Current Events – Kung Fu Tea

Introduction

Welcome to “Chinese Martial Arts in the News.” This is a semi-regular feature here at Kung Fu Tea in which we review media stories that mention or affect the traditional fighting arts. In addition to discussing important events, this column also considers how the Asian hand combat systems are portrayed in the mainstream media.

While we try to summarize the major stories over the last month, there is always a chance that we have missed something. If you are aware of an important news event relating to the TCMA, drop a link in the comments section below. If you know of a developing story that should be covered in the future feel free to send me an email.

Its been a while (almost a month) since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

A modern interpretation of Lion Dancing in Hong Kong. Source: CNN

A modern interpretation of Southern Lion Dancing in Hong Kong. Source: CNN

Chinese Martial Arts in The News

Our first order of business is to wish everyone a Happy Lunar New Year! Over the last week I discussed the holiday from a historical and theoretical perspective here and here. Needless to say the Spring Festival celebrations have dominated recent news cycles. Lion Dances and martial arts demonstrations have traditionally been a part of these celebrations in both the East and West. The news has been full of accounts of these events as they have unfolded in practically every major city. There are have literally been too many articles to list here.

However, the following feature by CNN stood out to me while I was reviewing this coverage. Titled “Chinese Lion Dancing Meets Cirque du Soleil” it profiles a large Lion Dance company in Hong Kong that is renowned for its innovative, heart stopping performances which do not hesitate to make use of modern visual effects technology. The goal of the troupe is to reach a “more modern” audience. Not unexpectedly their approach has raised protests among more traditional Lion Dance practitioners. Yet as I was listening to the interview I was struck with how much this discussion reminded me of the technical innovation and “culture of the spectacular” that became part of Cantonese Opera performance in the Republic Period. Be sure to play the short video that goes along with the article as its well worth watching.

A group of African disciples study the traditional arts at Shaolin.

Two of the stories in today’s news round-up touch on the topic of “Kung Fu Diplomancy” and the various ways in both state and private actors have attempted to use the martial arts to shape the public’s perception of China’s “national brand.” The first of these follows a large Chinese Wushu Tournament in Nigeria. Over three hundred athletes (from the governmental, military, police and private sectors) participated in the “Chinese Ambassador’s Championship.” At stake were the requisite trophies and scholarships for the top performers to visit China for additional martial arts training.

The individuals who discussed the tournament did not shy away from acknowledging its roots in China’s public diplomacy strategy.

“Also speaking, the Culture Counsellor in the Embassy of China, Mr. Yan Xaingdong said the Wushu championship was set up to encourage a sustainable relationship between China and Nigeria through sports.”

Wu Tang and the Three Levels of a Martial Artist. Source: Vice

One of the most interesting stories over the last few weeks appeared on the Vice blog. In “Wu Tang and the Three Levels of a Martial Artist” Nick Wong interviews and discusses the career of his uncle, Kurt Wong, a Wudang Master. This slightly longer piece speaks to a number of issues regarding the place of the Chinese martial arts in popular culture. Different mediums, including music and videogames are freely invoked by the author. But what I was most struck by was the complex role of history in his explanation of Wudang Kung Fu. Notice that he combines lineage, political and biographical history in his explanation of what the Chinese martial arts are, and how they are experienced by the individual practitioner. Also fascinating is how he turns to RZA of the Wu Tang clan to further translate and situate the Chinese martial arts for a young contemporary audience.

Cui Eyes Expansion in China. Source: South China Morning Post.

Cui Eyes Expansion in China. Source: Straits Times.

The Straits Times published a piece profiling the aspirations and tribulations of the One Championship fight promotion company as it attempts to expand the market for MMA in China. While the Cui outlined an ambitious agenda for the next twelve months, the article itself didn’t pull its punches in noting the difficulties that various MMA leagues have experienced in attempting to do business in China. One Championship in particular was only able to host about 20% of these events that they had originally announced for 2015 and their reputation suffered a further setback after a fighter died while cutting weight before a match. Still, Cui says that his company has learned from the setbacks and is ready to move on in both China and the rest of the Asian market.

“Cui will not rest until more households are hooked on MMA. He said: “This is the only sport that can say it is truly Asian. Why obsess over sports in other continents? Let’s show the world how much talent we have in Asia.”

A Wing Chun school shooting a video for the relatively new Martial Tribes social media platform. Source: South China Morning Post.

The South China Morning Post ran an article profiling a new social media platform (Martial Tribes) designed and launched by a Hong Kong Entrepreneur in 2015. The platform seeks to become an alternative to Facebook for martial artists. It has already attracted 100,000 members and is shooting for up to a million by the end of the year. In addition to allowing users to build profiles, send messages and post content, it specializes in tools that allow teachers to share and monetize their knowledge. There cannot be any doubt that social media has disrupted the ways in which martial arts knowledge is shared, taught and discussed. This platform seems determined to harness these innovations in the creation of a new sort of marketplace matching students and potential instructors. It will be interesting to watch this story and see what impact, if any, platforms like this have on the business of teaching the martial arts.

Taijiquan may be part of a balanced workout routine. Source: LA Times.

Are you looking to add a little balance to your workout? How about an effective exercise for improving your balance, flexibility and state of mental serenity? If so the following article in the LA Times suggests that you take a second look at that local Taijiquan class. In addition to the widely discussed physical health benefits of Taiji as a low impact work out, there may also be psychological factors to consider.

“This practice is good for the mind as well, notes Dr. Michael Irwin, professor at UCLA’s department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences. In reference to a 2011 study in which tai chi was credited for helping to reverse depression in elderly patients, he says that “Tai chi, as a mind-body intervention, targeted stress response pathways as well as inflammation which can contribute to depression.”

Of course the article concludes with a reminder to consult your physician before starting a new exercise regime. And if I had to guess your doctor would probably also appreciate if you practiced your forms while firmly planted on the ground. That would also decrease the risk of falling for senior citizens.

Embracing Chinese Philosophy is the Key to learning the TCMA. Source: The Courier Mail

A paper in Australia recently ran a short profile of a Sifu Henry Sue, a Mantis Kung Fu instructor, in Brisbane. It is brief and does not really delve all that much into the connections between Kung Fu and philosophy as promised by the title. But Sue’s personal story of turning to the martial arts after a history of racial abuse and bullying is an interesting one. Sue is said to currently own and run the oldest Kung Fu academy in Australia and now has students around the world. You can read more here.

A still from the sequel to Couching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Sword of Destiny. Source: SCMP.com

Chinese Martial Arts in the Entertainment Industry

During the last few weeks two major stories have dominated the discussion of the Chinese martial arts in the movies. The first of these focuses on the progress of the eagerly awaited sequel to Couching Tiger Hidden Dragon titled The Sword of Destiny. This much anticipated film features a new director and will be released 15 years to the day after its formidable predecessor. The cast will feature both new and returning faces, but in interviews with the press it is clear that everyone feels a high degree of pressure to live up to the artistic excellence of their predecessor.

The article in the SCMP discussing the project plays up the significance of the wuxia elements of the story (both in its literary roots and as a genera of movie making) and asks what impact a repeat success of this type of film might have on Hollywood. Might it open a wider space for Chinese films in Western theaters beyond the Hong Kong style Kung Fu genera? The article also questions whether Harvey Weinstein’s decision to release the film on Netflix at the same time as theaters (which has resulted in multiple chains refusing to show the film) might hurt its economic prospects and diminish its viability in the marketplace. After all, there has been a stigma that follows “direct to DVD” films. Still, the ways in which audiences consume media are rapidly changing, so we will have to wait to see how this plays out.

The reviews are in, and pretty much everyone loves Kung Fu Panda 3. My three year old nephew gave it an especially strong review, though like many of the toddlers in the audience he was confused as to why the theater decided to lead with the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies trailer. Letters were written to the theater management and I hear that they expressed just the proper amount of abject begging for forgiveness.

Pretty much every major paper and television station has now run something on this movie, suggesting the degree of market saturation it is likely to enjoy. I thought that this review in the Canyon News nicely summed up the juxtaposition of Eastern and Western family values that the film played on. Meanwhile the South China Morning Post took a closer look at the business side of the project and what it portends for future trans-pacific partnerships.

Sheen Yun and the spiritual side of the martial arts. Source: The Epoch Times

Lately the Chinese martial arts, often in conjunction with music and dance, have been making an increased number of appearances on the theatrical stage. I just ran across an article profiling a Shen Yun dance performance which spoke to this, as well as the ways in which private actors in civil society (in this case religious ones) can also draw on the cultural capital of the traditional martial arts to present their own image of China and Chinese values on the global stage. Kung Fu diplomacy, it seems, is not a game played only by the state. It is an area contested by a wide variety of private and civil actors.

In the case of the current article, all of this came to a head when Tsveta Manilova, a Bulgarian model and photographer, was interviewed about her reaction to a recent performance of Shen Yun. Here are the money quotes:

Of all the story-based dances in the program, one taught Ms. Manilova something about China that she didn’t know: that the spiritual discipline Falun Gong, whose adherents practice peaceful meditation, is persecuted in China today.

She took the dance “Hope for the Future,” personally. In the dance, people of faith are attacked by Chinese Communist Party police.

“It was quite upsetting,” Ms. Manilova said. “I am from a communist country, too,” she said.

Ms. Manilova is originally from Bulgaria where communists reigned 50 years and also forbade spirituality.

She knew that China was originally a deeply spiritual place, with Buddhism in their ancient past. Even martial arts has a spiritual basis, she says.

It’s not just about “warfare, it’s something spiritual. It’s something that connects them to their religion and nature—all the living creatures in our world,” she said.

“People should have the right, if not to everything else, they should have the right to have their religion,” she said.

Readers interested in a quick rundown on the relationship between the Falon Gong movement and the Shen Yun performance troupe may want to check out this wikipedia article. Of course the Epoch Times, based out of New York City, was also founded by a group of Falon Gong practitioners. Or, if your prefer a more secular approach to martial arts and dance, you might want to check out this article on the Jackie Chan’s Longyou Kung Fu Company’s recent trip to Chicago.

A presentation at “Martial Arts Studies: Gender Issues in Theory and Practice” held on Feb. 5th Brighton University.

Martial Arts Studies

The last month has seen a number of developments in the growing interdisciplinary field of martial arts studies.

On February 5th the Martial Arts Studies Research Network presented the first in a series of smaller, issue specific, conferences. This gathering was titled “Martial Arts Studies: Gender Issues in Theory and Practice.” Hosted at Brighton University it brought together about 30 scholars who shared their research on a wide range of issues relating to gender in various aspects of the martial arts and the possibility that these fighting systems might become vehicles for social transformation. Apparently a number of the presentations generated very lively discussions by the participants. Hopefully we will be seeing some of these papers in print soon.

In the mean time we are fortunate that a number of attendees have written up their own reports on the conference. Perhaps the most comprehensive of these was recorded by Paul Bowman, and I would encourage you check it out. It gives a great overview of how this part of the conversation is currently evolving. Also very helpful is the report at the Budo-Inochi blog which provides a lot of detail and its own perspective on the event.

While shorter readers will also want to take a look at Luke White’s discussion of the event. Of particular importance is his concluding discussion where he asks why academically focused martial arts studies events can be uncomfortable spaces and whether the casual sexism of the martial arts training hall is being allowed to infiltrate academic gatherings on the subject. Of particular importance is what role an author’s personal experience in the martial arts should play in their academic discussion of the subject. Both Paul Bowman and Alex Channon have discussed (and responded to) these concerns in a blog post titled “The Gender of Martial Arts Studies.”

An Evening of HEMA at Brock University.

On February 4th Brock University (Ontario, Canada) treated their faculty and students of Medieval and Renaissance Studies to an evening of 15th century Italian martial arts.

Brennan Faucher and Alex Unruh from the Niagara School of Arms presented some of the techniques and styles that they practice, which are based on the teachings of the Medieval Italian knight and fencing master, Fiore dei Liberi.

“Fiore’s system allows for an easy transition from one system to another,” said Faucher. “If you study how the human body works, you will be better able to use all the weapons.”

Fiore’s treatise on martial arts, The Flower of Battle, was written in 1410 and includes pictorial demonstrations of different moves for a variety of combat styles. Fiore starts with a basic grappling system, and then moves on to duels with a dagger, long-sword, spear and pole-axe. He also includes instructions for fighting with or without armour and fighting on horseback or on foot. Fiore’s system is called “Armizare”.

This sounds like a fantastic event. The one thing that really caught my attention though was the way it was discussed by the organizer of the lecture series. He went to lengths to explain that normally they discussed “academic” topics, but for a change of pace they had decided to look at something “outside of the box.” This raises some interesting questions about the place of this sort of historical exploration and reconstruction in our understanding of Renaissance Studies. Can the martial arts contribute to an academic discussion in this area, or do they sit entirely outside of the realm of “serious” conversation?

Consensual Violence by Jill D. Weinberg

Students of martial arts studies have some upcoming books to look forward to. The first of these (California University Press) has an announced release date June 7th, 2016. Written by Jill D. Weinberg it is titled Consensual Violence: Sex, Sports, and the Politics of Injury. Interestingly it seems to speak directly to some of the issues raised by Alex Channon’s paper at the recent conference on gender and violence in martial arts studies. Here is the publishers statement on the text:

In this novel approach to understanding consent, Jill D. Weinberg features two case studies where groups engage in seemingly violent acts: competitive mixed martial arts and sexual sadomasochism. These activities are similar in that consenting to injury is central to the activity, and participants of both activities have to engage in a form of social decriminalization, leveraging the legal authority imbued in the language of consent as a way to render their activities legally and socially tolerable. Yet, these activities are treated differently under criminal battery law.

Using interviews with participants and ethnographic observation, Weinberg argues that where law authorizes a person’s consent to an activity, consent is not meaningfully regulated or constructed by the participants themselves. In contrast, where law prohibits a person’s consent to an activity, participants actively construct and regulate consent. This difference demonstrates that law can make consent less consensual.

Synthesizing criminal law and ethnography, Consensual Violence is a fascinating account of how consent gets created and carried out among participants and lays the groundwork for a sociology of consent and a more sociological understanding of processes of decriminalization.

Jill D. Weinberg is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at DePaul University and a scholar at the American Bar Foundation.

The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor.

Students of gender and martial arts studies will also want to check out the recently re-released volume Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor (Princeton UP).

Amazons–fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world–were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey tangled with Amazons.

But just who were these bold barbarian archers on horseback who gloried in fighting, hunting, and sexual freedom? Were Amazons real? In this deeply researched, wide-ranging, and lavishly illustrated book, National Book Award finalist Adrienne Mayor presents the Amazons as they have never been seen before. This is the first comprehensive account of warrior women in myth and history across the ancient world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Great Wall of China.

Mayor tells how amazing new archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with their weapons prove that women warriors were not merely figments of the Greek imagination. Combining classical myth and art, nomad traditions, and scientific archaeology, she reveals intimate, surprising details and original insights about the lives and legends of the women known as Amazons. Provocatively arguing that a timeless search for a balance between the sexes explains the allure of the Amazons, Mayor reminds us that there were as many Amazon love stories as there were war stories. The Greeks were not the only people enchanted by Amazons–Mayor shows that warlike women of nomadic cultures inspired exciting tales in ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China.

Driven by a detective’s curiosity, Mayor unearths long-buried evidence and sifts fact from fiction to show how flesh-and-blood women of the Eurasian steppes were mythologized as Amazons, the equals of men. The result is likely to become a classic.

Adrienne Mayor is a research scholar in Classics and the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Program at Stanford.
I should also note that this book has been a highly awarded.

Zach Woznicki, right, and Karn Charoenkul, center, lock arms while Justin Sanchez, left, and Ian Cabeira battle in the background during an open practice held by Chapman’s Martial Arts Club .
Source: FOSTER SNELL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Lastly there have been a couple of articles looking at the practice of the martial arts at various universities and colleges. Following our recent interview with Andrea Molle regarding the Budo-lab research center I was happy to find this piece profiling the Chapman University Martial Arts Club. The article discusses the innovative relationship between the particle and theoretical engagement with the martial arts at Chapman. Both the interview here at Kung Fu Tea and this follow-up article are well worth checking out for anyone interested in the place of the martial arts on the modern university campus.

A Taijiquan class at Wellesley College.

This piece, titled “Achieve Balance with the Martial Arts,” outlines a more traditional presentation of the Chinese martial arts as part of the physical education curriculum at Wellesley College. Its a nice piece and it looks like the students have access to quality Hung Gar and Taijiquan training.

Chinese tea utensil. Source: Wikimedia.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

As always there is a lot going on at the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group. We discussed the mythology of swords, what blogs your should be reading and the various martial aspects of the New Years celebration. Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Introduction

Its been a while (almost a month) since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

Sifu Allen Lee, 1948-2016. Source: http://www.wingchunnyc.com/

A Busy Month for Wing Chun in the News

Given my personal interest and research focus, I always start these posts by looking for stories relating to Wing Chun. Most months offer few substantive stories to choose from. But the last three weeks have proved to be an exception to that trend.

That said, our first Wing Chun related story is a sad one. Sifu Allan Lee of Wing Chun NYC has passed away. Lee was a personal student of both Ip Man and Lok Yiu and his contributions to the Wing Chun community in North America will be sorely missed. Those interested in learning more about his life may want to start here. His students are currently raising a fund to honor the life and legacy of Sifu Lee.

Master Sam Lau, also a student of Ip Man. Source: Timeout Hong Kong

In happier news, Time Out Hong Kong recently ran a profile of Master Sam Lau, another of Ip Man’s original students who is still actively teaching and promoting the art of Wing Chun. I have never had a chance to visit his school but he is one of the people in the Wing Chun community whom I would most like to meet if given the opportunity.

The short article in Time Out covered a lot of ground. It discussed Ip Man’s early days in Hong Kong and the initially hostile reception that Wing Chun received. Master Lau then went on to discuss some of the misconceptions about Ip Man promoted by the recent films. Lastly the question of government support for the preservation of Wing Chun (a topic which he has addressed a number of times) was discussed:

“The situation is not helped by the lack of governmental support, both in Hong Kong and mainland China. “Unlike taekwondo in South Korea or karate in Japan, which are endorsed by their governments or large institutions, we can only rely on ourselves. The kind of kung fu supported by the Chinese government relates more to acrobatics, which has lost the original intentions of kung fu,” states Lau.”

After articles detailing events in North America and Asia, we next turn our attention to the Middle East. The Shanghai Daily ran a short piece on the opening of a new school in Cairo, Egypt, to meet the region’s growing demand for Wing Chun instruction.

Located on the first floor of a building in a quiet street, Egypt Wing Tsun Academy, the only officially certified Chinese academy for Wing Tsun in the Middle East, consists of a medium-sized parquet-floor hall with a wall-size mirror on top of which there is a portrait of Grandmaster Ip Man, Chinese Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee’s teacher.

“The popularity of Wing Tsun martial art increased in Egypt due to the recent movies about Ip Man, Bruce Lee’s teacher, and the circulated online videos on it,” Sifu Noah told Xinhua at the academy.

Of course the recent release of Ip Man 3 is the looming issue in the background of many of these stories. On the one hand the historical myth-making promoted by these films tends to irritate Ip Man’s still living students and family members. Yet it cannot be denied that these films have been a boon for the popularity of the style that he devoted the final decades of his life to promoting. As a community, what should our feelings be towards these films?

A still from Ip Man 3. Source: The Hollywood Reporter.

Master William Kwok, who teaches Wing Chun at Gotham Martial Arts, takes up this question in our next article. He argues that it is basically OK to like (or even love) the Ip Man films despite the fact that they have a wildly creative relationship with history. After all, we expect a lot of things from a good Kung Fu film, but accurate biographical discussion is one of the few things that audiences rarely clamor for. In my view the most interesting aspect of this piece wasn’t actually the discussion of the films themselves, but the insights that the exercise offered on the state of Wing Chun in the US today and the sorts of students that the art is attracting.

Marie-Alice McLean-Dreyfus, writing for The Interpreter, had a different take on the film. Drawing on the work on Dr Merriden Varrall she argued that Ip Man 3 closely reflected the world view and foreign policy positions of the Chinese government. Specifically, she argued that audiences in China are likely to view the film as a metaphor for the current conflict between China and other states for influence and access to disputed regions of the South China Sea. Her discussions included a few obvious misreadings of the film (e.g., Ip Man lives in Hong Kong during the 1950s, not Foshan). It also wasn’t clear to me that audiences in Hong Kong would approach what to them would be a distinctly local story through the same set of interpretive lens as viewers in Beijing or Shanghai. Still, its interesting to see the sorts of discussions that Martial Arts Studies promotes appearing in a wider variety of publications.

Other recent discussions of Ip Man 3 have focused on problematic aspects of the films marketing and business model. Or, as the LA Times put it, “Chinese regulators smell a rat over ‘Ip Man 3’ ticket sales.” There is no doubt that the film has been quite popular with audiences. But the volume of reported ticket sales are so high that it strongly suggests that the film’s production company has spent millions of dollars buying up tickets for performances of the film on screens that may or may not even exist. Obviously such a promotion strategy would provide a nice windfall for certain theater chains, but it would also overstates the popularity of Ip Man 3 and by extension the financial health of its parent company.

It turns out that this sort of manipulation is not unheard of in the Chinese film industry. When domestic productions employed similar strategies to boost their numbers against foreign films government regulators had been content to turn a blind eye to the practice. It is also thought that theaters have also systematically unreported the ticket sales of foreign films and then pocketed the difference. But similar tactics aimed at domestic competitors can seriously disrupt markets and undercut our understanding of both the actual character of Chinese movie-goers (e.g., what sorts of films would they actually want to see in the future) and successful advertising strategies (how can we reach these consumers). Apparently the abuses surrounding the release of Ip Man 3 have inspired government regulators to publicly put their foot down. Interestingly this story is starting to make the rounds and I have seen it reported in a couple of other places, including the Wall Street Journal.

Nevertheless, there is one marketing strategy that always succeeds. Make a viral video. One is currently circulating in which Ip Man himself offers viewers a “lesson” in Wing Chun. The discussion in question mostly focuses on the question of what happens when Ip Man decides to “bring the pain.” I thought it was interesting that this montage of epic beat-downs began with some footage of dummy work in an effort to establish the “theory” behind the silver screen magic to come.

The reviews for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny are in, and it would be overstating things to say they are mixed. Variety sums up what the critics have been feeling when it says:

“What a lousy year for long-delayed sequels: It may not be a stink bomb of “Zoolander 2” proportions, but in many ways “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny” feels like an even more cynical cash grab. Trading on the pedigree of Ang Lee’s 2000 Oscar winner but capturing none of its soulful poetry, this martial-arts mediocrity has airborne warriors aplenty but remains a dispiritingly leaden affair with its mechanical storytelling, purely functional action sequences and clunky English-language performances. The result has grossed a healthy $32 million in China so far and began its Stateside streaming release on Friday (while opening on about a dozen Imax screens), but regardless of how it fares, exec producer Harvey Weinstein’s latest dubious non-contribution to Asian cinema will add some quick coin but no luster to Netflix’s library.”

If anything the discussion in the Atlantic, which featured an extended piece on the film, was even more negative. They introduce the project to the readers with the following line. “Sword of Destiny, Netflix’s new sequel to Ang Lee’s 2000 Oscar-winner, feels like little more than a desperate knockoff.” Nor do things improve as the author delves into the details. The upshot of all of this is that the big miss with Crouching Tiger is calling Netflix’s strategy for distributing new and innovative original films into question.

Ju Ju Chan at the Los Angeles premiere of Crouching Tiger. Hidden Dragon – Sword Of Destiny. Source: SCMP.com

One piece of positive press I found emerging from this project was the following story in the South China Morning Post. They ran a couple of linked articles on the growing popularity of Muay Thai kickboxing with women in Hong Kong. The first of these profiled Ju Ju Chan who starred in the Hidden Dragon sequel. When not working as an actress she is a Muay Thai coach at the Fight Factory Gym (FFG) in Central where she teaches both kickboxing and functional fitness classes for women three times a week. About 40% of the kickboxing students at this gym are currently women.

Candy Wu fights Macau’s Tam Sze Long during the Windy World Muaythai Competition 2014. Source: SCMP

The SCMP also ran a longer and more detailed article titled “Young and dangerous: Hong Kong’s women muay Thai boxing champions.” This piece profiles four young female fighters who compete and work as coaches in an up and coming gym that caters to female students. I thought that the following quote opened an interesting window onto the motivations and background of one of these women.

“Muay Thai has boomed in popularity as a fitness regimen globally in recent years, but so has the number of tournaments for serious practitioners looking for a fight. And despite the risk of injury, a small number of Hong Kong women have broken the sex barrier by competing in the traditionally male combat sport.

“I’ve liked men’s sports since I was very small,” says Tsang, who previously practised wing chun. “I got into muay Thai because I found it more exciting. The punches come lightning fast so you have to know quickly whether to fight back, block or move away. I find that fun.”

A still from Chinese Boxer, a 1970s Shaw Bros. production. Source: avclub.com

Ever wonder what Kung Fu films looked like before Bruce Lee put the genera on the map in the west? If so the AV Club has a suggestion for you. Check out the 1970 Shaw Brothers production Chinese Boxer. I will admit to never having seen this film, but after this discussion I am inclined to make time to do so.

Speaking of Bruce Lee, a museum exhibit dedicated to the late star’s life is set to open in Beijing. The items are on loan from the Lee estate, and the discussion in the article suggests that this is at least part of the exhibit that was recently showing at the Wing Luke Museum.

Who doesn’t feel inspired by an epic martial arts infused landscape shot?

Medical studies extolling the virtues of Taijiquan practice continue to roll in. The most recent findings, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, found a small but statistically significant improvements in practitioners blood pressure and cholesterol levels for those doing a gentle style of Taiji or Qigong. The South China Morning Post also ran an article on these findings titled “Why Chinese exercises such as tai chi are good for patients’ all-round health.”

Taiji practice at Chen Village. Source: Shanghai Daily.

Taijiquan was also in the news for other reasons. The Shanghai Daily ran a feature that focused on the variety of students coming to Chanjiagou to learn Chen style Taijiquan. The article touched on both the motivations and personal stories of some of these students, as well as the business of martial arts tourism. Click here to check it out.

Martial Arts Studies
As always, martial arts studies has been a busy place. But that does not mean we can’t have fun. After all, who doesn’t like a good martial arts joke?

Paul Bowman has recently been at a conference help at Waseda University (report to follow) in which he presented a working paper titled “The Marginal Movement of Martial Arts: From the Kung Fu Craze to Master Ken.” Be sure to check this out if you want to deepen your appreciation of martial arts humor.

Also, the Martial Arts Studies Research Network has released a list of confirmed speakers for their one day conference (held at Birmingham City University on April 1) titled “Kung Fury: Contemporary Debates in Martial Arts Cinema.” Click the link to register for this free event. Its an impressive list of speakers for a one day gathering. There are too many names to list them all, but here are some of the topics that the papers will cover:

• Martial arts cinema and digital culture
• Funding and distribution
• Film festivals, marketing and promotion
• Martial arts cinema heritage, nostalgia and memory
• Mashups and genre busting intertextuality
• The place of period cinema
• Martial arts stardom and transnationality
• Martial arts audiences and fandom

Women Warriors and Wartime Spies of China by Louise Edwards (Cambridge UP, 2016).

While not directly addressing the martial arts, I am sure that this next book will find its way onto all of our bibliographic lists and works cited pages. Cambridge University Press is about to release a volume by Louise Edwards titled Women Warriors and Wartime Spies of China. In it Edwards discusses some of the most famous female spies and warriors in Chinese history (including devoting an entire chapter to Qiu Jin) and then goes on to address the importance of this archetypal image in Chinese society. Given the centrality of female warriors to the Wing Chun creation myth (which I have always suspected dates to the Republic period) I look forward to seeing her discussion. Here is the publisher’s summary:

In this compelling new study, Louise Edwards explores the lives of some of China’s most famous women warriors and wartime spies through history. Focusing on key figures including Hua Mulan, Zheng Pingru and Liu Hulan, this book examines the ways in which these extraordinary women have been commemorated through a range of cultural mediums including film, theatre, museums and textbooks. Whether perceived as heroes or anti-heroes, Edwards shows that both the popular and official presentation of these women and their accomplishments has evolved in line with China’s shifting political values and circumstances over the past one hundred years. Written in a lively and accessible style with illustrations throughout, this book sheds new light on the relationship between gender and militarisation and the ways that women have been exploited to glamorise war both historically in the past and in China today.

Louise Edwards is Professor of Chinese History and Asian Studies Convener at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She publishes on women and gender in China and Asia.

Readers looking for English language translations of primary texts dealing with the Chinese martial arts should follow the always fantastic Brennan Translation blog. It recently released a new translation of TAIJI BOXING PHOTOGRAPHED by Chu Minyi (The Many Blessings Company of Shanghai, 1929). This is a fascinating text written by someone who was not only a martial arts enthusiast but an important figure in Republic era politics. He also had some ideas for innovative Taiji training dummies that are introduced in this manual. Be sure to check it out.

Hing Kee shop in Wan Chai Road, Hong Kong. Source: Wikimedia.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group. We discussed the definition of “martial arts,” getting the most out of your training while abroad, and rare footage of the Wing Chun master Pan Nam. Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Gerda Geddes and Sophia Delza.Fightland.Charles Russo

Gerda Geddes and Sophia Delza. Source: Fightland/Charles Russo

Introduction

Its been a while (almost a month) since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

Chinese Martial Arts in the News

Our leading story for this week comes from the (virtual) pages of the Vice Fightland blog. My friend and fellow researcher of Chinese martial arts history Charles Russo just published a short essay titled “The Forgotten (Female) Pioneers of Tai Chi in the West” profiling the lives and contributions of Gerda Geddes and Sophia Delza. Its well worth taking a look at. Incidentally, readers should also check out the last section of this news update for information on the release of Russo’s upcoming volume (published by the University of Nebraska Press) on the development of the Chinese martial arts on the West Coast during the mid 20th century.

