Happy New Year!

New Years is a good time to sit back and reflect on recent accomplishments and events.  2015 has been a huge year for the field of martial arts studies.  Things had been picking up for a while, but in the last year we saw a veritable explosion of new books, articles, conferences and even a journal launch.  Likewise we have seen quite a bit of reporting on the Chinese martial arts in the popular press, including the emergence of some important trends.

Below is my personal countdown of the top 10 news stories that had the greatest impact in the world of the Chinese martial arts in 2015.  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.

Japanese and Chinese martial arts students meeting in Fujian. Source: SCMP

10. Increased Exposure for the Southern (and other Regional) Folk Martial Arts

As part of my ongoing research I spend a fair amount of time looking at how the mainstream and more specialized media discusses the Chinese martial arts.  Some trends are more subtle than others, but there are a few things that you can always count on.  In terms of subject matter there are some clear winners.  When a new story comes out there is a decent chance that it will focus on one of a handful of topics.  Bruce Lee and Taijiquan are both very popular, as is coverage of the latest martial arts movies.  More rarely you might get a feature on some aspect of Wushu, or the promotion and practice of the Mixed Martial Arts in China.  A lot of the coverage of the traditional folk arts tends to focus on the better known “internal” styles of the North.

One of the more interesting developments of 2015 was a pronounced undercurrent of stories that bucked this general trend.  The Southern arts of Fujian and Guangdong prefectures in particular received more recognition this year than in the past.  There does not seem to have been a single driver behind this trend.  Rather what we saw in 2015 was an interesting confluence of forces.  On the one hand there was an increased awareness of global exchange and influence in the history of the development of various fighting systems, such as this series of stories on Kung Fu’s influence on Karate.  Given Southern China’s importance in Asia’s historic trade networks, it was only natural that its martial arts should be featured in some of these discussions.

Other trends also directed the media’s attention to these styles.  The interest in global exchange seems to have been accompanied by an increase of discussion in the role of certain martial arts in maintaining regional identities, or the promotion of these more local identities abroad.  At times some of these discussions even took on a political tone as local governments debated whether their resources should be used to preserve or promote various aspects of martial heritage.  A number of these strains came together in the reporting on Hing Chao’s efforts both to preserve the historic architecture of Hong Kong’s martial past, as well as his current efforts to promote the various Hakka fighting systems as a critical element of the region’s intangible cultural heritage.  Thus while Bruce Lee and the health benefits of Taiji continued to dominate headlines in 2015, the more subtle emergence of discussions of China’s many regional martial arts styles seems to point to important future trends, including a loosening of the links between the “traditional” martial arts and entho-nationalist paradigms that so dominated the 20th century.

International Students Fall in Love With Wushu. Source: ECNS.CN

9. Wushu

While 2015 has been a good year for the regional folk arts (at least in terms of increased media exposure), the situation for Wushu has been more mixed.  After a flurry of discussion (some of which involved direct comparisons to a newly energized movement promoting competitive Karate) it was decided that Wushu would once again be locked out of Olympic competition in the 2020 Tokyo games.  At the same time a number of stories noted that Wushu has succeeded in building a broader base of popular support among martial artists outside of China. And some of the press coverage that the sport received was quite positive.

Perhaps the most interesting development that I encountered in the Wushu story over the last year was not something that was reported in the press.  While I did not talk with anyone important in China’s sports bureaucracy, in my discussions with the various Chinese scholars and martial arts observers there seemed to be a shift in how the Wushu problem was being understood.  Increasingly these individuals were willing to step back and ask some deeper questions about whether Olympic competition would actually be good for the development of their sport (which is already very popular at the regional level).  And if not the Olympics, where should Wushu go next?  I have no idea what, if anything, will come from these sorts of more fundamental questions, but its something that I will be following in the coming year.

A still from the trailer for AMC’s Into the Badlands presented at the 2015 Comicon.

8.  Into the Badlands – With heavy promotion

AMC, the home of such hits as The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, recently aired their new martial arts themed series Into the Badlands.  Ostensibly inspired by the Chinese classic “Into the West,” the show has billed itself as the long awaited return of authentic martial arts to the small screen.  In fact, some of the show’s promotional material has gone so far as to suggest that it is bringing “authentic” Chinese martial arts to American television for the first time (which then leads to really interesting questions about what Bruce Lee was doing back in the 1960s).

In some ways the story here is not the series itself, which has been judged rather harshly by the critics.  While everyone agrees that the fight scenes are well done, even fans of the genera have been left to wonder whether there just might not be too many of them, and to ask more serious questions about the quality of the writing, acting and world creation that have gone into the project.

The far more interesting thing from the perspective of martial arts studies is the way in which this series has been promoted.  To begin with, this is clearly the most heavily advertised and hyped martial arts project to ever grace the western TV screen.  As I reviewed the various news updates for the year in preparation for this post I was surprised to encounter extensive promotion of this series almost a full year before the project was ever available to audiences.  So whatever the show may lack in its production values, it has more than compensated in the advertising and social media departments.  Secondly, the ways in which the series is being promoted as groundbreaking in the portrayal of Asian leading characters is fascinating.  While it is true that the story has romantic elements that would never have made it into a Bruce Lee project, its also critical to note that much of the discussion of its “revolutionary” nature sounds like it was lifted directly out of a Bruce Lee biography.  We are left with the paradox of something that claims to be “new,” but the type of “revolution” that it represents is one that will already feel very familiar to audiences.  You can read more about these questions here.

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

7. A Good Year for Donnie Yen

Into the Badlands is not the only entertainment story to make our top 10 list.  At times it felt like 2015 was the year of Donnie Yen.  Ip Man 3, just released, continued what can only be called one of the most successful martial arts film franchises of recent memory.  Controversies surrounding the possible role of Bruce Lee and and the Boxing Champion Mike Tyson helped to whip up even more interest in the project than might otherwise be expected.

Nor was this the only blockbuster that Yen found himself associated with.  After beating out a number of competitors (including reportedly Jet Li) it was announced that Yen had been cast in the upcoming Star Wars film, Rouge One.  While Yen has developed a substantial following among western fans of martial arts films, this new role is sure to boost his name recognition among a much wider audience.  It is also the most brilliant plan to avoid being typecast as Ip Man that I could possibly imagine.  And by accepting this role Yen has automatically endeared himself to both fans of the series who were critical of its lack of Asian characters (despite borrowing heavily from Asian martial arts lore and swordsmanship) as well as those who wanted to see established martial artists in what is been billed as a “gritty” and “more realistic” Star Wars film.

These two projects also given Donnie Yen a windfall of earned media exposure, much of which came in the way “will he, won’t he” interviews pontificating on his future within the martial arts genera, the Star Wars universe and the state of both Hollywood and Hong Kong film.  It was a good year for Donnie Yen, and one that set him up for even greater media exposure in 2016 and beyond.  And did I mention that he still found time to record the best PSA ever?

A “Kung Fu” nun demonstrates a pole form at a Tibetan Temple in Nepal. Nuns from this order recently traveled to CERN Switzerland where they displayed their skills and discussed “energy” with a set of confused particle physicists.

6. Gender Takes Center Stage in the Discussion of the (Chinese) Martial Arts

Scholars have been interested in the intersection of gender and the martial arts/combat sports for some time.  The area is a rich one for anyone who writes on identity formation or a number of other topics.  But 2016 was a year in which some of these discussions seemed to capture the interest of a more general readership.

Readers may recall that a devastating earthquake hit Nepal earlier in the spring.  A number of “human interest” stories on the aftermath of tragedy focused on a local order of Buddhist nuns who practice the Chinese martial arts.  In the wake of the earth quake they put both their labor and more specialized skills at the disposal of their neighbors, and a number of western media outlets detected a gendered aspect to the story.  And throughout the year media outlets such as the South China Morning Post ran features looking at the practice of the martial arts among women around the world.  Often these stories also intersected with the previously noted trend of an increased interest in regional fighting practices.  And the Assassin, perhaps the most discussed martial arts film of 2015, put forth a compelling and complex vision of a martial heroine.

Within the realm of martial arts studies we saw a number of publications on gender within the martial arts and combat sport.  The most important of these was the edited volume titled Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors Around the World by Alex Channon and Christopher Matthews.  Other works dealing with gender in context of Martial Arts Studies gained important recognition from their peers, such as this award winning title from SUNY Press.

Other works, including this project by two sociologists at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, focused instead on the construction of masculinity in the Mixed Martial Arts and combat sports.  While not without its faults, Jonathan Gottschall’s highly engaging work, the Professor in the Cage, asked many of these same questions, while also bringing the academic study of the martial arts to a truly mass readership.

Taiji Boxer. Source: Burkhardt, 1953.

5. Quantifying the Health Benefits of Taijiquan

A host of factors, including greater sociological acceptance, rising health care costs, an aging population and increased skepticism of opiate based strategies for chronic pain management, have motivated the western medical community to take a more systematic look at “alternative” Asian medical practices including herbalism, qigong mediation, acupuncture and Taijiquan practice.  Indeed, the medical benefits of practices like Taijiquan have been discussed from time to time in the West for more than a century.  Yet only recently have medical professionals dedicated the attention and resources necessary to systematically test and describe the benefits of Taiji for a wide number of (most chronic) conditions.

A recent review article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which examined, correlated and interrogated the results of a large number of smaller studies conducted in recent years, attempted to do just that.  The results were surprisingly positive for people suffering from a very wide range of chronic conditions (including insomnia, diabetes and arthritis among others).  These findings were widely reported in a number of outlets and ended up working their way down in the mainstream media.  Hopefully this will clear the way for more individuals to discover the benefits of the traditional Chinese martial arts for themselves in the upcoming year.

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.

4.  Abbot Shi Yongxin shows off his defensive skills

Back in 2014 there was a story about the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province advertising job openings for public relations and media specialists.  Indeed, the Temple has a knack for keeping its name in the news, and given its vital importance to Henan’s tourist industry, that is probably a good thing.  Much of its success in this area in recent years has been attributed to (or, depending on who you ask, blamed on) its current Abbot, Shi Yongxin.  Sometimes called the “CEO Monk,” the Abbot has brought modern business and promotional methods to the Temple.  He has been especially aggressive in his attempts to build his institution’s market share in both China and abroad.

Still, there complexities to Shi Yongxin’s reputation.  On the one hand he has proved to be a lightening rod for controversy (ranging from past claims that he has commercialized Chan Buddhism to consorted with prostitutes), yet he has also shown himself to be exceptionally adroit in the realm of survival.  Few of the charges thrown at him seem to stick for long.  2015, however, put even his prodigious defensive skills to the test.

Earlier this year readers of Chinese social media seem to have discovered the plans, long in the works, for the Shaolin monastery to build a combined daughter temple/kung fu complex/luxury hotel/golf course in the tourist mecca that is Australia’s Gold Coast.  This led to renewed questions as to whether the construction of costly tourist attractions and luxury hotels in foreign countries is really the sort of business that Buddhist monks are supposed to be heading up.  Luckily environmental impact concerns halted construction of the golf course and luxury condo development, blunting at least some of the more controversial optics associated with the project.

The wider Shaolin brand may also have taken another hit with the trial of Juan Carlos Aguilar, the self-styled “Shaolin Monk” responsible for torturing and killing two women in Spain.  Aguilar studied at one of the many local Kung Fu schools surrounding the Temple, but did not have any relationship with the actual Shaolin organization.  While they quickly moved to distance themselves from Aguilar, its not the sort of press that any organization wants.

