Hunting was one of the productive activities carried out by the primitive man as a means of survival. In the latter stage of the primitive society it began to be incorporated into the military training programmes of the ruling class. By the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods (770-221 BC) it assumed enormous dimensions as the rulers "taught the civilians ways to fight" by training them in such combat skills as marching, archery on horseback, and hand-to-hand fighting.

In the early Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24), hunting gradually became a kind of recreation for the emperors and the nobility. Emperor Liu Che (140 BC- AD 88) had a hunting ground opened up in a forest west of the city of Xi'an. Named Shang Lin Yuan Park, it covers a large area with a circumference of hundreds of kilometers. Li Yuanji, son of the Tang emperor Li Yuan, is said to "prefer going without food for three days to going without hunting for one day." This shows what great favor hunting was among the nobility.

Rulers of the Oing Dynasty (1644-1911) hailed from northeast China where people depended on hunting for their livelihood. Following an old tradition, they practised marching and fighting through hunting. Emperor Kangxi (1662-1723) had a hunting ground named Mulan Ranch opened up in Rehe (a region comprising parts of today' s Hebei, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia), where large-scale hunting was carried out in the seventh and eighth months of the lunar year for six decades on end. Oianlong (1736-1796), another Oing emperor, issued a decree to make his officials understand the importance of hunting to both military exercise and physical training.