Taijiquan has made a few other appearances over the last couple of weeks. One has to do with the decision of Henan’s Military Police to begin to teach Chen style Taijiquan to its officers. The Talking Chen Taiji blog (always one of my favorites) has a nice write-up of the story based on an article posted on the police command’s webpage. Here is a quick quote to whet your interest:

“China’s official military police website recently highlighted the introduction of Chen Taijiquan into the training programme of its officers. The idea behind its introduction is to transmit traditional culture, improve officers physical constitutions and to enrich their cultural awareness and life style when they are not on operational duty. In the time-honoured Chinese way, the movement is encapsulated in a slogan: “Learn Taiji, strengthen the body and spirit, quieten the heart and nurture the body”.

A still showing FM Chiu Chi Ling from Kung Fu Hustle.

If you are looking for an exciting training opportunity of your own, and you happen to be in the St. Louis area, you are in luck. GM Chiu Chi Ling, a renowned practitioner of Hung Gar, will be leading a workshop at the International Shaolin Wushu Center. If I were anywhere in the area I would definitely be calling to see if there is any space left for this event. But you will have to act fast as he is due to appear on April 5th!

Master Shi Tanxu. Source: Rick Loomis/LA Times.

Master Shi Tanxu, however, is in it for the long-haul. The LA Times recently ran a somewhat lengthy story detailing the Shaolin Monk’s life, background and success in spreading the traditional Chinese martial arts in the LA area. As always, these sorts of stories are fascinating windows into the sorts of narratives that accompany the modern Chinese martial arts. This article has a few nuggets on the details of running a high profile martial arts school in a crowded marketplace today. I thought the following incident was particularly revealing:

“When he went to apply for a business license using the name “Shaolin Temple,” he found more than 200 other businesses using the name, Yanxu said. The temple had provided documents certifying that he was an official Shaolin monk, but counterfeiters replicated them so perfectly that they looked more authentic than the real thing.

When he opened his first center in Temple City in 2008, attorneys from the more established kung fu academies told him that he had to stop using the name of Shaolin, Yanxu said with a laugh. He kept using it, and they never followed up with the lawsuits.”

Students from a martial arts school practice Shaolin Kung Fu on cliffs in Dengfeng, Henan Province, China, March 17, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer

There seems to be one constant that unites the many disparate news stories on the Shaolin Temple. The fighting arts of this institution and its various associated commercial schools generate some astounding visual images. Indeed, one wonders how much of the modern image of the Chinese martial arts in the West can be traced directly to the “Shaolin visual aesthetic”?

The latest contribution to this popular genera comes from the pages of the Daily Mail. It ran a photo essay (appropriately) titled “Masters of inner peace: Hair-raising pictures show Shaolin kung fu monks sharpening their skills on terrifying cliff face.” It appears that the local schools and photographers have been putting Deng Feng’s famous mountains to good use.

Taiji being demonstrated at the famous Wudang Temple, spiritual home of the Taoist arts. Notice they wear the long hair of Taoist Adepts. Source: Wikimedia.

Taijiquan being demonstrated at the famous Wudang Temple, spiritual home of the Taoist arts. Source: Wikimedia.

The English language branch of CCTV (China’s state run public television network), has recently released a new documentary dealing with the traditional Chinese martial arts. It has been split into four 20 minute chapters. The first of these follows a Western student who has come to a school at Wudang in hopes of finding inner peace. I have yet to find the time to sit down and watch the entire thing, but I must admit to a certain weakness for these sorts of documentaries. If nothing else they are a fantastic example of the way the Chinese martial arts are being deployed as part of the state’s larger public diplomacy strategy.

The blows just keep coming for the producers of Ip Man 3. In our last news update we learned that Chinese government regulators had accused the production company backing the film of buying large numbers of imaginary movie tickets (with very real money) in an attempt to artificially inflate the apparent success of their film and hence the value of the company. Such practices had been rumored for some time, but the government had seemed to turn a blind eye to them in the past, particularly when the “juiced” numbers supported the popularity of a domestically produced film at the expense of foreign rivals. However, there are now worries that estimates of the actual size and nature of the Chinese film market have become so distorted that future products may suffer.

Unfortunately this has not been the end of the story. A recent article by Reuters indicated that over 100 private investors stormed the offices of the Jinlu Financial Advisors in Shanghai (the group that had backed the Ip Man film and a number of other questionable projects) demanding back payments on their loans and other investments. Reports indicate that most of these individuals are not “industry insiders,” but were regular people who had been convinced to invest large amounts of cash with the production company.

A scene from the second season of Daredevil. Source: Daily Beast

Those interested in the portrayal of the martial arts (and Asian Americans) by the Western media will want to check out a recent essay by Arthur Chu (of the Daily Beast) titled “Not Your Asian Ninja: How the Marvel Cinematic Universe Keeps Failing Asian-Americans.” He has a lot of good things to say about the second season of Daredevil on Netflix, particularly as it relates to the introduction of the Punisher’s story line. But then he gets to the ninjas, and that is where the trouble starts….

“Look. Did the producers of Daredevil set out to create a storyline where every single Asian character is an agent of supernatural evil who is deeply corrupted by that evil and empowered to be a monstrous killing machine because of it? I doubt they thought of it in those terms. They just took existing tropes from the comics and ran with them without thinking too hard—and lo and behold, an army of interchangeable evil ninjas plus one sexy femme fatale is what they got.”

Ever since Bruce Lee there has been a debate about value of the portrayal of Asians using the martial arts in the popular media. Did Bruce Lee smash suffocating stereotypes about Chinese masculinity, or did his work subtlety reinforce them? It is a fascinating conversation, and one that martial arts studies has made important contributions to. But Chu’s main beef with the way that this other story-line within the Daredevil franchise is developing is that there is really nothing “nuanced” or “subtle” about the stereotypes that are being put on the screen. It will be interesting to see whether the shows producers respond to criticism like this in the future.

Bruce Lee executes a spectacular flying kick while filming “Game of Death.”

Speaking of Bruce Lee, CNTV recently released a short interview with Lawrence Grey regarding his upcoming Bruce Lee biopic. Interestingly he states that the Lee Estate approached him about the project and that he was initially not inclined to take it. Apparently he changed his mind after they OK’ed something that would look more at the internal emotional and psychological struggles of Lee rather than simply his external battles. Grey states that he has a director for the project but declined to give a name. Nevertheless, he is predicting a 2017 release date.

A still from Rise of the Legend. Source: NY Times

In other movie news, the NY Times ran a short review of “Rise of the Legend.” All things considered they seem to have liked it, even if they withheld effusive praise. This seems to have been a well produced and enjoyable film. It will no doubt be of special interest to anyone who is a fan of the Wong Fei Hung movies or who follows the development of the folklore surrounding Guangdong’s most famous martial artist.

Now With Kung Fu Grip! How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America. By Jared Miracle. McFarland & Company (March 31, 2016)

Martial Arts Studies
As always it has been a busy time in the world of martial arts studies. The conference “Kung Fury: Contemporary debates in martial arts cinema” (April 1 at Birmingham City University) has just wrapped up. We hope to have some “after-action” reports to share soon.

Also the draft schedule for the 2016 Martial Arts Studies Conference is now available. It looks like we have an exciting group of speakers and papers lined up for this year and a few new activities as well. There is still time to register for the conference if you would like to attend. If you want to make use the University’s housing accommodations during your stay its important that you get this registration in soon! Of course there are also lots of other hotels in downtown Cardiff and it is a very charming and walkable city.

If you are interested in Capoeira, or just looking for some good reading material, be sure to check out Greg Downey’s recent chapter “Capoeira as an Art of Living: The Aesthetics of a Cunning Existence.” He first published this in the 2014 volume Fighting: Intellectualizing Combat Sports, and was kind enough to post a copy on his Academia.edu account.

Also, it looks like Jared Miracle’s book Now with Kung Fu Grip!: How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America is about to be released and should be shipping within days. Dr. Miracle has written a number of excellent posts for Kung Fu Tea and readers may remember his superb article on the Donn F. Draeger, R. W. Smith and Jon Bluming “Imposing the Terms of Battle” in the last edition of the journal Martial Arts Studies. Be sure to check out this book for more high quality historical research on the modern history of the Asian martial arts.

Last, but by no means least, Charles Russo’s latest book is now available for pre-order through amazon.com. Titled Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America this 272 page volume from the University of Nebraska Press is scheduled to ship around the end of June. This volume should have great cross-over appeal to both practitioners and students of martial art studies, and I hope that it will make an important contribution to our understanding of the history of the Chinese martial arts community in North America. Here is the publishers blurb:

In the spring of 1959, eighteen-year-old Bruce Lee returned to San Francisco, the city of his birth, and quickly inserted himself into the West Coast’s fledgling martial arts culture. Even though Asian fighting styles were widely unknown to mainstream America, Bruce encountered a robust fight culture in a San Francisco Bay area that was populated with talented and trailblazing practitioners such as Lau Bun, Chinatown’s aging kung fu patriarch; Wally Jay, the innovative Hawaiian jujitsu master; and James Lee, the no-nonsense Oakland street fighter. Regarded by some as a brash loudmouth and by others as a dynamic visionary, Bruce spent his first few years back in America advocating a more modern approach to the martial arts and showing little regard for the damaged egos left in his wake.

In the Chinese calendar, 1964 was the Year of the Green Dragon. It would be a challenging and eventful year for Bruce. He would broadcast his dissenting view before the first great international martial arts gathering and then defend it by facing down Chinatown’s young ace kung fu practitioner in a legendary behind-closed-doors high noon–style showdown. The Year of the Green Dragon saw the dawn of martial arts in America and the rise of an icon.

Drawing on more than one hundred original interviews and an eclectic array of sources, Striking Distance is an engrossing narrative chronicling San Francisco Bay’s pioneering martial arts scene as it thrived in the early 1960s and offers an in-depth look at a widely unknown chapter of Bruce Lee’s iconic life.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group. We discussed the life of Yu Chenghui, the relationship between Silat and that state in S. E. Asia, and China’s repeating crossbows! Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Introduction

A few months ago I decided to make a more concerted effort to report on academic conferences and seminars happening within the field of martial arts studies. My hope is to promote greater awareness of current discussions within our growing research community. Readers interested in following these trends might want to begin by check prior reports here, here and here.

This is something that I cannot do without your help. If you have recently attended a conference or seminar please consider submitting a brief report that can be shared with the Kung Fu Tea community. Its a great way to keep the conversation going even after everyone returns to their normal schedules. Simply shoot me an email, message me on the facebook group, or leave a comment if you know of an event that should be covered.

Today’s report is reblogged from the Martial Arts Studies Research Network (you can see the original here) and was written by Paul Bowan. As always, Paul did a great job of capturing not only essence of the arguments that various researchers put forth, but the overall “tone” of the event as well. For those of us who could not attend, reports like this are the next best thing to being there. Enjoy!

Kung Fury: Contemporary Debates in Martial Arts Cinema
Paul Bowman

A key aim of the Martial Arts Studies Research Network is the forging connections; and specifically of two kinds of connection: on the one hand, connections between academics approaching martial arts from different perspectives and different disciplines; and on the other hand, connections between those working on martial arts inside the university and those on the outside. The first Martial Arts Studies Research Network event at Brighton University in February 2016, saw academics from the social sciences in particular enter into discussions and debates on issues related to gender, youth, sexuality and class with a range of teachers, coaches and practitioners from outside of academia. The second event, at Birmingham City University on 1^st April 2016 brought scholars, researchers and teachers of martial arts in film and visual culture into dialogue with film-makers, distributors, festival organisers and other industry professionals.

The event was hosted by Drs Simon Barber and Oliver Carter from Birmingham City University, who arranged a fast-moving and fascinating day, involving keynotes, panels, plenaries, buffets, receptions and a film screening, all of which went off without a hitch.

The first main event was a keynote address by Bey Logan – a writer, martial artist, actor, director and producer, who is well known for his wide-ranging work within all aspects of the Hong Kong film industry. He began by reporting that his presentation title was initially going to be something along the lines of ‘Why Kung Fu Movies Matter’, but that he changed it to ‘Why I Love Kung Fu Movies and Why They Matter’.

In his talk, Logan’s argument was that although kung fu movies are obviously so much fun for the viewer, they also ‘propose dreams’, dreams that kung fu training itself can in a way make real. I found myself to be in complete agreement with Logan throughout his discussion of the relations between cinematic fantasy, escapism and real life, and I have made similar arguments myself, many times. However, just because Logan’s argument was familiar to me, does not mean it was predictable. Rather, Logan spiced his presentation with a range of interesting and often hilarious biographical and industry references and anecdotes that made for a very fresh and lively presentation.

Bey Logan with Jo Morrel, who has also written up her own report of the event which you can read here.

Bey Logan with Jo Morrell, who has also written her own report on the event which you can read here.

In the process, he also proposed an image for one useful way to understand the logic of the development of martial arts cinema in Hong Kong. The image is that of a bending and stretching mirror. If we think of this image, he proposed, it is possible to see the ways that film production develops, with new films mirroring earlier films, but not identically. Rather, because of the variations and angles of reflection, different films produce exaggerated or stunted dimensions, some flip over from serious to comedy, and others flip back from comedy to serious, and so on, and so forth, in endless dialectical permeations and permutations. (In a way, this image mapped onto an image proposed by Susan Pui San Lok’s later presentation of her artwork projects, in a paper entitled ‘RoCH Fans and Legends’.

I cannot easily do justice to the richness and diversity of Bey Logan’s presentation. But hopefully we will see it in print in the not-so-distant future – Simon Barber and Oliver Carter are keen to develop the conference proceedings into a special issue of the journal Martial Arts Studies (http://martialartsstudies.org/). Suffice it to say that Logan discussed a wide range of films and issues, ranging from accounts of the personalities of key figures in the Hong Kong film industry to an argument in favour of the specific variant of feminism that he sees as unique to Hong Kong martial arts films.

The following panel saw papers by Jonathan Wroot, Hyunseon Lee and Felicia Chan. Wroot discussed issues in the distribution of Hong Kong films in the West in general; Lee explored the transnational and intermedial connections between martial arts film and Chinese opera; while Chan asked the question ‘Must a Chinese (Auteur) Filmmaker make a Martial Arts Film?’

All three papers were stimulating in different ways; but I think that Chan’s paper spoke most directly to my own interests, as it essentially operated at the level of discourse, proposing that not only is the category of the ‘auteur’ socially constructed, and not only does it serve a range of interests, but it also – when we think of how many East Asian ‘auteur’ directors turn to making a martial arts film or two at the mid to late points of their careers – shows us the ways in which a range of forces, expectations and gratifications play themselves out in the types of film production we can see from certain figures in certain times and places. Chan also rather deftly deployed a reflection on the growth of ‘simplified Chinese script’ in such a way as to pose questions of the ways Chinese ‘auteur’ (and) martial arts films are elaborated.

After lunch came an industry panel discussion on the making and distribution of martial arts film, featuring Bey Logan, Paul Smith, and Spencer Murphy, each in their own way representing the realms of film production, promotion, and distribution.

The final session of the day featured presentations from Susan Pui San Lok, Kyle Barrowman and Colette Balmain. Lok showed sections of short films she had made from myriad jumping and flying scenes from the many episodes of different versions of the Condor Trilogy / Return of the Condor Hero, alongside discussion of her ongoing art practice, in a complex argument about the (re)iteration and dissemination of textual elements.

Is this what they mean by “mixed martial arts”? Source: PEGASUS MOTION PICTURES

Kyle Barrowman followed, with a paper that he proposed took issue with aspects of Bey Logan’s arguments about the supposed differences between Hong Kong and Hollywood film. Barrowman argued – contra Logan – that MMA is not an ethically or morally barren world compared to traditional martial arts, and that signs of its complex lifeworlds can be discerned in the emerging movement of MMA films. Barrowman’s overarching project involves reconsidering the American martial arts film, and obviously MMA films seem to map onto this concern; but Logan proposed that MMA has clearly been incorporated into a number of Donnie Yen films, which suggests that there is no necessary correlation of ‘MMA film’ with ‘Hollywood’. In a similar spirit, I proposed – only half joking – that perhaps the best example of a film about MMA and/as ‘culture’ might be Keanu Reeves’ directorial debut, Man of Tai Chi.

Colette Balmain concluded the academic proceedings with a discussion of the heroines of Hong Kong cinema, in an enjoyable and challenging paper that sought to examine the problems and possibilities of female agency within the traditional martial arts film. Her argument was that such cinematic feminism is at once gesturing towards a kind of emancipation whilst always operating within the strictures of certain established representational codes and conventions.

In many ways, then, Bey Logan turned out to have been the ideal keynote for this event. His opening keynote unexpectedly set the scene – and many of the terms – of and for the ensuing academic and industry discussions and debates, all of which made for a wonderfully interconnected and cross-fertilizing day.

But the day was not over yet. After a Chinese buffet and drinks reception, Oliver and Simon led us across to the next building, an erstwhile IMAX cinema, where we watched the eponymous yet hitherto largely unmentioned or undiscussed star of the day – the half hour film Kung Fury.

oOo

If you enjoyed this report you might also want to see: After Action Report on the First Annual Martial Arts Studies Conference

oOo

Source: http://tribune.com.pk

Introduction

Its been a while (almost a month) since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

A Taijiquan performance by visiting martial artists from neighboring China in Chungju South Korea. Source:

Notes From All Over
Our first story this week originates in Korea. Its no secret that martial arts related tourism is an ever-growing industry. Discussions of it here at Kung Fu Tea tend to focus on the motivations and mechanisms by which individuals from the West travel to Asia. Yet there is also a booming inter-regional trade. One South Korean city seems to have found a way to attract ever growing numbers of Chinese tourists to its various martial arts centers and attractions. How?

“Chungju has just the pedigree, as the home of the oldest Korean martial arts “taekgyeon.”

Chungju has also been hosting the World Martial Arts Festival since 1998. And it is a birthplace for the World Martial Arts Union (WoMAU), an international martial arts organization that counts 60 martial arts organizations from 40 countries as its members….

With this background, providing a stage for Chinese tourists to showcase their martial arts skills was not a difficult choice, according to Cho. The city believes exploring this niche market of martial arts tourism will provide memorable experiences to the visitors.

“We have assets of martial arts and we want to use them,” Cho said. “We are trying to vitalize tourism where visitors can actually engage in activities they like.”

Students train at a Wushu Academy in Henan Province. Source: SCMP.com

Our next story was written by frequent guest author and friend of Kung Fu Tea, Sascha Matuszak. It is a shorter feature as it is just one part of a multi-part series that he did on Zhengzhou for the South China Morning Post, but it will be of interest to readers. In it he discusses the growing fortunes of some of Henan’s many Wushu Academies. After a period in which their viability was being questioned, he notes that many of these institutions have managed to diversify their pool of students, instructors, and the sorts of martial arts training that they offer. Additionally a growing number of students who attend these schools have career plans that fall outside of the traditional industries that they fed graduates into in years past (professional wushu, the military etc…)

Lightweight but strong armor, wired with computer sensors, may allow for the birth of a new class of weapons based combat sports. Source: The Economist.

The Economist recently ran an article titled “Modern gladiators: New body armour promises to transform fighting sports.” It discusses a firm which has created a new type of highly protective body armor that is wired with various sorts of computer sensors. These allow the suit to absorb weapons based attacks and determine the severity of the resulting injury (which presumably the armor will also prevent). Obviously this opens up all sorts of avenues for “reality based” weapons training, and multiple armed forces have expressed interest in the project. But the creators seem to see its real future in the creation of a new type of weapons based Mixed Martial Art. If this gets off the ground it will be interesting to see whether it remains a contest between styles, or if it births a new hybrid style of its own (as happened in unarmed MMA environment).

“The first official fights, which are being branded as the Unified Weapons Master, will begin later this year in Australia, with competitions expanding to America in 2017.

Nationalistic fervour will be part of the entertainment mix. Martial arts from different cultures, such as Japanese swordsmanship and Chinese staff fighting, will be pitted against each other. Shen “War Demon” Meng, a Beijing fighter who used a particularly ruthless form of kung fu known as “eagle claw” in the Wellington trials, believes the system lends an air of superhero to the martial arts. He also liked the fact there was less need for a referee to have to step in and stop the fight to prevent injury, and that reviewing the detailed fight data afterwards was good for improving his technique.”

An article in New China recently noted that a Chinese martial arts expert in the UK is inspiring British firms to hire older workers. 71 year old Milton Keyne has been a practicing martial artist for the last 55 years. He has just been hired as the oldest Fitness trainer in the UK by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in a drive to raise awareness of the talents of more senior workers. Congratulations are in order! Hopefully his career will also inspire younger martial artist to take better care of their joints so that we too can be just as active 50 years down the line.

Kung Fu Soft Power in Africa. Source: http://www.globaltimes.com

The role of the martial arts in promoting a state’s image abroad (and how that can be manipulated through the techniques of “public diplomacy”) is a topic that I find endlessly fascinating. It probably has something to do with my background in International Relations. As such I am always on the lookout for a good “Kung Fu Diplomacy” story. This week provided a couple of nice examples of the genera.

The first was titled “Kung Fu Soft Power in Africa.” It was basically a short editorial looking at the changing public perception of the Chinese martial arts on the continent. Its worth taking a look at if that is a topic which interests you.

Tiger Shroff, who has recently generated controversy with his remarks about the Indian origins of the Chinese Martial Arts. Source:

The Indian actor Tiger Shroff, has been making waves recently with some statements about the ultimately Indian origins of the Chinese martial arts. In a fascinating bit of cultural appropriation he has claimed that Kung Fu (which apparently means all of the Chinese martial arts) are really Indian in origin because…(you guessed it)…Bodhidharma went to the Shaolin Temple.

This is hardly a novel claim. It has even been widely repeated within the Chinese martial arts community (often with an aim towards explaining why the arts of Wudang are “authentically Chinese” while those of Shaolin are not). Nor does it matter that this is one of the most debunked narratives in all of Chinese martial arts history. [For the record Bodhidharma did not bring the martial arts to Shaolin, and he almost certainly never actually visited the temple. But its still a fascinating story that Meir Shahar has discussed in great depth.]

However, Shroff’s statements have hit a nationalist nerve in China and generated some discussion. And that is now being widely reported in the Indian press. All of which is a good illustration of why it is a problem when the history of the comparatively modern martial arts gets reduced down to supposedly “timeless” ethno-lingustic mythic narratives.

Good Samaritan faces multiple years in prison after intervening in an assault. Source: Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail is reporting that a Kung Fu student in China is facing multiple years in jail after he attempted to intervene on behalf of a woman who was being sexually harassed. The intervention escalated into a full scale fight between the two leaving the harasser seriously injured, and the woman supposedly fled before giving a police report. While the details of this case are not entirely clear, it does appear to be a fascinating example of the interaction between law enforcement, society and the martial arts community in China today.

One of 13 Spectacular Pictures of Shaolin Students. Source: http://tribune.com.pk

The Shaolin Temple is (among other things) the institution that has launched a thousand photo-essays. The latest entry in the genera comes from the pages of the Express Tribune. Who ever selected these pictures seems to have had a strong attraction to more geometric motifs! Check them out here.

Custom Graflex lightsabers, similar to those used in the original Star Wars by Luke Skywalker. Source: The Verge

As Lightsaber Combat (a hyper-real martial art) is now one of my research areas, I have decided to keep an eye open for Star Wars related news stories that might be of interest. One of the issues that my recent blog-posts on LSC highlighted was the importance of materiality. Specifically, the marketing of high quality replica lightsabers, more than any other single factor, seems to have driven the development of this new set of practices. Of course, most of the stunt sabers that performers and martial artists use are relatively primitive compared to the examples that you will see this article and the accompanying video feature. If you wonder what the world of very top-end lightsabers is like, you need to check this out (and bring your wallet)!

Zheng Manqing, the teacher of William Chen, with sword, possibly on the campus of Columbia University in New York City.

Chinese Martial Arts in Film

It looks like we are about to get the Zheng Manqing (Cheng Man-ch’ing) documentary that so many of us have been waiting for. The new film is titled “The Professor: Tai Chi’s Journey West” and it is directed by Barry Strugatz (who, in addition to being a professional film person, has also studied with some of Zheng’s students). You can also follow the project’s progress on facebook. The documentary will premier in Los Angeles on May 6 and in New York City on June 9. Look for an advance review here at Kung Fu Tea sometime in the next week!

Jackie Chan in Rumble in the Bronx. Source: Indiewire.

The Old School Kung Fu Film Fest is returning to New York City for its sixth season, and it will be featuring some of the finest Asian grindhouse treasures in this year’s screenings. This is definitely something to follow. What can you expect at this year’s festival?

“Get limber, because New York’s Old School Kung Fu Fest is back in action and more bruising than ever. Overseen by Subway Cinema (the NYC genre gurus who mastermind the city’s indispensable New York Asian Film Festival), the series is a portal to a glorious past where every fight scene was choreographed with the grace of a hyper-violent ballet and every kick crackled on the soundtrack like a bolt of lightning. And the sixth edition of OSKFF promises to be the best yet, as Subway Cinema has partnered with the recently opened Metrograph theater so that all of these wild treasures can be screened in 35mm.

This year’s fest celebrates Golden Harvest, the legendary Hong Kong studio that rivaled the Shaw brothers and ruled Kung Fu cinema from the ’70s until the ’90s.”

The Kung Fu classics are also gracing the pages of the New York Times. It notes that ‘A Touch of Zen’ (one of my favorites) will be playing at the Film Forum through May 5th. And if you are a newcomer to the world of “Rivers and Lakes” (or you just need a refresher course) the Wall Street Journal recently ran a piece titled “Kung Fu Movie Viewing, Made Easy.” Get yourself up to speed as the film festival season kicks off.

Martial Arts Studies
Recently I published a couple of posts exploring various definitions of the martial arts and attempted to apply them to a “hard case.” Nevertheless, there is nothing obvious or neutral about the process of defining our terms, particularly in academia. As Paul Bowman responds in the following short essay, there is a solid case to be “Against Defining the Martial Arts.” This is a brief paper on an important topic, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to think more deeply about how we should go about studying the martial arts.

Chinese Martial Arts Cinema by Stephen Teo (Edinburgh University Press, 2009).

“Is Chinese Martial Arts Cinema Underexamined or Undervalued?” That is the central question which occupies this essay discussing the upcoming second (and expanded) edition of Stephen Teo’s now classic work, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. If you read the footnotes of a lot of what is being written in martial arts studies today you will see Teo’s name in all sorts of places. As such the second edition of this book will be a welcome addition to the personal libraries of many scholars.

Prof. Peter Lorge’s single volume history of the Chinese Martial Arts (Cambridge, 2012) has been getting some increased public discussion lately. This also seems to be connected to the greater popular awareness of martial arts studies as a research area. Readers may want to take note of this recent review. I did, however, note the degree to which the reviewer dismissed the civilian aspect of the Chinese martial arts in favor of the more “intellectually respectable” discipline of military history. While we are making progress we still have a ways to go:

“Author Peter Lorge, a history professor at Vanderbilt University, has written an intriguing and thorough history of martial arts in China. Readers interested in military history or the nation of China will find this a rewarding book.

An important distinction for readers to be aware of is that martial arts literally mean the arts of war. Drawing on the written record that stretches back many centuries, Lorge examines how men really fought in battle as well as how subsequent fictional accounts embellished the skills of warriors and heroes. There is much more in this book about the development and use of weapons and battlefield tactics than unarmed fighting techniques or spiritual matters. Readers looking for a critical discussion of the differences between Crane Technique and the Cobra Kai school should look elsewhere.”

Lastly, Prof. Jill D. Weinberg (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Tufts University) has released a new book through the University of California Press titled Consensual Violence: Sex, Sports, and the Politics of Injury. It appears that her central argument will be relevant to multiple strains of discussion that are currently proceeding in martial arts studies. Here is the publisher’s description of the work:

In this novel approach to understanding consent, Jill D. Weinberg presents two case studies of activities in which participants engage in violent acts: competitive mixed martial arts (MMA) and sexual sadism and masochism (BDSM). Participants in both cases assent to injury and thereby engage in a form of social decriminalization, using the language of consent to render their actions legally and socially tolerable. Yet, these activities are treated differently under criminal battery law: sports, including MMA, are generally absolved from the charge of criminal battery, whereas BDSM often represents a violation of criminal battery law.

Using interviews and ethnographic observation, Weinberg argues that where law authorizes a person’s consent to an activity, as in MMA, consent is not meaningfully constructed or regulated by the participants themselves. In contrast, where law prohibits a person’s consent to an activity, as in BDSM, participants actively construct and regulate consent.

A synthesis of criminal law and ethnography, Consensual Violence is a fascinating account of how consent is framed among participants engaged in violent acts and lays the groundwork for a sociological understanding of the process of decriminalization.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group over the last few weeks. We discussed the finer points of the Wing Chun pole form, examined some martial arts studies conference reports, and thought about the meaning of failure in the traditional hand combat systems. Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Zheng Manqing, with sword, possibly on the campus of Columbia University in New York City.

The Professor: Tai Chi’s Journey West. First Run Films. 2016. Directed by Barry Strugatz. 72 minutes.

Click here for the Webpage.

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“The Professor” premieres in Los Angeles on May 6 and in New York City on June 9.

Review

Learning is a matter of desire. The transmission of complex systems of knowledge cannot be forced. As such, when we attempt to explain the transmission of a martial art we are always faced with two puzzles. Why does the teacher desire to share it? And second, why (and what) do the students actually desire to learn?

Why did they seek out this individual out in the first place? How do these desires shape the process of transmission and the always tricky business of cross-cultural translation? How do the needs and wants of a teacher feed into the needs and desires of the students?

As I have researched the history of the Asian martial arts I have come across numerous biographies, interviews and essays all hoping to record the lives and contributions of great teachers. Unsurprisingly most of these are produced by students. Yet what is interesting is that (leaving debates about lineage politics aside) most of these accounts have very little to say about the community of students that surrounded the teacher and supported them.