Still, the worst was yet to come.  After Shi Yongxin missed a public appearance in Thailand it was suggested that the Abbot had been prohibited from leaving the country due to an investigation of a new set of charges by an anonymous insider accusing the Abbot of, among other things, having both a secret family outside of the walls of the temple and financial improprieties.  The timing of these accusations were especially dire as they coincided both with a highly publicized (and feared) crack down on corruption among public figures on the one hand, and a renewed set of investigations into wrongdoings by various religious groups on the other.  Thus Shaolin, always a favorite topic on Chinese social media, found itself at the confluence of a number of dangerous currents.

As the summer firestorm subsided Shi Yongxin reemerged in public and began to once more lead events at the temple.  His supporters have claimed that the charges against him are trumped up, and that he has laid the claims to rest (or at least proved the excellence of his bureaucratic kung fu).  However, as late as this fall his attackers were reiterating the charges and pointed to other ongoing investigations.  At the moment Shaolin appears to be taking a well deserved break from the headlines, but while reviewing the events of this summer I was once again struck by how widespread coverage of controversies at the temple have become.  While the debate may have been fueled in its early stages by micro-bloggers on Chinese social media platforms, by the summer its seems that most of the major western media platforms were talking about the story.  Hopefully the Temple will find a return to tranquility in 2016.

For the complete issue (including a number of review articles not listed here) go to martialartsstudies.org

3.  The Year that Martial Arts Studies Took Flight

Over the last few years a number of us have been tentatively discussing the creation (or renewal) of “martial arts studies” as an interdisciplinary research area dedicated to the academic investigation of the history, practice, meaning and theoretical significance of the traditional fighting systems and combat sports.  The last decade had seen a fair amount of movement in that direction, and the pace of developments had been accelerating in recent years.  Yet it is now clear that the way in which we discuss this project must change in the post-2015 environment.  Martial Arts Studies is no longer an aspiration.  2015 was the year that many long planned projects burst into full flower.  Martial Arts Studies has arrived.

The number of accomplishments over the last year is almost too great to list.  Respected university presses and academic publishers put forth a number of important titles that will help to shape both the empirical and theoretical discussion for years to come.  A sample of these include Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Indonesia by Lee Wilson (Brill, 2015), Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports edited by Alex Channon and Christopher Matthews (Palgrave, 2015), Kendo: Culture of the Sword by Alexander C. Bennett (University of California Press, 2015),  Taekwondo: From Martial Art to Martial Sport by Udo Moenig (Routledge, 2015), Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries by Paul Bowman (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), and my own book The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts (State University of New York Press, 2015).

While such publications are critical to the growth and acceptance of any field they are far from 2015’s only accomplishment.  A number of interdisciplinary conferences have been held over the last year seeking to engage a diverse body of scholars from around the world.  Discussions of the progress made in these meetings can be seen in the reports on the following events in Israel, Korea and at the First Annual Martial Arts Studies held in the UK.  Obviously a number of other events and conferences (some more theoretically specialized) are also scheduled, and we hope to hear more on them later.

At least two research institutes have been founded in the last year to advance the promoting of Martial Arts Studies.  The first of these in the Martial Arts Studies Research Network (headed by Paul Bowman) in the UK, and the other is the BUDO-Lab at Chapman University (under the guidance of Andrea Molle).  Rowman & Littlefield Press has also announced the creation of a new book series of Martial Arts Studies (edited by Paul Bowman) which will also be vital to supporting the ongoing growth of the research area.

Nor could we neglect to mention the release of the first issue of the new journal Martial Arts Studies (co-edited by Paul Bowman and myself).  While recent years have seen the publication of a number book length studies of the martial arts, there was no single journal dedicated to establishing and interdisciplinary conversation on this topic.  In fact, after conducting an extensive literature review for my own book on the history of Wing Chun, I decided that this was the probably the single greatest obstacle facing the development of the academic literature on the martial arts.  Now, in partnership with Cardiff University Press, there is a freely available, open source journal devoted to promoting this previously neglected area of the literature.

Nor should we neglect to mention the headway that martial arts studies has made in the classroom, especially at the undergraduate level.  This is a topic that we will be hearing more about in the coming year in a special series to be hosted here at Kung Fu Tea.  While 2015 has been a banner year for Martial Arts Studies perhaps its most impressive accomplishment has been the establishment of a firmer foundation for promoting future research.

2.  Bruce Lee at 75

As I mentioned at the top of this post, Lee is always a popular subject.  This last year saw an additional surge of interest in the the life of the Little Dragon, and its ongoing cultural relevance, as he reached what would have been his 75th birthday.  Signs of these festivities were hard to miss.  While it is no surprise to see Lee gracing the cover of Black Belt magazine, it was slightly more interesting to see him on the cover of his own special issue of Time.  South China Morning Post was not to be outdone.  They also ran a number of features on Hong Kong’s favorite son.  You can see a summary of much of this discussion (as well as links to specific pieces) here.

Of course birthdays are also a good time for introspection, meditation and long-form blog posts.  For instance, with all of the discussion of the “revolutionary” nature of Into the Badlands, does Western popular culture still need Bruce Lee?  And if so, why?  Will we still be talking about him at his 100th birthday?  You can find my own reflections on these questions here:  Bruce Lee: Memory, Philosophy and the Tao of Gung Fu.

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

The Top News Story of 2015: Kung Fu Diplomacy

This brings us to my pick for the top news story of 2015.  It is the ever growing importance in China’s public diplomacy (or possibly “national branding”) strategy within press and media discussions of the martial arts.

As one looks back over the history of the traditional Chinese martial arts you quickly get the sense that there are really two separate, yet interconnected, stories at play.  On the one hand there is the question of what actual martial artists do at any given point in time.  This is what a lot of academic and lineage history focuses on.  Then there is the question of what people (usually non-martial artists) are saying about these hand combat systems at that same moment in time.

How does this popular discourse impact the cultural meaning of martial arts practice within society?  Are these messages absorbed, resisted or co-opted by actual practitioners?  And who “controls the messaging?”

Is it martial arts teachers and reformers with their voluntary associations?  Novelist, reporters, TV actors and film producers who promote the martial arts for their cultural and economic value?  Or local and state governments that see in them either a source of tourist dollars or a means of strengthening nationalism and state penetration of society?  In actual fact all three of these actors tend to be active at the same time, and their vision of what the martial arts are, or should be, can harmonize or clash in fascinating and complicated ways.  Much of my writing here at Kung Fu Tea has been dedicated to teasing out these competing influences.

At various points in its modern history the enthusiasm of China’s government for the martial arts has waxed and waned.  The KMT sought to use the Central Guoshu Institute to strengthen its statist aims and better resist Japanese aggression in the 1930s.   After 1949 the Communist government saw Wushu as a way of implementing a vision of China’s martial and athletic culture firmly based in Maoist collectivist and non-competitive values.

A survey of press coverage over the last year indicates that the Chinese government is once again taking a renewed interest in the martial arts.  Yet this time their focus is different.  Rather than simply influencing their own society, they have realized that the positive association that foreign peoples already have with the Chinese martial arts make them a powerful tool of public diplomacy.  By promoting both the practice and discussion of the martial arts abroad, Chinese diplomats hope to educate the global community about their culture, values and to create a greater sense of “good will” and trust towards China.  This is all the more important in an era when China is actively beginning to flex its muscles as it tries to discover its proper place on a global stage.  A healthy store of political trust could be the key to weathering the sorts of mishaps, misunderstandings and conflicts that are sure to happen along the way.

Of course Kung Fu is not the only (or even the most important) tool in China’s public diplomacy arsenal.  Currently the Chinese state is expanding its network of Confucius Institutes at Universities around the globe where language training and other university level course work is provided.  Nor can we neglect the role of TV and radio stations owned by the Chinese government in crafting a certain image.  And Chinese cooking is even more popular globally than the martial arts.

Still, it is interesting to note how often efforts to promote the martial arts intersect with these other tools and strategies.  CCTV regularly runs stories on the growing popularity of Wushu, while Confucians Institutes have often taken the lead in providing Taijiquan classes for local communities.  The government has gone to some lengths to promote the teaching of the martial arts in areas like Africa and Nepal where Chinese financial interests are becoming ever more pronounced.  Often the source of these stories is fairly transparent, such as when they are directed by a government agency or CCTV.  In other cases it is less clear when a press office simply puts out a news release that is picked up by one of the many tabloid news services or webpages.

A lot of positive good will and social capital was created around the Chinese martial arts in the West between the 1970s and the 1990s.  During these decades it was overwhelmingly private actors, both martial artists and media figures, who controlled the narrative that determined how the public would view the martial arts.  Yet in almost every news update that I reviewed over the course of the last year there was at least one story that focused on “Kung Fu diplomacy.”

Public diplomacy is not necessarily a bad thing.  Indeed, America, and pretty much every other country in the world, has its own public diplomacy strategy.  The world is always a better place when states can peacefully discuss their values and competing visions of the future.  That is the very essence of diplomacy.

As a political scientist with a background in International Relations, public diplomacy is one of the topics that I have a professional interest in.  The important development in the current case is that we are seeing number of governmental and NGO (but politically active) actors stepping up their discussion of, and engagement with, the martial arts precisely because they think that it might help with these “national branding” efforts.  While interesting on a number of counts, one must also wonder how it will change the existing narrative around these traditional fighting systems.

On one level none of this is new.  Actors in the Nationalist Chinese government sent a martial arts demonstration team to the 1936 Olympics for a reason. And who could forget a young Jet Li performing a Wushu routine for President Nixon on the White House lawn in the middle of the Cold War?  Yet the sheer volume of Kung Fu diplomacy stories that we have seen reported in 2015 indicate that there may be some trends here that deserve further considerations in 2016.

A Guoshu school located in Tianjin, 1927. Source: The Taiping Institute.

Introduction

Welcome to our fourth annual discussion of the top webpages in Chinese martial studies. The purpose of this series is to acknowledge some of the individuals who have made great contributions to our understanding of the traditional martial arts in the last year. We also hope that visitors who are not familiar with these authors will be inspired to go out and discover some of these resources for themselves. Anyone interested in going back and reviewing our previous selection for 2013 or 2014 should click here.

After considering the questions we are ready to announce Kung Fu Tea’s selection’s for “Top Chinese Martial Arts Webpage of 2015.” To be eligible a webpage must have posted regularly in the last year and to have shown excellence in the study and understanding of some aspect of Chinese martial culture. It is also expected to have made a substantial original contribution in its research, journalism, analysis, art or creative writing. Finally, the webpage must be searchable and available on the open internet.

Beyond that everything can (and does) get quite subjective. “Chinese martial culture” is a huge research area with lots of different branches. Better still, there are a great many individuals devoting their time and resources to researching and spreading this information. The pace and quality of this work has grown markedly in the last year. Collectively our community turned out some great work in 2015. Narrowing the field down to a single “winner” was a challenge. There were a number of strong contenders that I looked at, each advancing their own understanding of the arts and unique style of writing.

The winner was the webpage that best responded to both the challenges and opportunities that 2015 presented. Specifically, how can we bring practitioners, students of Chinese popular culture and historians together into a single conversation that advance our understanding of the development and the practice of the traditional fighting styles? How can we best preserve the unique fighting systems of southern China? Is it possible to present a meaningful conversation on these topics that cross regional, cultural and linguistic boundaries?

