausanne at the age of seventy-four. As he had wished, his body was buried there, but his heart was carried to Olympia in Greece — so that even in death, it might go on beating in time with the Games he had revived.

Sun Lutang's final years coincided with the Mukden Incident and the installation of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. At seventy-three, feeling he no longer had the strength to fight back against forces he could not defeat, he gave up every public post he held and retired to his hometown. Sensing his death was near, he stopped eating for twenty days, spending his last weeks practicing calligraphy and his forms. When the end came, he told his family not to grieve — life and death, he said, were only a kind of game.

And if life and death really are a kind of game, then each man played his in his own way: Coubertin by relighting the Olympic flame, Sun Lutang by carrying the Dao through the art of boxing. The world, for having watched them play, was left richer for it.

奧林匹克之父與太極宗師        

顧拜旦（Pierre de Coubertin 1863-1937）和孫祿堂（名福全1860－1933），兩人素未謀面，卻是同代的精英，一個生於法國，一個生於中國；兩人都是近代體育界的先驅，一個是現代奧林匹克之父，一個是有「虎頭少保，天下第一手」之稱的太極宗師。

兩人的功績都與運動教育分不開。一八九六年，顧拜旦成功復興了古希臘的奧林匹克運動會，時值清光緒廿二年，孫祿堂在河北家鄉創辦蒲陽拳社，吸納鄉紳和農民學武習文，重振文武兼修的傳統耕讀文化。

兩人均畢生努力以圖挽回祖國的頹勢。在歐洲，顧拜旦年幼時，普法戰爭爆發，法國戰敗，法國的有識之士紛紛尋求強國之道。顧拜旦長大後，認為要改革學校的制度，來改變國民的人格素質，除了知識的灌輸，必須加強體育鍛煉，有健康的體魄，才有健全的心智，從而培養出堅強進取、勇於承擔的優良公民。

回望亞洲，中日戰爭爆發，清廷敗北，之後又與俄國簽訂喪權辱國的不平等條約，政府腐敗無能，列強得寸進尺，在國家水深火熱之際，年青的孫祿堂期望通過文武兼修的訓練，「完善人民之身心，圖以黎庶之振作」。

兩人的家庭背景迥異，但秉性聰敏好學則一。顧拜旦出生貴族，但不耽於安逸，喜運動，拳擊、劍擊、賽艇、與騎術皆好，又受父親薰陶，善畫畫、彈琴。顧拜旦嚮往英式的私立學校教育，最喜歡《湯姆布朗的學校生活》（Tom Brown’s School Days）的故事，特別是書裏描述校園的體育生活，對他日後的事業有深遠的影響。顧拜旦受法國的精英教育，擁有文學、科學和法學三個學位，傾其一生精力，從事復興和推動奧林匹克體育運動的大業，任國際奧委會主席達二十九年(1896-1925)。

孫祿堂幼年體弱， 故習武強身，只唸了兩年書塾，因喪父而綴學，生活艱苦卻自強不息。他一面靠製作毛筆為生，一面拜師學武，兼修繪畫書法，對易學與儒道釋等諸家哲理尤為嚮往，自學而至秀才。晚清時曾任知縣、知州等職務，民國期間先後任總統府武承宣官、中央國術館教務主任兼武當門門長、江蘇省國術館副館長兼教務長等。

在兩人身上，我們看到君子擇善求真的精神和毅力。顧拜旦致力於研究體育和教育的關係，曾走訪歐洲和美國多個城市，參考各國的體育制度，最後鍾情於英國的經驗，取其活潑、自由、愉快，是年輕人自我鍛煉的最佳途徑。

年青的孫祿堂為求深造武藝，曾花三年多時間，走遍大江南北，足跡遍及少林、武當、峨嵋等武學名山，尋訪隱者高人，最後總結出「三拳合一，拳與道合」的武學理想。

他們身體力行，通古今之變，著作等身，成一家之言。顧拜旦是傑出的國際體育推動家，同時是卓越的教育家和歷史學家，著作包括《英國教育學》、《運動心理之理想》、《體育頌》等。

孫祿堂是中國武術的集大成者、文武俱進的開創者和傳播者，著述有《太極拳學》、《形意拳學》、《八卦掌學》、《拳意述真》、《八卦劍學》、《論拳術內外家之別》等。

偉人的離逝總帶幾分傷感，幾分傳奇。顧拜旦為奧林匹克事業散盡家財，退休後過著儉樸孤獨的生活，最後因心臟病死於瑞士洛桑，享年七十四，後人遵照他的遺願，將其遺體安葬於洛桑，而心臟器官則安葬在希臘奧林匹克，象徵死後仍與奧林匹克運動的脈搏一起跳動。

孫祿堂晚年，九一八事變爆發，日本扶植偽滿洲國在華通車通郵，在外憂內患之下，七十三歲的孫祿堂深感有心討賊無力回天，遂辭去所有公職，歸隱故里，並預言即將離世，二十天不食，以寫字練拳度日，臨終時囑家人不用哀傷，說生死就像一場遊戲！

假如生死真如一場遊戲，顧拜旦選擇重燃奧林匹克的聖火，孫祿堂以武載道，世界亦因他們的遊戲而變得更加精彩！