Instead esteemed masters are often cast as remote geniuses, almost unapproachable in stature, whose abilities lay beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. Alternatively a teacher may be seen as the careful curator of a vast lineage tradition; one who regulated the clan’s relationship with the past and their martial ancestors. These sorts of popular folk histories are common and they tend to follow certain, almost universal, patterns. Prof. Thomas Green, in his work on folk history in the martial arts, has explained what sorts of work this type of knowledge does within the community.

Rarely do we come across accounts that take as their central object a teachers relationship with their students. Perhaps this is because in a traditional Confucian context the nature of such relationships were assumed to be universal. Yet one of the things that I have always found most interesting (and inspirational) about the Chinese martial arts is the close personal relationships that often emerge between teachers and students.

In truth the structure and nature of these relationships (even with a “traditional” setting) have always been highly variable. This is critical to understanding the learning process. The categories “teacher” and “student” are mutually constitutive. One cannot exist without the other. Martial arts, as a social system, only appear when both are present.

To ask the question, “How did Taijiquan travel to the West?” is to enquirer about the most deeply held desires and relationships of two sets of individuals. Yet it seems that most of our popular discussions overlook these questions as they focus strictly on the biographical details of the masters.

Barry Strugatz’s documentary, The Professor: Tai Chi’s Journey West (2016), employs a very different approach. This project, produced by First Run Films, takes as its subject the life and career of Zheng Manqing (Cheng Man-ch’ing, 1902 – 1975).

Born into relatively challenging circumstances in Zhejiang Province, Zheng went on to become a highly accomplished polymath, sometimes referred to as “The Master of Five Excellences” due to his talents as a painter, poet, calligrapher, traditional medical doctor and martial artist. In addition to these pursuits Zheng was also an author and a revered teacher.

Over the course of his varied career he held numerous academic and cultural posts. Zheng got his start in life as a professional painter (specializing in floral subjects) and staged multiple important shows throughout his career. Yet, as Douglas Wile has noted, it was his great professional flexibility which allowed him to remain relatively successful and well connected throughout the turmoil of the mid 20^th century.

In the current era Zheng is best remembered a talented and prolific teacher of Yang style Taijiquan. He became a student of Yang Chengfu sometime around 1930 and is reported to have ghostwritten the actual text of his classic work Essence and Applications of Taijiquan. Zhang associated with such luminaries as Chen Weiming and other leading lights of the Taiji movement. He is widely remembered by his students for his unique, highly cultured, approach to taijiquan and the creation of his own short form.

Zheng published two early English language texts on Taijiquan (one with the assistance of R. W. Smith) and he taught students in China, Taiwan and the United States. It should be noted that his approach to Taijiquan also proved to be quite popular in South East Asia.

After arriving with his family in New York City in 1964 Zheng (with the help of a few other individuals such as T. T. Liang and Robert W. Smith) did much to spread and popularize his approach to Yang Taiji in the West. While a politically conservative figure he found himself thrust into a period of American social upheaval. In his time in the US Zheng witnessed the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam War protests and the flowering of the 1960s counter-cultural movement.

Yet this volatile era proved to be fertile ground for Zheng’s teachings. Acting as a sort of cultural missionary he reached out to a wide range of pre-existing martial artists, hippies, and those who were simply curious about Chinese culture. It was among these groups that he established his school.

While Zheng chose to reside on Riverside Drive (near the library at Columbia University where he conducted some of his research), at his school in Chinatown he taught classes on the Taiji form, push-hands and fencing. He even offered instruction in more cultural pursuits, such as calligraphy. Zheng also saw patients and dispensed prescriptions for traditional Chinese medical treatments.

The Professor’s career was diverse and spanned continents. He was an undeniably important figure in the spread of the Chinese martial arts to the West, yet he is not without his detractors. And there are certain questions that still linger about important details in his biography. Yet in comparison to most other 20^th century TCMA masters much has already been written on Zheng.

I have sat down multiple times to write his biographical sketch for the “Lives of the Chinese Martial Arts” series, but every time I have stopped myself before going forward. Maybe this documentary will finally inspire me to produce something more comprehensive on Zheng’s life and career. Yet my background is not in Taijiquan and every time I have approached the task I have been deterred by the amount of material out there as well as the passion that Zheng still generate in the martial arts community.

Barry Strugatz seems to have sidestepped these issues by approaching Zheng in a highly focused way. Rather than attempting to tell the entire story of his involvement with Taiji, he focuses only on the last phase of his career, after the move to New York. Nor does his film even attempt to chronicle this late period in a systematic way.

Instead the narrator’s voice is reduced to a half a dozen informational screens presenting important details of Zheng’s life at key moments of the documentary. Between these markers the audience’s attention is monopolized by extensive interviews with a number of Zheng’s surviving students from the New York period. The viewer is not presented with a single authoritative statement of Zheng’s life, or even a single extended reminisce.

Instead we have the voices and memories of a large number of students, each revealing the essence of their personal, educational and martial encounter with Zheng. As you would expect these narratives support each other in places, and at other times they diverge.

Some accounts stress his wisdom and virtue, almost to the point of hagiography, while others go on to note that Zheng was not a saint, but was in possession of an ego just like any other human being. Some of his students recall him as an unassuming individual, while to others he was a magnetic and charismatic force. The benefit of this approach is that the relatively unfiltered memories offer many glimpses of Zheng’s school and his teaching methods. Yet, as is always the case with memory, when one focuses on a single detail for too long Zheng fades from view. Viewers looking for a definitive statement of who he was, and what he accomplished, are likely to be disappointed.

How could it be otherwise? By the time one reaches the end of this film it is clear that this was never a statement on Zheng so much as it was an exploration of the shared community of desire that existed between him and his students. This, I think, is the most interesting aspect of film. What it lacks in biographical detail it make for in the rich portrait that it paints of life in New York for early students of the Chinese martial arts before Bruce Lee and the explosion of the Kung Fu Fever.

The image that emerges here is of a complex community, one split between crew cut wearing martial artist coming out of disciplines like Judo and Karate on the one hand, and long haired hippies looking for a physical expression of the counter-cultural impulse on the other. Both groups looked to Zheng and saw in him the promise of fulfilled desires, possibly even for a new sort of community.

Nor did these competing cultural currents always sit well with Zheng’s Chinese supporters. One of the most interesting exchanges in the film is a debate as to whether his school was expelled from one of its early Chinatown locations because the property’s owners were offended that Zheng was teaching black and white students. Or, as Carol Yamasoki asserted, was the problem that he was teaching hippies whose values were seen as offensive to the more conservative local Chinese community?

It is fascinating to watch the development of a persistent narrative throughout this film that Zheng was forced to “break free” from the oppressive and at least tacitly racist Chinese community in New York so that he could spread his art to outsiders. Given his conservative nature one wonder’s what Zheng himself would make of these accounts. Ultimately we will never know. Yet in telling them his family and students seem to be claiming for him a very specific sort of Chinese identity, one that is fully compatible with progressive American life and which positions itself against the superstitions and parochialism of the past.

One of the films more surprising moments for me came in the opening sequence. Here the camera focuses on a black and white image of Bruce Lee giving a televised interview in which he expounds briefly on the nature and goals of Taijiquan.

That one would turn to Bruce Lee as the opening act for Zheng Manqing seems a bit odd. Lee never claimed expertise in Taijiquan, and given his complex relationship with his father (who was a Taiji exponent) one suspects that you would not want to pursue this line of questioning very far. As I watched this I found myself thinking “Couldn’t we have found a more “proper” voice to introduce Taijiquan?” Indeed, I kept coming back to that thought for days after watching the film.

If this was a feature length documentary about the history of Taiji in the West, or even the career of Zheng Manqing, the answer would probably be “yes.” But if we look a little deeper it becomes apparent that this is not a film about either of these things. Indeed, the actual stars of the show are Zheng’s many students.

Or perhaps its focus is the cooperative community that sprang up between a teacher and a group of students drawn together by deeply felt, mostly unarticulated, desires. A desire for martial mastery. A desire for stability and peace in a period of turbulence. A desire for esoteric knowledge and the promise of truly ancient wisdom. A desire for an authentic encounter with Chinese culture. A desire for adventure and exploration. A desire to experience a profound human connection, and through that to find self-worth. A desire for an acceptable vision of authority. A desire for authentic community.

Bruce Lee and Zheng Manqing may seem to be two entirely different types of martial artists. Their incompatibilities extended far beyond questions of style. These were men of unequal age who were the products of radically different life experiences. And yet they both found themselves enmeshed within this same web of desire. Their contributions to the development of the martial arts in the West were filtered through these desires. Lee’s standing within the Taiji community ultimately does not matter as, by including him, we are reminded that he was an inspiration to many of the individuals who found themselves drawn to Zheng’s teaching during the later 1970s (R. W. Smith’s spirited protests notwithstanding). Thus another aspect of the community is revealed through this editorial choice.

Some viewers, I suspect, will argue that Strugatz has drawn the frame around his subject a little too tightly. Even if we accept the choice to focus on Zheng’s relationship with his students, one cannot help but notice that some of the most interesting personalities are conspicuous by their absence. Specifically, the Professor seems to be remembered only from the perspective of his New York students.

Even other students and disciples in the US do not make the cut. Robert W. Smith did much to promote Zheng’s standing in the US through his various publications and teaching efforts. Smith first met Zheng while stationed with the CIA in Taiwan. As such their association predates the period of this film. Yet I was surprised that the only mention of Smith was a memorial note at the end of the credits.

Likewise William C. C. Chen, another important Taiwan era student (and a fixture in the NY Taiji scene) was notably absent. And one wonders what opportunities were missed by not discussing T. T. Liang and his notoriously complex relationship with his teacher.

This documentary appears to present a wealth of images of Zheng Manqing. And there is a lot to be said for the strategy of self-consciously approaching a teacher from the perspective of their students. Yet even here we are seeing only a small slice of the number and types of relationships that existed. Once again, as we focus too intently on Zheng, dressed in his scholarly robes, “The Professor” seems to recede from view.

It may simply be that it is impossible to present a comprehensive portrait of any individual who could legitimately be called a “Master of Five Excellences.” Yet Strugatz has painted a compelling image of him at the center of a specific community at a critical time and place in the history of the United States.

This film shines brightest as a primary document recording the needs and desires that drove individuals to seek out the Chinese martial arts in the 1960s and 1970s. It is also an important remembrance of a critical period in the dissemination of Taijiquan in the West. For students of Zheng’s Taijiquan it will be mandatory viewing. While it may not resolve all of the riddles of the Professors’ life it is sure to inspire new discussion. And students of martial arts studies will find in these conversations new insights about the unique balance necessary to culturally translate a martial art while forging a new community around it.

The Professor’s students. Source: http://www.tai-chifilm.com/whatistaichi

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If you enjoyed this review you might also want to read: Sugong – Exploring a Shaolin Kung Fu Tradition

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25-year-old master Zhong Siyuan practices martial art at the Yuhuang Temple in Luzhou city, southwest China’s Sichuan province. Source: china.com.cn

Introduction

Its been a while since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

A fight between the Armenian and Azerbaijani camps at a recent Kung Fu tournament in the Ukraine. Source: https://www.rt.com

News from All Over

You can file our first story under “Well…that happened.” A set of European Kung Fu Championships were recently held in the Ukraine. But the only news stories about the event that are currently circulating focus on an epic, bench clearing brawl that erupted during the Armenian/Azerbaijni match. Follow the link for footage of the event. After reviewing the tape and various news stories I think that there are a couple of lessons that we can take away from this.

First, we can think of this as an example of “Kung Fu Diplomacy” gone very badly. The relationship between these two countries has been difficult for years. And sometimes mutual participation in sporting institutions can be an important step in normalizing relations and spreading a zone of peaceful norms. That is the basic idea behind the Olympics. But in other cases events like this can lead to a serious rethink of the wisdom of using folding chairs for seating at a fight. Sure they are convenient for the venue, but they are uncomfortable both when sitting on them and when getting smacked upside the the head with one. Maybe next year we will go with theater style seating instead?

Is this the future of the martial arts in China?

Is this the future of the UFC in China?

Continuing with the theme of seemingly unlikely stories, multiple news outlets over the last few weeks have reported that the the UFC is currently in “advanced stage” talks to sell its fight promotion business. Two of the bidders at the table are actually Chinese firms (Dalian Wanda and a private equity and venture capital firm named China Media Capital). Current speculation is that this deal, if it goes through, could be be worth $3.5-4 billion USD. One also can’t help but wonder whether a sale to a Chinese media company might solve the franchises perennial difficulties in cracking the Chinese TV market.

If our first story seemed to illustrate the dangers of Kung Fu Diplomacy, this one shows the strengths of the strategies. A number of news stories from across Africa have come out in the recent weeks profiling local students who have won opportunities to pursue further studies in China through contests hosted by local embassies and Confucius Institutes. In general these events seem to have focused on language training, but as I read multiple accounts I was struck by the fact that the Chinese martial arts just kept coming up as a key aspect of Chinese culture that was popular with students and actively drawing them into closer engagement with these broader public diplomacy strategies. Maybe the best case of this to merge in the recent crop of news stories is this account of Luis Matthew who left the judges in awe with his Chinese Kung Fu performance at a Chinese language proficiency competition held recently in Namibia. His story is well worth reading as it seems to be representative of a much larger trend that is currently underway. Click here for the link. It is also worth noting that this specific account seems to have been singled out for heavy distribution by the Chinese press. [Sadly I was not able to find a picture from the winning performance.]

It looks like a new version of the Kung Fu game for Kinect is about to drop. Check out the previous link for the announcement, a game-play trailer and a review.

In a variety of previous posts we have discussed the importance of media in attracting people, and forming their initial beliefs about, the martial arts. A lot of this discussion has focused on Kung Fu movies as film studies scholars are a driving force behind the discussion. But in the current era video games are an increasingly important agent in spreading ideas about the martial arts.

In that respect this game is very interesting as it fully harnesses the fantasy of entering a comic book world where it is physically possible to fight the bad guys without ever having to go to an actual school and put in the time necessary to learn from a teacher. Its the closest thing to a martial arts game on the holo-deck of the USS Enterprise that we have yet seen. Needless to say its hard not to think of Umberto Eco’s essay “Travels in Hyper-Reality” when watching these trailers. In fact, I suspect that a cultural studies student could put together a pretty decent paper just on the representations of the martial arts in this set of links alone.

25-year-old master Zhong Siyuan practices martial art at the Yuhuang Temple in Luzhou city, southwest China’s Sichuan province. Source: china.com.cn

Of course it would be foolish to ignore the strength of the “authenticity discourse” that pervades the Chinese martial arts. The next story taps into these currents. Multiple Chinese news sites have reported the story of Zhong Siyuan, a 25 year old college student who turned down a potentially lucrative career to instead take up the life of a Daoist nun at the Yuhuang Temple in Luzhou (Sichuan province.) The photo essay shows her cultivating traditional arts such as music and calligraphy, but also dedicating herself to martial arts training in stereotypical mountaintop location. Stories like this can easily be read as reinforcing the self-orientalizing discourse that often pervades discussions of the traditional martial arts in China. Yet at the same time they help to position the martial arts as a “cultural luxury good” that the upwardly mobile both can (and should) aspire to. See this guest post for a little more on this phenomenon.

Zhong Chen at Singapore’s REDSEA Gallery. Source: http://sea.blouinartinfo.com (I can’t help but notice that the Gentleman on the right bears more than passing resemblance to Batman).

Regular readers will know I am always on the lookout for good Kung Fu related art. Its a little surprising to me that the TCMA don’t generate more visual art. As such the following story grabbed my attention, especially as it also plays into the “authenticity discourse” and makes a strong argument about what happens to the Chinese martial arts when they are practiced and appropriated by “Westerners.”

“The Kung-Fu Series by Zhong Chen” explores how Chinese cultural touchstones, like the iconic martial art, are diluted in the process of exportation and representation in Western mass media. The artist’s own experiences living in Australia inform his perspective on the phenomenon of “Western” or Anglo-Australian ideas mixing freely with “Eastern” or Chinese ideas.

Kung Fu visualization by the German artist Tobias Gremmler. Source: https://thestack.com

Over the last few weeks there have also been news stories about another, aesthetically very different, TCMA related art project. These images were rendered by the German artist Tobias Gremmler using motion capture technology to show patterns of movements within Chinese martial arts forms. I noted with some interest that the project was backed by the always productive International Guoshu Association.

Taijiquan students, and those interested in philosophy of the Chinese martial arts and their history in North America, will want to take a look at The Professor: Tai Chi’s Journey to the West, a recent documentary by Barry Strugatz. The LA Times wrote a short review of the film, and I reviewed it here at Kung Fu Tea as well looking at some of the issues most relevant to students of martial arts studies. The Film Journal also did a piece on the documentary which was less complimentary but also worth taking a look at.

A still from the five deadly venoms.

For those looking for a little more action in their martial arts films, we have a list of the “20 Best Martial Arts Films” courtesy of the the Movie Pilot. For reasons that I do not completely understand, lists seem to be one of the dominant genera for generating content on the internet. But this list is actually pretty good, and I noticed that some classic Japanese samurai films got included in the group! Pretty much everything here is mandatory viewing (and I was even happy to see that Iron Monkey made the cut).

Finally, we have a lightsaber story. The Syracuse Martial Arts Academy and The Gathering of Sabers recently hosted the region’s first open lightsaber combat tournament. Fortunately the local news decided to drop by and do both a story and short video segment on the event. You can see them here. It is always interesting to observe the ways in which these events are discussed, and it appears that a good time was had by all! You can follow the group that hosted this event here.

Martial Arts Studies

As always there are some exciting announcements for students of martial arts studies. The first thing to catch my eye was the announcement of a new forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press that is sure to become a workhorse volume in pretty much everyone’s library. Later this year they will be releasing an English language translation of Pingyuan Chen’s classic study A History of Chinese Martial Arts Fiction.

Here is the publisher’s blurb:

Chen Pingyuan is one of the leading scholars of modern Chinese literature, known particularly for his work on wuxia, a popular and influential genre of historical martial arts fiction still celebrated around the world today. This work, presented here in English translation for the first time, is considered to be the seminal work on the evolution, aesthetics and politics of the modern Chinese wuxia novel in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tracing the resurgence of interest in classical chivalric tales in late Qing China.

Now With Kung Fu Grip! How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America. By Jared Miracle. McFarland & Company (March 31, 2016)

I also want to remind readers that Dr. Jared Miracle’s much anticipated modern history of the martial arts, Now with Kung Fu Grip! (McFarland & Company, 2016) is about to start shipping. Miracle has been a frequent guest author here at Kung Fu Tea and he recently contributed an important article to the journal Martial Arts Studies. Needless to say I have been looking forward to the release of this book for quite some time and recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the martial arts. Be sure to check out his MAS article for a sample of the sorts of discussions that you will find in this book.

Grayson Perry (centre, back), in Episode One of All Man, Channel 4

If you are looking for some immediate satisfaction with no shipping delay, consider checking out this blog post by Paul Bowman dealing with questions of masculinity and gender in the martial arts (specifically in the UK) today. It is a fascinating read.

An assortment of Chinese teas. Source: Wikimedia.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group over the last few weeks. We discussed some really old spear work, examined the latest translations of Taijiquan manuals released by the Brennan Translation blog, and discovered a group recreating medieval combat sports in New York City. Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Ken Chun Talks Wing Chun. Source: http://www.examiner.com

Introduction

Its been a while since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

Daniel Wu, being interviewed for CCTV.com

News from All Over

Summer is blockbuster movie season, and that certainly shows in the current news update. A particularly interesting set of reports came out on CCTV’s English language TV and internet networks over the last couple of weeks. They featured Daniel Wu who generated a lot of publicity for his portrayal of the complex hero Sunny on AMC’s Into the Badlands. Now he is back in the news, this time for his role as an Orc villain in the fantasy film Warcraft. CCTV has released a major profile on Wu commenting on his impact on American popular culture, as well as his quest to find the right balance of body and spirit through the martial arts. Also see here. Readers should also consider how these interviews function in the framing of the TCMA for the purposes of English language public diplomacy.

Chinese deputy Premier Deng Xiaoping and retired world champion Muhammad Ali [alias Cassius Clay] shake hands in Beijing at a meeting during which Deng invited Ali to return to China to train boxers for the 1984 Olympics, December 19, 1979. AP PHOTO

I am sure that by this point you are all aware of the passing of the boxing legend Muhammad Ali. I also suspect that a number of Kung Fu Tea’s readers also followed his career with interest. While looking through the South China Morning Post I came across an important news item relating to Ali’s role in restoring the popularity of western style boxing in China following the end of the Cultural Revolution and promoting its eventual re-legalization. Students of Chinese martial studies may find this corner of Ali’s history to be particularly fruitful.

Meanwhile, a very different sort of profile has been running on the other side of the Pacific. The Epoch Times (based in New York City) recently ran a piece on Li Youfu, who will be the head judge at this years International Chinese Traditional Martial Arts Competition. As you might expect the discussion quickly turns to spiritual matters and Li’s relationship with the Falun Gong movement (a valuable reminder that private groups can also harness the power of Kung Fu diplomacy, making this a contested space). But there is also an interesting historical dimension to this discussion, including the various ways in which the Cultural Revolution actually accelerated Li’s martial arts training. As such this article hits on a couple of the topics that we have been discussing at Kung Fu Tea over the last few months.

Pushing Hands at the 108 Studios. Source: Fiona Lee/hoodline

Switching to the West Coast, Hoodline had a very nice piece titled “Pushing Hands: Tai Chi in Chinatown Draws Old and Young.” More than just a profile of a single school, this article provided an overview of the San Francisco Taijiquan scene and even dipped into the area’s rich martial arts history. Overall a nice, if somewhat short, piece.

Zhang Hexian, 93, leading a group of Kung Fu practitioners. Source: http://www.womenofchina.cn

Multiple Chinese tabloid and news outlets have been promoting stories and video of Zhang Hexian, a 93 year old resident of Ninghai, Zhejiang Province, who has been practicing the martial arts for nine decades. Not much detail was provided about her specific style, other than the fact that its a family tradition, now open to anyone interested in Kung Fu. You can read more about her here. Or, if you would like to see her in action, click this link. Needless to say she appears to be the (eternally vital) archetype of the “little old Chinese martial artist” that has launched so many kung fu pilgrimages.

Taijiquan. Source: Edwin Lee/flickr

The last few weeks have also seen the public discussion of a number of new studies focusing on the various benefits of regular (low impact) Taijiquan practice for senor citizens. Perhaps the biggest news is one study purporting to demonstrate that the practice of this martial art can have the same impact on a patient’s blood pressure as a pharmaceutical regime. Another study looked at how the focus on balance and strengthening in Taiji helped some senior citizens lessen their fear of falling in daily life. Finally, one last article examined the health benefits of this practice for those with arthritic knees. So maybe there is something to that archetype after all….

A statue of Bruce Lee erected in the Los Angeles Chinatown. Source: english.peopledaily.com.cn

“Why Bruce Lee is Still Relevant.” That was the title of a think piece published on the Esquire Middle East blog recently. The post focused on Lee’s role in the popularization and normalization as the Asian martial arts in the West and how great that has been as a corrective to the overly lax, self-esteem indulging, education that most kids are getting in school these days. The post quickly devolves into a rant in favor of increased discipline and hierarchy in education, leading me to suspect that the author lacks even a passing familiarity with the life or thought of the individual who wrote the manifesto-like essay “Liberate Yourself from Classical Karate.” So all things considered, this is a valuable reminder that “the author is dead” and none of us will get to define, let alone control, our intellectual legacies.

Images of Bruce Lee and his mother. Source: Charles Russo/fightland.com

Bruce Lee fans who are a little more attentive to details and controversies surrounding his life may want to check out Charles Russo’s latest post over at the Fightland blog. It is titled “Was Bruce Lee of English Descent?” Then, after you are done with that, you will want to review this essay by Paul Bowman discussing the actual significance of questions like this. Russo is also a long-time friend of Kung Fu Tea and readers should definitely check out his recent book on the early history of the Chinese martial arts in the Bay Are a.

John Vincent, co-founder of Leon (left) with Julian Hitch. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk

The Telegraph recently ran an article on John Vincent, the co-founder of the upscale fast food restaurant Leon (in the UK). He discussed both his background in Wing Chun, business strategy, and how there is basically no conceptual space between the two. Vincent has even added elements of martial arts training to his workplace to increase efficiency and employee well being while reducing wastage. Its an interesting discussions which in some ways sees Wing Chun as shading into a “lifestyle brand.” This is certainly not the first time that I have run across this idea, but its something that I generally associate with other Chinese arts (especially Taijiquan).

That was not Wing Chun’s only appearance in the news. The Examiner published an interview with Ken Chun. You can see Part I of the interview here.

The Final Master. Source: LA Times.

Chinese Martial Arts in Film

Wing Chun will be making another appearance on the big screen, this time in the guise of Xu Haofeng’s latest film “The Final Master.” Xu was the co-writer of Wong Kar-wei’s Ip Man bio-pic “The Grand Master.” This film also features a complex and engaging story, but visually it is an entirely different movie. If nothing else blades, rather than fists, seem to be the true star. Rather than a return to the visual fantasy of Wuxia dramas, these swords remain elegant yet gritty, giving the entire project a feeling of “blade-fu.” While I don’t endorse the films love of the reverse grip (at least not with something the size of a butterfly sword), fans of the hudiedao now have a film to call their own. And both the Hollywood Reporter and LA Times seem to like it.

Donnie Yen. Source: Time Out Hong Kong

Regular readers of these news updates will know that Donnie Yen has been on an extended media tour for a couple of months now. All of this has been sparked by the success of Ip Man 3 (which he says will be his last kung fu film) and the building anticipation over his appearance later this year in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. In this interview Yen talks about both of those projects, his future plans, and the under-representation of Asians in Hollywood (based on China buying power in today’s global media market). But the most interesting thing about this interview was that he reflected on his mom, who is a very accomplished TCMA master living and teaching in Boston. I have been kicking around the idea of doing a profile on her for a while now, so I was fascinated to see her being discussed in the media. If you are Donnie Yen fan this interview is worth checking out.

A number of reviews of Barry Strugatz’s documentary, The Professor: Tai Chi’s Journey West (2016), examining the NY phase of Zheng Manqing’s career have come out in the last couple of weeks. For two examples see the pieces in the Hollywood Reporter and the LA Weekly. You can see my own review of it here. Readers should also note that the upcoming edition of Martial Arts Studies will carry a review by Douglas Wile who has previously studied and written on the life of Zheng. The Professor will premier in NYC on June 9th.

Kendo and Judo as part of life in the Japanese Navy. Source: Vintage Postcard. Author’s personal collection.

Martial Arts Studies

There has been a lot of activity in the martial arts studies community over the last few weeks. To begin with, we are currently putting the finishing touches on the second issue of the interdisciplinary journal Martial Arts Studies. This will be a thematic issue examining a variety of topics surrounding the “invention of the martial arts.” I will post an announcement on this blog as soon as the issue is ready to go public, and I am sure that some of the articles and reviews will inspire discussion.

Rowman & Littlefield Press has just announced the release of the first book in their new martial arts studies book series. The Virtual Ninja Manifesto: Gamic Orientalism and the Digital Dojo, by Chris Goto-Jones, is poised to expand the borders of martial arts studies.

Navigating between society’s moral panics about the influence of violent videogames and philosophical texts about self-cultivation in the martial arts, The Virtual Ninja Manifesto asks whether the figure of the ‘virtual ninja’ can emerge as an aspirational figure in the twenty-first century. Engaging with the literature around embodied cognition, Zen philosophy and techno-Orientalism it argues that virtual martial arts can be reconstructed as vehicles for moral cultivation and self-transformation. It argues that the kind of training required to master videogames approximates the kind of training described in Zen literature on the martial arts. Arguing that shift from the actual dōjō to a digital dōjō represents only a change in the technological means of practice, it offers a new manifesto for gamers to signify their gaming practice. Moving beyond perennial debates about the role of violence in videogames and the manipulation of moral choices in gamic environments it explores the possibility that games promote and assess spiritual development.

I had a chance to look at an early version of this manuscript and its a fascinating project. Given the importance of video-gaming in shaping current popular discourses about the martial arts, it will be nice to have some theorizing in this area. Chris Goto-Jones is Professor of Comparative Philosophy & Political Thought at Leiden University, where he was previously Professor of Modern Japan Studies. He is also a Professorial Research Fellow of SOAS, University of London.

Paul Bowman has just announced a new forthcoming volume titled Mythologies of Martial Arts (also published by Roman & Littlefield). This short volume, modeled in many ways as a response to Barthes’ 1957 classic Mythologies, is Bowman’s most accessible work yet. I also had a chance to take a look at some early chapters of this project. While his 2015 volume, Martial Arts Studies, has already had an impact on scholarly discussions, I think that this book is poised to reach a much larger audience. You can see a more detailed description of the project here. Expect a release date sometime in November.

Stephen Chan delivering the conferences opening keynote. Source: http://martialartsstudies.blogspot.com/2015/06/conference-2015-and-2016.html

There are also a number of conferences coming up this year that will be of interest to students of martial arts studies. Building on the success of last years effort, the Second Annual Martial Arts Studies conference will be held at Cardiff University from July 19th-21st. If you are going to be in the UK there is still time to register, but please hurry as arrangements are currently being made for the dinners. This is looking like it will be a great conference with an impressive group of speakers and presenters.

On October 6th-8th the German Sports University in Cologne will be hosting a conference titled “Martial Arts and Society – On the Societal Relevance of Martial Arts, Combat Sports and Self-Defense.” This years conference will also feature English language sessions so please check out their call for papers. I will be attending this conference to deliver one of the keynotes and look forward to meeting a broader slice of the martial arts studies community.