The Winner!

I am very happy to announce that this years winner is the “International Guoshu Association” Facebook group.  This community, run by Hing Chao, has become a critical source for updates, information and news on both the various conservation and awareness projects that the group is undertaking, as well as martial arts related events in Hong Kong more generally.  Hing Chao himself will be no stranger to regular readers of Kung Fu Tea.  He also made our list of Top News Stories of 2015.  Readers will remember his recent work documenting Hung Gar traditions, as well as organizing festivals and promoting awareness of the traditional Hakka martial arts.  Those with a slightly longer memory will also remember him as the driving force behind the short lived, but very high quality, English language Journal of Chinese Martial Studies.  (If you have not read the back issues of this publication I highly suggest checking it out).

Even within this distinguished lineup, the International Guoshu Association Facebook group continues to stand out.  Over the last year it has published a fantastic mix of event reviews, vintage photos, community awareness notes and media reports.  Its one of the few webpages that I find myself checking daily.  The mixture of Chinese and English language posts is great and the “micro-blogging” format of the Facebook group is well suited to the community’s essential mission at this moment in history.  If you have yet to check this group out, please consider doing so.

The Runner Up

At this point I would also like to highlight one more webpage that was launched in 2015 which I expect will have a huge impact on future conversations.  It is the new interdisciplinary journal Martial Arts Studies.  By way of full disclosure, since I am closely involved with this project (as a founding co-editor) I preemptively disqualified it from consideration for this years prize.  “Conflict of interest” and all of that.

Still, as an imprint of Cardiff University Press, and with the backing of an impressive editorial advisory committee of respected academic researchers from around the world, this journal will provide a critical outlet for new scholarly research on the martial arts.  Better yet, anyone can read this peer reviewed journal for free on its shiny new webpage.  The first issue, released earlier this Fall is available here.  This new project had a great first year and we are looking forward to big things in future issues.

Cityscape by Jay Musler (1981). Blown, cut, Sandblasted and painted glass. Corning Museum of Class. Picture by Benjamin Judkins.

…When I asked why he was not more active teaching himself, he answered in a gravelly voice:

In my opinion, the world has changed. I never teach my son and grandson. People ask me to teach, but people’s minds nowdays are wicked….

A real master can only teach real kung fu to his disciple who learns under him for at least 10 years in order to know his character well or he will create problems. We’ll not teach the practical use of Kung Fu to those who learn only 2 or 3 years. This is the traditional culture. That’s why a lot becomes extinct. Chinese traditional kung fu is like this.

When I asked whether it was possible to modify the way that students were selected and basic training methods, all of the masters at the table said ‘no.’ They made it clear that the processes through which they learned Kung Fu were integral to the arts and that it would not be possible to teach properly if things were made ‘easier.’…Furthermore, they said that even if they wanted to change the methods, they could not, because they made an oath and were obligated to continue teaching the way that they were taught by their masters. One commented:

It has carried on from generations to generations in this way. From master to student through time. So we can’t do it freely as we wish. We must respect the way things were done. This is how we respect our masters.

P. Daly. 2012. “Traditional Chinese Martial Arts and the Transmission of Intangible Cultural Heritage.” In Daly and Winter (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Heritage in Asia. London: Routledge. pp. 360-361.

Introduction
Anyone who has been keeping up with the news will know that “intangible cultural heritage” has become a hot topic in the more political corner of the martial arts world. Both national and international groups (such as the UN) have mechanisms to designate items (works of art) and places (either architectural or natural) as important examples of “heritage”; meaning objects inherited from the past, enjoyed in the present and worthy of being passed on to the future. More recently the bodies that direct this work have become interested in the human and cultural elements of this process. Skills, identities, languages and beliefs have increasingly been deemed examples of “intangible cultural heritage” (ICH) and efforts have been launched to preserve the human capital behind them.

The bestowal of an ICH designation on a group or practice is not without consequences. It can lead to an increased sense of internal legitimacy or value being placed on what have often been marginal or minority practices. In some cases it may even open the way for the eventual monetization and economic exploitation of a once forgotten cultural practice through renewed interest on the part of visiting scholars, collectors or tourists. While these blessings are not without their inevitable complications, it is no surprise that we often see competition, both within and between states, as to what practices should be recognized as part of a nation’s “heritage.”

One of the difficulties in the study of the Chinese martial arts is that for much of their history they were considered “feudal” and “backwards” practices by cultural elites both within and outside of Chinese society. Some modernizers called for the reform of the martial arts (such as the Jingwu and Guoshu movements in the 20th century), while other intellectuals (including many May 4th Reformers) simply stated that they had no place in China’s quickly developing modern society. While these practices have always been critical to the identities of certain groups or individuals, very few objective observers of the Qing dynasty or the Republic period would have argued that the civilian schools of boxing and self-defense were in any way central to China’s grand cultural heritage.

Luckily the traditional Chinese martial arts survived China’s tumultuous 20th century. In some areas they even thrived. And in terms of social respect, it is impressive what a difference the passage of a century can make.

Over the last decade the Chinese government, as well as the administrations of Hong Kong and Taiwan, have all made concerted efforts to grant ICH status to certain traditional martial arts practices. Students of Wing Chun and fans of traditional Chinese culture may find Hong Kong’s most recent heritage list to be particularly interesting.

This is all the more remarkable when we remember that Wing Chun was never practiced in the city on a large scale prior to 1950, and it didn’t gain a substantial following (compared to the other better established martial arts systems) until the 1970s-1980s. Yet it has now become an undeniable aspect of the city’s cultural landscape. At the international level the Peoples Republic of China is currently in the midst of a campaign to promote Taijiquan’s designation as a piece of critical world heritage by the United Nations, on par with its recent acknowledgement of Yoga.

For all of these reasons discussions of ‘heritage’ as a theoretical and analytical category have been appearing in the sorts of scholarly discussions of the martial arts that I follow. While looking at submissions for a book series on martial arts studies I noted that a reviewer specifically requested to see potential titles that would address the traditional martial arts within the context of heritage studies. And recently, while reviewing Daly and Winter’s excellent Routledge Handbook of Heritage in Asia (2012), I came across an article titled “Fighting Modernity: Traditional Chinese Martial Arts and the Transmission of Cultural Heritage.” The extended quote at the start of this post is drawn directly from this article.

If it sounds familiar it is probably because Prof. Daly used the same set of quotes in a documentary that he directed and released a few years ago titled “Needle Through Brick.” Both the article and the documentary look at the challenges of transmitting the traditional Chinese martial arts in the current era of globalization by following a number of schools and masters within East Malaysia’s traditional Chinese martial arts community.

While the article and the documentary share many of the same sources, what I find to be most interesting is the stark differences that emerge between them. Obviously Daly’s (very helpful) theoretical discussion and literature review is confined to the printed article. Such probing investigations would have felt out of place in a documentary that followed the “show, don’t tell” conventions of the genera.

Beyond these stylistic differences more fundamental variables come into play. While both works emphasize the struggle of passing on ‘heritage,’ they come to differing conclusions as to whether this project is ultimately possible.

The documentary follows more closely the story line of a handful of Wushu students who practice at the Chinese Martial Arts Association (CMAA). Realizing that their competitive careers in this sport will be limited, these students are also embarking on an exploration of the traditional martial arts. Under the guidance of Master Eric Ling it appeared that Wushu and traditional clubs would be able to work together to preserve authentic kung fu. The martial heritage of Chinese culture was secure and being successfully conveyed to future generations.

The concluding discussion of “Fighting Modernity” paints a very different picture. This article instead focuses its resources and theoretical attention on a group of aging “traditional” masters. The picture that they paint of the future of Kung Fu is bleak.

Few if any of them are teaching. Of those who have taught, none seem to have a student who they believe to be qualified to carry on the lineage. Each expresses doubts about the economic viability of the martial arts and the quality of their students. One is overwhelmed with the sense of fatalism. “Real” kung fu, as opposed to the flashy Wushu the kids are doing, is about to die out and the individuals who might be expected to preserve it feel that it is impossible to save.

From a theoretical perspective Daly seems to suspect that they may be right. In fact, his concerns about the preservation of the Chinese martial arts in Malaysia pointed to a much broader problem with the entire effort to preserve all sorts of elements of intangible cultural heritage skills across Asia.

How can we reconcile these two visions of the future of the traditional martial arts arising (ironically) from the same research project? Is it possible to adapt the ways in which the traditional martial arts are introduced to students while preserving their underlying cultural values? If, so, how far can we go? Who determines what is “central” to the martial arts when multiple visions of Chinese modernity come into conflict? How can we understand the decision of some actors not to pass on their skills? Lastly, what are the limitations of the ICH framework for understanding the rich variety of martial arts communities that actually exist?

Red Pyramid by Stanislov and Jaroslava (1993). Corning Museum of Glass.

Fighting Modernity

The best way to address these questions is with a close reading of Daly’s chapter, yet in a post like this we will only be able to hit a few of the high points. Better yet, readers interested in applying the cultural heritage concept to martial arts studies should take a close look at the entire volume that Daly and Winter edited for Routledge. While only a single chapter speaks directly to the martial arts, a number of them raise issues (such as the role of “cultural tourism” and the possibility of a “developmental heritage trap” similar the “curse of natural resource abundance”) that could be applied very widely throughout these studies.

Readers should also take special note of Chapter 1, which serves as an introduction both to the field of heritage studies and as a review of the major topics and debates that this volume seeks to speak to. A number of these discussions (such as the debate between the rhetoric of ‘preservation’ vs. ‘sustainability’) could potentially be valuable to studies of Asia’s traditional hand combat systems. Read as a unit this introductory chapter helps to frame and highlight significant elements of Daly’s more detailed discussion of the Chinese martial arts in Chapter 23.

The later chapter (titled “Fighting Modernity”) proceeds in six sections. In the first we are introduced directly to a few of the informants that the author relies on and the very concrete problems that they see in the transmission of their shared martial heritage.

The next part of the article focuses on the major theoretical questions that the investigation touches on. The author looks at the role of rapid economic development in social disruption as well as the growing realization of the importance of non-physical forms of cultural heritage. He then introduces his central research question; in what ways should traditional pedagogies be considered an aspect of ICH? If these skills or types of knowledge are removed from their social framework and preserved only in museums or universities, employing different modes of knowledge preservation, have we lost the essence of an ICH?

While the author acknowledges that both the meanings and modes of transmission of ICH have changed over time, he wonders how much flexibility there can actually be in the traditional martial arts where certain social values come into existence as they are invoked directly in the relationship between teacher and student. It would appear that for Daly this relational element of pedagogy in the TCMA is much more central to their “authenticity” than simply getting the physical movements right. While it does not appear that the author goes so far as to understand the martial arts as primarily social institutions, it is clear that he sees certain sorts of relationships as being central to their continuation. This raises important questions about what an ICH designation should really be trying to preserve in the first place.

The following section includes the bulk of Daly’s ethnographic observations. It highlights excerpts from a number of the masters that he interviewed as well as analysis of the sorts of relationships that typically exist between masters and students during the process of training.

These observations were critical to his overall conclusion that it was the ‘unsystematic’ nature of TCMA training which made it unappealing to parents, schools and government agencies in the second half of the 20th century. Each of these institutions was more likely to throw their support behind standardized, rational and linear arts such as Taekwondo, Wushu or Judo. Thus it is not so much the “traditional” element of the Chinese martial arts that make them unappealing, or even the values that they promote. Rather the problems arise from the disconnect between traditional and modern views of pedagogy.

