Use Chinese Methods to Convert Barbarians

When two different cultures meet, dance is the first art across the border. Music is very close behind. Interaction with another culture has great potential to create change; most societies fear change. This is why societies so often ban or at least try to control dance.

Dance often invokes trance of various sorts, heroic, competitive, sexual, or ecstatic. All of these types of trances have the potential to disrupt traditional designations of authority and hereditary power.

The brilliance of Chinese (Han) culture is that it has spread Martial Arts (gongfu) instead of dance to all of it's neighbors and all of the societies it comes in contact with. Gongfu is merit based, and on the surface it shuns trance. It seduces the naturally aggressive, and trains the wild-at-heart.

The expression "Yong yu bian yi", use Chinese methods to convert barbarians really captures the idea. I got the expression from a book I recommend about the relations between China's dominant Han majority and the numerous smaller peoples who inhabit the broad periphery of China's territory: Cultural Encounters on Chinas Ethnic Frountiers, Edited by Stevan Harrell.
I think it's interesting that in China right now the most common activities in a public park are, gongfu/qigong, ballroom dance, Weiqi (Go), Chinese Chess and basketball.