Chinese American students in San Francisco.

Are you thinking of teaching an undergraduate martial arts studies class? What happens in the classroom is, in many ways, just as vital to the growth of our field as the progress on the research front. As such I am always on the lookout for new syllabi. Recently Jeffrey T Martin of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Anthropology) posted his syllabus for Asian Martial Arts Anthro 399 to Academia.edu. Take a look at what his students will be discussing.

Kung Fu Tea in NYC. Photo by Charles Russo.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group over the last few weeks. We discussed snake kung fu, vintage taijiquan pictures, and the Hakka martial arts in Hong Kong. Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Do you feel that? Olympic fervor is once again in the air. As we prepare for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio there has been a distinct uptick of Olympic advertising on the TV. Athletes whom we have not seen for four years are once again making regular appearances on the news. Even some martial artists are getting in on the act.

My initial plan for today was to sit down and write a serious essay on functionalist discussions of history. Or to put it in slightly different terms, why it is generally a bad idea to assume that social institutions were invented by a group of prophetic planners for the express purpose of filling the specific roles which we find them functioning in today. Nowhere is this disjoint between investigations of “origins” and studies of “function” more evident than in discussions of the traditional Asian martial arts.

Then I read this. I highly recommend that you take a moment to do so as well. Prof. D. S. Farrer recently wrote a short piece for the Anthropology News titled “The Olympic Future of Mixed Martial Arts.” Better yet, his essay made the issue’s cover!

That editorial decision seems entirely appropriate to me. Farrer appears to have been figuratively (and possibly literally) on fire when he wrote this piece. Due mainly to wushu’s frustrated relationship with the Olympics (going all the way back to 1936 for anyone who is keeping track), I have read a lot of popular articles advocating for some fighting art’s inclusion in the Games. Rarely, however, have I seen anyone make a case quite like this, or with such conviction

Farrer cogently argues that the Olympics are, perhaps inescapably, “warrior games.” It is in their very DNA. We see it in the early gatherings of ancient Greece, and in the rebirth of a modern set of games in which a thin veneer of “international cooperation” masked the role of this institution in supporting and upholding the spread of 19^th century notions of nationalism and imperialism. Scholars such as Andrew Morris (Marrow of the Nation, 2004) remind us that states like China were eager to enter the Olympic system precisely because they understood the real world implications of these games.

In the global arena “perceptions” have a way of quickly hardening into “political facts.” The modern Olympics have been seen not just as a celebration of what an individual athletic “body can do,” but as a test of what nations and states are capable of doing. To successfully project power into this sphere is to suggest that one is also capable of dominating other, less symbolic, venues.

The government of the Republic of China realized that a successful Olympic appearance would impact the perceived legitimacy of their state both in the eyes of domestic and global audiences. During a time of intense competition and actual imperialism within the geographic borders of China, this was a reality that could not be ignored. It is no coincidence that the Chinese martial arts were first showcased on the global stage at the 1936 Olympics, as the world teetered on the brink of total war.

Farrer hits his stride when he turns his attention more directly to the mixed martial arts (MMA). How often in Olympic discussions (cloaked as they usually are in the sentiments of saccharine consumerism) does one encounter arguments such as this:

“MMA, however, does not just create another world of bored/boring spectators, yet another banal, dead space for the outmoded parade of false national pride. We must learn to see beyond the fascist flag-waving society of the spectacle, where actual embodied human performance is supplanted by collective representations of the elite other, facilitating the fatted-up, nerdish spectators in becoming-brainwashed, hooked to their smart-phones and digital devices in their collective becoming-sheep. MMA creates a whole new world of savage cage fighters that the police force, law enforcement, and even highly trained military personnel struggle to contain. Also, MMA makes the practitioner aware of their heartbeat, breathing, vulnerability and mortality, and that of their partners in training. Cage fighting is only one, if the ultimate, outcome of MMA. Other outcomes include superb athleticism, health, fitness, self-confidence, fraternity, and fictive kinship as befits an Olympic sport.” (Farrer, 11)

That is strong stuff, yet Farrer is far from alone in arguing for the inclusion of another combat sport in the Olympic lineup. In popular discussions both hope and anxiety over the fate of various Olympic combat sports seems to be reaching a boiling point. These debates often center on commercial, social, cultural and even regional fault lines. As such they suggest something about the state of both the Olympics and the modern martial arts.

Perhaps we should begin by considering some of the factors that draw various martial arts and combat sports like moths towards the flame of Olympic competition. The games already feature a number of combat arts including (but not limited to) shooting, fencing, wrestling, boxing, judo, taekwondo and archery. Others are eager to add themselves to the line-up. Karate was recently successful in its bid for a birth in the 2020 games. Wushu has been overlooked multiple times in the past and has focused on expanding its base of international support in an effort to broaden its appeal.

Source: http://www.ludosport.net

Recently I ran across voices in the lightsaber combat community talking up the possibility of their practice becoming an Olympic Sport. Admittedly, this seems like a massive long shot and the entire conversation is comically premature. This is a set of practices that is barely a decade old and, by any measure, is just getting to its feet.

It lacks an international federation or any plans for creating one. Nor does it have a widely agreed upon consensus as to what a typical match should look like, how scoring is organized and what sorts of basic safety equipment is necessary. Right now each organization and club handles these questions on an ad hoc basis. Needless to say there is no funding infrastructure in place to organize the sort of elite level training and competition needed to sustain lightsaber combat as a theoretical Olympic sport.

If anyone were to ask my advice, I would suggest starting with some intramural collegiate level clubs and seeing where things might go from there. Nor do I even want to imagine the legal calamity that could be unleashed by bringing Disney’s intellectual property (Star Wars) into contact with the IOC’s. To quote Ghost Busters, another American classic, “Don’t cross the streams…it would be bad.”

The entire idea of Olympic lightsaber combat feels ludicrous from the outset. So I was fascinated to note that this seems to have become a core talking point of Ludosport, perhaps the largest of the European lightsaber groups. Their homepage subtly points out that they have developed a sport that upholds and advances the Olympic ideals. So many of Ludosport’s instructors have noted their Olympic aspirations in recent interviews that one suspects that this is part of a coordinated campaign to craft a certain type of public image.

All of this would seem to suggest something important about the place of the Olympics in the modern world. While Farrer and others worry about the Game’s slide into cultural irrelevance, for many consumers they continue to function as a power symbol of legitimacy. To be in the Olympics is to be a “real” sport.

Of course achieving Olympic status has other profound implications that go beyond “respectability politics.” These may include great benefits, but they also introduce some of the sources of anxiety that tend to haunt such conversations.

The first and most obvious set of considerations is financial. While different states have their own funding and organizational models (China is very different from the US in its support of athletics), the possibility of Olympic glory generally leads to an infusion of cash into a sport. Elite training facilities need to be constructed and manned. State or corporate sponsorship becomes a possibility. And all of this must be organized and overseen by a group of specialized administrators. The Olympic Games employ a lot of people who are not athletes.

From an administrative perspective it is fairly obvious why it might be in your best interest to have a sport chosen for the Olympics. This logic transcends state borders. It is hoped that by opening new spots on the medal podium athletes in other countries will be enticed into competing in a given event. One of nagging doubts that has plagued wushu’s adoption bid is whether enough countries outside of China and the old Soviet bloc are really capable of fielding (and financially supporting) the sorts of elite teams necessary to make the event a successful proposition.

The flip-side of this is that the failure of a sport to succeed in attracting audiences, sponsors, advertisers and funding might lead to its dismissal from the Olympics. Low audience interest and other problems have led to multiple rounds of speculation that Taekwondo might one day find itself on the chopping block. The reality of these worries were confirmed in shocking fashion when wrestling found itself temporarily without an Olympic birth before being reinstated (but no longer as a core sport).

As Farrer notes, wrestling is perhaps the world’s original combat sport. It is one of the few events in the modern games that can trace its roots back to its old world predecessor. Wrestling is also very popular with athletes around the globe. Due to the nature of the contest a talented fighter can train and reach a high level expertise with relatively minimal infrastructure investment compared to other sports like Olympic diving or downhill skiing. For a variety of reasons wrestling has a wide global appeal among athletes.

Unfortunately this love is not shared by television audiences. One suspects that the same simplicity which makes the sport relatively easy to practice also gives it little in the way of dynamic visual appeal. Important moments in a match may not be legible to individuals who are unfamiliar with the sport. It often lacks the same dynamism as flashier track and field events.

Olympic Taekwondo. Source: nytimes.com

Nor is wrestling alone in this respect. Taekwondo, while faster paced, has also proved to be a tough sell for general audiences. Judo seems to get somewhat greater news coverage, yet it enjoys very little network broadcast time (at least in the United States). As such it is at a disadvantage when it comes to bringing in sponsorships or advertising dollars. I am not sure that the situation will prove to be much different for karate during the Tokyo games.

Karate, judo and taekwondo bring up another set of anxieties. While lucrative, is Olympic competition ultimately good for a broader martial arts tradition? Is this a venue within which an art can succeed, or will the very act of inclusion change it into something that it was not?

Consider the question of rules. Any political scientist will tell you that it is the rules of the game that ultimately decide the winners and losers. They determine the very nature and parameters of the contest.

This is critical in the current case as one of the fundamental traits of the traditional martial arts is their richness and variety. Karate is not a singular tradition, it exists in many forms. Not all organizations or lineages will have the same set of standards. How then will the winning standards be chosen, and what is the fate of the losers?

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article outlining debates as to the rules that should govern competition within the new sport of karate, but it would be possible to write a similar article about many of the arts that we have discussed. The type of wushu that is being considered for Olympic competition by no means represents the totality of the Chinese martial arts. Its gymnastics inflected floor routines are far removed from the actual reality of the traditional folk arts.

Yet these two set of practices, traditional kung fu and modern wushu, must both compete for the time and attention of a limited pool of talented young athletes. Nor is it really possible to be committed to both disciplines at an elite level. The popularity enjoyed by government sponsored wushu has not been great for the folk arts. One must wonder whether wushu’s inclusion in future Olympics would further damage the richness that makes the Chinese martial arts so interesting. Indeed, I have spoken with Chinese scholars studying the traditional martial arts who are worried about scenarios just like this.

Within any community large scale change always creates winners and loser. The ascension to Olympic glory is no different. Such questions require further consideration and study.

In some ways the mixed martial arts are well situated to deal with these challenges. While wushu tends to have a more regional following, MMA has found a global, and still growing, audience. Elite training camps can already be found in many countries. The brutal nature of these fights, as well as their basic rules, ensures that they are visually dynamic.

As Farrer notes, this same violence seems to reflect the current phase of global capitalism. Of course that same factor will make the IOC very wary of accepting the event, or Farrer’s larger arguments about their place in the “warrior games.” As I mentioned earlier, theories of origin do not always work as explanations of current function or accepted meaning.

One of the most interesting aspects of Farrer’s essay was his concluding notion that MMA might end up functioning as an umbrella federation under which many sorts of Olympic martial arts competition (judo, TKD, silat, wushu, karate) might be ordered. One doubts that the organizations behind judo, wrestling or taekwondo would appreciate this move. Yet it does open interesting possibilities for the inclusion of a vastly expanded number of fighting styles (each imagined as a single “event,” rather than an entirely different sport) without taking up more than one of the 25 permanent Olympic slots.

Indeed, the nature of Olympic organization has meant that the combat sports have sometimes faced a “zero-sum” game. In order for wushu or karate to be included something else has to be dropped (recall the case of wrestling). Farrer’s suggestion might allow for a greater variety of styles to be showcased as well as increased flexibility in adopting new events. That alone might remove much of anxiety that seems to surround the discussion of Olympic combat sports.

Olympic Judo. Source: nytimes.com

There is one other source of “anxiety” that seems to accompany these contests which also deserves our attention. Who exactly competes in the Olympics, individual athletes or nation states? The answer would seem to be both, and anyone who doubts that might want to go back and revisit some of the Olympic coverage from the Cold War. Still, combat sports are uniquely positioned to chip away some of the more overt elements of nationalism in the Games.

Ironically they can do this work precisely because so many martial arts are closely associated with nationalist identities. Everyone knows that judo is a Japanese art and Taekwondo is a Korean style. Wushu, as we are constantly reminded, is an aspect of Chinese culture. And as Farrer has just illustrated, MMA is in many ways a uniquely American creation.

These acknowledgements of a practice’s point of origins should not come to be confused with other essentializing discourses about the “national character.” Yet that is what we always do. The Budo arts are thought to reveal the “essence” Japanese identity. Hence one would expect that Japan should dominate the medal podium in every judo event. Indeed, they do rather well. Likewise TKD is sometimes seen as reflecting the “essence” of Korean culture. And the Chinese Olympic Committee seeks to advance wushu in large part so that they can claim this same sense of legitimacy for their own “national arts.”

Yet victory in grappling, kicking or striking depends on a great many factors prior to one’s ethno-nationalist background. What happens when the Japanese judo team suffers unexpected losses to athletes from other countries? What impact does a string of “foreign” victories in TKD have on the discourse surrounding that art? And given the global popularity of MMA, if it were to ever become an Olympic sport, I doubt that the USA would monopolize the medal count. There are just too many good athletes in too many different countries. And that is a very good thing. It demonstrates the fundamental vitality of the sport.

Yet the reality of losing in one’s “national art” to athletes from other states has caused a fair amount of anxiety in the home countries of some of these other sports. Nothing puts the lie to myths in the martial arts quite as fast as actually testing them in the ring.

Ultimately that is also a good thing. It serves to break down some of the ethno-nationalist mythologies surrounding the Asian martial arts that were so assiduously cultivated over the course of the 20^th century. Hopefully the sort of “instant verification” that international sporting events provide make the creation of new myths more difficult, or at least less profitable.

The actual reality of what happens in an event suggests that it is the individual athletes, and not some abstraction like “the nation” or “flag,” that competes and fights. If the Olympics ever are to become a true celebration of global peace, rather than simply a glorification of “national violence by other means,” such a perspective is necessary.

As Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari, Spatz and Farrer have all noted, the real question we seek to explore is “what can a body do?” In this riddle we find a celebration of our common potential and humanity. Ironically it is often the combat sports, even practices as different as MMA and wushu, which are best positioned to answer that question. While I remain to be convinced that martial traditions always benefit from the Olympics, the Olympic Games clearly need the martial arts and combat sports. Maybe even one (far off) day…lightsaber combat.

oOo

If you enjoyed this discussion than you really owe it to yourself to go and read: “The Olympic Future of the Mixed Martial Arts” by D. S. Farrer

oOo

A replica of a Ming era Dandao.

Introduction

Its been a while since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

Scott Rodell whilen filming the recent Dandao special with Balitmore Knife and Sword. Source:

Scott Rodell filming the recent Dandao special with Baltimore Knife and Sword. Source: http://steelandcotton.tumblr.com/

News from All Over

Regular readers will already be well aware of my interest in the material culture that surrounds the traditional Asian martial arts. Blades are a particularly fascinating subject. Beyond their central role in the practice of many of these combat systems, details surrounding the design and manufacture reveal a wealth of cultural, social and economic data about the groups that used them. As such I was happy to run across the following post on the Nerdist. It chronicles the efforts of Baltimore Knife and Sword to recreate (using a mix of modern, traditional and 19th century methods) a 400 year Chinese Dadao (essentially a very long two handed saber).

The short article describing the effort is fine. The project was inspired as the 400th anniversary of Cheng Zongyou’s groundbreaking illustrated manual for the weapon. He is a central figure in our knowledge of Ming era martial arts and anyone interested in learning more about his life should check out Meir Shahar’s discussion of his work in The Shaolin Temple.

But don’t just read the article. Be sure to click the video link at the top of the page for an 18 minute overview of the production process. Scott Rodell also makes a guest appearances in the program and even put the sword through its paces once it was completed. This program does not attempt to be entirely historical in nature, but its still quite interesting. For some additional production details be sure to check out Scott’s Tumblr page.

When I opened the CNN homepage this morning I found a long article titled “Enter the Mind of Bruce Lee.” The work discussed Lee’s philosophical interests and the effects that they may have had on both his martial arts practice and life. The article was heavily informed by popular publications by authors including John Little and Bruce Thomas. Unfortunately the piece was basically uncritical in its admiration of Lee. It dealt with neither the more serious academic work on Lee’s ongoing cultural significance, nor did it discuss the many instances of plagiarism and questionable borrowings in Lee’s various philosophical writings and college papers (see James Bishop for the gory details). The end result was a detailed discussion outlining the sort views that Lee’s many fans hold today.

When I went back to find the link to include it in this post the original article was gone and this short photo essay was in its place. I poked around on line and found a copy of the original story reposted here. I don’t think that dedicated Bruce Lee scholars will find anything ground breaking in these pieces, but they are a timely reminder of Lee’s ongoing cultural significance and the way that he is discussed by his fans.

Shannon Lee, the daughter of Bruce Lee. Source: http://www.nbcnews.com

This was not the only Bruce Lee story to circulate in recent weeks. NBC News recently ran a piece on Lee’s family (particularly his daughter Shannon) and their efforts to continue to carry on his legacy. Of particular interest was Shannon’s discussion of a long-term project to produce a serious bio-pic of her father’s life and where previous efforts may have fallen short.

Unfortunately not all of the news on the Bruce Lee front is positive. I recently ran across a short article discussing the closure of his fan club (as well as the auctioning of a sizable body of memorabilia) in Hong Kong. Apparently this small organization has fallen victim to the ever increasing rents which have already pushed a great many traditional Kung Fu schools out of their buildings and neighborhoods. This story is mostly interesting for what it suggests about what the changing economic and social landscape that the traditional martial arts in Hong Kong are currently facing.

Master Li You Fu. Source: the Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times, which publishes quite a few articles related to the traditional martial arts and qigong, has some good news for parents. According to a recent study conducted in Hong Kong the practice of the traditional Chinese Martial Arts can reduce aggression in children. The effect is strongest when students are introduced to both discussions on martial morality and physical training. If you are forced to choose between the two the stats say you should opt for the latter. Interestingly the study implied that movies (such as Ip Man) are being shown to children as part of their training in “martial morality.” I am sure our readers in media studies will have something to say about that.

It seems that quite a few of our stories this week revolve around the topic of books. In all of the discussions of “embodied practice” and “secret oral teachings” its easy to forget that Chinese publishers have been producing manuscripts of and about the martial arts for centuries. The current Hong Kong book fair aims to revive some of this interest, particularly as it relates to Wuxia novels. These adventure stories often follow the exploits of a lone swordsman or group of heroes as they travel the countryside, right wrongs, and model their unique variant of Confucian ethics. For a quick look at the book fair and its relationship with this genera see here.

As authors like Hamm and Liu would be quick to remind us, Wuxia novels are rarely escapist fantasies. Instead the works of Jin Yong and others typically employed the world of martial artists and adventures to comment on the social and political situations of their day. Some of these works are quite political in nature. “The Politics of a Martial Arts Book Fair in Hong Kong” takes up some of these themes in a more modern context. Another article in the South China Morning Post is even more direct in drawing a line between the current political situation in the city and the resurgence of interest in the Wuxia genera. Political discord tends to renew the popularity of this genera.

Readers more interested in classic manuals or military encyclopedias may find the next group of stories to be more interesting. Earlier this month it was reported that UNESCO had added a particularly important manual held by the North Koreans to the World Regional Register for Asia-Pacific Heritage. Anyone interested in checking out the contents of this volume can see its Wikipedia article. Needless to say its interesting to compare a scholarly assessment of this material (which sees it as a Korean updating of older Chinese military sources) to the popular discussions related in some of the recent news accounts. They have simply characterized the discussions of spears, swords and fighting from horseback found in these manuals as examples of early taekwondo. And this is how myths get made.

Are you interested in taking a closer look at this text? It turns out that you can also find a scanned copy in the collections of the BNF in Paris. Enjoy! (Special thanks to Daniel Jacquet for bringing this copy to my attention).

Chinese children learn the martial arts.

Are you interested in a photo essay of Kung Fu practice in idyllic surroundings? If so the next post has you covered. The occasion is a short article on a program being run in Chongqing designed to expose school children to the traditional arts during their summer vacations.

African students studying at the Shaolin Temple.

Speaking of travel for martial arts instruction….the Chinese tabloids have circulated another round of stories on the ever popular topic of African students being trained at the Shaolin Temple. These stories are now appearing with enough regularity that they deserve some serious thought and reflection about the messages that they convey to both Chinese and global audiences. Luckily the photography in this latest example is decent.

Chinese children prepare to board a train at a railway station in Beijing on January 27, 2011, as thousands of Chinese people head home for the Lunar New Year.Police in China have detained more than 600 people for using the Internet to scalp highly sought-after train tickets for the massive Lunar New Year holiday travel period, state media said . CHINA OUT AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)

CHINA OUT AFP PHOTO (Photo credit STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Our next article is more interesting as it brings a new (or at least less frequently discussed) wrinkle to the “Kung Fu Diplomacy” story. One of the mechanisms by which China is attempting to expand its “soft power” abroad is through strengthening ties with its diaspora population. The following article on the Foreign Policy blog outlines how its “birthright tourism” program has been modified in recent years to help with this goal. Basically the Chinese government has agreed to subsidize, in whole or in part, the cost of ethnically Chinese children abroad flying to China to take part in various sorts of tours or programs designed to familiarize these youngsters with their “homeland.” And yes, the traditional martial arts are definitely on the agenda (particularly if you take one of the tours of Henan Province.) This article is worth checking out for anyone following the public diplomacy story.

We have one last story about Kung Fu tourism before moving on. Do you see those two gentlemen standing next to Dwyane Wade and his wife in the above picture? Do you know who they are? No? Well neither do the actual monks of the Shaolin temple…..It turns out you need to exercise caution when arranging your VIP tours and photo-ops.

Everything you know about the Ninja is probably wrong. Given our frequent discussions of popular culture and the invention of tradition, such a statement probably won’t come as a big surprise to regular readers. But as someone who spent much of the 1980s daydreaming about these figures, its always great to run across the occasional Ninja story.

Preparation for Lightsaber sparing in San Diego. Source: http://www.theverge.com

Given that so much of my current fieldwork involves lightaber combat I thought I would I pass one one last article on this topic as well. The following piece discusses a group called the “Underground Lightsaber Fighters” in San Diego that I was previously unfamiliar with. Apparently they host big get-togethers in Balboa Park that sound quite fun. Two things stood out to me about this article.

First, its good to to see that a number of their members opt to use safety gear in the sparring. But this should be mandatory. If you are really going to square off with a stranger in park (at night) who is going to try and hit you in the head with a one inch heavy poly-carbonate blade you want a really solid mask. Your dentist will thank you.

Secondly, I thought that it was fascinating how the guy who ran this group described the relationship between LSC and the traditional martial arts. Check out the following quote:

“People with martial arts experience seem to have some advantage in the battles. But Murico said that even people who have trained in Kendo and Eskrima — both of which have inspired Star Wars’ combat styles — only have a limited advantage.

“I don’t care who you are,” Murico said. “How many lightsaber classes have you taken? … I’m a six-month veteran and that makes me a master. Nobody’s really that good because it’s so different, and it’s a toy, and it’s fun. It’s not what anyone is used to.””

On a technical level this seems like a series of dubious assumptions. Every week I watch individuals without prior training walk into a martial arts school and try to spar more experienced lightsaber students and martial artists. And I can tell you that in my experience formal training and years of practice make a big difference. And yet, on some level individuals want these lightsabers to remain toys. They want this to be about “having fun” rather than highly disciplined training. They seem to be looking for something similar to a martial art….without actually being a martial art. This way of talking about lightsaber combat it something that I have spent a lot of time thinking about. It was actually the subject of my recent keynote address at the Martial Arts Studies conference in Cardiff and we will be taking a closer look at this subject on Friday.

Cardiff Castle. Photo by Benjamin Judkins

Martial Arts Studies

The last few weeks have been an exciting time for academic students of Martial Arts Studies. Having just returned from the UK I can attest that the 2016 MAS conference (held at Cardiff University) was a great success. More individuals attended the event than last year, the quality of the papers was excellent and there was even more energy and enthusiasm than in 2015. These meetings are quickly becoming the high point of my scholarly year. To read more about this event see my conference report here. Most of the keynote addresses were recorded and should be released on the Martial Arts Studies Research Network YouTube page in the coming weeks. We will also see copies of a number of these papers start to circulate. Stay tuned for additional details.

While on the subject of conferences, don’t forget to register for the 5th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Sport Science’s Martial Arts Commission, October 6th to 8th 2016, held at the German Sport University of Cologne. The theme of this year’s conference will be “Martial Arts and Society – On the Societal Relevance of Martial Arts, Combat Sports and Self-Defense.” The organizers have told me that a number of sessions will also be held in English. I will be discussing some of my Wing Chun research at this conference and the whole program looks excellent.

I am happy to announce that Paul Bowman’s new book, Mythologies of Martial Arts (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), is now being printed and it available for preorder from Amazon.com. I was fortunate enough to see an advance copy of this manuscript and am quite excited about the project. Bowman’s text is both accessible and powerful, with every chapter offering a fresh take on topics as diverse as history, lineage, identity and even humor in the martial arts. Here is the blurb from the publisher:

What do martial arts signify today? What do they mean for East-West cross cultural exchanges? How does the representation of martial arts in popular culture impact on the wide world? What is authentic practice? What does it all mean?

From Kung Fu to Jiujitu and from Bruce Lee to The Karate Kid, Mythologies of Martial Arts explores the key myths and ideologies in martial arts in contemporary popular culture. The book combines the author’s practical, professional and academic experience of martial arts to offer new insights into this complex, contradictory world. Inspired by the work of Roland Barthes in Mythologies, the book focusses on the signs, signifiers and practices of martial arts globally. Bringing together cultural studies, film studies, media studies, postcolonial studies with the emerging field of martial arts studies the book explores the broader significance of martial arts in global culture. Using an accessible yet theoretically sophisticated style the book is ideal for students, scholars and anyone interested in any type of martial art.

Kendo club at a Japanese Agricultural School during the 1920s. Note the rifles along the back wall. Source: wikimedia.

I noticed that over the last week Andrea Molle (Director of the Budo-lab at Chapman University) was kind enough to post copies of his articles and book chapters to Academia.edu. I had not seen some of this material before and I thought that the following two examples may be of interest to readers.

Andrea Molle, George Jennings and David Brown. 2009. “Exploring Relationships Between Asian Martial Arts and Religion.” STADION. 35. Special Issue: Sports and Religion. Pp. 47-66.

Andrea Molle. 2010. “Towards a Sociology of budo: Studying the Implicit and Religious Issues.” Implicit Religion. 13.1 pp. 85-104.

The Creation of Wing Chun by Judkins and Nielson.

Are you looking for some summer reading? If so SUNY Press has you covered. From now until August 31st you can get a 30% discount on everything in their catalog by using the code XSUM16 at checkout. Obviously this is a great way to get a deal on the new paperback edition of The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts (regularly $26.95).

But that is not all. SUNY has produced a number of books that are critical for students of martial arts studies. These include Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge by D. S. Farrer and John Whalen-Bridge, Green Peony and the Rise of the Chinese Martial Arts Novel by Margaret B. Wan, From Kung Fu to Hip Hop by M. T. Kato (a classic) and Lost T’ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch’ing Dynasty by Douglas Wile (another classic). Browse their catalog and see what else you can find.

An assortment of Chinese teas. Source: Wikimedia.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group over the last month. We discussed the benefits of Taijiquan, the upcoming Bruce Lee biopic, and the framing of female fighters on twitter. Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Nima King, in his Hong Kong Wing Chun school. Source: South China Morning Post

Introduction

Its been a while since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

Nima King. Source: South China Morning Post.

News From All Over

Our first story this week comes from the (digital) pages of the South China Morning Post. The paper recently ran a profile (complete with a 15 minutes video) of Sifu Nima King, (Chu Shong Tin lineage) who runs the Mindful Wing Chun School in Hong Kong. As one might guess from the name of his studio, mindfulness is a big part of King’s approach to the martial arts. It is the subject that dominates much of the video and article. But he also has an interesting narrative about the various ways that Wing Chun helped him as an “angry youth” which also plays into popular perceptions of the TCMA.

I think that we will be having at least one academic event looking at the topic of mindfulness in the martial arts in the upcoming year, so this seems to be one area where the traditional arts are well situated to grow. Overall its a nice profile and worth checking out. And I always enjoy getting a glimpse into another school. This one has some very nice dummies on the back wall.

Ip Man demonstrating the wooden dummy form. Photograph was taken in 1967 by Tang Sang and is currently the property of Ip Ching.

“Clean Footage Of Wing Chun Grandmaster IP Man Has Emerged.” So proclaims the title of another news story which is currently making its way around a number of e-zine and blogs. Many Wing Chun students will already be familiar with this footage, taken during the Master’s final weeks. If its not something that you have seen before, this is mandatory viewing for all Wing Chun students. But what is really interesting to me is that Ip Man now has enough public recognition that there can be a certain level of public discussion of these sorts of artifacts. Thanks should be directed to Donnie Yen (who will be making his own appearance later in this post).

A scene from the Wushu Master Challenge Event. Source:macaudailytimes.com

Hong Kong often makes the news, but we hear less about Macau. This week is the exception. The Macau Daily Times ran an article covering the recent Wushu Master Challenge event. The gathering was designed to promote awareness of, and training in, the traditional martial arts. It brought together a large number of practitioners from both Southern China and the global community. Of course the obligatory Sanda matches pitting Chinese and Western fighters against each other were also held.

There is a certain body of academic theory criticizing movie plots in which Caucasian fighters (Chuck Norris, Van Damme….) confront and defeat an “Eastern” opponent to prove their mastery/appropriation of the arts (Chong). What is always surprising to me is that something so structurally similar to these situations get enacted with such regularity and vigor in real life. I suspect that this is an interesting example of mutually reinforcing but different cultural narratives (nationalism vs. the quest for self-cultivation) creating a predictable pattern. Or maybe everyone just wants to live out there own version of Blood Sport?