This section ends with perhaps the most important paragraph of the paper:

While masters were quick to emphasize the necessity of strict adherence to traditional roles to maintaining the arts, it needs to be recognized that this is part of the broader self-construction of authority and social positioning. The perceived onslaught of modernity is not just an assault on the TCMA, but also upon long-standing power-structures, systems of knowledge production, flows of social capital and lines of patronage – all of which are demonstrated above. Therefore, it is important to read deeper into discussions of safeguarding to situate intangible cultural heritage within a broader context of social contestation and the unravelling of pre-existing social expectations that are implicit parts of many ICH practices and embodied within social transmission. The masters that I interviewed were quick to point out a wide range of external reasons why their traditions were fading, but much less inclined to be critically reflective of their roles within this process as potential obstacles to adaptation. (p. 358)

These are important ideas, and I wish that Daly had expanded upon them substantially in his concluding remarks. The lack of emphasis given to these points makes his paper seem, in some ways, like an unfinished project.

The next section of the chapter takes a closer look at a few of the specific factors that are impeding the transmission of the traditional martial arts. These include the need to make a living and the low economic value of martial practices, at least for individuals who were trying to make a living as a full time instructor. Interestingly the idea that Sifu’s should teach full time was widely held by the Master that Daly interviewed though he did not attempt to critically interrogate this notion.

The competing interests of young people were also a major factor in this discussion. The Wushu program of the Chinese Martial Arts Association (also seen in a Needle Through Brick) were once again brought into this discussion, yet this time they were not portrayed as a conduit bringing students into the TCMA. Rather Wushu was viewed only as a direct competitor to the traditional arts, and one that was systematically advantaged due to its government support, rationalized nature and inclusion in local school programs.

Daly then moves on to his concluding discussion. Readers will already be familiar with a good chunk of this material as it was used to introduce the current essay. Extrapolating from these points the author notes the emergence of a fundamental paradox for anyone interested in preserving the TCMA as an element of intangible cultural heritage.

The threat to heritage practices comes not so much from a simple “forgetting” of the skills in question. Rather, rapid economic development creates widespread patterns of social change. This change dictates new classes of “winners” and “losers” within society all of which brings about fundamental shifts in values, neighborhood institutions and social capital networks.

The traditional martial arts, whose demise is lamented by the masters that Daly interviewed, was not understood as simply a set of self-defense skills. Rather it was a means of conveying a range of values and relationships that supported a social world that had now vanished due to economic change. The preservation of these techniques would require institutional innovation, yet by definition, the values of these new institutions (capable of competing in the rational, standardized and linear world of modern pedagogy) could not be the same as those that had shaped the now elderly group of master in their youth.

In their view, these masters were the ones who were properly authorized to state what constituted an “authentic heritage discourse.” They were the guardians of traditional values and hence “real” kung fu. While it might be tempting to see their withdrawal as a form of protest against their own marginalization, a sort of “weapon on the weak” (to use the James C. Scott’s phrase), in reality it may simply have been the dawning realization that one cannot convey social values that society no longer wants. But does this mean that “real” Kung Fu dead?

Javier Pérez (Spanish, b. 1968), Carroña (Carrion), Murano, Italy, 2011. Blown glass chandelier, assembled, broken, taxidermied crows. The Corning Museum of Glass.

Conclusion

To answer this question it may be necessary to first take a step back from the theoretical discussion of heritage preservation and ask some basic historical questions. This may help us to better understand what exactly an attempt to understand the Chinese martial arts as examples of intangible cultural heritage might entail.

While Daly’s work has much to recommend it, his discussion of history, in both the article and the documentary, is very thin. Like many commentators he simply starts with the assumption that the there is a single, basically coherent social pattern that represents all of the “traditional” Chinese martial arts. Conveniently his informant are inheritors of this homogeneous pattern which supports an equally stable and universal set of “traditional” values.

Secondly, he assumes that the Chinese martial arts, as he encountered them in Malaysia, are truly ancient. Viewers of his documentary are informed in the opening shots they date back “thousands of years.” All of this is critical as it informs Daly’s view of the object being preserved through ICH status as well as the sort of values that it has represented within Chinese society.

At the same time Daly seems to be aware of the dangers of making hard and fast generalizations about the Chinse martial arts. On pages 352 of his article he laments the lack of academic publications on the history or the culture of the Chinese martial arts. Most of what he has found on the subject has been published in popular magazines or trade journals. The only areas of academic research that he notes are media and film studies and he does not seek to critically engage with this material.

Rather than being a simple inconvenience, this lack of academic literature is a problem for Daly as it may have impeded the ability of the appropriate governmental and NGO bodies to determine that the TCMA should be granted ICH status and protection. This implication is, in itself, a fascinating commentary on the social (and potentially economic) value of academic research into “heritage” practices. Daly states that his research is meant to address this silence and in so doing “push the boundaries of practices that are typically recognized as intangible cultural heritage.” Further, “It is important to acknowledge, as many non-academics have, that the traditional Chinese martial arts have been part of Chinese history for several thousand years.” (pp. 351-352.)

It is certainly true that we need to see more academic research on the history and culture of the Chinese martial arts. And some very good work has come out after this piece was published in 2012 that may have been helpful to the author’s discussion had it been available. Still, while reading through the list of Works Cited at the conclusion of this article, it was remarkable to note that not a single academic source on the history of the Chinese martial arts had been consulted.

Obviously Peter Lorge’s single volume history Chinese Martial Arts (Cambridge UP) came out in 2012 and may not have been available at the time that Daly was writing. Still, other potentially helpful works should have been readily at hand and in any university library.

Wile’s work on the evolution of modern Taiji in the late 19th century was published by SUNY press in 1996 and is widely cited. Adam Frank’s ethnography of pedagogy and identity in the traditional martial arts in Shanghai (a topic directly relevant to the study at hand) came out in 2006. Morris’s research on the evolution of social attitudes within the martial arts community during the Republic period was published by California University Press in 2004. Meir Shahar’s work on the Shaolin Boxing tradition (Hawaii UP), if consulted, would have strongly suggested that many of the fears about the disappearance of the “authentic” martial arts were already a well-established aspect of the discourse by the second half of the Ming Dynasty (2008). And of course multiple works by authors like Stanley Henning or Kennedy and Guo could have helped Daly to establish a detailed timeline of the modern history of the Chinese martial arts.

It is certainly true that the academic literature on this subject was not as well developed in 2012 as it should have been. Yet it does not appear that the author identified or engaged with any of the important sources that would have been readily available when he was doing this research. Rather, it appears that his entire mental map of the history and the development of the traditional arts came from popular publications (some of which are listed in his Works Cited) and his discussion with his informants in the field.

If Daly had actually engaged with the available historical or ethnographic discussions, what would he have found? To begin with, the traditional Chinese martial arts, as he encountered them, are not “thousands” of years old. Individuals have had systematic ways of fighting with sticks, swords and bows for thousands of years, but there are real questions as to how much of this material can be termed a “martial art” in the modern sense of the term (and almost certainly not as Daly employs it).

Shahar does much to reveal the deep roots of what might be thought of as “modern” Chinese martial arts culture in the 17th century, yet as both Wile and Morris show in great detail, these strains were extensively modified in the late 19th and early 20th century as China came into contact with the forces of imperialism, colonialism, economic globalization and modernity. The specific traditions that Daly seems to be interested were all shaped by the economic and social trends of the late 19th century and the Republic period.

In short, had he seriously engaged with the historical literature the first thing that Daly would have realized is that the TCMA are not something that “survived” globalization and need to “preserved” in the face of economic change. He is dealing with social institutions that are very much a product of modernity and the first round of globalization which occurred in the late 19th and early 20th century. This brings up a critical point raised in Chapter 1. Some objects of “heritage preservation” may be better understood as examples of “invented tradition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983). While the folk histories that exist within these styles would not lead one to suspect that this is the case, a quick study of the existing academic research on their history would certainly point to that possibility.

This then suggests some questions about the social values that might be conveyed by the TCMA. Can they really be understood as a unified and homogeneous block emerging from the mysterious past? Again, the answer would seem to be no. A familiarity with the modern history of this movement will show that it is rife with discussions and disputes as to what the martial arts should be, and what role (if any) they should play in civil society. Not all masters agreed on these points.

The Guoshu and Jingwu movement (which are both now considered “traditional” Kung Fu styles) started by questioning and discarding the very basic teacher-student relationships that Daly identifies as being at the heart of the Chinese martial arts. Readers should recall for much of the 20th century these were the most popular hand combat institutions of the day.

Other teachers, such as Ip Man in the Wing Chun system, took a middle road between these extremes. While the structure of his school would have looked very familiar to Daly’s masters in East Malaysia, his understanding of a “proper” martial art might not have sat so well with them. Ip Man did everything in his ability to strip out “useless” cultural content in an attempt to make a highly efficient, empirically tested, self-defense art. He saw this as the key to ensuring the survival of his system in the “modern world” of the 1950s and his students loved it.

Ip Man (and many other reformers like him) represented a direct challenge to the sorts of Master that Daly worked with sixty years later. The very fact that the paradox which the author outlines has been debated since the 1920s would seem to indicate that there is more than one set of competing values within the world of the Chinese martial arts and that none of them are going away anytime soon.

Avron Boretz, in Gods, Ghosts and Gangsters: Ritual Violence, Martial Arts and Masculinity on the Margins of Chinese Society (Hawaii UP, 2011) does a good job of pointing out how the “traditional” martial values of interest to Daly function as mechanisms for the self-creation of sometimes highly marginal individuals. The fact that Ip Man’s system championed another set of values naturally reflects the fact that he (and his students) had a different background and a richer set of social options. And the martial values of the Jingwu system were likewise calculated to reflect the social norms held by China’s growing, educated and increasingly urban middle class.

A more historically informed view of the Chinese martial arts would not support the simple dichotomy of Wushu (free of all traditional values) on the one hand versus “traditional” kung fu (which embodied a universal set of norms) on the other. Rather it would have shown that Chinese society was a diverse place, and many groups have employed the martial arts as a tool for creating their own vision of what Chinese modernity should be, and what values their fellow citizens should accept. The Chinese martial arts are not simple victims of modernity, rather they are tools that have been used to amplify the agency of their practitioners through their interactions with both the state and society.

Some of these efforts have been more successful than others and balances naturally shift over time. Yet what is not clear to me upon reading this article is why the author assumes that the types of kung fu done by his set of “traditional” masters, or the values that they hold, are inherently more authentic, “Chinese” or worthy of preservation than any other vision of the Chinese martial arts to arise during this same period.

The danger in this critique is that some reader might conclude that the current martial arts styles are unworthy of study and preservation (or that their values should not be passed on) simply because these things are often not as old as their creation myths might lead one to believe. I want to stress that this is not the case.

Something does not have to be ancient or universal to become an important part of a community’s heritage. America’s great contributions to the world are jazz and rock and roll. Neither of these musical generas are any older than the southern Chinese martial arts that Daly is interested in. Yet they are both critical pieces of American’s cultural heritage.

The problem in accepting an ahistorical and hegemonic view of the traditional martial arts is not that it will cause our efforts to preserve them to fail. They might succeed all too well. The martial arts have never been just one thing or represented a static set of social values. Instead they have been dynamic tools by which somewhat marginal elements of Chinese society have articulated their own (often contrasting) visions of the many pathways to China’s modernity.