Our second news item from Macau was reported by the Shanghai Daily. It ran a feature on the recent One Championship MMA event and discussed the growing body of local and regional talent featured in these fights.

A fresco on a cave wall in Dunhunag. Source: en.people.cn

The next item will appeal to readers who are more interested in medieval social history. The recent Rio Olympics inspired some Chinese scholars to release a number of images of ancient sports as preserved on the walls of the famous Dunhunag caves. Obviously most of this art work is Buddhist in nature. It is what the area is most famous for. But in this case the emphasis was on some lesser known vignettes showing swimming, wrestling, horseback riding, gymnastic feats and other martial arts. Some of these paintings have an abstract or surrealist quality to them. Plus, if you have never read about the Dunhunag Caves before, this is a great excuse to check some of this material out.

A Young Bruce Lee in Oakland. Source: Charlie Russo.

Readers may recall my recent discussion of Charlie Russo’s new (and highly recommended) study of the history of the Bay Area Chinese Martial Arts community, Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of the Martial Arts in America. It looks like he recently had the opportunity to do a radio interview in which he discussed some of the various ways in which Lee’s legacy has lived on after his death. Unfortunately I have not been able to find a full audio copy of this piece, but you can see parts of the transcript here.

Does Bruce Lee have a long lost sister? Source: CCTV

The Daily Mail has been wondering whether Bruce Lee might have had a long lost sister. In fact, ever since CCTV ran footage of an incredible nunchuck demonstration lots of people have been asking the same question. Unfortunately the news releases which I have seen on this have very little additional information. But the footage of the demonstration is well worth watching. Now, if someone can just send her a yellow tracksuit….

Donnie Yen takes the stage as a blind, Force sensitive, warrior (though probably not a Jedi) in Rogue One.

I have now had an opportunity to discuss Donnie Yen’s upcoming role in Rogue One in a few places. The recent release of a new theatrical trailer for the film (due out in December) now has lots of people in China talking as well. And apparently they don’t all like what they are seeing. By way of background I should begin by noting that unlike other American movie franchises, Star Wars has always struggled in China. The reasons are obvious. Inter-generational nostalgia is a big part of the franchise’s success in North America, but it was never released in China during the 1970s and 1980s. Nor did the Force Awakens do much to win over Chinese audiences.

Disney has been looking for a way to more effectively introduce these stories to new viewers, and to that end the upcoming film will feature not one but two well known Chinese actors. Unfortunately a skeptical public is reading these efforts as yet another example of Hollywood’s penchant for tokenism rather than crafting stories actually designed to appeal to Chinese audiences. It looks this may be another bumpy box office ride for Star Wars in China.

The Ultrasabers display at the 2012 Phoenix Comicon. Ultrasabers is one of the largest manufactures of stunt sabers intended for use is lightsaber combat.

While we are on the subject of Star Wars, I should also mention that I recently did an interview discussing lightsaber combat as a martial art over at Inverse. I would not say that this is my best interview (and the final product could have used some additional editing), but some readers may find it to be a helpful introduction to the topic.

Martial Arts Studies by Paul Bowman (2015)

Martial Arts Studies

Summer is generally a slow time for academic news as everyone in on break and working on their new research. But there have been some recent developments on the Martial Arts Studies front. First off, a new book has been announced that will be of interest to students of New World martial arts traditions. Michael J. Ryan’s volume, Venezuelan Stick Fighting: The Civilizing Process, is due to be released by Lexington Books in December. This volume will also feature a forward by Thomas A. Green. The publisher’s note on the project is as follows:

Ryan examines the modern and historical role of the secretive tradition of stick fighting within rural Venezuela. Despite profound political and economic changes from the early twentieth century to the modern day, traditional values, practices, and imaginaries associated with older forms of masculinity and sociality are still valued. Stick, knife, and machete fighting are understood as key means of instilling the values of fortitude and cunning in younger generations. Recommended for scholars of anthropology, social science, gender studies, and Latin American studies.

Striking Beauty by Barry Allen

I have mentioned the book Striking Beauty by the Philosopher Barry Allen a few times on this blog. Michael Wert has just published a review of this volume. While generally critical of Allen’s treatment of the martial arts, it is well worth reading. One of Wert’s central points is that Allen’s repeated gaffs regarding martial arts history are not simply side-notes. Rather they have critical implications for the substance of his philosophical arguments. This line of reasoning is actually quite similar to the argument that Stanley Henning advanced in a number of his writings. A warped understanding of martial arts history leads to all sorts of other problems precisely because these institutions and practices have always been more central to society than we generally care to admit.

Paul Bowman and Meaghan Morris having a frank exchange of ideas. Source: http://martialartsstudies.blogspot.com/2015/06/conference-2015-and-2016.html

Over the last few weeks I have noticed slides and papers from the 2016 Martial Arts Studies at the University of Cardiff begin to appear on Academia.edu. George Jennings and Anu Vaittinen have kindly uploaded the very detailed slides from their presentation on the use of multimedia resources by Wing Chun students. Hopefully this is a subject that we will be hearing more about in the next few months. Neil Hall has uploaded his paper (presented in a special session) titled a “Convenient Myth.” Its abstract is as follows:

This paper looks at how the martial artist’s need to make a living (or on a smaller scale a class teacher’s need to make the class viable) has a determining effect on the things martial artist teachers convey about martial arts. Drawing on real and easy to grasp examples from present-day martial arts schools, including his own, the author explains the financial imperative to engage with potential customers who have no martial arts experience, and whose purchasing choices are shaped by myth and media representation. He shows how quickly and easily the need to play popular perceptions comes to shape not only the marketing of the teacher’s class, club or school, but also the perceptions that the teacher – and their students – continue to convey about martial arts, and how the multiplication of this type of effort itself helps to shape popular perceptions – and often myths – about martial arts

Lastly, William Acevedo has posted an essay on his blog titled “An Overview of Chinese Martial Arts in the Olympics.” This is the most detailed discussion of this topic that I have seen, and I am sure that many Kung Fu Tea readers will find it quite interesting. Its a timely discussion of an important event.

SUNY Press Book Sale, Only One Week Left!

SUNY is currently running a 30% off sale on everything on their webpage. That is great news for you as they have long been one of the premier publishers of innovative studies of the martial arts. I have attached a couple of cover images above just to give you a quick sense of the range of work that they have published over the years.

For the next two weeks its all 30% off, making this a great time to pick up some summer reading or to fill that gap in your library.

If you are wondering where to start I would suggest taking a look at Farrer and Whalen-Bridge’s edited volume Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge.

And of course SUNY also published my own book, the Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Martial Arts, which they released in a more moderately priced paperback edition last month!

Click the link to see more, and be sure to enter coupon code XSUM16 at checkout. Offer expires August 31, 2016.

Xing Xi pracctices ar the Zen Kung Fu Center in Beijing. Source: Reuters.

Xing Xi practices at the Zen Kung Fu Center in Beijing. Source: Reuters.

Introduction

Its been a while since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

Master Li, a practioner of "Body Shrinking" kung fu. Source: Reuters.

Master Li, a practitioner of “Body Shrinking” kung fu. Source: Reuters.

Stories From all Over
The traditional Chinese martial arts are dying! At least in China. Regular readers will have heard the claim before. And over the last couple of weeks some articles in high profile outlets have once again taken up the call. The first of these is a Reuters piece that was picked up by a number of sources. I encountered it in the Japanese Times. It is titled “Master of obscure ‘body-shrinking’ form of kung fu looks to bend the trend on martial art,” but overall the piece does not strike a hopeful tone. It does, however, offer up some memorable quotes.

“As soon as I’m gone, this thing will be gone completely. There won’t be anyone else practicing it. This is a really, really great regret, it’s really a loss,” Li said.

“We’ve carried it on, we’ve promoted it abroad, but while the flowers have blossomed within the wall, the fragrance is only smelt outside,” he said, using an expression to mean it is only appreciated abroad.”…….

Xing Xi, a Shaolin kung fu master who spent 10 years studying before opening his own martial arts academy on the outskirts of Beijing, felt young people lack the commitment of previous generations.

“There are many, many young people who have potential with kung fu,” he said. “But what we need more are those who can settle in, so it goes from a hobby to being so deeply into it that kung fu becomes a part of our body and part of our life.”

As usual the prime offenders seem to be China’s young people. It is also interesting to compare this story with the recent (August 22^nd) NY Times Article titled “Exit the Dragon: Kung Fu, Once Central to Hong Kong Life, is Waning.” It dealt specifically with the situation in Southern China. Finally, those who would like to see Master Li in action should be sure to check out his interview on Quartz.

Source: ABC Nightline.

ABC’s Nightline painted a more positive vision of the traditional Chinese combat methods in a recently aired segment. The shows producers visited a village in Guizho where the martial arts continue to be quite popular with local residents and young people. This segment is definitely worth watching. It is well shot and the landscape is beautiful. On a more critical level it is a fantastic example of the sorts of Orientalizing and self-Orientalizing discourses that seem to dominate our discussions of the Chinese martial arts. But overall there is nice material here. I was particularly interested in the account of the last tiger killed in the region during the 1940s. Apparently he attacked a villager who was walking along the road with a pole. Sadly both combatants died of their wounds, but the memory of the event lives on.

Expats in Shanghai are showing more interest in local Kung Fu Classes. Source: News

Expats in Shanghai are showing more interest in local Kung Fu classes. Source: globaltimes.com

A number of the preceding articles noted continued Western interest as a potential bright spot in the preservation of the Chinese martial arts. That same theme was taken up in a recent article in the Global Times.

“Classes for traditional Chinese martial arts have mushroomed in Shanghai in recent years. What is eye-catching is the number of Westerners studying in these classes and some of them have traveled from far across the globe to learn the genuine Chinese forms of kung fu and tai chi. The Global Times talked to six expats in Shanghai about their enthusiasm and drive to study here.”

The piece profiles six different students who have taken up the practice of various arts. As such it brings a greater depth of perspective to these questions than you generally find in a piece like this.

Shannon Lee, the daughter of Bruce Lee. Source: LA Weekly.

For those interested in events closer to home, the LA Weekly recently published a long-form article titled “How Bruce Lee’s Daughter is sharing his philosophies with the Digital Generation.” This one will take a little bit longer to work through, but it will be worth it for Bruce Lee fans, or scholars interested in multimedia discussions of the Chinese martial arts. I learned a couple of new things as I read this piece. One of them was that Shannon now has a podcast dedicated to her father’s philosophical side.

“BLE’s latest venture is the Bruce Lee podcast, which in each episode uses Bruce’s sayings as a jumping-off point for conversation between Shannon and Sharon. Shannon’s favorite: “The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the beginning.” For 50 minutes, they dig deep, espousing anti-guru, self-help techniques for a better mind. Just five weeks into production, and with little promotion, the show’s already been downloaded more than 224,000 times.

“In today’s Kardashian and Trump moment, to go, ‘I think the global millennials will appreciate a long-form conversation about philosophy’ was counterintuitive,” Sharon says.”

Indeed, with a new crop of Bruce Lee related projects on the horizon I think we can expect to see another uptick of interest in his ideas among young people.

Lion Dancers in Seattle, 2007. Source: Wikimedia. Photo by Joe Mabel.

Next, we have two items that fall under the general heading of “Kung Fu Diplomacy.” The first is another reminder of the role that the martial arts play in China’s cultural diplomacy strategy in Africa. Five Wushu Athletes, after winning a competition, are headed to China for a month and a half. There they will be concentrating on Lion Dancing.

Secondly, the Boreno Post ran a short piece on the sociological and political value of the martial arts in Malaysia. While ostensibly about a recent three day event that had brought martial artists from a number of countries to the region, the article itself focused on the role of the martial arts in creating cross-cutting bonds of identity that helped to knit together what is an otherwise very diverse country. The piece could be read as a statement on the role of the traditional fighting arts in civil society and social capital creation.

A “Kung Fu” nun demonstrates a pole form at a Tibetan Temple in Nepal.

Nepal’s famous “Kung Fu Nuns” are once again on the move, distributing aid and promoting gender equality in the Himalayan region. This time they rode mountain bikes 2,485 miles from Katmandu (the capital of Nepal) to Leh (in India) in an effort to draw public attention to the problem of human trafficking in this remote region. Apparently this situation has worsened following the devastating earthquake that affected much of Nepal and created large numbers of orphans.

The Chinese Martial Arts on the Big and Small Screen

The last few weeks have seen some good news for fans of the Kung Fu film genre. Perhaps the biggest story has been the release of the first trailer for “Birth of the Dragon,” director George Nolfi’s upcoming Bruce Lee biopic. A quick viewing of the trailer suggests one or two minor historical liberties may have been taken with Lee’s life. As expected the film will focus on the famous, but not well understood, fight in Oakland between Wong Jack Man and Bruce Lee. Only in this version of events Wong Jack Man appears to be a full on monk sent directly from the Shaolin temple to check up on what Bruce was teaching in his classes. Luckily, if the clips are to be believed, he was mostly teaching a lot of Chi Sao. As an Wing Chun guy, those scenes warmed my heart.

Issues of historical accuracy aside, the trailer looked pretty good. It will be interesting to see how Hollywood approaches something more like a traditional Kung Fu film. And they do seem to have created a very “cool” vision of Lee. I do not believe that this film has a US launch date yet, but I may have to put it on my list. Readers who want to dig a little deeper should see the interview with George Nolfi on deadline.com.

Bruce Lee Fighting Wong Jack Man (as a Shaolin Monk) in “The Birth of the Dragon.”

There has also been some Bruce Lee related news on the small screen. Justin Lin has been working to bring a series called “Warrior” to life. Following the story of a Chinese martial artist in the old West, the show was inspired by hand written notes found in the Lee archive. It was stated that these were likely part of the material that helped to inspire the original (and highly influential) Kung Fu tv series. We have just learned that Cinemax has ordered a pilot for the series.

Wing Chun Journey to the Heart, by Lee Moy Shan. Source: Youtube.

Our final news item will be of interest to Wing Chun students. Lee Moy Shan (Douglas Lee), has recently released a set of 22 short lectures (ranging in length from 5 minutes to half an hour) developing his “Wing Chun Journey to the Heart” project. Based on the fighting and tactical idioms of the art, this is an ethical theory of Wing Chun meant to illustrate how the principles of the art can be applied in a variety of life situations. Its totally free to watch on Youtube and the discussion itself is in no way limited to a single lineage. Pull up a chair and get ready to stay a while.

A choreographed lightsaber duel in California. Source: The Coast News.

Lightsaber Combat
I was looking at my list of recent posts and realized that it has been a while since I wrote anything about my lightsaber combat research. I have one or two ideas on the back burner, but in the mean time, here are a few news items. First off, I was recently interviewed by a reporter from Inverse who wanted to know whether lightsaber combat could be a martial art. Check out my response here.

Next up is an article from The Coast News titled “The Force is Strong With Lightsaber Groups Around the Country.” Despite the title it focuses on only a couple of more local groups. Still its nice as it illustrates some of the diversity of interests and activities that can be found in the broader Lightsaber combat community.

A photo of a recent Ludosport seminar run in San Francisco.

Finally, Ludosport, a major Lightsaber combat franchise that has proved popular across Europe, is getting ready to open their first US school in San Francisco. Classes will start on October 15. Check out their Facebook page to learn more.

Martial Arts Studies

As usual, there is a lot going on in the world of Martial Arts Studies. First off, the 5th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Sport Science’s Martial Arts Commission will meet October 6th to 8th 2016 at the German Sport University in Cologne. The title of this years conference is “Martial Arts and Society – On the Societal Relevance of Martial Arts, Combat Sports and Self-Defense. ” This gathering will feature an English language day and two English language Keynotes. One will be delivered by Paul Bowman, and the other by myself. I am not sure what Paul will be speaking on, but my paper is titled “Creating Wing Chun: Towards a Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts.” In it I discuss some of the challenges that arise from engaging in martial arts studies from the perspective of social history, as well as the approach that Jon Nielson and I employed in our recent study of the development of the fighting systems of the Pearl River Delta region.

There is exciting news from the Martial Arts Studies book series, edited by Paul Bowman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. The first work in the series, by Chris Goto-Jones, is now shipping. It is T he Virtual Ninja Manifesto: Fighting Games, Martial Arts and Gamic Orientalism (2016). Here is the publisher’s statement on the project:

Navigating between society’s moral panics about the influence of violent videogames and philosophical texts about self-cultivation in the martial arts, The Virtual Ninja Manifesto asks whether the figure of the ‘virtual ninja’ can emerge as an aspirational figure in the twenty-first century.

Engaging with the literature around embodied cognition, Zen philosophy and techno-Orientalism it argues that virtual martial arts can be reconstructed as vehicles for moral cultivation and self-transformation. It argues that the kind of training required to master videogames approximates the kind of training described in Zen literature on the martial arts. Arguing that shift from the actual dōjō to a digital dōjō represents only a change in the technological means of practice, it offers a new manifesto for gamers to signify their gaming practice. Moving beyond perennial debates about the role of violence in videogames and the manipulation of moral choices in gamic environments it explores the possibility that games promote and assess spiritual development.

Also, Paul Bowman’s Mythologies of Martial Arts (2016) is now available for pre-order and should be shipping at the start of December.

What do martial arts signify today? What do they mean for East-West cross cultural exchanges? How does the representation of martial arts in popular culture impact on the wide world? What is authentic practice? What does it all mean?

From Kung Fu to Jiujitsu and from Bruce Lee to The Karate Kid, Mythologies of Martial Arts explores the key myths and ideologies in martial arts in contemporary popular culture. The book combines the author’s practical, professional and academic experience of martial arts to offer new insights into this complex, contradictory world. Inspired by the work of Roland Barthes in Mythologies, the book focuses on the signs, signifiers and practices of martial arts globally. Bringing together cultural studies, film studies, media studies, postcolonial studies with the emerging field of martial arts studies the book explores the broader significance of martial arts in global culture. Using an accessible yet theoretically sophisticated style the book is ideal for students, scholars and anyone interested in any type of martial art.

I have already read chapters from both books (by way of full disclosure, I am on the editorial board of this book series) and am certain they will make a smash. The Virtual Ninja Manifesto is unlike anything I have read before. Anyone interested in either video-games or multimedia engagement with the martial arts will want to pick it up. Paul’s book, probably his most accessible for non-theorists, offers short essays that speak to a number of important issues in the practice and discussion of the martial arts.

My friend Scott Phillips has just released the paperback edition of his recent study Possible Origins: A Cultural History of Chinese Martial Arts, Theater and Religion. I just got my copy of this work and have started to work my way through it. Given the frequent association of Wing Chun with the Cantonese Opera I am interested in a more broadly based discussion of the intersection of the martial arts, ritual and performing arts. Scott is primarily interested in events in Northern China and frames the discussion with his own study of Daoist and martial practice, as well as dance.

Review: Alexander C. Bennett. 2015. Kendo: Culture of the Sword. UC Press. Reviewed by Michael Wert, Marquette University, in the Summer 2016 issue of The Journal of Japanese Studies.

I just ran across Michael Wert’s recent review of Kendo: Culture of the Sword. This discussion might be of interest to a wide group of scholars, even those not working on Kendo or the Japanese martial arts. In it Wert raises important questions about why discussions of the Asian martial arts (even academic ones) often stumble when attempting to explore the question of origins. Wert sums up the situation by arguing that you can have an academic history, or you can have a story about origins, but you cannot have both. The forces that motivate the quest for the latter are generally anathema to the former. Further, students of martial arts studies who are also practitioners seem to have trouble escaping the tendency to fall back on “object language” and emic accounts. It would be interesting to see some discussion of the points that he suggests from a variety of perspectives.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group over the last month. We discussed Ming vs Qing era armor, how to make martial arts history matter , and Wing Chun’s upcoming appearance on “Blind Spot.” Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

African graduates at the end of their three month program at the Shaolin Temple, Henan.

Students from Africa graduating from a three month training program at the Shaolin Temple, Henan.

Introduction

Its been a while since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

Motion capture technology being used to document the traditional Chinese Martial Arts. Source: The Facebook group of the International Guoshu Association.

Motion capture technology being used to document the traditional Chinese Martial Arts. Source: Facebook group of the International Guoshu Association.

Chinese Martial Arts, Within China

By their nature, news roundups tend to be somewhat random. Yet every once in a while a discernible pattern seems to emerge. This last month has been one of those rare times. In his excellent (and still underappreciated) study,Taijiquan and the Search for the Little Old Chinese Man, anthropologist Adam Frank noted (with reference to the increasingly globalized TCMA) that “identity moves.” This statement is true on many levels. But the news reports that have emerged over the last month seem intent on demonstrating both geographic shifts and chronological fading within these practices. As such, these “movements” will organize the first section of our news update.

We begin with discussions of the TCMA within China. Interestingly, stories in this category are vastly outnumbered by the plethora of pieces that focus instead on martial identities either entering, or being exported from, China. Two of the three stories that we do have in this category seem to be concerned with issues of marginality (in this case the de-centering of the martial arts from mundane Chinese life), understood both ethnically and temporally.

Our first article (which includes a short video clip) reports on the ongoing efforts of Hing Chao and the Intentional Guoshu Association to document the Southern Chinese martial arts through advanced 3-D motion capture technology before they finally (inevitably?) vanish from social neglect. The entire project seems to be pitched as a continuation of the early 20th century project of “salvage anthropology” (which should probably inspire a degree of self-reflection).

The next article asks what happens when Muslims and Chinese martial artists come together? Apparently you get some really great hand combat practices. This piece also looks at the martial arts in China, but once again de-centers them in a slightly different way. And in the process it comes up with a short introduction to a couple of the major personalities within China’s rich Muslim martial arts traditions.

Shaolin’s famous bronze men, as re-imagined for a public performance. Source: The Daily Mail.

Of course no round-up of Chinese martial arts stories would be complete without an obligatory massive public performance being staged at the Shaolin Temple. In this case the martial arts are once again reworked as a vehicle for nostalgia, this time more directly inspired by film. The occasion for the public performance was 11th International Shaolin Wushu Festival.

Taiji Softball (which, apparently is a racket sport.) My god its finally come to this.

My god it has finally come to this. Taiji Softball, which apparently is a racket sport. Maybe there is something to all of that stuff about the “death of the martial arts in China” after all.

Martial Identity Moving Out of China

It is not hard to spot an interesting dichotomy in the way that the TCMA are discussed in these articles. When examined in their home environment the focus is often on their struggle to survive, or to remain relevant, within the modern life of the nation. Yet when discussed in a global context these same arts are often held up as vital ambassadors of Chinese identity and culture, and are seen as essential to the Chinese nation. Note for instance the following article titled “Martial arts school in L.A. teaches traditional Chinese sports, delights students. It recounts a visit by a group of coaches from China who introduced some young American students to a number of “traditional” Chinese sports….like Taiji Softball.

“The team including five coaches came from the Chinese Leisure Sports Administrative Center. It’s the first time they came to the United States to teach traditional Chinese sports. The two-day program mainly focused on three sports: dragon and lion dance, Chinese folk dance (Yangge) and Taiji softball (Rouliqiu).”

Another article in the Times of India recounted a somewhat similar story in which three Chinese Taijiquan instructors were invited to visit Kolkata. While various Shaolin and “external” Chinese martial arts are already quite popular in India, the feeling seems to be that the internal arts have been under represented. And so these instructors came with a mission to introduce local residents to the culture and practice of Taijiquan. In both of these stories the TCMA are not only a central element of Chinese culture, but they are viewed as something that should be passed on to the global community as well.

Students from Africa who recently graduated from a three month training program at the Shaolin Temple. Source: Global Times.

The Global Times ran another story with this same theme. This time rather than sending teachers abroad, a group of African students (already discussed in a previous news update) were brought to the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province. After three months of training they staged a graduation performance. In a separate story CCTV noted that many such student take it upon themselves to spread Chinese martial culture once they return to the West. The following report profiles an individual (first introduced to Kung Fu while living in Macao) who now operates a successful school in Portugal. The short video that accompanies the story is worth watching.

Bruce Lee is the most recognizable of all of China’s many martial ambassadors. The San Francisco Examiner recently ran a short interview with Charlie Russo in which they discussed his new book, Striking Distance: Bruce Lee & the Dawn of Martial Arts in America. The interview and the book are both worth checking out, especially if you are looking for a non-fictional discussion of Lee’s now legendary fight with Wong Jack Man. Given George Nolfi’s imaginative treatment of this episode, it is sure to reemerge as a topic of conversation in the next few months. You can see my review of Russo’s book here.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at the King Club in Beijing.

Martial Identity Moves Into China

Needless to say, identities rarely flow in only one direction, or along a single axis. This is especially true within the global martial arts community. Every month there is a fairly steady drumbeat of stories discussing the importation (or popularization) of new martial practices within China. When looking at the stories, two such items stood out. The Global Times ran a decent piece titled “Brazil’s Martial Arts Popular in Chinese Cities.” In discussing the growing popularity of BJJ within China’s first tier cities, the author noted the importance of fashion and mediatized images. Unlike many traditional form of Kung Fu, BJJ is widely perceived as being perfectly compatible with modern life.

“The influence of celebrities is one of the reasons jiu-jitsu has become so popular in China,” Ma said. Many models and actors play jiu-jitsu to keep fit, and this has introduced the sport to more people. “Another reason is that many office workers in big cities, especially males, are under huge living pressure,” Ma said. “Martial arts is an effective way for them to relax.”

The mixed martial arts (MMA) are also attempting to enter the mainstream of Chinese public life. CCTV ran a story discussing a recent event sponsored by the Dragon Fighting Championship in Shanghai. While the article is ostensibly about fighters and combat sports from other nations coming into China, Bruce Lee is discussed at length as the spiritual father of MMA. The end result seems to be the domestication of the event. Both Western and Chinese discussions of MMA ask the memory of Bruce Lee to carry a lot of water. At some point it might be useful to do a comparative study of how his image is being used in these emerging discourses.

Bruce Lee facing off against Wong Jack Man in George Nolfi’s biopic, Birth of the Dragon.

Chinese Martial Arts In the Media

George Nolfi’s recent Bruce Lee bio-pic has not yet hit most theaters, but it has already generated a notable degree of controversy regarding the “whitewashing” of Asian characters within their own stories. After viewing the initial trailers for this film many fans were incensed by the idea that Bruce Lee was being relegated to a supporting role within his own life story. With no apparent sense of irony, the movie appears to cast him as the exotic sidekick to someone who looks and sounds a lot like Steve McQueen. Fan reaction has been swift and vocal. And it just keeps on coming.

Given the quickly souring public narrative on this project its director has decided to respond to, and directly contest, the various complaints that are being launched. The Guardian ran a surprisingly detailed article covering both sides of this story which is well worth checking out. It also brought Dr. Felicia Chan (a films studies scholar at the University of Manchester) into the discussion to comment on Nolfi’s defenses of his work and creative choices. She seems to have been unimpressed.

Do you remember Donnie Yen’s recent proclamations that he was done playing Ip Man, and might even take a step back from martial arts films? Well, we can now collectively forget any such idea. A large number of sources are reporting that Yen has just signed onto Wilson Ip’s 4th installment in the Ip Man franchise. It look’s like the Master has at least one more epic battle to go!

Kung Fu film buffs will also want to check out this article. Titled “Dying art challenges the masters: As Hong Kong’s kung fu movie legends fade from limelight, they fear there is no one able or willing to carry on the tradition” it profiles Kara Wai Ying-hung as she retires from the genre. Aspects of her interview read a bit like a diatribe about “the kids these days” (by which she means other actors and directors in the business). Yet underneath it all is a discussion of the various ways in which the production of martial arts films have changed. What I found particularly interesting is that she articulates a debate as to what “realism” in a Kung Fu film actually is. Is it showing the audience authentic techniques actually done by a trained practitioner in a single take? Or is it instead invoking the feeling of “real” violence through the use of close shots and fast cuts that are emotionally intense yet visually obscure? Achieving a sense of realism has always been central to the genre, but this article nicely illustrates the ways in which that concept has evolved.

A trip to any public park in China would seem to indicate that the average of traditional martial artists is increasing. At the same time these individuals may have a greater need for strong social networks and more resources to devote to finding them.

Taijiquan. Source: Wikimedia

A recent study in the Journal of Pain may be of interest to Taijiquan students. A peer reviewed paper found that a sample of individuals with chronic, non-specific, neck pain who practiced Taijiquan for 12 weeks showed statistically significant levels of improvement. They fared notably better than a control group which was prescribed no form of physical therapy. However, a third group who practiced specifically formulated neck exercises showed results that were identical to those experienced by the Taijiquan students. Still, if my choice was between learning a new martial art or practicing a set of neck exercises, I know which treatment I would choose!

Benjamin Judkins, presenting a keynote at the 2016 Martial Arts Studies meetings at Cardiff University.

Martial Arts Studies

There has been a lot of news within the field of Martial Arts Studies. First, The Martial Arts Commission of the German Society of Sport Science just wrapped up their 5^th annual meeting which was held this year at the German Sport University of Cologne. The title of the conference was “Martial Arts and Society: On the Societal Relevance of Martial Arts, Combat Sports and Self-Defense.” It was a great event which you can read more about in my conference report. Also, two of the keynotes are already available on-line, here and here.

The dates for the 3rd Annual Martial Arts Studies Conference have also been announced. These meetings will be taking place from July 11th to July 13th at Cardiff University. Professor Peter Lorge (Vanderbilt University), the author of Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, 2012) has already been confirmed as the the first keynote speaker. Check out this post for more details and to review the Call for Papers (the deadline for submissions is the 31st of December, 2016).

Kendo club at a Japanese Agricultural School during the 1920s. Note the rifles along the back wall. Source: wikimedia.

I recently noticed two articles that may be of interest to the Martial Arts Studies community. The first is “An Oral History of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Ben Penglase interviews Rolker Gracie” In The Rio de Janeiro Reader: History, Politics and Culture, Duke University Press, 2016, which can be found here.

Second, Jonathan Tuckett has just published a piece titled “Kendo: Between Religion and Nationalism” in the Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies (15: 44). Unfortunately you will need to head to jstor or your local university library to get a copy of this paper. But the abstract seems promising.

To date, the study of “religion” and “martial arts” is a lacuna of the field in Religious Studies in which the depth of association has long gone unrecognised. What little study there is, however, suffers from a practitioner’s bias in that those writing on martial arts are also attempting to promote the agenda of their own discipline. This paper attempts a more critical approach to show the study of martial arts can contribute to the ongoing problematisation of “religion” as an analytic category, particularly in its relation to “the secular” and “nationalism”. To do this I will draw on the philosophical phenomenology of Husserl, Sartre and Schutz to argue that “religions”, “nationalisms” and “martial arts” are all names given to modes of naturalisation. By this I mean they are means by which a person “fits” within their life-world and deals with the problems of surviving and thriving.

"London Sees Thrills Of Japanese Sport." A self-defense demonstration by a female martial artist, choreographed to as to be humorous for the audience. Vintage Newsreel. 1932.

“London Sees Thrills Of Japanese Sport.” A self-defense demonstration by a female martial artist, choreographed to be humorous for the audience. Vintage Newsreel. 1932.

There have been a number of recent announcements for upcoming books. While a few of these will not be out for some months, it is interesting to get a quick look at what we will be reading and discussing next year. The first is Wendy Rouse’s Her Own Hero: Origins of the Women’s Self Defense Movement, due out in August 2017. Hopefully this book will provide new perspectives on the role of gender in the global spread of the Asian martial arts.

The surprising roots of the self-defense movement and the history of women’s empowerment.

At the turn of the twentieth century, women famously organized to demand greater social and political freedoms like gaining the right to vote. However, few realize that the Progressive Era also witnessed the birth of the women’s self-defense movement.

It is nearly impossible in today’s day and age to imagine a world without the concept of women’s self defense. Some women were inspired to take up boxing and jiu-jitsu for very personal reasons that ranged from protecting themselves from attacks by strangers on the street to rejecting gendered notions about feminine weakness and empowering themselves as their own protectors. Women’s training in self defense was both a reflection of and a response to the broader cultural issues of the time, including the women’s rights movement and the campaign for the vote.

Perhaps more importantly, the discussion surrounding women’s self-defense revealed powerful myths about the source of violence against women and opened up conversations about the less visible violence that many women faced in their own homes. Through self-defense training, women debunked patriarchal myths about inherent feminine weakness, creating a new image of women as powerful and self-reliant. Whether or not women consciously pursued self-defense for these reasons, their actions embodied feminist politics. Although their individual motivations may have varied, their collective action echoed through the twentieth century, demanding emancipation from the constrictions that prevented women from exercising their full rights as citizens and human beings. This book is a fascinating and comprehensive introduction to one of the most important women’s issues of all time.

This book will provoke good debate and offer distinct responses and solutions.

Film studies scholars should look for Man-Fung Yip’s new work Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity: Aesthetics, Representation, Circulation from Hong Kong University Press, expected in July of 2017.

At the core of Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity: Aesthetics, Representation, Circulation is a fascinating paradox: the martial arts film, long regarded as a vehicle of Chinese cultural nationalism, can also be understood as a mass cultural expression of Hong Kong’s modern urban-industrial society. This important and popular genre, Man-Fung Yip argues, articulates the experiential qualities, the competing social subjectivities and gender discourses, as well as the heightened circulation of capital, people, goods, information, and technologies in Hong Kong of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to providing a novel conceptual framework for the study of Hong Kong martial arts cinema and shedding light on the nexus between social change and cultural/aesthetic form, this book offers perceptive analyses of individual films, including not only the canonical works of King Hu, Chang Cheh, and Bruce Lee, but also many lesser-known ones by Lau Kar-leung and Chor Yuen, among others, that have not been adequately discussed before. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, Yip’s stimulating study will ignite debates in new directions for both scholars and fans of Chinese-language martial arts cinema.

Sara Delamont, Neil Stephens, and Claudio Campos are expected release a somewhat pricey volume form Routledge just after New Years. Their study is titled Embodying Brazil: An Ethnography of Diasporic Capoeria. This sounds as though it will be worth a trip to the library.

The practice of capoeira, the Brazilian dance-fight-game, has grown rapidly in recent years. It has become a popular leisure activity in many cultures, as well as a career for Brazilians in countries across the world including the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. This original ethnographic study draws on the latest research conducted on capoeira in the UK to understand this global phenomenon. It not only presents an in-depth investigation of the martial art, but also provides a wealth of data on masculinities, performativity, embodiment, globalisation and rites of passage.Centred in cultural sociology, while drawing on anthropology and the sociology of sport and dance, the book explores the experiences of those learning and teaching capoeira at a variety of levels. From beginners’ first encounters with this martial art to the perspectives of more advanced students, it also sheds light on how teachers experience their own re-enculturation as they embody the exotic ‘other’. Embodying Brazil: An ethnography of diasporic capoeira is fascinating reading for all capoeira enthusiasts, as well as for anyone interested in the sociology of sport, sport and social theory, sport, race and ethnicity, or Latin American Studies.

Paul Bowman’s Mythologies of Martial Arts will be released by Rowman & Littlefield very soon. This one should certainly be on your Christmas list, and given the publisher it will be reasonably priced.

What do martial arts signify today? What do they mean for East-West cross cultural exchanges? How does the representation of martial arts in popular culture impact on the wide world? What is authentic practice? What does it all mean?

From Kung Fu to Jiujitsu and from Bruce Lee to The Karate Kid, Mythologies of Martial Arts explores the key myths and ideologies in martial arts in contemporary popular culture. The book combines the author’s practical, professional and academic experience of martial arts to offer new insights into this complex, contradictory world. Inspired by the work of Roland Barthes in Mythologies, the book focusses on the signs, signifiers and practices of martial arts globally. Bringing together cultural studies, film studies, media studies, postcolonial studies with the emerging field of martial arts studies the book explores the broader significance of martial arts in global culture. Using an accessible yet theoretically sophisticated style the book is ideal for students, scholars and anyone interested in any type of martial art.

For readers who cannot wait, there are also two books to be aware of that have just been released. The first makes a contribution to the growing literature on New World martial arts. Michael J. Ryan has just released Venezuelan Stick Fighting: The Civilizing Process in Martial Arts (Lexington Books). Readers should note that this volume includes a forward by Prof. Thomas Green.

Ryan examines the modern and historical role of the secretive tradition of stick fighting within rural Venezuela. Despite profound political and economic changes from the early twentieth century to the modern day, traditional values, practices, and imaginaries associated with older forms of masculinity and sociality are still valued. Stick, knife, and machete fighting are understood as key means of instilling the values of fortitude and cunning in younger generations. Recommended for scholars of anthropology, social science, gender studies, and Latin American studies.

Lastly, Chris Goto-Jones promises to stretch the boundaries of what we consider to be martial arts in The Virtual Ninja Manifesto: Fighting Games, Martial Arts and Gamic Orientalism.

Navigating between society’s moral panics about the influence of violent videogames and philosophical texts about self-cultivation in the martial arts, The Virtual Ninja Manifesto asks whether the figure of the ‘virtual ninja’ can emerge as an aspirational figure in the twenty-first century.

Engaging with the literature around embodied cognition, Zen philosophy and techno-Orientalism it argues that virtual martial arts can be reconstructed as vehicles for moral cultivation and self-transformation. It argues that the kind of training required to master videogames approximates the kind of training described in Zen literature on the martial arts. Arguing that shift from the actual dōjō to a digital dōjō represents only a change in the technological means of practice, it offers a new manifesto for gamers to signify their gaming practice. Moving beyond perennial debates about the role of violence in videogames and the manipulation of moral choices in gamic environments it explores the possibility that games promote and assess spiritual development.

Chris Goto-Jones is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Humanities at the University of Victoria. He is also a Professorial Research Fellow of SOAS, University of London.

Bey Logan. Source: SCMP

Introduction

Its been a while since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

A trip Down Memory Lane

One of the pleasant surprises to emerge while gathering the stories for this news update has been the appearance of some old friends. The first of these is Bey Logan, whom the South China Morning Post profiled in an article titled “How a British man broke into Hong Kong’s martial arts film industry.” Students of Martial Arts Studies may recall that Logan was a keynote presenter at the April 2016 “Kung Fury: Contemporary Debates in Martial Arts Cinema” conference held at Birmingham City University.

This article emphasized his desire, as both a film producer and martial arts student, to promote and raise the profile of the Southern Chinese martial arts around the globe.

“In addition to running his own film company and operating a kung fu school, he’s now shifting his focus towards promoting southern Chinese martial arts culture and giving back to the community that nurtured his passion….”

According to Logan, there is still a lot more work that needs to be done on fostering local appreciation of martial arts culture. Kung fu has lifelong benefits and may help individuals balance the demands of body, mind and spirit, as well as foster mental strength. Unlike most physical disciplines, practitioners may continue to practise and benefit from martial arts in their more mature years, he said.

As a body, mind and spirit practice, it hasn’t been sold to the public in the right way. The problem is not the quality of the art, or the need people have [for it]. As a community we haven’t reached out in the appropriate way. You can apply [kung fu] principles in business or in daily life. I think that spiritual aspect is very useful.”

Our second major story this week also focuses on the world that cultivated and supported the golden age of Hong Kong cinema. It comes in the form of a long NY Times article titled “Searching for Lady Kung Fu.” This piece profiles and interviews Angela Mao, one of the more important female martial arts leads during the 1970s who somewhat mysteriously vanished from public view upon retirement. Even if you have never seen her films you will want to read this article for its rich description of a classic period in martial arts cinema.

“Ms. Mao’s career was brief but bright, taking place in Hong Kong and Taiwan and including roles in more than 30 films over a decade. Studios promoted her as a female Bruce Lee. When she appeared as Mr. Lee’s doomed sister in the 1973 martial arts classic “Enter the Dragon,” her place in the kung fu canon was secured. Quentin Tarantino has cited her as an influence, and a violent fight scene in his 2003 film “Kill Bill” involving a swinging ball and chain is strikingly similar to one of Ms. Mao’s duels in “Broken Oath.”

She fought with ferocity and grace, mowing through armies of opponents with jaw-breaking high kicks, interrupting the carnage only to flip her pigtails to the side. A common climax in her films was her combating a villain twice her size.”

Speaking of nostalgia, did you hear that Jackie Chan was awarded an Oscar in recognition of his many achievements and lifetime of hard work (and countless broken bones)? I will admit to be a fan of his films, and have always thought that Kung Fu comedies are an under appreciated genre. Really, how many times do I need to watch someone avenge their Master? Congratulations Jackie!

“On Saturday at the annual Governors Awards, the Chinese actor and martial arts star finally received his little gold statuette, an honorary Oscar for his decades of work in film. “After 56 years in the film industry, making more than 200 films, after so many bones, finally,” Chan, 62, quipped at the star-studded gala dinner while holding his Oscar.”

Still, nothing stirs up nostalgia for the original Kung Fu Fever quite like the cult classic, “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.” It turns out that this film has inspired more than its fare share of artists including, most famously, RZA. And that is a good thing as it has just been announced that he will be accompanying a newly released edition of the film. Once again, the NY Times has your back. There is some nice life/career history in this piece as well.

Did I just say that nothing could evoke more nostalgia for Kung Fu students than the 36th Chamber? Well, I might have been wrong. Not to be outdone, the South China Morning Post ran a fun retrospective examination of the press coverage that accompanied the release of Bruce Lee’s film, The Big Boss, 45 years ago this month.

Lines like: “this is probably the biggest thing to hit the Mandarin film business since the invention of fake blood” are sure to have you running for your DVD collection.

Master Wu Lian-Zhi. Source: Wikimedia

News From All Over

Not all of the important stories over the last month emerged from the world of cinema. Fans and students of Baijiaquan were greeted with the following article that ran in multiple English language news outlets. It profiled a recent event celebrating the art, and emphasizing its status as an important aspect of China’s “Intangible Cultural Heritage.” Readers may recall that this sort of ICH language is becoming an increasingly important part of the strategy to both preserve and promote the traditional fighting systems.

“The two-day exhibition of Baijiaquan, or “eight extremes fist”, opened in Mengcun Hui Autonomous County in Hebei Province, drawing over 1,000 practitioners from China and other countries such as France, Denmark and Russia. Baijiquan is known for explosive, short-range power and elbow and shoulder strikes. With a history of nearly 300 years, the martial art was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2008. Mengcun, the birthplace of Bajiquan, built an international training center in 2006. Over 2,000 practitioners from over 30 countries and regions have come to the village to watch and learn.

Bajiquan is an important part of Chinese martial arts,” said Wu Lianzhi, deputy chairman of Hebei Wushu Association, also the seventh lineage holder of Mengcun Bajiquan.

“The training center helps foreign visitors better understand Bajiquan and it serves as a platform to spread Chinese culture to the rest of the world.”

Prime Minister of Sri Lanka visiting the Shaolin Temple.

Many of these same themes were picked up and expanded in our next article. Titled “China Pushes Kung Fu Fighting to Boost Soft Power” this English language article ran in multiple South East Asian news outlets. Those interested in the role of the martial arts in current Chinese public and cultural diplomacy efforts will want to read this piece carefully. It explicitly adopts political scientist Joseph Nye’s “soft power” framework. This is then used to present one of the more explicit discussion of China’s current “Kung Fu diplomacy” efforts that I have seen in a popular discussion.

Readers should also note that another one of our old friends, Prof. Gong Maofu of Chengdu Sports University, is quoted at the very end of this article. Check it out!

– ‘Soft power’ –

Wushu’s global sporting popularity pales before karate, judo and taekwondo, but state media reported this month that a “Wushu Cultural Industry Investment Fund” worth $7 billion has been set up to run tournaments and promote it at home and abroad.

Shaanxi province sports official Dong Li was cited as saying it was created “as a channel for China to increase its soft power”. The Chinese government’s development plan for the sport from 2016-2020 says that its aims include “increasing national confidence and boosting national cultural soft power”. The document, which is replete with political slogans such as “Implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s series of important talks,” also vows to secure the sport’s entry into the Olympics.

The Zhengzhou city sports administration’s deputy director Zhang Jiafu told AFP: “The party and government pays great attention to promoting our Shaolin to the world.”

The Nairobi news is reporting “Three lucky Kenyans picked to learn Kung-Fu in China.” More specifically, the winners of a local tournament received an all expenses paid, week long, trip to the Beijing International Arts School. On the surface this seems very similar to a number of the Kung Fu Diplomacy articles that we have covered in the past. And its important to note how much of this is press coverage is coming out of Africa. But if you read a little more closely this one is interesting because of the role of private entities (including a local TV station) in organizing and funding this event. That points to the importance of civil society groups in making “exchange diplomacy” strategies successful. Readers should also note that CCTV has been promoting reports of the same event in their English language news outlets.

While not directly related to the Chinese hand combat systems, I think that students of Martial Arts Studies will find the following items worthwhile. First, the Daily Mail ran a longer piece on Karate’s upcoming debut in the 2020 Olympics. This article is important for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the rhetorical tension between “Hollywood and history” that gets played up from literally the opening lines of the article.

“The martial art was only brought to Tokyo in the early 20th century when Gichin Funakoshi, regarded as the father of modern karate, moved from Naha. Okinawa was the place where karate’s spirituality developed,” explains Kurihara.

Frustrations remain however, that Okinawa’s role in the development of karate has been airbrushed out of history. For Nakamoto, the Olympic Games in four years time, is a chance to redress that. “This is a great chance to show the world where karate has its roots. The world may be surprised to know that it was developed here,” he said, adding that it was inexorably linked to the island chain’s politics.”

Speaking of the martial arts and public diplomacy, there have also been quite a few discussions of Indian Kalarippayattu lately. It seems that this art is also being employed as a discursive tool to educate audiences about India today. Some of these articles are fairly straight forward, but I personally prefer the video and interview published at the Huffington Post following the career of a “Sword Fighting Granny.”

Martial Arts Studies by Paul Bowman (2015)

Martial Arts Studies

Our last update on Martial Arts Studies focused almost exclusively on upcoming scholarly books. To balance things out, this report will look at notes of interest in the journal literature.

First off, the International Journal of the History of Sport has just released a special issue focusing exclusively on the East Asian Martial Arts. The list of authors and topics covered is pretty impressive. In fact, I am currently trying to figure out if I can order a paper copy of the volume to add to my book shelf. This is well worth checking out even if it means a trip to JStor or your local university library.

Bruce Lee Graffiti. Source: Wikimedia.

“Why have Kung Fu movies endured in Africa?” This is actually a somewhat paradoxical question. Currently the Chinese government is spending lots of money to create news and other media content for the African media. This is another aspect of their larger public diplomacy strategy. And its not all clear that these efforts are paying off. It seems that making content is one thing, but creating an audience is an entirely different sort of challenge.

Yet classic Kung Fu films still have a huge following throughout Africa. So why do some images and figures find a more natural audience than others? This topic is addressed as a blog post, podcast and scholarly article.

“While China’s state-funded, Communist party-run media outlets may struggle to find a mass audience for their content in Africa and elsewhere around the world, a certain genre of Chinese-language movies, by contrast, has been popular for decades. Hong Kong-produced Kung Fu movies, most notably those featuring martial arts legend Bruce Lee, have been staples in Africa’s pirated video bazaars dating back to the 1960s and 70s. Even today, in the DVD markets of Cairo or the bars in Kinshasa or on cable TV channels in Johannesburg, Hong Kong’s martial arts films remain an extremely popular form of entertainment.”

Mount Tobisu Dawn Moon, from the 100 Aspects of the Moon by Yoshitoshi (1839 – 1892).

Anyone interested in martial arts history must check out “Reconsidering Zen, Samurai, and the Martial Arts” by Oleg Benesch (University of York). This article is free to read on line. It would also work well on a syllabus for anyone teaching a martial arts history or martial arts studies course in the next semester or two.

“The notion that Zen had a powerful influence on bushido and the samurai is a construct of the Meiji period, but has shown remarkable resilience. Even after 1945, Zen figures such as Suzuki Daisetsu and Sugawara Gidō (1915-1978) continued to argue for the historicity of the Zen-bushido connection, and this interpretation has remained influential in popular literature and culture in both Japan and abroad up to the present day…..

These same dynamics also tied into the development of popular views of Zen’s relationship to the martial arts. The Zen-samurai relationship was the result of conscious efforts on the part of Zen promoters to gain patriotic legitimacy by engaging closely with the burgeoning bushido discourse. In contrast, the relationship between Zen and the martial arts was less straightforward, and developed from a confluence of several factors. One of these was that, aside from Shinto nationalists and state-sponsored proponents of the “imperial” bushido ideology, promoters of Zen and promoters of the martial arts were two of the most active and effective groups tying their interests to bushido. As a result, both Zen and the martial arts were widely seen as closely related to bushido, an impression that was strengthened when direct links between the two were drawn explicitly in popular works by promoters of both, such as Eugen Herrigel. This became especially important following the discrediting of “imperial” bushido in 1945, when the more fantastical elements were stripped from the ideology, leaving behind a vague association between Zen, the samurai, and the martial arts to help revive bushido in the postwar period and carry it on into the twenty-first century.”

Lightweight but strong armor, wired with computer sensors, may allow for the birth of a new class of weapons based combat sports. Source:

Readers more interested in the modern martial arts and combat sports will also want to give this next article a look. Unfortunately it will require a trip to the library. Niel Gong. 2016. “How to Fight Without Rules: On Civilized Violence in ‘De-Civilized’ Spaces.” Social Problems. First published online by Oxford UP, First published online: 27 September 2015.

“Sociologists have long been concerned with the extent to which “civilizing processes” lead to the increasing salience of rationalized behavioral guidelines and corresponding internal controls, especially in social situations characterized by violence. Following Norbert Elias’s identification of a civilizing process in combat sports, sociologists have debated, though not empirically established, whether emerging “no-holds-barred” fight practices indicate a rupture in the historical civilization of leisure time violence. Using a critical case study of a “no-rules” weapons fighting group, where participants espouse libertarian values and compete in preparation for hypothetical self-defense encounters, I ask how the boundary between violence and social regulation is negotiated in an arena that putatively aims to remove the latter. Drawing on more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork, I specify the mechanisms that moderate action: (1) the cultivation of a code of honor and linked dispositions to replace codified rules; (2) the interactional hesitance that arises when participants lack clear rules or norms to coordinate action; and (3) the importation of external rule sets, such as self-defense law, to simulate the “real” world. Contrary to surface readings of “no-rules” discourse, I conclude that the activity is deeply embedded in larger societal norms of order. Participants’ ethos of honorable self-governance, “thresholds of repugnance” when exposed to serious injury, and aim of transforming emotive, violent reaction into reflective, instrumental action all indicate that the ostensibly unrestrained violence is, in Elias’s technical sense, precisely civilized.”

Luckily everyone has access to academia.edu. There readers can find a recently posted paper on Hing Chao’s efforts to document Hong Kong’s martial arts through motion capture technology. See “Kapturing Kung Fu – Future proofing the Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive” by Hing Chao (International Guoshu Association), Matt Delbridge (City University Hong Kong/ University of Melbourne), Sarah Kenderdine (University of New South Wales), Jeffrey Shaw (City University Hong Kong), Lydia Nicholson (University of Tasmania)

“There are intangible cultural heritage benefits associated with the capture, documentation and preservation of Kung Fu practices in Hong Kong. An international collaborative project between the School of Creative Media, City University Hong Kong and the International Guoshu Association, the Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive (HKMALA), encompasses an analysis of a comprehensive digital strategy of archiving and annotating Hong Kong’s diverse and rich Kung Fu styles and traditions using state-of-the art motion capture data. By using high-definition and high-speed capture sequences, the activity of preservative annotation is transformed. The HKMALA challenges the established tradition of transference and record, to include motion data to visualize speed, torque, torsion and force (momentum and acceleration). Framing the HKMALA as a cultural heritage project also significantly shifts focus from annotation to preservation, enabling the provision of benchmarking in the use of extensive analytic tools for future generations. This approach enables a revitalized method of capture and subsequent transference never undertaken within this discipline. When traditional organisations like the International Guoshu Association embrace tools of Digital Humanities research, they become part of a broader community of intangible cultural heritage archival projects. This active association teaches us about the documentation and preservation of heritage internationally, enabling a richer strategy for future research and preservation projects.”

Left to Right: Doug Farrer, Scott Phillips, Paul Bowman. Source: http://martialartsstudies.blogspot.com/2015/06/conference-2015-and-2016.html

Lastly, it is time to start thinking about possible topics for the July 2017 Martial Arts Studies Conference to be held at the University of Cardiff. Click here to see the Call for Papers.

Confirmed speakers so far include Peter Lorge, the author of Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the 21^st Century, Cambridge UP, Meaghan Morris, who has written profoundly important things on Hong Kong Cinema, and my friend Sixt Wetzler who (among other achievements) is a curator for the Deutsches Klingenmuseum (German Blade Museum).

The central theme of this gathering will be “how to further the academic study of martial arts in the new field of martial arts studies.”

An assortment of Chinese teas. Source: Wikimedia.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group over the last month. And for some reason much of that discussion has focused on weapons. We have talked about all sorts of spears, poles and swords (and even the occasional lightsaber). Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Bernard the Kung Fu Elf, training for a spot on the elite North Pole Alpine Search and Rescue team. (Source: late 1940s Swedish Postcard, Authors personal collection.)

Its That Time of Year Again!

Welcome to Kung Fu Tea’s fifth annual holiday shopping list! These are always some of my favorite posts to pull together. They also serve as a great reminder to continue to make time for martial arts practice and study during the festive seasons. In fact, training can be a great way to deal with the various sorts of stress that the holidays unintentionally bring. And Christmas is a great excuse to stock up on that gear that you have been needing all year.

This year’s shopping list is split into four categories: books, weapons (some sharp), training equipment, and items of cultural interest. I have tried to select items at a variety of price points for each category. Some of the gift ideas are quite reasonable while others are admittedly aspirational. After all, Christmas is a time for dreams, so why not dream big!

Given the emphasis of this blog, most of these ideas pertain to the Chinese martial arts, but I do try to branch out in places. I have also put at least one Wing Chun item in each category. Nevertheless, with a little work many of these ideas could be adapted to fit the interests of just about any martial artist.

As a disclaimer I should point out that I have no financial relationship with any of the firms listed below (except for the part where I plug my own book). This is simply a list of gift ideas that I thought were interesting. It is not an endorsement or a formal product review. Lastly, I would like to thank my friend Bernard the “Kung Fu Elf” (see above) for helping me to brainstorm this list.

WSL Ving Tsun Kuen Hok: An Overview in the Form of Essays. Source: http://www.everythingwingchun.com

Books to Feed Your Head

If you are browsing this list for gift ideas for others, I would start with the books. They are always the right size, they cover an infinite variety of topics and they never cause uncomfortable questions in an airport security line (unlike some of the other items below).

WSL Ving Tsun Kuen Hok: An Overview in the Form of Essays by David Peterson

If you are looking for a discussion of old school Hong Kong Wing Chun with fascinating hands-on content this might be the book for you. And if you know anyone who studies in the Wong Shun Leung lineage (or is just a fan), this might make a great gift. When ordering be sure to note that there is both a less expensive paperback in black and white and a pricier hard cover with color photos to choose from. Click accordingly.

2. Possible Origins: A Cultural History of Chinese Martial Arts, Theater and Religion by Scott Park Phillips

This book will appeal mostly to students of the Northern Chinese arts who are interested in the deep cultural background of these practices, or anyone with an interest in the history of the martial arts. Scott writes from the perspective of a practitioner rather than a professional academic, but he is very interested in how questions of cultural understanding impact our relationship with the martial arts. Also, Wing Chun students who are curious about their art’s operatic connections might find some interesting comparative material here.

3. The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts by Benjamin N. Judkins and Jon Nielson
Are you interested in the history of Wing Chun? Are you looking for an academic yet engaging study of the development of the Chinese martial arts? If so I would be remiss not to mention that my book (co-authored with Jon Nielson) is now out in paperback and can be had for about $27 (or less if you read on a Kindle). For those who would like to give this as a gift the more expensive hard cover edition is still available, and SUNY Press seems to have done a very nice job on the production of both volumes.

4. The Virtual Ninja Manifesto: Fighting Games, Martial Arts and Gamic Orientalism (Martial Arts Studies) by Chris Goto-Jones

What is almost as fun as actually doing martial arts? Playing martial arts themed video games of course. But under what conditions might the lines between these two activities become blurred? When should scholars start to think about and analyze gaming in the same way that we do martial arts? This recent publication in the field of martial arts studies breaks lots of new ground and may be required reading for any Kung Fu Tea readers who are also avid gamers.

5. Mythologies of Martial Arts (Martial Arts Studies) by Paul Bowman

This forthcoming volume is due to ship just in time for Christmas. While a scholarly study, this book is also Bowman’s most accessible effort for readers not trained in critical theory. Organized as a series of short essays covering topics as diverse as martial arts history, humor and and the fine art of fake wrestling, anyone with an interest in martial arts studies will find something that will make them think.

Iron Palm Training Bag. Source: http://www.everythingwingchun.com

Training Gear to Keep You Active
There seems to be a certain seasonal rhythm to the practice of the TCMA. This is especially true if one occasionally practices in outdoor parks, and those spaces are now covered in snow. As such, winter can be a great time to focus more on “indoor” activities, such as the wooden dummy or iron palm training. If you see the later of these in your future you will need two things.

A Good Bag

Dit Dat Jow, waiting for your finishing touch. Source: everythingwingchun.ccom

2. Lots of Dit Dat Jow

And given that you now have plenty of time on your hands, why not brew your own?

Tiger Claw Kicking Shield. Source: https://www.tigerclaw.com/

3. Kicking Shield

One of the things that I have always appreciated about the traditional Asian martial arts is their simplicity. Very little equipment is needed to get a good workout. Still, when practicing with others its nice to have some basic gear. I find that focus mitts and a good kicking shield covers about 90% of what I need for partner work. Nor do you need to spend a fortune on this gear. I have been using Tiger Claws’ basic kicking shield for a couple of years and have been happy with it.

Focus Mitts. Source: https://www.tigerclaw.com/

4. Focus Mitts

Wing Chun guys also spend enough time on punching drills that it is nice to have a set of good curved focus mitts. There are a couple of different styles of mitts that I use for various exercises, but this type is probably my favorite for all around use. Again, a gift like this would see a lot of use throughout the year.

The Sentinel by Ultrasabers.

5. Ultrasabers Sentinel Stunt

Lets face it. Winters can be long and dark, and that might leave you looking for something a little bit different. And if such an activity is fast paced, pop culture themed, and glows, so much the better. Why not try your hand at lightsaber fencing? You can pick up a basic stunt saber without sound effects (the sort that is most often used for martial arts training) for under $70. That should leave you plenty of cash for some lacrosse gloves and a decent fencing mask if you decide that you want to move beyond forms work and try your hand at sparring. Or you if you are looking for something a little fancier, but still suitable for full contact martial arts use, check out the current offerings at JQ Sabers.

A beautiful handmade dummy by Buick Yip. Source: http://www.everythingwingchun.com/

6. Wooden Dummy – Temple Pillar

No Christmas list would be complete without a truly aspirational item. When I was growing up that was always a robot (I am not sure why). Now my ambitions take a slightly different form.

This is one of Buick Yip’s “Temple Pillar” dummies, made from architecturally salvaged Chinese timber. I always thought that the symbolism behind these pieces was particularly fitting, given that the Chinese martial arts themselves are essentially modern creations built on the foundations of older, discarded, cultural patterns. This wonderfully carved testament to the ever evolving nature of Chinese society (and the place of martial arts within it) can be yours for about $1400.

Some really nice poles from Everything Wing Chun.