As the economic structure of Chinese society changes this struggle must also evolve to retain its relevance. Further, a study of the actual history of the martial arts shows that they have been exceptionally adept at making these transitions in the past. Yet by creating an unchanging vision of the past capable of supporting only one a single set of values we might bring this process to a halt, depriving future generations of their chance to find what is most beautiful in the Chinese martial arts. That is almost surely a greater threat to these systems than the waves of globalization and rapid economic growth from which they first emerged in their current form in the early 20th century.

The concept of intangible cultural heritage potentially has much to offer Martial Arts Studies. Yet we must begin with a more nuanced understanding of what we seek to sustain and its actual relationship with broader social trends.

oOo

If you enjoyed this you might also want to read:  Kung Fu is Dead, Long Live Kung Fu: The Martial Arts as Voluntary Associations in 20th Century Guangzhou

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A Vintage Postcard showing a Shanghai Sword Juggler. Source: Author’s Personal Collection.

The TCMA as a Perpetual Revival Movement

Kung Fu has an odd relationship with the past. It seems that for the last century (at least) each generation has discovered the beauty of the Chinese martial arts only to realize that they are quickly “dying out,” and will likely succeed in doing so unless steps are taken. In other words, there is a strain of the Chinese martial arts that exists in a state of perpetual revival. This is not just to say that each generation must discover these arts for themselves, but that the very language of “loss” and “preservation” are inherently bound up in this process.

Once we understand this, we come closer to grasping the social meaning and function of these practices throughout time. This same discourse seems to be deeply meaningful in our own era. In striving to preserve an ‘authentic’ aspect of martial history, practitioners find something equally authentic within themselves. It may be an increased awareness of their Chinese heritage, a sense of self-creation and empowerment, or simply the awe of touching a relic from humanity’s deep past. After all, few things in our daily life claim to be as ancient as Kung Fu.

Recently I was struck by the notion that not only is there a degree of regularity in the on-going rediscovery of Kung Fu, but that certain rhetoric regarding its social meaning and significance also reappears, with surprising regularity, over the decades. Each generation is bound to rediscover, more or less, the same thing about Chinese masculinity, whether it is embodied in Huo Yunjia, Bruce Lee or, more recently, Daniel Wu. Not only have these individuals carried the same symbolic torch, but they have even been discussed in broadly similar terms by their contemporaries.

This is not to say that they have all played identical roles. Ideas about gender, nationalism and identity are in constant flux. Change is a vital part of this process. Still, the similarities between them are interesting enough that it causes one to stop and think.

The need to look into the past and discover something of value, an idea or symbol that will point the way to a better future, is not confined to the present moment in history. This seems to be an almost universal impulse. Perhaps we enthusiastically rediscover similar inspirations in the lives of each of these figures because there is a ‘Kung Fu shaped hole’ in the human soul?

Alternatively, if we dig deeply enough we will find that the archaeology of popular history and media provides valuable insights into the motivations and meanings driving the current embrace of the Chinese martial arts. The fact that each generation is compelled to “discover” so much anew also mandates that much must also be “forgotten” just as regularly. I personally find the odd forgetfulness that surrounds the contemporary history of the Chinese martial arts to be one of their most fascinating traits. Yet one still suspects that deep currents of discourse from the past shape at least some attitudes in the present even if most of us remain blissfully unaware of this cultural inheritance.

For this reason I am always looking for clues as to how the Chinese martial arts were perceived within the ‘trans-national’ or ‘global’ community prior to their rediscovery in the 1970s. It is tempting to allow our impressions of these attitudes to be shaped by the narratives of popular Kung Fu films in which Western forces were always implacably hostile to the Chinese martial arts. These practices were, after all, tasked with defending the nation’s dignity against the forces of imperialism and spiritual colonization.

Nor is it all that difficult to find racist or bigoted accounts of the Chinese martial arts. Still, it is interesting to note that many of these hostile accounts date to the middle or later periods of the 19th century. This was an era of active military conflict throughout the region and doubts about the Qing government’s ability to adapt to its rapidly changing environment.

By the second and third decades of the 20th century there was a notable change in foreign language discussions of the Chinese martial arts. The main sentiment expressed by these writers was one of mild curiosity rather than derision. And a notable percentage of western authors were inclined to see positive values and potential strengths in these systems of boxing and gymnastics. (Readers should recall that the Chinese hand combat systems were rarely referred to as “martial arts” in the pre-WWII period).

The following Research Note includes two articles found in Hong Kong’s English language newspapers written nearly a decade apart. Both are interesting in their own right and introduce some important facts about the period in question.

The first documents a Jingwu (Chin Woo) demonstration at a local school. This specific organization did much to promote the practice of the Chinese martial arts among students during this decade, spreading their base of support widely throughout society. Readers should also note that this article follows Jingwu’s linguistic convention and uses the term “Kung Fu” as a label for the traditional Chinese martial arts. This usage provides further evidence reinforcing certain arguments about the historical evolution of the term that I made here.

The second article reminds us of the importance of court records and legal proceeding as historical resources. It is a notice of charges against a Kung Fu teacher in Kowloon for the possession of unregistered weapons. The brief nature of this account raises as many questions as it resolves about how the martial arts community interacted with law enforcement during the 1930s.

The police appear to have had no interest in pressing charges against the Sifu as they were aware that the weapons were only used in teaching, and the judge dismissed the case as a technicality after imposing a minimal fine. Still, one wonders why the instructor was dragged into court at all for a weapons offense that no one was interested in enforcing. We know that during the 1950s-1980s there was a degree of hostility between the Hong Kong police and traditional martial arts schools, whom they often viewed as fronts for organized crime and Triad activity. Cases such as this one raises the question of how far back these tensions went.

Taken together these articles seem to illustrate a more nuanced reception of the traditional Chinese martial arts on the part of Westerners in southern China than current popular culture troupes might lead one to suspect. Their attitude was not always one of derision or implacable hostility. Jingwu’s involvement with the education of the youth was seen in a generally positive light. Both the police and presiding judge in the second account seemed capable of distinguishing the social function of the Kowloon school as a place of instruction from any technical infractions of weapons regulations that existed at the time.  As a set these articles shed light on how the Chinese martial arts were being discussed and imagined prior to their “re-discovery” by the English speaking world in the 1960 and 1970s.

A typical Jingwu training class in front of the second Shanghai Headquarters of the group. Note the emphasis on forms and line-drills.

CHINA’S YOUNG IDEA
The China Mail, Page 4
2/25/1924

What the “Chin Woo” is Doing.

Unique Show at Queen’s College.

Small Chinese boys whirling huge swords around their heads and, grotesquely costumed in clownish rigs, performing quaint ballet. Chinese flappers swinging an equally nimble blade and then dancing a graceful pas a deux—these were some of the sights seen in the hall of Queen’s College yesterday afternoon, when prominent members of the Chin Woo Athletic Association gave a demonstration of the form of physical culture which it is their purpose to persuade the young people of China to take up.

It was altogether a unique show. The hall was filled with scholars from Queen’s college, who applauded the performances with much warmth, and members of the teaching staff, who looked on with evident interest. Under the genial supervision of Mr. Tang, a squad of boys kept the fry occupying the front “stalls” in a permanent state of apprehension by their smartly performed evolutions with a sort of Chinese claymore and following this came a vimful exhibition of kung fu, or Chinese boxing.

Mr. Lo Wei-tsong, one of the directors in Shanghai of the Chin woo, who had earlier explained to the gathering the objects aimed at by the system of physical culture the association teaches, proceeded to practice what he preached by demonstrating, with the help of Mr. Yao Shur-pao a number of useful holds and grips which might be used in self-defence. Clad only in tiger skins they looked a picturesque pair and certainly proved themselves exceedingly capable exponents of their art.

But the piece de resistance, as far as the audience was concerned, was unquestionably the comic ballet in which half a dozen Queens College boys participated. Dressed as clowns, they wore absurd masks and their antics made them appear for all the world like a collection of mechanical toys. The basic principal underlying this performance is that it must be done to music and it said much for the training of the youngsters that, owing to the fact that someone had lost the key of the cabinet containing the musical instruments, they did their “turn” remarkably well without other accompaniment than a sort of sing-song chant by their instructor. Later when one of the “property” swords had been requisitioned to break open the music box, and the musicians had fished out their instruments, clamorous demands for an encore were yielded to and they repeated their quaint performance with added gusto.

How far the modern young woman of China has succeeded in overstepping the bounds previously imposed upon her by prejudice and tradition may be gauged from the fact that three Chinese girls from Canton took part in the programme and followed an exhibition of swords dancing and kung fu with something rather less martial in the shape of an elegant minuet with which their juvenile audience was obviously, as one of the lady teachers put it, “tickled to death.”

As an exhibition of Chinese Calisthenics the performance was extremely interesting and the Chin Woo Association whose motto appears to be something like our own mens sna in corpore sano deserve high praise for their efforts in this way to advance the physical development of China’s youth. Thanks expressed by the headmaster (Mr. B. T. Tanner) to Mr. Lo Wei-tsong, and cheers for all concerned ended a highly entertaining afternoon.

Confiscated weapons. Shanghai Municipal Police Department, 1925. University of Bristol, Historical Photographs of China.

POSSESSION OF WEAPONS
Hong Kong Daily Press, Page 11
5-28-1938
CHINESE BOXING INSTRUCTOR FINED

Ng Hak Keung, boxing instructor of the Yuk Chi School and the Ching Wah Boxing Club, was charged before Mr. Macfadyen at the Kowloon Court yesterday with possession of three swords, two daggers, four spear heads and four fighting irons.

Dept.-Sergt. Pope said that the weapons were used for instruction purposes and the police were not pressing the case.

Defendant said that he was under the impression that as the blades were not sharp he need not have a licence.

His Worship remarked that it was only a technical offense, and fined the defendant $10.

oOo

If you enjoyed this Research Note you might also want to read: The Invisibility of Kung Fu: Two Accounts of the Traditional Chinese Martial Arts

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A pair of Japanese Komuso or “Monks of Emptiness.” Original Source: Unknown.

Introduction

I am currently in the middle of writing a short introduction that I was asked to contribute to a forthcoming volume.  As such we will be revisiting a post from the archives which asks how secrecy, often criticized as the bane of the traditional martial arts, might actually be contributing to their flexibility and continued survival in the current era.  Yet before moving on I have a brief announcement.

It was recently brought to my attention that Kung Fu Tea was selected as one of the Top 30 Martial Arts Blogs by the travel site BookMartialArts.com.  After taking a look at the rest of their blogroll that appears to be something of an accomplishment.  There is a lot of good reading material on their list.  And it is always exciting to see evidence of the growing popular interest in martial arts studies.

Secrecy in an Era of Global Markets

It is hard to think of any topic that has more deeply marked the Chinese martial arts than secrecy. Countless students have been drawn to these systems by the search for mysterious techniques of revitalized health, self-actualization and combat prowess. Movies and novels have told stories of secret books, hidden temples and the rediscovery of long forgotten lore. Generations of reformers have railed against it, usually to little effect.

In practical terms the traditional Chinese martial arts are an embodied practice in which one generation instructs the next through physical forms, drills and sparring. Hand combat can only be “understood” to the extent that it can be felt and experienced.

Yet in the realm of media and popular culture these same systems are almost universally reimagined as the quest for hidden lore. These stories sometimes intersect with how the martial arts present themselves. Ancient secrets make for undeniably good advertising.

Students may compete with each other to discover the greatest number of their master’s “secrets.” Adam Frank has recently observed that having a body of private knowledge may advantage certain instructors.  Still, they cannot actually capitalize on this without revealing their “secrets.” Ergo the bilateral exchange of personal loyalty for information which is critical to the social structure of a number of martial arts communities.

Even those teacher who boldly claim that “there are no secrets” or that “everything will be taught, holding nothing back” often find that it is impossible to check the rising demand for secrecy coming from their students. Ancient bodies of esoteric lore are so much a part of the image of the Chinese martial arts that even in instances in which reformers attempt to create more open structures, there is still a certain amount of cultural inertia opening a space for claim of “secret discipleship” and the like. It is not hard to understand why this subject has gotten under the skin of reformers and modernizers within the martial arts world since at least the 1910s.

The more recent incarnations of these reformers might guess that the days of truly hidden lore are numbered. While claims about “lost lineages” within various styles continue to be published (and in truth there is a lot of martial culture that has remains stubbornly local in nature) hand combat students seem somewhat more jaded to such claims than they might have been in the past.  In the era of both the internet and sentiments like “pictures or it didn’t happen,” is it truly possible for the martial arts to remain hidden behind a mysterious and poorly understood past?

Many individuals suspect that the globalization of the Chinese martial arts will ultimately bring about the end of older ways of thinking about secrecy. After all, the exchange of drabs of information for personal loyalty that underpinned this system may be much less fruitful when one’s students are actually consumers on the other side of the planet, all of whom can easily take up other arts (from various styles of Kung Fu, to MMA to Yoga) if they feel that they are being exploited.

The basic reality of the Chinese martial arts is that they have always been, in large part, a form of commercial activity. Even in the “golden age” of 19th century clan feuds, martial arts instructors and mercenaries were hired from the outside and expected to be paid for their efforts in real money. In the current era, will open markets tolerate and continue to value secrecy?

Surprisingly, the answer seems to be a resounding “yes.” As Adam Frank pointed out in a recent paper, it is not at all clear that the globalization of certain arts (in the case of his research Taijiquan) will lead to a universal liberalization of the practice.

The opening of new markets and avenues of instruction has changed the personal calculus facing many individual instructors and their larger martial associations back in China. As always, it is difficult to monetize one’s mastery of the martial arts without being willing to teach the complete system to students who are able to pay for instruction. Yet the appearance of these new lucrative markets also gives organizations an incentive to tighten discipline and engage in internal competition over who has the “right” to teach the family’s secrets.  Thus it may be that the commercial success of these arts in the current era actually reinforces their more esoteric tendencies.

Daikokuji-Sasayama Komusō Shakuhachi. Photo by 松岡明芳. Source: Wikimedia.

A Second Critical Engagement with Gary Krug

Over the last few years I have repeatedly found myself thinking about the many roles that secrets play within the martial arts. This is much too large a topic for a single post. Yet when I was reviewing Gary J. Krug’s article “At the Feet of the Master: Three Stages in the Appropriation of Okinawan Karate into Anglo-American Culture” I found that he actually had a number of things to contribute to this conversation.

Readers will recall that in his paper Krug attempted to explain the complex process by which Karate came to be accepted as a normal (and unthreatening) part of American commercial life a few decades after the conclusion of a destructive war with Japan. Krug argued that Karate was too complex a cultural phenomenon to be adopted all at once, or without substantial transformation. Its “appropriation” by western society could only be completed once a substantial body of other more basic ideas which underpinned the practice of Karate (chief among them Traditional Chinese Medicine) came to be accepted in the West. Yet rather than engaging in a true discourse with the culturally bounded concepts that lay behind Okinawan karate, this process allowed the West to detach it from its original matrix and to claim it as an indigenous product.

Krug’s argument is not without its problems. As I argued last time, the strength of his paper lays in the fact that he is advancing a more general theory of how complex acts of cultural appropriation happen which has application far beyond the rather limited case of Karate. Yet his key independent variable is exogenous to his model (meaning that the most important factors in his theory are simply “assumed” rather than explained) and his treatment of certain ideas, like TCM, tends to be rather reductive.

After posting this critique Paul Bowman sent me a link to another article that also examined the origins of Karate, suggesting that it might be useful when thinking about Krug. “Constructing a Martial Tradition: Rethinking a Popular History of Karate-Dou” by Kevin S. Y. Tan (Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 28:2 (May) 2004 pp 169-192) makes many contributions to this discussion and anyone studying Krug will also want to read his paper.

Tan’s critique of Karate’s treatment within popular culture picks up on many of the same themes that Krug touched on, yet its implications tend to be further reaching. Like Krug, much of Tan’s theoretical framework is also directly applicable to the very similar discussions that are often seen on the origins of influences within the various styles of the Chinese martial arts.

Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Tan’s paper is his suggestion that both practicing students and historians of the martial arts become much more comfortable with three short words, “we don’t know.” He notes that both groups often seek to speak to the various national, social and cultural factors that influenced the development of martial arts traditions such as Karate. While Krug’s paper really focused on the post-1946 era, Tan instead attempted to assess what we can assert with certainty about the deeper history of this art going back to the 17th century. What he found was that very little could be documented with any degree of certainty.

Worse yet, the basic concepts that we often attempt to impose on these sorts of conversations (like what it means to assert that Karate is an “Okinawan” or a “Japanese” art) are in many ways deeply anachronistic. Some of these ideas are actually the product of multiple layers of complex and strategic mythmaking which unfolded slowly as Okinawa, China, Japan and America played out themes of dependency, colonization, national awakening and imperialism. Yes it is “correct” that say that Karate is an Okinawan art, yet that seemingly simple assertion obscures huge amounts of intricate social history that is critical for understanding how it (or any other traditional fighting system) actually emerged in the modern era.

Tan concludes:

“Although now commonly framed as a Japanese or Oriental martial tradition, karate was never a direct creation or invention of any one particular cultural form or political interest. Rephrasing a term coined by the historical anthropologist Sahlins (1985), the construction and subsequent reconstructions in light of changing historical and political climates may be described as a “structure of conjunctions,” where the “martial tradition of karate” is often a dynamic interplay between various cultural logics as they constantly encounter and reinterpret each other throughout history. The historical fate and future of karate-dou then is one that can never be apprehended through a rigid and linear understanding of the process of history making or any narrow claims to essentialized notions of culture. Therefore, only through the adoption of a multistranded and critical approach would one be able to appreciate the fullness of any seemingly empty hands.” (Tan p. 187)

It is interesting to note that Tan’s paper does not directly engage Krug, even though one possible reading of his conclusion would seem to problematize much of his predecessor’s argument. One cannot really fault Anglo-Americans for innovating in their practice of the art after arguing in painstaking detail that the entire idea of “traditional Japanese Karate” is basically a simulacra, a detailed representation of a past that never really happened that way. At the very least, it was understood in vastly different ways by the individuals who were actually engaged in its practice than how we tend to imagine their efforts today.

The one time that Tan does directly engage with Krug is in his discussion of the post-WWII evolution of the art. Tan notes that Krug perceives Karate as having been dissociated from its Okinawan and Japanese roots through the process of western cultural appropriation. While seeming to leave the door open for such a possibility in the future, Tan’s interpretation of the situation in the West is fairly different. Rather than Karate being “westernized,” he sees it as remaining primarily a projection of oriental and “Japanese” (rather than Okinawan) identity.

These empirical differences aside, on a more theoretical level Tan might be seen as problematizing some of the core concepts within Krug’s article. Krug appears to take the existence of something called “traditional Okinawan Karate” more or less for granted when its emergence was in fact a deeply complex process which drew on a variety of cultural influences (all which tended to identify with specific villages or geographic locations rather than “nationalities”.)

Likewise Tan’s exploration of Karate’s importation into Japan seems to undercut Krug’s assertion that the cultural similarities between these two places simplified the process and allowed for “cross-fertilization” rather than “appropriation” (as was necessary in the more alien West). In fact there was nothing simple about this short voyage and the end result as described by Tan actually bears a striking resemblance to exactly the sorts of “appropriation” and aggressive adaptation that Krug outlined.

Given these empirical discrepancies we might be tempted to simply dismiss Krug’s treatment of Karate’s nature and thus much of the basis of his argument. Perhaps his tendency towards reductionism extends beyond his cursory treatment of TCM. Perhaps it encompasses Karate itself, his central object of study?

A more generous reading of Krug’s article would suggest that we resist this temptation. In his opening sentences Krug defines Karate and as an “object of knowledge” and not a fixed body of techniques, practices or even identities. In his view what we now call Karate represents a complex dialogue of ever evolving concepts, philosophies, histories and calculations. In that sense he would seem to agree with Tan’s call for the rejection of “a rigid and linear understanding of the process of history making or any narrow claims to essentialized notions of culture.” Perhaps the biggest difference between the two authors is that Krug seems to place more emphasis on the unfolding conversation happening on the island of Okinawa itself while Tan’s more systemic approach takes all of the Pacific Rim as the relevant unit of analysis.

Krug might respond that the seeming crystallization of Karate that readers may detect in his article is more of a product of how it was being treated in Anglo-American culture in the 1950s and 1960s than his own understanding of his object of study. He notes that as American GI’s came into contact with the art it became a frozen moment in their imagination. What had initially been a single instant in an ongoing conversation about hand combat, local culture and colonization became a touchstone for how generations of Americans would imagine what it meant to be “Japanese.” In reality the conversation continued to evolve in schools across Okinawa and Japan…but not in the minds of this new generation of western students.

The similarities and differences between Tan’s argument and Krug’s theory of cultural appropriation make the two interesting debating partners. The papers share enough common ground that one can sustain a conversation between the authors. Tan provides a much more detailed and accurate picture of the early emergence of Karate, while Krug’s interests are restricted to its evolution within in western markets. While Tan is probably writing better social history, I have to admit that I find of number of the ideas that Krug raises to be fascinating and potentially helpful.

Another Komuso Buddhist Monk. Photo by Tarourashima. Source: Wikimedia.

Conclusion: Krug on Secrecy in the Martial Arts

From time to time it becomes necessary to explain why otherwise sober scholars would spend valuable resources studying a “pop” phenomenon such as Karate, or the Chinese martial arts. It is all too easy to argue, as both Tan and Krug (among many others) do, that these things have functioned primarily as a signifier of western beliefs about the nature of Asian identity. Yet that alone does not make them theoretically interesting.

Nor does it actually explain the success of the martial arts in the West. Many things, from “Willow Ware” porcelain to pictures of Chinese women with bound feet, have served as potent markers of the “Oriental Other” in the western imagination. Most of these signifiers have faded and been replaced over time. I suspect that more Americans probably associate the drinking of Tea with the United Kingdom today than they do with China. Yet this surely would not have been the case in the 18th or 19th century.

The martial arts have shown a remarkable degree of cultural resilience. First discussed in print and taught in the west from about 1900 onwards, these practices have gained both cultural value and market share over time. Theorists can even point to specific periods (one after 1945 and another in the 1970s) when the meaning of these practices shifted in dramatic ways, allowing them to grow in popularity.

Nor has this process been restricted to the West. While early 20th century modernizers predicted the imminent demise of the martial arts (especially in China), these movements have demonstrated a surprising ability to reinvent themselves in practically every generation. They have adapted both their techniques and institutional forms to match the unique market conditions that modernity and globalization have created.