Weapons – The Cutting Edge

Of course not all weapons cut. The long pole, seen throughout the southern Chinese martial arts, is no less lethal for its lack of an edge. Given my recent post on the pole I thought that this might be the appropriate place to start our weapons wish list.

Solid Hickory, un-tapered, Poles

Traditional long poles, of the type used in the southern Chinese martial arts, can be pretty expensive. Martial artists on a budget (or those looking for shorter, custom sized, poles), might want to check out Purple Heart Armory. In their HEMA section they offer a wide variety of pole weapons in various lengths, styles and woods that may fit your needs. I purchased an eight foot hickory pole from them earlier this year and have been very happy with what I got. Best of all, their prices and shipping rates are pretty reasonable.

2. The Traditional Tapered Pole

Those with a bigger budget and more space will probably want to check out some of the more traditional poles currently on offer at EWC. I was particularly drawn to their selection of Kwan Din Wood poles. These have some great color to them. They are priced at $199 plus $42 for shipping and handling within the continental United States.

A Sparring Jian. Source: http://www.sevenstarstrading.com

3. Sparring Jian by Scott Rodell

Individuals looking to bring a greater degree of reality to their combative blade training within the TCMA might want to check out Scott Rodell’s new jian. Obviously metal blades feel and behave differently from wood, bamboo and synthetic analogues. Hopefully we will see more of these training blades in the coming years. At the moment these swords are priced at $289.

Traditionally shaped Hudiedao. Source: http://traditionalfilipinoweapons.com

4. Traditionally shaped Chinese Hudiedao

Traditional butterfly swords seem to be a topic of perennial interest here at Kung Fu Tea. Of course finding a nice set of antique hudiedao can be difficult and expensive. Nor would I be really comfortable using vintage blades for cutting practice or experimentation. But these knives, made in the Philippines, might fill that niche nicely. Their blades are more similar in shape and profile to some of the 19th century pieces while still being accessible to modern martial artists. They are currently priced at $325 for the set.

Taijiquan in Shanghai, by Paul Souders.

Artistic and Cultural Objects
It is just as important to feed the soul as it is the mind the body. That is why I always try to have a section devoted to the arts in each of these lists. And many of our training spaces could use some better visual art. As such, posters and prints can make wonderful (and not very expensive) gifts.

China, Shanghai, Martial Arts Group Practicing Tai Chi at Dawn by Paul Souders

Paul Souders has a nice photo that can be reproduced in various formats of a group practicing their morning Taijiquan against Shanghai’s skyline. The juxtaposition of the construction of the “traditional” and the “modern” works well in this piece. The price of this image varies widely depending on how it is framed and reproduced, but you can get into it for less than $30.

Students at a Japanese Archery Club. Source: http://faculty.washington.edu/kendo/budo.html

2. Empty Mind Films (One Shot. One Life)

Documentaries also make excellent gifts. Some of my favorites are produced by the team at Empty Mind Films. Of course Kung Fu Tea readers will appreciate their offerings on Wing Chun, Tajiquan and the various Chinese martial arts. But their more recent work on the Japanese martial arts is also very interesting. I Particularly liked One Shot. One Life.

Star Wars Themed Travel Posters.

3. Star Wars Themed Travel Posters

So lets say that you did decide to go for the lightsaber, what sort art would inspire an up and coming Jedi? Check out the Star Wars inspired travel posters over at the Etsy. These are available in lots of different styles from a variety of artists. But for some reason the Hoth posters are always the best.

The Centerline, an original work of art by Brasil Goulart.

4. Centerline by Brasil Goulart (note that this is the original painting, and not a poster)

Those with a larger budget might want to check out some of Brasil Goulart’s recent Wing Chun themed paintings. I am particularly partial to “Centerline.” Original canvases are currently available for $1000-$1500 dollars.

Martial Arts Studies, Issue 2: The Invention of Martial Arts

Best Things in Life Are Free

Before wrapping up this years holiday list it is probably worth pointing out that there is some great stuff out there that will not cost you anything at all. For instance, we are currently preparing the next issue of the journal Martial Arts Studies for release. As always it will be free to read by anyone with an internet connection. T his might be the perfect time get caught up on our back issues.

Alternatively, once you have your lightsaber, be sure to check out the Terra Prime Light Armory, an open source (and very friendly) community dedicated to spreading their art. Or if you are looking for something a little more traditional, did you know that the complete run of Fight Quest can now be found on Youtube? That should make for some great binge watching!

Finally, if you still need help shopping for all of the martial artists on your list consider checking out the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 gift guides.

Sifu Yiannos Christoforou with his dummy. Source: http://www.news.cn

Introduction

While we try to summarize the major stories over the last month, there is always a chance that we may have missed something. If you are aware of an important news event relating to the TCMA, drop a link in the comments section below. If you know of a developing story that should be covered in the future feel free to send me an email.

Its been a while since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

News from all over
Our first story this week has been republished by a couple of English language Chinese news services. It is an interview and photo essay profiling a Wing Chun teacher in Cyprus named Sifu Yiannos Christoforou. (Reader should note that this version of the story has a few additional photographs not found with the first link.) I do not normally report school profiles as there are simply too many of them out there. But I thought that this one was particularly interesting as Sifu Yiannos Christoforou (a student of Philip Bayer) talked about the 2013 financial crisis that gripped the region and how it adversely affected the area’s martial arts culture.

“”The 2013 economic crisis turned things upside down. Some of my students lost their jobs and others had their income slashed and could not afford the fees. As far as I know, at least 10 percent of them went abroad to find a job,” said Christoforou. He told his students who lost their jobs to continue training and pay their fees after they could find a job. “Some of them accepted the offer but many refused out of pride and quitted the academy,” he said.”

Meiyu (R) performs with a tai chi instructor of Shanghai University of Sport in Shanghai, May 2016. [Photo provided by Meiyu]. Soure: China Daily.

The next story, titled “Turkish student pursues martial arts dream in China” was also reported in multiple outlets. It profiles a woman from Turkey who has accepted a Chinese government scholarship to pursue graduate work in the Chinese martial arts. At the moment that she was interviewed she was attempting to decide whether to stay and pursue a PhD, or return to Turkey. As she puts it:

“”Many people in Turkey are learning Chinese martial arts without knowing its culture, and I would like to share with them the stories behind Chinese martial arts after returning home,” said Meiyu.”

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this story was the creation of a subtle juxtaposition between China and the West as competing cultural (rather than simply economic or political) powers. Note the following line: “Meiyu chose to learn Chinese in college after graduating from high school. “Too many people learn English or Spanish, but I did not want to be like them,” she said.” It will be interesting to see whether this sentiment is idiosyncratic, or if its something that we will hear more of in future public diplomacy statements involving the Chinese martial arts.

A brawl broke out at the World Union of Martial Arts Championships in Italy. Source: The Sun.

“It’s a knockout! Brit Kung Fu master ‘Deadly Dicker’ and his three sons quizzed as contest descends into mass brawl,” or so reported the Sun. Apparently tempers flared at a World Union of Martial Arts Championship in Italy leading to a short brawl involving members of the Italian and British teams as well as some spectators. While the police questioned a number of people no arrests were ultimately made. The Sun also reports that the team from the UK ended up winning the tournament.

Students examine Chinese swords that were part of a Confucius Institute martial arts demonstration in Israel. Source: CCTV

Meanwhile CCTV was reporting how “Israelis [students] learn Chinese ways of keeping healthy.” The piece profiled a cultural festival hosted by a local branch of the Confucius Institute. As is so often the case, martial arts and qigong both proved to be major draws.

“There was also a martial arts demonstration performed by children. Chinese martial arts are believed to be both a way of defending against enemies and a way to stay healthy. In another room, some students got to experience the traditional Chinese healing system of Qigong. It is a therapy using deep breathing, meditation and a set of movements to cultivate energy and cure diseases. The aim of the Confucius Institute Day at the University is to help more Israeli people get to know China, get in touch with China, know about the country’s history and culture. To ignite their interest toward China. Today’s event attracted many students, most of which were not Chinese majors,” said Michal Kozlovich, student of Confucius Institute.”

The short video produced for this story is in some ways more interesting than the actual text. Note for instance how the mushrooming of “Confucius Institutes” around the world is framed as an explosion in the demand for knowledge about Chinese culture (which certainly exists) rather than the equally significant decision by the Chinese government to plow huge amounts of funding into these programs (the corresponding supply side of the equation). All in all, an interesting example of public diplomacy in a story about cultural diplomacy.

Chinese wushu students in Dengfeng. Source: The National

Do you remember the 2001 film “Shaolin Soccer?” It looks like a few of the martial arts schools in the area around Shaolin are determined to make that a reality. So why would anyone want to combine kung fu and football? One of the articles to come out on this topic over the last month reported:

“China is investing hugely in football training and has vowed to have 50 million school-age players by 2020, as the ruling Communist party eyes “football superpower” status by 2050. The vast Tagou martial arts school has 35,000 fee-paying boarders, who live in spartan conditions and are put through a rigorous training regime. Some 1,500 of its students, both male and female, have signed up for its new football programme centred on a pristine green Astroturf football pitch where dozens of children play simultaneous five-a-side-games.

“We are responding to the country’s call,” said Sun, a former martial arts champion who took a football coach training course last year. What we want to do … is combine Shaolin martial arts with football and create an original concept,” he added.”

…..Or it could just be that a bunch of people really, really, liked that movie.

Bruce Lee wearing his iconic yellow track suit in “Game of Death.”

The Global Times has had a couple of martial arts features. Both are reprints, but they might be worth checking out if you missed them the first time. First is an interview with Paul Bowman titled “How Bruce Lee helped change the world.” Alternatively you might want to check out “The Ancient Tradition of Chinese Kung Fu.”

Kung Fu has proved to be popular with Kenya’s students. Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com

As is often the case, there were a number of news stories over the last week discussing the growing presence of the Chinese martial arts in Africa. The first of these was a photo-essay titled “Kung Fu is Popular among Kenya’s young.” Meanwhile, in Rwanda no fewer than 20 Kung Fu schools (from a number of regions) headed to the national Championship.

Chinese mixed martial arts fighters to be showcased on TV sports channel broadcast in Africa. Photo: AFP. Source: Asia times.

Of slightly more interest was an article in the Asia Times titled “Chinese cage fighters to be showcased in Africa TV deal.” This piece went on to note:

“ONE Championship, a major Asian promoter of mixed martial arts (MMA), has signed a partnership deal with StarTimes, a Beijing-based media group dedicated to broadcasting Chinese culture in Africa. There is huge potential for growth in Africa and obviously in China where we have focused our efforts,” said ONE Championship chief executive Victor Cui at a press conference in Beijing on Friday.”

Taiji Quan being practiced at Wudang. Source: Wikimedia.

A number of recent headlines have noted that Taijiquan may have benefits for veterans suffering from PTSD. The source of this finding is an article published by Boston University Medical Center and the journal BMJ Open. It should be noted that this study relies on qualitative and self-reported data.

“Veterans with symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who participated in Tai Chi not only would recommend it to a friend, but also found the ancient Chinese tradition helped with their symptoms including managing intrusive thoughts, difficulties with concentration and physiological arousal.”

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story..Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen)..Ph: Jonathan Olley..©Lucasfilm LFL 2016.

Chinese Martial Arts on Film
The big movie news at the moment is the much anticipated release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. While a science fiction film, it is still managing to generate a fair amount of martial arts news. Unsurprisingly much of this has focused on Donnie Yen and his “Force sensitive” (though apparently not “Force wielding”) character Chirrut Imwe. Yen has been interviewed in a number of places recently. Many of the subsequent articles, such as this one by Variety, focus on his attempts to transcend his image as “just” a martial arts star and to gain greater recognition for his acting abilities. While he is playing a martial artist and blind warrior in the upcoming Star Wars film, the hope appears to be that a prominent role in this iconic film series will help him to do that.

Meanwhile the publicity surrounding Felicity Jones’ appearance in the same film appear to be headed in the opposite direction. It has tended to emphasize the amount of (Chinese) martial arts training that was necessary to take on this role. See for instance the following clips of her recent appearance with Jimmy Fallon (who really, really, did not want to get hit in the head). Incidentally, this will be of special interest to Craig Page and anyone else who has been waiting to see the Tonfa make a repeat appearance in the Star Wars universe.

CCTV has been reporting on the various controversies surrounding the Bruce Le bio-pic, Birth of the Dragon. We have discussed the fan reaction to the seeming minimization of Lee’s role in what is ostensibly his own life story in previous news updates. But given CCTV’s (Chinese public TV) role in promoting, and attempting to shape, western perceptions of the Chinese martial arts, it is interesting to note the source where this story is now appearing.

Stephen Chan delivering the conferences opening keynote. Source: http://martialartsstudies.blogspot.com/2015/06/conference-2015-and-2016.html

Martial Arts Studies

There are a number of announcements for students of martial arts studies. Lets start with recently released books. First, Paul Bowman’s Mythologies of Martial Arts (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) is now shipping and ready for your Christmas stocking. The advance copies of the book look great. You can read more about this release here.

Next, Sara Delamont, Neil Stephens and Claudio Campos’ ethnographic study Embodying Brazil: An ethnography of diasporic capoeira (Routledge) is due to ship in early January. So get your preorder in now, or bug your library to order a copy.

The practice of capoeira, the Brazilian dance-fight-game, has grown rapidly in recent years. It has become a popular leisure activity in many cultures, as well as a career for Brazilians in countries across the world including the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. This original ethnographic study draws on the latest research conducted on capoeira in the UK to understand this global phenomenon. It not only presents an in-depth investigation of the martial art, but also provides a wealth of data on masculinities, performativity, embodiment, globalisation and rites of passage.

Centred in cultural sociology, while drawing on anthropology and the sociology of sport and dance, the book explores the experiences of those learning and teaching capoeira at a variety of levels. From beginners’ first encounters with this martial art to the perspectives of more advanced students, it also sheds light on how teachers experience their own re-enculturation as they embody the exotic ‘other’.

Embodying Brazil: An Ethnography of Diasporic Capoeira is fascinating reading for all capoeira enthusiasts, as well as for anyone interested in the sociology of sport, sport and social theory, sport, race and ethnicity, or Latin-American Studies.

Colin McGuire has just posted a recent article on Academia.edu titled “The Rhythm of Combat: Understanding the Role of Music in Performances of Traditional Chinese Martial Arts and Lion Dance.” Its abstract sounds fascinating:

Toronto’s Hong Luck Kung Fu Club has promulgated martial arts, lion dance and percussion music since 1961. Drawing on my Fieldwork there, this paper argues that these practices structure—and are structured by—a combative approach to rhythm. Students begin with martial arts and train without music, but percussion accompanies public demonstrations, creating an unfamiliar situation that I position as a distinct phase of the transmission process. Martial arts performances are both fuelled by musical energy and challenged by the requirement of remaining asynchronous to it. Lion dancers, however, treat drum patterns like signals coordinating manoeuvres on the performance battlefield.

On a lighter note, I was recently interviewed by Itamar Zadoff, an up and coming graduate student who works with Meir Shahar, for the “No Wax Needed” podcast. I was really happy with the way that this interview turned out, and we had a chance to discuss a number of current and upcoming projects. Click here for a wide ranging conversation on a number of topics related to martial arts studies.

Those more interested in primary texts will want to head over to the Brennan Translation Blog to see the newly released edition of Xu Taihe’s 1926 Fundamentals of the Southern Boxing Arts. As always, the front matter of these Republic Era texts are full of fascinating information. These translations are free to read or download.

Where the magic happens. Speaker Council meeting of our commission at the German Sport University Cologne – planning for the 2016 conference. Source: https://www.facebook.com/dvskommissionkuk

The videos from the October 2016 “Martial Arts and Society” conference, held at the German Sports University of Cologne, are now up on Youtube. As one would expect most of these are in German, but a number of English language papers were also presented at this years event. Head on over and check it out!

Alex Channon love’s fighting but hates violence.

Last, but by no means least, my friend Alex Channon and Christopher R. Matthews are getting their new project, “Love Fighting, Hate Violence” under way. I know that they have been laying the groundwork for this for a while. Their new blog is now up and running and it has a number of fresh posts by names you might recognize. Be sure to check it out and learn more about this important campaign.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group over the last month. We have talked about lightsabers, the end of civilization and our favorite kung fu training montages. Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of Kung Fu Tea’s readers. Thanks so much for your support and feedback over the last five years. I think that Santa left me one or two martial arts related items under the tree. Hopefully he did the same for you.

We will be returning to our normal posting schedule after the first week of January, but I might have one or two short articles to go up before then, so check back often. If, however, you find yourself looking for some long-reads over the holiday, consider checking out one of these classic posts:

2012: Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Martial Arts: Another Approach to Globalization and Chinese Martial Studies.

2013: “Fighting Styles” or “Martial Brands”? An economic approach to understanding “lost lineages” in the Chinese Martial Arts.

2014: 1928: The Danger of Telling a Single Story about the Chinese Martial Arts

2015: Yim Wing Chun and the “Primitive Passions” of Southern Kung Fu

2016: Letting ‘Real’ Kung Fu Die: Paradoxes of the Traditional Chinese Martial Arts as Intangible Cultural Heritage

Bruce Lee and James Lee at a Christmas Party!

New Years fireworks display at Panama City Beach. Source: Visit Panama City Beach.

Happy New Year!
New Years is always a good time to sit back and reflect on recent events. Of course it is hard not to note that public opinion on 2016 (at least here in the United States) has been decidedly mixed. Still, it has been an interesting year for the Chinese martial arts and a great one for Martial Arts Studies. We have seen quite a bit of reporting on Kung Fu in the popular press and even the emergence of some important trends.

Below is my personal countdown of the 12 news stories that had the greatest impact on the Western Chinese martial arts community in 2016. While some of these stories made a big splash during the year, others were less well reported. A few are general patterns that appeared over the course of many months and one or two are just for fun. Collectively they remind us of where we have been and point to a few places that we might be headed towards in the coming year.

Sifu Allen Lee, 1948-2016. Source: http://www.wingchunnyc.com/

12. Passing of Sifu Allen Lee

Our first Wing Chun related story is a sad one. As is customary with our New Year’s posts here at Kung Fu Tea, we begin by taking a moment to remember the Masters, instructors and friends that we have lost over the course of the last year. As always there are too many individual passings to note them all. Yet the loss of Sifu Allan Lee, of Wing Chun NYC, may serve to inspire us to look back with gratitude for those who came before. Lee was a personal student of both Ip Man and Lok Yiu and his contributions to the Wing Chun community in North America will be sorely missed. You can read more about his various contributions here.

Wooden Dummies for sale at a Costco store in Japan.

11. Costco was selling Wooden Dummies in Japan
Most of the stories that get included in these yearly round-ups fall into one of two categories. Either they are shocking events (gratefully we had relatively few of those this year), or long term trends. But to be totally honest, I selected this story as it was one of the most amusing things that I came across in 2016. Following the successful release of Ip Man 3 (discussed below), a couple of Costco locations in Japan began to carry Wing Chun style wooden dummies in their fitness section.

How do you know when a martial art has gone mainstream? When you can purchase your training equipment directly from the Walton family. Needless to say I called my local Costco to see if they would be stocking dummies any time soon but, alas, this seems to have been limited to Japan. Still, it is a pretty graphic illustration of the impact that the recent Ip Man films have had on the global spread of Wing Chun.

Of course there were many other Wing Chun related news stories in 2016. Most of them were in the form of instructor and school profiles. But if your are looking for something a little more substantive, why don’t you check out this news update from March of 2016?

Xing Xi pracctices ar the Zen Kung Fu Center in Beijing. Source: Reuters.

10. Increased public discussion of “Kung Fu Diplomacy”

In the 2015 countdown of top news stories we noted the spike in news coverage of events related to the use of the traditional Chinese martial arts in efforts related to “public” and “cultural diplomacy.” Simply put, public diplomacy is any attempt by members of a foreign state (including, but not limited to, government officers) to change the way that their policies, people or culture is viewed by foreign populations. Some experts have likened this to the building and maintenance of a “national brand,” though members of the diplomatic corp often bristle at the suggestion that they are involved in a simple branding exercise. Even a brief review of the public news sources coming out of China quickly reveals that the Chinese martial arts are increasingly viewed as an excellent tool to build links with citizens in other countries and to spread the message of China’s “peaceful rise.”

What was a steady stream of stories last year became a torrent in 2016 (see here, here and here for a few of the many examples we discussed). What was particularly interesting to me about the number of these was how transparent various foreign service officers were when discussing what they were attempting to accomplish with the global promotion of the Chinese martial arts. In an article on a major event in Nigeria we find quotes such as this.

“Also speaking, the Culture Counsellor in the Embassy of China, Mr. Yan Xaingdong said the Wushu championship was set up to encourage a sustainable relationship between China and Nigeria through sports.”

Senior woman doing Tai Chi exercise to keep her joints flexible, isolated.

9. Science says Taijiquan is good for you.
Taijiquan practice is good for your health, in a surprising number of ways. Whether it was balance in senior citizens, arthritis, chronic neck pain, depression, or cardio-vascular health, the last 12 months have seen a barrage of articles in the popular press as to how the practice of Taijiquan (almost always in its guise as a low impact exercise routine, rather than as a combative martial art) is good for your health. It should be noted that many of these articles are presenting the findings of preliminary studies on small groups of subjects. Others rely on self-reported (and hence subjective) data. But there does seem to be growing enthusiasm for the use of Taijiquan (in any of its many forms) as a treatment for a number of chronic conditions. Of course nothing about these findings would come as a surprise to the reformers who sought to promote the health benefits of Taijiquan in early 20th century China!

Motion capture technology being used to document the traditional Chinese Martial Arts. Source: The Facebook group of the International Guoshu Association.

8. International Guoshu Association Uses Motion Capture Technology to Preserve and Document Southern Chinese Kung Fu

While not technically a new project, 2016 saw a number of stories reporting on the continuing efforts of the International Guoshu Association’s efforts to preserve southern Chinese Kung Fu through the use of advanced motion sensor technologies. These efforts are the brain child of Hing Chao, who was also the creator of the short lived (but excellent) Journal of Chinese Martial Studies. (Personally I am still hoping that this publication will be resurrected at some point in the future). Much of the work in the last year seems to have focused on the region’s rich Hakka fighting traditions. You can read more about these efforts here and here.

Even more interesting, in my opinion, has been the series of talks, seminars and short conferences that the IGA has helped to host and promote at various Universities around Hong Kong over the last year. Generally speaking these events do not generate as much press coverage, so they might fly under the radar. But a number of them have looked very interesting.

Master Li, a practioner of “Body Shrinking” kung fu. Source: Reuters.

7. The Death of Kung Fu!

Still, these efforts do not appear to have convinced everyone of the traditional Chinese Martial Art’s long term viability. Many news stories came out in the last year predicting their imminent demise (including this one in the NY Times).

Its worth pointing out that this refrain has a long history in Chinese martial culture. As early as the Ming Dynasty writers like General Yu Dayou were lamenting the commercialization and loss of Shaolin Kung Fu. Texts from the early 20th century also decried the decline of the Chinese martial arts…which is rather ironic as these practices, as we know them today, are very much a product of the early 20th century (and to a lesser extent the late Ming). All of which is to say, worries about the imminent death of Kung Fu seems to have been one of the main social forces that actually drove their creation in the first place.

Those interested in the more modern forms of this argument might want to start by checking out this this article here. It also appears that not even Kung Fu in Chinese cinema is safe from the threat of extinction.

A close up of Donnie Yen in a cast photo for Rogue One. Source: Starwars.com

6. The Year that the Chinese Martial Arts Officially Took Over Star Wars
Regular readers of Kung Fu Tea have no doubt noticed my recent interest in Lightsaber Combat. It seems an increasing number of martial artists feel the same way. And why not? 2016 was the year that the Chinese martial arts officially invaded the Star War’s universe.

The presence of some degree of martial arts in these stories is nothing new. Lucas has been quite open about the fact that he was greatly influenced (via the Japanese film movement) by the allure of the samurai. Fight choreographers on the original films included Olympic fencers. Nor can we forget that Wushu champion Ray Park set an incredibly high bar for all future lightsaber choreography when he was tapped to play Darth Maul. While originally intended to fill a limited role in the Star War’s universe, Maul has since become a fan favorite through his appearances in various novels and animated series.

As I have argued in other places, the Star Wars films have always had a lot in common with martial arts stories, and this affinity has become steadily more pronounced in each new iteration of the franchise. But 2016 was the year that it all broke into the open. While “The Force Awakens” was released in the final weeks of 2015, it was during early months of 2016 that the tonfa wielding storm trooper FN-2199 became a viral sensation. It was later revealed that this trooper was played by Liang Yang, another very accomplished practitioner of the Chinese arts.

Things were really shaken up by Donnie Yen’s performance as Chirrut Imwe, a blind monk (apparently sensitive to the Force but apparently not able to manipulate it like a Jedi) in “Rogue One.” This was an important performance from the perspective of the evolving Star Wars canon as Yen introduced an entirely new group to the story line with a different (and more relatable) relationship with the Force than the wizardry exhibited by the likes of Yoda or Darth Vader. From a professional perspective Yen has noted that he was given great latitude in crafting Chirrut’s screen presence and sought to bring identifiable Chinese values to the role. He even got to arrange his own fight choreography. It is thus fitting that of the various martial artists who have contributed to the Star War’s project over the decades, Yen’s character was the first to make a substantive contribution to the dialog and philosophy of the films. And he managed to do all of this without a lightsaber. Apparently they were not a favored weapon of the “Guardians of the Whills.”

Bruce Lee facing off against Wong Jack Man in George Nolfi’s biopic, Birth of the Dragon.

5. Bruce Lee Bio-Pic Crashes and Burns Amid Fan Accusations of “White-Washing”
The latest installment in the Star Wars series was not the only film making waves among martial arts fans. George Nolfi’s Bruce Lee bio-pic also generated a lot of talk. Unfortunately very little of it was positive. After seeing early trailers for the film fans accused the director of essentially writing Lee out of his own life story so that the camera could focus more fully on its white narrator (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Steve McQueen). That fact that this was done with no apparent sense of irony led many viewers to surmise that in fact Nolfi was not all that familiar with Lee’s actual career or the problems that he faced in Hollywood. Wong Jack Man was also re-imagined as a full-on Shaolin Monk because…why not. In the end accusations of “white-washing” and cultural appropriation overshadowed any other discussion of the film. Some of the more in-depth reporting on this film seems to suggest that martial arts audiences are increasingly demanding different sorts of stories from the studios.

Shannon Lee, the daughter of Bruce Lee. Source: LA Weekly.

4. The Rise of Shannon Lee
It is never surprising when Bruce Lee makes a list of “top Chinese martial arts related stories.” He is still featured on the cover of Black Belt Magazine so frequently that it is difficult to tell when there is a new issue. But lately it is his daughter Shannon who has been making waves. Through the Bruce Lee Foundation Shannon has launched a number of programs to sustain and spread her father’s legacy. These include efforts as diverse as a podcast dedicated to his philosophical views, scholarship programs and plans to create a permanent Bruce Lee museum. But in the last year an increasing number of profiles have focused on Shannon herself as a savvy promoter of her father’s memory and brand. Apparently we should be looking for some new releases from the Bruce Lee Foundation early in 2017.

Now With Kung Fu Grip! How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America. By Jared Miracle. McFarland & Company (March 31, 2016)

3. The Year Chinese Martial Arts History Went Mainstream
The Chinese martial arts have always inspired a prodigious amount of folklore and mythology. Carefully researched history, on the other hand, has been more difficult to find. And the audience for such works have largely been academic rather than popular. But over the last few years there have been hopeful signs that a new trend is a foot.

All of that culminated in 2016 with the release of a couple of high quality, well researched, projects that aimed to spread the actual history of the Chinese martial arts to the masses. Perhaps the most important of these were Charlie Russo’s Striking Distance: Bruce Lee & the Dawn of Martial Arts in America, and Jared Miracle’s Now with Kung Fu Grip! How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America. Both works were published by solid academic presses. Yet it is also clear that they aspire to bring a more accurate (and in many ways more interesting) vision of the history of these fighting systems to the general public. Readers wanting a more detailed discussion of these efforts can find my reviews of them here and here.

This trend towards the popularization of serious research was not confined to the world of publishing. A major documentary titled The Professor: Tai Chi’s Journey West, examined the legendary New York City period of Cheng Man-Ching career. Readers can find reviews of this work here and here.

Or if you are more interested in the early history of Taijiquan in the West why not check out this post profiling the contributions of Gerda Geddes and Sophia Delza? And did I mention that there is a new book on Wing Chun and the Southern Chinese Martial Arts that released a paperback edition earlier this year? Or maybe you need free translations of important primary sources? All in all, this is a great time to research the actual history of the Chinese martial arts.

A still from Ip Man 3. Source: The Hollywood Reporter.

2. Ip Man 3 Packs a Punch
If you find yourself wondering whether we are living in Donnie Yen’s decade, just take a look at some of the press coverage surrounding Ip Man 3. While this film was released in Hong Kong in the final weeks of December, 2015, it had a huge impact on the public discussion of the Chinese martial arts in the early months of 2016. In addition to the normal reviews this film inspired more substantive discussions in the popular press. See for instance Master William Kwok’s thought on whether its OK for Wing Chun students to love these films despite their wildly creative relationship with the very recent past.

More interesting was an article by Marie-Alice McLean-Dreyfus, who advanced a geopolitical take on the film. Drawing on the work on Dr Merriden Varrall she argued that Ip Man 3 closely reflected the world view and foreign policy positions of the Chinese government. Specifically, she argued that audiences in China are likely to view the film as a metaphor for the current conflict between China and other states for influence and access to disputed regions of the South China Sea. Her discussions included a few obvious misreadings of the film (e.g., Ip Man lives in Hong Kong during the 1950s, not Foshan). It also wasn’t clear to me that audiences in Hong Kong would approach what to them would be a distinctly local story through the same set of interpretive lens as viewers in Beijing or Shanghai. Still, its interesting to see the sorts of discussions that Martial Arts Studies promotes appearing in a wider variety of publications.