While the martial arts maintain the public image of timeless and stoic tradition, holding up their hands against the onslaught of social change, they are in fact unmistakably modern practices. The economic and social conditions that even the most traditional hand combat schools depends upon for their daily survival (such as the existence of a monetized market economy) guarantee this.

This image of cultural continuity is one of the “goods” that modern consumers demand. Yet it is supplied by organizations and movements that are in a constant state of revival, reimagining both themselves and their relationship with the past. This is the basic pattern that both Krug and Tan see in the history of Karate. Nor is it all that different from what exists in the other martial arts.

How do they pull it off? How do the various hand combat schools create a deep sense of continuity with the past while at the same time appealing to the ever evolving demands of consumers?

At the beginning of this blog post I mentioned the role of globalization, cheap video and the internet in the evolution of the martial arts. All of this has conspired to put more information in the hands of martial arts students than they ever possessed in the past. The dominant discourse that surrounds many of the traditional arts has also conditioned these individuals to be on the lookout for all sorts of “secrets.” One simply has to visit any internet chatroom dedicated to the martial arts to find some exquisitely detailed debates on arcane lineages or hidden techniques.

All of this has sensitized certain individuals (particularly those interested in a more critical approach to martial arts history) to the frequent claims of the rediscovery of lost lineages, techniques, books or even entire arts. Other claims are more modest. We also see individuals attempting to really research their own forms in an effort to find new applications, better ways of dealing grappling than their instructors may have taught, or critical insights to empower a renewed emphasis on contact weapons training. It seems that no matter who you are, the discovery of new information is a critical aspect of the lived experience of the martial arts.

When considering the remarkable flexibility and survival of these fighting systems, Krug argued that we should view the seemingly impenetrable, always shifting, bamboo curtain that obscures so many aspects of the “real history” of the martial arts as a feature of this system rather than as a bug. It is this belief that there is always something more to be revealed, something just a little wiser, more deadly, or more culturally relevant, that keeps students coming back for more. More crassly, it is the seemingly unending faith that we have in the ancient masters that provides our modern teachers with the breathing room and the license that they need to keep these arts socially relevant and institutionally vital.

Krug found that the idea of secrecy itself was vital to Karate’s success in West, a civilization that claims to value transparency as a central value.

“The malleability of the cultural forms of martial arts was enhanced by a tradition of secrecy, which had long been a part of the martial arts….Thus Karate has a long history of inventing imaginary forms for itself to present to outsiders, and these imaginary forms often have been mistaken for the practice itself. This mistake continues into the present day. Having no well-defined public face, the art could be reformed and represented as a different set of practices with relative ease.” (Krug, pp. 397-398)

Tan’s social history of hand combat in Okinawa, and its encounter with Japan, provides a number of places where these same mechanisms can be observed. Yet when it comes to secrecy the Chinese martial arts are second to none. Is traditional Kung Fu really on its deathbed? Not as long as it can maintain the allure of its mysteries.  These show no signs of fading.

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If you enjoyed this you might also want to see: “Fighting Styles” or “Martial Brands”? An economic approach to understanding “lost lineages” in the Chinese Martial Arts.

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A Pallet of Wooden Dummies for sale at a Costco store in Japan. Source: goodall factory on Instagram.

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!

Ming era armor currently on display in Shanghai. Source: Shanghai Daily Post.

News from all Over

This week’s report starts with three items from the Shanghai Daily.  The first article details the opening of a new exhibit of ancient and traditional Chinese weapons at the Han Tianheng Art Museum in Shanghai.  Much of the article focuses on an interview with the individual who collected these artifacts and loaned them to the exhibit.  It certainly sounds as though there will be some important early pieces there and if anyone is in the area it would be great to see a report.  The exhibit is currently expected to run through February.

That article was followed up by another titled “The Finest Swords Becomes Legends.”  It focuses on the mythology surrounding some of the amazing bronze swords produced in ancient China.  Dedicated students of the history of China’s weapons will already be familiar with these accounts, but its always fascinating to see them working their way into the more general press.

Jiang Hanlong, Wing Chun Instructor. Shanghai Daily.

Next we turn to something a little more current.  As part of its Hangzhou Special series the Shanghai Daily also ran a profile of Jiang Hanlong, a cartoonist who, after being introduced to Wing Chun, went on to become an professional martial arts instructor and to open his own school.  A student of Lun Jia (who in turn studied with Ip Man), Jiang went on to open a school with a friend and Taijiquan practitioner hoping to help students find peace within the routines of a hectic modern life.  In addition to Wing Chun and Taijiquan they also offer courses in Chinese archery, meditation and traditional music.

A Pallet of Wing Chun dummies at a Costco store in Japan. Source: Apple Daily.

This next story is by far my favorite in the current news roundup.

How do  you know that Wing Chun is officially “big in Japan”?  There are reports (such as this one at inverse.com) that some Costco locations have begun to sell wooden dummies (mook yan jongs).  Photos on Instagram appear to back this up.  I have attempted to contact Costco’s corporate media people in Japan to find out more about this product but have yet to receive a reply.  All of the photos seem to show stand-alone (rather than wall mounted) units and feature the “Jeet Kune Do” style head.  One assumes  that the release of these dummies just prior to Ip Man 3 may not have been a coincidence.  Still, the packaging doesn’t make any direct reference to either Ip Man or Bruce Lee.  I don’t really need a new dummy at the moment, but I would still love to see these show up at my local Costco!  You can read the original Apple Daily story here.

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.

One of the surprises to arise out of the last news cycle was this detailed article published by Bloomberg Business reviewing the current controversies and financial history of the Shaolin Temple.  Titled the “Rise and Fall of Shaolin’s CEO Monk” this is probably the best discussion of the current state of the Shaolin Temple that I have seen produced by anyone in the mainstream press.  Over the last few years Shaolin has appeared in more and more articles, but very few of them take the time to review the modern history of Shaolin in quite as much detail as you will find here.  Definitely a recommended read.

Yang Style Taiji Students In Shanghai, 2005.

The Chinese Martial Arts also made a recent appearance in the New York Times “Wellness” blog.  The topic of the conversation was Taijiquan and whether it had therapeutic value with regards to heart disease.  Spoiler alert….the answer is yes, for a couple of reasons.  You can read the full discussion here.  (No word on how practicing Taiji against Shanghai’s smoggy skyline might impact your health).

The character Jack Wong (based on Wong Jack Man) and co-star (along with Bruce Lee) of “A Challenge,” a webcomic by Jeremy Arambulo.  Source: NPR

As always Bruce Lee’s legacy continued to be discussed.  Anyone interested in either Lee’s fight with Wong Jack Man, or the portrayal of the martial arts in comic books more generally, will want to check out this interview on NPR (national public radio).  In it Jeremy Arambulo talks about growing up as an Asian-American, Bruce Lee and his current webcomic, “A Challenge.”  This work is loosely based on Lee’s well known confrontation with Wong Jack man and also provides some extended meditations on subjects that may be of interest to readers of Kung Fu Tea.  Or click here to go directly to the comic.

If you are in the Northwest you might instead want to check out a new walking tour of Bruce Lee’s Seattle which ties into the current exhibit on his life at the Wing Luke Museum.  It appears that they are trying to get some good social history into their program.

A few other pioneers of Kung Fu in North America have been in the news. I particularly liked this discussion of Grandmaster Pui Chan as it had some good biographical material about his life in southern China and his early teaching career in the USA.  The discussion is well worth checking out if you are interested in the more modern history of the Chinese martial arts.

Also fascinating is the recent feature titled “The Legend of the 52 Blocks” published by the Vice Sports blog.  Written by Benjamin Nadler this article provides a fairly comprehensive introduction to the history, legend and mystery of this predominantly African-American vernacular martial arts style.  Students of Martial Arts Studies may have been introduced to this unique style through the writings of the anthropologist Thomas Green.  I have it on good authority that Prof. Green is getting ready to publish more of his ethnographic research on the topic.  As such Nadler’s blog post may be a good way to get yourself up to speed for prior to its release.

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

Chinese Martial Arts Films

Ip Man 3 has now officially made its way into theaters and the reviews are starting to roll in.  I have yet to see  it, but the initial signals seem to be encouraging.  First off, the Hollywood Reporter has a quick list of five things to expect if you are planning on seeing the film.  The San Francisco Chronicle gave the film an overall decent review and thought that it was a fitting end to Ip Man’s martial arts saga.  And while a number of reviewers lampooned Mike Tyson’s appearance in the film, the Vancouver Weekly had some surprisingly positive things to say about his performance, starting with the fact that he basically stole every scene that he was in.  And what could we do to make the Ip Man franchise even bigger?  How about a little cross-promotion with Star Wars?  That was another trend that has been evident in a lot of the discussions of Donnie Yen’s recent work.

Kung Fu Panda 3. Grab destiny by the dumplings.

Possibly the only thing bigger than Donnie Yen right now is a Panda named Po.  All of the early discussion of this film has been great.  But what has really been turning heads among Hollywood insiders is the business mechanics behind this project.  As a joint production between an American studio and a set of our Chinese companies, this film is able to skirt a number of the regulations that are normally imposed on foreign films in China (limiting the amount of time that they can run and the total numbers of screens that they can show on, as well as the distribution of ticket sales).  Given the popularity of the franchise in China, its clear that this film is going to be very profitable.  Forbes dives into the number here, and The Street offers its own commentary on the Panda’s success.

Lastly, a Star Wars story has emerged for fans of the Chinese martial arts.  As I have discussed elsewhere, the internet has been clamoring for an Asian Jedi for some time now.  This is not an unreasonable request given the importance of Kung Fu mythology and Samurai films to the genesis of Star Wars.  Simply put, no katanaa, no lighsabers.  Well, it appears that Disney heard these prayers and responded by giving the fans a Storm Trooper.  And not just any white bucket wearing thug.  Nope, Kung Fu brought you the internet’s favorite Storm Trooper.  You can read more about him here.

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

Martial Arts Studies

There are a number of forthcoming books on martial arts studies that readers should be aware of.  Yet before we launch into these, Paul Bowman recently posted an article on Academia.edu asking the prior question of how we go about making martial arts history matter.  It is an interesting paper on an important subject.  Be sure to check it out.  And while you do, get your registrations in for the 2016 Martial Arts Studies conference to be held in July at the University of Cardiff.  Last years event was a great success, and the list of speakers and guests for this year’s event is even stronger.  Click here to find out who is coming and how to register.

In Search of Legitimacy by Lauren Miller Griffith (Berghahn Books, January 2016)

Lauren Miller Griffith’s volume In Search of Legitimacy: How Outsiders Become Part of the Afro-brazilian Capoeira Tradition (Berghahn Books (January 31, 2016) is about to be released.  I have been looking forward to reading this book for a while and am currently in the process of ordering a review copy for the journal Martial Arts Studies.  It certainly tackles a topic of central importance to students of many martial art traditions.  The publisher’s synopsis is as follows:

Every year, countless young adults from affluent, Western nations travel to Brazil to train in capoeira, the dance/martial art form that is one of the most visible strands of the Afro-Brazilian cultural tradition. In Search of Legitimacy explores why “first world” men and women leave behind their jobs, families, and friends to pursue a strenuous training regimen in a historically disparaged and marginalized practice. Using the concept of apprenticeship pilgrimage-studying with a local master at a historical point of origin-the author examines how non-Brazilian capoeiristas learn their art and claim legitimacy while navigating the complexities of wealth disparity, racial discrimination, and cultural appropriation.