Unfortunately the film’s release in China was marred with financial improprieties that may lead to new industry wide regulations regarding the reporting of ticket sales. Nevertheless, between his recent successes in the Star Wars and Ip Man franchises, it looks like Donnie Yen is well positioned to make the leap towards more dramatic roles.

African students studying at the Shaolin Temple.

1. Kung Fu’s African Moment
We have now reached our top news story of 2016. After carefully reviewing the international coverage of the Chinese martial arts, it is evident that Kung Fu is enjoying a moment of marked popularity across Africa.

In a sense this is not surprising. Prof. Stephen Chan, among others, has noted that the Asian martial arts have been an important symbol within the region’s popular culture since the 1970s. But increased economic growth and deepening ties with China has allowed an unprecedented number of local students to take up the study of various types of Chinese martial arts.

Careful readers will have already noted that the Chinese government has enthusiastically deployed “Kung Fu diplomacy” across the region. This often takes the form of hosting tournaments, setting up local classes, and even instituting exchange programs where aspiring African martial artists can travel to China for additional training. Still, not all of this interest can be explained through external subsidies and “supply side” push. The Chinese government has produced quite a bit of media and cultural material for the African market. Much of it generates relatively little popular interest. Yet Kung Fu films from the 1970s (not produced or distributed by the government) remain incredibly popular.

This raises a critical question. Is the Chinese government leading, or following, the martial arts trend? One thing, however, is clear. The influence of the Chinese martial arts is set to expand throughout the region for years to come.

Wong You Kau and students in Hong Kong. Source: Reuters.

Its been a while since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

A “warrior monk” and family. Source: Houston Chronicle

News from all Over

If you are married to an American woman and have children, can you still be considered a “Shaolin Warrior monk?” That is one of the questions that comes up in an article titled “A Warrior Monk Makes Houston Home,” published in the Houston Chronicle. The entire piece is full of fascinating description and detail. It even contains a frank discussion of the visa problems that Chinese martial arts teachers face, and a look back on the early origins of the touring Shaolin shows which are now relatively common. There is lots of good stuff to think about in this article (particularly if you are part of the overseas Shaolin community) though, as always, I think that the most interesting thing is how the press chooses to talk about Chinese martial artists. All in all this is a very nice description of an important aspect of the modern Kung Fu community.

Kung Fu training at the Shaolin Temple. Source: Global Times.

Of course Houston might not be the exotic destination of which you have been dreaming. Perhaps you are looking for some of that spectacular Shaolin photography that we have all come to know and love? No problem. The Global Times has you covered!

A Shaolin martial arts school housed in an abandoned railway station, London. Source: The Londonist.

Or perhaps you are looking for a uniquely urban Shaolin experience. In that case be sure to check out the Londonists profile of a Shaolin school that is housed in an abandoned railway station. As I have mentioned before, I don’t normally post school profiles unless they include some additional item of interest. There are just too many of them to sort through. But this location certainly caught my eye. It is also a fun read. If there are readers in London with a camera, I would love to get a some pictures of this place!

Continuing on with the Shaolin theme.

Unless you have been living under a rock you are probably aware that Donald Trump has recently been sworn in as the President of the United States. Controversy surrounding that fact inspired one of the larger conversations about the martial arts to take place in the public sphere over of the last few weeks.

This odd confluence of events all began when Meryl Streep, speaking at the Golden Globes, attempted to throw mixed martial arts (and apparently professional sports more generally) under the proverbial bus in an attempt to defend the cultural value of Hollywood films. In case you missed it, her exact quote was as follows: ““Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if we kick ’em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”

This same quote can be found at the top of an editorial in the Washington Post titled “The Martial Arts are Arts.” It set out to restore the honor and reputation of the Asian martial arts, while arguing that these practices are “arts” in the true sense of the word. Unfortunately the editorial (which apparently drew rather heavily from a 2007 law review article) quickly degenerated in to rehash of pretty much every myth about the martial arts imaginable. The author started with Bodhidharma creating Shaolin kung fu, proceeded to disarmed Okinawans inventing karate to defeat the Samurai and then took an extended detour through Zen and Japanese archery.

One would hope that the general caliber of our discussion of martial arts history had improved since 2007. If nothing else the editorial is a nice illustration of the fact that what is said about the martial arts generally tells us vastly more about our own Western values and fantasies than anything about their actual origins. Streep’s off-hand comment probably deserved some push-back from the larger martial arts community, but we would have been better served by something a bit more grounded.

A shorter and more focused rebuttal was published in the Northwest Asian Weekly. It pointed out that some of those immigrants and outsiders that Streep was attempting to defend were in fact central to the creation and the promotion of MMA and other martial arts. Bruce Lee as the “godfather of MMA” was a central aspect their argument.

Master Li Tin Loy of the Chow Ka Southern Praying Mantis system in a Hong Kong Part. Source: Time

Chow Ka Southern Praying Mantis Master Li Tin-loy performs a set at a park in Hong Kong in 2016. Photo by the International Guoshu Association. Source: Time

“The Last Stand of the Southern Praying Mantis: Preserving Hong Kong’s Vanishing Martial Arts.” This somewhat dire headline can be found at the top of an extensive article in Time magazine that all students of southern Chinese martial arts will want to check out.

As one might expect, it discusses Hing Chao’s efforts to digitally record various types of Hakka Kung Fu in an attempt to preserve them for posterity. But there is a lot more going on in this article. Readers will find interesting local history, a discussion of immigration’s adverse impact on some of the region’s martial arts, and clear evidence of how the “intangible cultural heritage” discourse is shaping the way that masters think about their art. There were even some rumblings about a possible “Chinese martial studies center” in Hong Kong at some point in the future (which would be awesome)! I was even surprised to find a link in the article that led me back to an early essay that I posted right here at Kung Fu Tea. This piece is certainly worth checking out, and makes a fascinating counterpoint to the relatively low information discussion published in the Washington Post.

Readers should also note that there is a link to a short video on the lives of MMA fighters in Beijing embedded in this page that is also worth watching. Finally, a shorter article focused only on the motion capture technology being used by the International Guoshu Association can be found here.

A Taijiquan class in Shanghai. Source: The Shanghai Daily.

The Shanghai Daily recently ran a brief feature on Taijiquan. It discusses the health benefits of the art, but also spends a bit more time than one might expect on its history (while reviewing a couple of theories it ultimately favors the Chen Wangting school). This is clearly an introductory piece for the paper’s English speaking audience, but its nicely executed.

africans-take-on-chinese-entertainment-market

Source: African Business Magazine

We have looked at a number of public and cultural diplomacy articles profiling the promotion of the Chinese martial arts in Africa. There is certainly some of that in the current piece, titled “Africans take on China’s entertainment market.” But what I really liked about this article (published in African Business) was that it illustrated a bilateral exchange of art, culture and dance and noted the impact that Africans are having on Chinese markets. Theoretically this is important as there is a debate in the public diplomacy literature as to who the relevant player are in these sorts of exchanges. Should we only be looking at more or less official government attempts to sway public perception, or is “public diplomacy” something that happens much more effectively when it is carried about by NGOs and private citizens? What is the value of cultural exchange directly between “the people?” This article is interesting as it begins to move into some of that territory.

Mixed Martial Artist Angela Lee. Source :http://news.asiaone.com

Our next article provides a glimpse into the different ways that MMA might be evolving in China (and Asia more generally) than what we have previously seen with the UFC in the West. According to Victor Cui it is all a matter of “cultural values.” One suspects that there quite a bit more to the UFC’s failure to penetrate the Chinese media markets than that. But it is a valuable reminder of the power of social expectations to shape any newly emerging hand combat institutions.

Ask One Championship chief executive officer Victor Cui how his mixed martial arts (MMA) organization maintains its superiority in Asia over rivals Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

His answer is simple: Just look at the fighters’ post-match conduct.

Last month, after beating Ronda Rousey, UFC bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes infamously said: “F*** Ronda Rousey. Now she is going to retire and go do movies.”

In contrast, Cui pointed to how Mei Yamaguchi responded after losing to Angela Lee in the atomweight title bout last May as the way One Championships sets itself apart.

“First thing they do after going to war with each other over five rounds – they hug. Mei walked up to Angela and said, ‘You’re going to be a great champion’,” said Cui in a conference call with local and international media.

“Respect, loyalty, humility and dedication – these are values Asian fans want to see in their heroes.

“In the west, the sport is about blood, guts, machismo and disrespecting your opponent. In Asia, we are completely opposite.

China’s elite bodyguards are struggling to find enough rich people to protect. Many Wushu academies have, for years, produced students who go on to become soldiers, police officers and, more recently, private security personal. But, as this article in Time magazine notes, a slowing economy and the accelerating “anti-corruption campaigns” is putting the breaks on this once fast growing industry. This may be a potentially important observation for anyone interested in China’s broader “martial culture.”

A close up of Donnie Yen in a cast photo for Rogue One. Source: Starwars.com

Have you been wondering how Donnie Yen’s performance in Rogue One was received in China? This is, after all, one of the few markets in which the Star Wars franchise has faced substantial headwinds in recent years. When The Force Awakens came out Chinese viewers were notably underwhelmed, but that film still managed to take in $53 million USD on its opening weekend.

Ticket sales number are in (free of the inflation that has plagued these measures in past years), and things are looking ok. According to the LA Times:

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” topped the charts last week, raking in $30.6 million in its first three days, according to consulting firm Artisan Gateway.

Lucasfilm’s epic adventure film, which stars Felicity Jones and Diego Luna alongside Chinese actors Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen, received high praise from Chinese moviegoers: It garnered 7.5 out of 10 on the fan rating site Douban.

Reviewers applauded the performances and depictions of their fellow countrymen.”

Of course, there are different ways of reading those same numbers. While Rogue One topped the box-office, overall it was still a slow weekend. Other news outlets looked at the same numbers and came to the conclusion that 1) the movie fell well short of Hollywood’s expectations and 2) favorable reviews notwithstanding, Chinese viewers could not really connect with Donnie Yen’s character, and they certainly didn’t care about the rest of the ill-fated crew. So maybe Star Wars is still in for a bumpy ride in China. Then again, China’s entire movie industry seems to be entering a period of contraction and readjustment. In some ways its hard to evaluate exactly what these numbers mean in the current environment.

Martial Arts Studies

Journals:

Issue 3 of Martial Arts Studies is now available, including seven original research articles and four reviews of recent books. Read it for free here. Wondering where to start? You can find a quick summary of each of the articles in the opening editorial. Or, if you are fan of the Ip Man movies, why not just skip right to Wayne Wong treatment of “authenticity” and “combativity” in Donnie Yen’s performance? His paper is one of the best things written on the media image of Wing Chun to date. Alternatively, those following the ongoing debate on how best to define the martial arts will probably want to check out Paul Bowman’s paper, “The Definition of Martial Arts Studies.”

Acta Periodica Duellatorum (a journal dedicated to the scholarly study of the Historic European Martial Arts) also has a new issue out, which includes must read articles by Eric Burkart and Sixt Wetzler. They will be of interest to all students of martial arts studies. Be sure to take a look at both!

Eric Burkart (left) and Sixt Wetzler engaging in a frank exchange of ideas at the 2016 Martial Arts Studies Conference at the University of Cardiff.

Conferences and Other Research:

You will need to register soon to qualify for the early bird discount for the 3^rd Annual 2017 Martial Arts Studies Conference at Cardiff University. Peter Lorge, Meaghan Morris, and Sixt Wetlzer, among others, have already been confirmed as speakers. If you are interested in presenting your own research please see our Call for Papers.

Readers may also be interested in an upcoming conference sponsored by the International Martial Arts and Combat Sports Scientific Society in Osaka, Japan. There is still some time to plan for this one. The conference is scheduled for September 6^th-8^th, and abstracts need to be submitted between May 20^th and June 20^th.

Do you teach a self-defense class? If so Mario Staller and Swen Körner (German Sports University of Cologne) are carrying out research into self-defense coaching and they need your help conducting a scientific survey. The survey does not take long to complete and your cooperation would be very much appreciated. Feel free to pass the link along.

New Books:

Sara Delamont, Neil Stephens, Claudio Campos book, Embodying Brazil: An ethnography of diasporic capoeira (Routledge. 244 Pages. $147 HC, $57 Kindle) has just been released and is now shipping from the publisher. Obviously students of capoeira will be interested in this volume, but the authors have addressed a number of subjects of much broader concern throughout the martial arts studies literature. Here is the publisher’s abstract:

The practice of capoeira, the Brazilian dance-fight-game, has grown rapidly in recent years. It has become a popular leisure activity in many cultures, as well as a career for Brazilians in countries across the world including the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. This original ethnographic study draws on the latest research conducted on capoeira in the UK to understand this global phenomenon. It not only presents an in-depth investigation of the martial art, but also provides a wealth of data on masculinities, performativity, embodiment, globalisation and rites of passage.

Centred in cultural sociology, while drawing on anthropology and the sociology of sport and dance, the book explores the experiences of those learning and teaching capoeira at a variety of levels. From beginners’ first encounters with this martial art to the perspectives of more advanced students, it also sheds light on how teachers experience their own re-enculturation as they embody the exotic ‘other’.

Embodying Brazil: An Ethnography of Diasporic Capoeira is fascinating reading for all capoeira enthusiasts, as well as for anyone interested in the sociology of sport, sport and social theory, sport, race and ethnicity, or Latin-American Studies.

Paul Bowman’s most recent book Mythologies of Martial Arts (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016, $39.95 paperback) is also shipping. This one seems destined to become a standard theoretical guidepost for the field.

What do martial arts signify today? What do they mean for East-West cross cultural exchanges? How does the representation of martial arts in popular culture impact on the wide world? What is authentic practice? What does it all mean?

From Kung Fu to Jiujitsu and from Bruce Lee to The Karate Kid, Mythologies of Martial Arts explores the key myths and ideologies in martial arts in contemporary popular culture. The book combines the author’s practical, professional and academic experience of martial arts to offer new insights into this complex, contradictory world. Inspired by the work of Roland Barthes in Mythologies, the book focusses on the signs, signifiers and practices of martial arts globally. Bringing together cultural studies, film studies, media studies, postcolonial studies with the emerging field of martial arts studies the book explores the broader significance of martial arts in global culture. Using an accessible yet theoretically sophisticated style the book is ideal for students, scholars and anyone interested in any type of martial art.

Lastly, Udo Moenig’s volume Taekwondo: From a Martial Art to a Martial Sport (Routledge, 2016, $54 Paperback) has been released in a new paperback edition. This is great news. I quite enjoyed this work and hopefully it will find a broader audience in paperback.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the historical, political, and technical evolution of taekwondo. Many of the supposedly ‘traditional’ and ‘ancient’ Korean cultural elements attached to taekwondo are, in fact, remnants of East Asia’s modernization drive, and largely inherited from the Japanese martial arts. The current historical portrayal has created an obstacle to a clear understanding of the history of taekwondo, and presents problems and contradictions in philosophy and training methodology. Using rich empirical data, including interviews with leading figures in the field, this book brings together martial arts philosophy with an analysis of the technical aspects and the development of taekwondo, and provides a detailed comparison of karate and taekwondo techniques. It debunks nationalistic mythology surrounding taekwondo to provide a reinterpretation of taekwondo’s evolution.

Chinese tea set. Source: Wikimedia.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group over the last month. We have talked about Hong Kong Cinema, the Southern Long Pole and pedagogy in Krav Maga training. Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Spring is the season for sharpening your Kung Fu. Source: Shanghai Daily.

Its been way too long since our last update so there is a lot to be covered in today’s post. Let’s get to the news!

Bruce Lee fighting a room full of Japanese martial arts students in “Fists of Fury.” This scene later inspired the “Dojo Fight” in Wilson Ip’s 2008 Ip Man biopic.

News from All Over

You don’t have to be a student of Cultural Studies to notice that Bruce Lee’s films carry some very specific political subtexts. They became an inspiration for a number of communities that have struggled with the legacies of racial, ethnic and social marginalization. Lee’s memory has also been invoked directly within Hong Kong politics.

One recent incident, reported in the South China Morning Post, caught my attention. John Tsang, a candidate in the election for Hong Kong’s chief executive, recently promised that if elected he would move to name a street or public place after the Little Dragon.

It goes without saying that many of Hong Kong’s martial artists want to see one of the city’s most famous sons honored in some way. And given the number of tourists that Lee inspires on a yearly basis, its a bit odd that we have not already seen something like this. Yet in this case Tsang’s campaign promise seems to have been an opening gambit for him to address his youth growing up in the United States, the racism that he personally faced, and the many ways in which Lee (who he has discussed previously) influenced him. Given Lee’s growing importance as a unifying symbol of Hong Kong identity, it was probably only a matter of time until he was openly invoked in the area’s political campaigns. Still, Tsang’s discussion is worth checking out, regardless of whether you are political scientist (like me) or just a fellow Bruce Lee fan.

Shi Yongxin (L), current abbot of the Shaolin Temple, presents a sculpture of Bodhidharma to Professor Charles Mattera of United Studios of Self Defense (USSD) from the United States.

Our next article is also somewhat political in nature, but in a different way. The Financial Times recently ran a short story titled “China clears Shaolin temple’s ‘CEO monk’ of corruption.” Upon reading a little more closely the first thing that I noticed was that it was actually the local government that cleared Shi Yongxin in their investigation. Needless to say, as the single most valuable tourist attraction in the region the Shaolin Temple has always been somewhat entangled with the local administration. Still, this story appears to have been widely circulated in China and may be enough to quiet the concerns that erupted last year about the Abbot’s lavish lifestyle and growing commercial empire. From my perspective the most interesting aspect of this story is where it was reported. Once again, it is a fascinating moment in history when we find the Financial Times doing detailed reporting on events at the Shaolin Temple!

Pretty much every long-time kung fu practitioner whom I have met has an opinion on the iconic Feiyue sneakers, favored by Shaolin Monks and middle school students across China. These opinions seem to run both hot and cold. Some people love the simple, durable, canvas sneakers, and others have had bad experiences with them. A recent controversy involving a French firm and multiple Chinese manufacturers sheds some light on the wide variety of loosely associated companies that are responsible for making the shoes and why the the quality of batches may vary considerably.

From a business perspective, this is really a story about trademarks and international brand management. As the Chinese martial arts, and Chinese culture more generally, began to develop a certain amount of cultural appeal in Europe in the early 2000s, one French firm decided to import a large number of Feiyue sneakers, made to their own specification, by a manufacturer in China. At a later point the French firm then bought the trademark and set up their own domestic production lines. The problem, however, is that its not clear who really owns the Feiyue brand in China, and it now appears that the company which sold out to the French did not. The end result is a fascinating case study in the current challenges of establishing and managing an international brand.

Of course that is something that a great number of martial artists will already have first hand experience with, so perhaps its not surprising to see these same issues arising with their footwear. One wonders whether situations like this will become more common in the future as Chinese firms increasingly establish a base of Western fans.

The anthropologist Adam Frank wrote an ethnography of a martial arts group in Shanghai entitled “Taijiquan and the Search for the Little Old Chinese Man: Understanding Identity Through Martial Arts.” If you have never read his book, you really should. One of Frank’s more important points is that the manifestly Orientalist idea of the small, wizened, Yoda-like, martial arts teacher is not just an object of Western desire or misunderstanding. Such figures are also sought out by Chinese students and play an important role in their own understanding of the meaning and values that lay behind the martial arts.

Recently the press has been abuzz with the discovery of another such archetypal instructor. See, for instance, CNN’s story on the “93-year-old “Kung Fu Grandma” who says she has no plans to stop any time soon.” Zhang Hexian is a resident of Zhejiang province, an area with a rich martial arts culture. By her own account she started to practice the martial arts in 1928 (a good year in TCMA history) and still relishes pole fighting. Her story has been picked up by a number of outlets and was on heavy rotation at CCTV. While a fascinating figure in her own right, it seems that she has also come to signify a range of values that both Western and Chinese students hope to find within the traditional martial arts.

Wudang Kung Fu. Source: Shanghai Daily.

The Shanghai Daily recently posted a short series of informative (almost didactic) articles on the Chinese martial arts. Perhaps the most interesting of these was its entry on Wudang which begins as follows:

“WUDANG kung fu is one of the two most representative styles of traditional Chinese martial arts, the other being Shaolin. It’s a popular saying in China that “In the north, Shaolin kung fu is king; yet in the south, Wudang kung fu rules. Unlike its northern counterpart, which is known for its “external” form of martial arts and integration with Zen Buddhism, Wudang kung fu is an “internal” martial art based on the philosophy and canons of Taoism, an indigenous Chinese religion.”

Another entry looked at the ancient practice known as the Five Animal Frolics and their relationship with the martial arts. Like the Wudang article, this piece also noted the government’s efforts to preserve these practices through various types of cultural heritage mechanisms.

Finally, readers of the Shanghai Daily are informed that “Spring is the Season to Hone your Kung Fu Skills.” This last article goes on to review the various styles, curriculums and prices that are available at some of Shanghai’s major martial arts schools. Of course this discussion was specifically aimed at the paper’s English language readership, but it was still an interesting peak into what is available at the moment.

Chinese Kung Fu actor Jet Li has launched a webpage and martial arts video platform. This is a new venture so its still a bit hard to say how it will evolve. If I had to guess it will end up being something of an on-line magazine featuring a lot of content about Jet Li as well as more general short posts on various aspects of martial arts practice and history. This will certainly be a project to keep an eye on, particularly if you happen to be a Jet Li fan.

An Iron Crotch Demonstration. Source: http://www.newshub.co.nz

This next story is also making the rounds in various news outlets.

Master Wei Yaobin is known in China as the ‘Iron Crotch Kung Fu’ master. He trains students in how to take blows to the crotch. In the video, he and his students subject themselves to kicks, battering rams, and bricks to their most sensitive area. Master Wei says he wants to make his martial arts style more “popular and accepted by the public”.

If you head over to read more, be sure to check out the video that goes along with this. After the demonstration of a crotch destroying “battering ram” dummy, I am going to go out on a limb and say that this probably isn’t a winning strategy for mainstreaming the Chinese martial arts!

If you are looking for a different sort of TCMA experience, try checking out the Reuter’s video essay “Girls in Afghanistan Fight Prejudice with Martial Arts.” This story is also getting a lot of airplay, and has also generated a number of articles.

Is this the future of the martial arts in China?

MMA fans will probably want to read this piece on the UFC’s upcoming efforts to move into the Chinese market. This has proved to be a challenge, but this article outlines the organizations next steps in opening this new market. Here is the critical quote:

While UFC has previously hosted two events in the southern Chinese semi-autonomous city of Macau, UFC Head of International and Content Joe Carr said its sights were now firmly fixed on the lucrative Chinese mainland.

“We’re definitely working on our first event in mainland China,” he said at a press conference in Singapore. “We’ve had a couple of events in Macau but it’s completely different going to a Beijing or a Shanghai. I have nothing to announce but it’s definitely a priority and a focus for the organisation. We were successful in Macau and that’s fine but our ambitions are mainland China.”

An authentic master of ninjutsu martial art, Kazuki Ukita poses in Ninja costume at the Ninja museum’s Ninja residence in the small ancient city of Ueno 08 April 2002. AFP PHOTO / TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA

Forget the Mario Brothers and Sushi. In an effort to boost tourism and build its international brand the Japanese are turning to ninjas. So proclaims a fascinating, if slightly surreal, article in the South China Morning Post. This is one of those pieces that you really need to read, but the following quote should give you a sense of what the government is about to embark on:

The Japan Ninja Council, a government-backed organisation of scholars, tourism groups and businesses, said on Wednesday that it’s starting a Ninja Academy to train people in the art of ninja, and building a new museum in Tokyo devoted to ninja, set to open in 2018.

“The art of ninja is made up of various elements, such as combat, survival techniques and astronomy,” Jinichi Kawakami, known as “the last ninja” and a master of the Koga ninja school, told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. “We hope this will appeal to people all over the world.”

The council, set up in 2015, has created an official logo for certified products and movies to nurture what it called the “ninja business,” and it hopes to educate “ninja ambassadors” to promote the culture globally.

I simply cannot wait to see how “scholars” are about to be recruited into all of this. It should be stated that these efforts to promote Ninjitsu are only one aspect of a broader public diplomacy/national branding campaign to promote the Japanese image abroad titled “Cool Japan.” I find this name to be both unfortunate and ominous as the UK’s “Cool Britannia” campaign is widely cited as a spectacular failure of the national branding strategy. But maybe that campaign crashed and burned because the UK just didn’t have enough Ninjas in their promotional material?

Paul Bowman and Meaghan Morris having a frank exchange of ideas. Source: http://martialartsstudies.blogspot.com/2015/06/conference-2015-and-2016.html

Martial Arts Studies

In the last month there has been some exciting developments on the conference front. First, it was announced that the 3rd annual Martial Arts Studies conference at Cardiff University will feature a workshop and roundtable debate exploring key problematics pertinent to anyone researching, writing about or teaching martial arts. Be sure to read more about this upcoming discussion. To see the Call for Papers or to register, click here.

Also, for students of Japanese martial studies, there will be a more intimate gathering dedicated to “New research on the Japanese martial arts“. Space will be limited at this venue, so be sure to prepare your proposal soon.

Kickboxing trainig in the Hague. Source: Sports Provocation. Photo by Jasmijn Rana

This years Annual Conference of the Martial Arts Committee of the German Sports Commission will be titled “Martial Arts as a Challenge for Inter- and Transdiciplinary Research”. It will take place from September 28-30, 2017 at the Leuphana University Lüneburg.

I had an opportunity to attend this conference last year and highly recommend it. The conference organizers are once again looking for submissions from the international community, and there will be a number of papers and sessions in English. This would be a great event to attend if you can make it to Germany this September!

Click here for the Call for Papers (the first pages are in German, then its all there in English as well).

Dr. Sixt Wetzler showing off a fight book from the collection of the German Blade Museum.

The German Blade Museum in Solingen will be hosting a conference this November titled “Fight Books in a Comparative Perspective.” This might be a great opportunity to present that paper you have been contemplating comparing your favorite Chinese and European manual! See the Call for Papers for more information about this upcoming event: cfp-fight-book-conference-1-0-1-copy

Just Released!

Embodying Brazil: An ethnography of diasporic capoeira (Routledge 2017) by Sara Delamont, Neil Stephens, Claudio Campos

The practice of capoeira, the Brazilian dance-fight-game, has grown rapidly in recent years. It has become a popular leisure activity in many cultures, as well as a career for Brazilians in countries across the world including the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. This original ethnographic study draws on the latest research conducted on capoeira in the UK to understand this global phenomenon. It not only presents an in-depth investigation of the martial art, but also provides a wealth of data on masculinities, performativity, embodiment, globalisation and rites of passage.

Centred in cultural sociology, while drawing on anthropology and the sociology of sport and dance, the book explores the experiences of those learning and teaching capoeira at a variety of levels. From beginners’ first encounters with this martial art to the perspectives of more advanced students, it also sheds light on how teachers experience their own re-enculturation as they embody the exotic ‘other’.

Embodying Brazil: An Ethnography of Diasporic Capoeira is fascinating reading for all capoeira enthusiasts, as well as for anyone interested in the sociology of sport, sport and social theory, sport, race and ethnicity, or Latin-American Studies.

Now In Paperback

Taekwondo: From a Martial Art to a Martial Sport (Routledge) by Udo Moenig

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the historical, political, and technical evolution of taekwondo. Many of the supposedly ‘traditional’ and ‘ancient’ Korean cultural elements attached to taekwondo are, in fact, remnants of East Asia’s modernization drive, and largely inherited from the Japanese martial arts. The current historical portrayal has created an obstacle to a clear understanding of the history of taekwondo, and presents problems and contradictions in philosophy and training methodology. Using rich empirical data, including interviews with leading figures in the field, this book brings together martial arts philosophy with an analysis of the technical aspects and the development of taekwondo, and provides a detailed comparison of karate and taekwondo techniques. It debunks nationalistic mythology surrounding taekwondo to provide a reinterpretation of taekwondo’s evolution.

Chinese tea utensil. Source: Wikimedia.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group over the last month. We have talked about the survival of Lam Gar, Kung Fu documentaries, and the evolution of Chinese swords. Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.

If its been a while since your last visit, head on over and see what you have been missing.

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: February 15th, 2015: The Business of Kung Fu, Gender in Martial Arts Studies and Wudang Meets Wu Tang

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: March 14th 2016: Ip Man, Wing Chun and Taijiquan

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: April 4th, 2016: Taijiquan, Shaolin and New Books

Conference Report: Kung Fury – Contemporary Debates in Martial Arts Cinema

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: April 25th, 2016: Tourism, Weapons Based MMA and Old School Kung Fu

The Professor and His Students: Taijiquan’s Complicated Journey to the West

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: May 17th, 2016: Kung Fu Art, Brawling and New Books!

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: June 6th, 2016: Taijiquan, Wing Chun and The Final Master

Martial Mastery and Olympic Glory: A Winning Combination?

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: August 1, 2016: Bruce Lee, Books and Bringing a Ming era Dandao to Life

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: August 22, 2016: Wing Chun, Nunchuks and Summer Reading Discounts

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: September 19th, 2016: Expats in Shanghai, the Birth of a Dragon, and Kung Fu’s Decline?

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: October 24th, 2016: Moving Identities and Upcoming Books

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: November 14th, 2016: Friends, Nostalgia and New Articles

2016 Christmas Shopping List: Martial Arts Equipment and Long Reads to Get You Through the Winter Months

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: December 12th, 2016: The International Edition

Seasons Greetings!

A Year in the Chinese Martial Arts: How the Chinese Martial Arts Amazed and Surprised Us in 2016

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: January 23rd 2017: Global Shaolin, MMA and the Endangered Southern Mantis

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: Feb. 27th 2017: Shaolin, Feiyue Sneakers and Bruce Lee Gets Political