Lauren Miller Griffith is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Hanover College who studies performance, tourism, and education in Latin America.

Later in the spring readers can expect another volume focusing on Capoeria.  Sara Delamont (Cardiff University), Neil Stephens (Cardiff University), Claudio Campos will be releasing Dreaming Brazil, Embodying Brazil: An Ethnography of Diaspora Capoeira through Routledge (May 15, 2016).

Capoeira, the Brazilian dance-fight-game, has spread across the world since the 1970s. It has become a popular leisure activity for many people, and a career for many Brazilians in countries as diverse as China and Spain, and as geographically distant from Brazil as New Zealand and Finland. This ethnographic research conducted on capoeira in the UK is not only an in-depth investigation of one martial art, but also provides rich data on masculinity, performativity, embodiment, globalization, rites of passage and tournaments of value, as well as an enhanced discussion of methods and methodology.

This April Lionel Loh Loong will be releasing The Body and Senses in Martial Culture by Lionel Loh Han Loong through Palgrave.  While still a few months out, this work will focus on the booming martial arts tourism industry in Thailand.

This ethnographic study of a mixed martial arts gym in Thailand describes the everyday practices and lived experiences of martial art practitioners. Through the lived realities and everyday experiences of these fighters, this book seeks to examine why foreigners invest their time and money to train in martial arts in Thailand; the linkages between the embodiment of martial arts and masculinity; how foreign bodies consume martial arts and what they get out of it; the sensory reconfiguration required of a fighter; and the impact of transnational flows on bodily dispositions and knowledge. The author argues that being a successful fighter entails not only sensitized awareness and knowledge of one’s body, but also a reconfiguration of the senses.

Lastly, students of cultural and film studies may want to take a look at Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood by Northrop Davis (A professor of Media Arts at the University of South Carolina).  Various types of comics have had an important impact on film in recent years, and they are also important vectors by which media discourses on the martial arts are spread throughout society (consider the impact of a single title like Scott Pilgrim in promoting a specific image of the martial arts).  The publisher’s blurb is as follows:

The media industries in the United States and Japan are similar in much the same way different animal species are: while a horse and a kangaroo share maybe 95% of their DNA, they’re nonetheless very different animals-and so it is with manga and anime in Japanese and Hollywood animation, movies, and television. Though they share some key common elements, they developed mostly separately while still influencing each other significantly along the way. That confluence is now accelerating into new forms of hybridization that will drive much of future storytelling entertainment. Packed with original interviews with top creators in these fields and illuminating case studies, Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood helps to parse out these these shared and diverging genetic codes, revealing the cross-influences and independent traits of Japanese and American animation.

Readers looking for study material of a more “practical” nature may want to check out Scott Rodell’s latest project.  Dandaofa Xuan – Chinese Long Saber Techniques Anthology is a translation of a 400 year old manual describing techniques for a the long two handed saber called the dandao.  Apparently this was also the first Chinese martial arts manual to be published with accompanying illustrations.  As such it is an interesting bit of martial arts history.

An assortment of Chinese teas. 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 logic of Taijiquan’s forms, African-American martial arts history and hand combat as intangible cultural heritage.   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.

Vintage Postcard. Yukio Tani demonstrating a flying armbar on William Bankier c.1906. Source: Wikimedia.

Introduction

The term “Yellow Peril” is something that I do not often see in the martial arts studies literature. Even in research projects tracking the global spread of the traditional fighting systems it is conspicuous by its absence. This has always seemed odd. When I started to more actively research this topic a few years ago I simply assumed that the early 20th century fantasies of depravity, violence and racial competition which shaped so much of that era’s popular culture would be central to most of the ongoing discussions.

Questions of race and identity are commonly discussed in the martial arts studies literature. Yet most of these seem to be rooted in firmly in the post-WWII environment in which the Chinese and Japanese communities were already well on their way to being re-imagined as “model minorities.” Alternatively, the disillusionment and cultural confusion following America’s defeat in the Vietnam War has been much discussed. Nor have we neglected Bruce Lee’s contributions to the global spread of the martial arts as first an emissary of community struggle, and later a symbol of a more personal quest for development.

All of this is important. Yet the Asian martial arts did not begin their global journey in 1973. Half a century earlier they were already established on American shores where they were seen as a threat to the dominance of Western martial arts and as a powerful political symbol of the changing balance of power in the Pacific. And by 1920 it was clear that this was no passing fad. Judo and jujitsu had managed to find a footing within the military, police and civilian communities.

This raises some important questions. The early 20th century saw very active nativist agitation against the Chinese and Japanese communities in the US. This resulted in new rounds of legislation that served to further marginalize and segregate these groups. The idea of a “Yellow Peril” was an active and motivating force among many labor activists in the Progressive Era who linked the appearance of relatively low wage Asian agricultural workers in California both to an erosion of wages and a threat to White American masculinity. In the wake of the failed Boxer Uprising in China (1899-1900), or the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), any mention of Asians and violence was more likely to bring up the specter of Fu Man Chu (or some other literary villain) than a boundary crossing hero like Bruce Lee.

The Asian martial arts made their first important inroads into Western popular culture at a time of considerable cultural anxiety. How were these trends connected? And how did the basic social scripts and patterns that were laid down in the early 20th century go on to shape and influence the larger process of cultural appropriation of these fighting systems in the 1970s and 1980s?

It is no coincidence that both of these time periods, the 1910s and the 1970s, share a number of key characteristics. Both were periods of rapid globalization measured in the growth of international trade and domestic economic dislocation. These eras were also characterized by the fear of global war in which Asia might play a more prominent role. And in both periods the public showed a great interest in the Asian fighting arts. Reconsidering the role of the “Yellow Peril” in this earlier period may reveal previously overlooked social patterns which survive into the later period as well.

An advertisement for the Yabe School of Jiu-Jitsu in the July 1905 edition of the Business and Bookkeeper Magazine. Note the not too subtle reference to Japan’s recent victory over Russia and its relevance to hand combat.

Jiu-Jitsuing Uncle Sam

Recently it was my good fortune to run into an article which nicely sets the stage for this sort of comparative exercise. Wendy Rouse published “Jiu-Jitsuing Uncle Sam: The Unmanly Art of Jiu-Jitsu and the Yellow Peril Threat in the Progressive Era United Stated” in the October 2015 issue of the Pacific Historical Review. Best known for her work on childhood and family life among early Chinese-American immigrants, in this piece she turns her considerable historical talents to a detailed examination of the media discussion surrounding the initial introduction of Japanese jiu-jitsu (using the spelling preferred at that time) and its complex, at times contradictory, relationship with economic, gendered, nationalist and social discourses in early 20th century America.

This article has much to recommend it and will be of interest to anyone who studies either the global spread of the Asian martial arts or the Asian-American experience in the progressive era. The author’s research is firmly grounded in a rich array of primary sources. These fall basically into two categories. On the one hand she has assembled an impressive database of newspaper and magazine articles, early jiu-jitsu manuals (published by both Japanese and Western authors), political statements and even advertisements for mail-order martial arts classes.

This material is often juxtaposed with more traditional historical sources (including letters and journals) recording the conversations and thought of political elites. Much of her investigation of upper-class opinion on the Japanese question and the value of jiu-jitsu focused on President Theodore Roosevelt’s effort to master the system, promote it within the USA and wrestle with its implications for his understanding of early 20th century racial/national hierarchies.

Her empirical discussion is also theoretically grounded. Rouse draws inspiration from two sources in particular, and they seem to have provided the framework upon which she organizes her understanding of the forces that shaped the progressive era’s appropriation of judo and jiu-jitsu.

The first of these is Elliott G. Gorn’s now classic study, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Cornell UP, 2nd ed. 2010). Appearing in the late 1980s, this book made two major contributions to the discussion of the combat sports and fighting traditions. First it argued that these practices revealed important insights into a wide range of social, class, political and gender discourses. At the time this was still a novel insight.

Secondly, it used the development of boxing to argue that changes in any of these discourses could only be understood in relation to what was going on in the other. In short, the combat sports are interesting precisely because they provide a way to cut into a group of complex and mutually constitutive social forces. Rouse’s own contributions to the discussion do much to reinforce both of these prior conclusions.

Rouse also references Akihiko Hirose and Key Kei-ho Pih’s “Men who Strike and Men who Submit: Hegemonic and Marginalized masculinities in Mixed Martial Arts” (Men and Masculinities, 2010 no.2, 190-209). When looking at the debate between “striking” versus “grappling” strategies in the development of mixed martial arts these authors noted a strong correlation with stereotypic “western” and “eastern” theories of masculinity. They noted that culturally speaking more “western” modes of attack such as punching and kicking (reminiscent of boxing) tended to be favored over Orientalized and “feminized” practices such as jujitsu. However, the effectiveness of these techniques led to them being selectively appropriated in such a way that they were no longer a threat to the overall (western) cultural values of MMA. As will become clear Rouse sees basically the same pattern playing itself out between 1902 and the end of WWI. As such this article functions as her main interpretive lens.

Rouse’s article starts out with a brief yet comprehensive review of popular anxieties centering on increased Asian immigration and the threat of a “Yellow Peril” in America in the late 19th and early 20th century. After looking at the political and imperialist origins of this discourse she turns her attention to the ways in which it intersected with other powerful economic and social conflicts during the period. Labor organizations were on the front lines of this fight as they had the most to lose from falling wages. Antagonistic patterns that had developed with reference to Chinese communities during the 19th century were increasingly applied to Japanese immigrants (many of whom were actually coming from Hawaii) in the 20th.

These clashes led to new legislation marginalizing and attempting to segregate Japanese-American residents during the Roosevelt Presidency. This was a problem for the president who had a more complicated and nuanced view of the Japanese. While he (like practically all members of his generation) perceived the world as a series of racial hierarchies, Roosevelt was not in favor of the outright exclusion of the Japanese. This was likely because he both admired and was somewhat afraid of Japan’s growing military stature in Asia and wanted to avoid conflict with Japan so far was possible. Yet at the same time he was politically obligated to respond to the demands of progressive voices in the labor movement.

This sort of political calculus alone might be enough to explain the eventual banning of Japanese immigration to America. Yet in what ways can it help us to make sense of the growing popular interest in jiu-jitsu, which began to explode at almost the exact same moment in time?

Rouse argues that to understand this we must also look at the “crisis of masculinity” which was starting to grip popular discourse in the early 20th century. Many streams contributed to this rising tide of anxiety. It stemmed from the increasingly urban and sedentary nature of American life as the economy evolved, changing theories about the value of physical culture and even the growing women’s suffrage movement. Yet there were also unmistakable racial overtones to this discussion. Indeed, it is here that Western fears of a “Yellow Peril” began to play out differently for the Japanese than what had already been seen with the nation’s much larger Chinese population.

Japan had been a rising military power in Asia for decades, and the world had begun to take note. Many Western commentators had been surprised by the effectiveness of Japan’s modernized military during the Sino-Japanese War and the Boxer Rebellion (where the performance of its forces could be compared directly to its allied Western counterparts). But that was nothing compared to the wave of awe that was unleased by Japan’s defeat of Russia during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), whose conclusion was negotiated by Roosevelt himself.

On the one hand this vastly improved Japan’s standing in the Western imagination. Compared to China it was seen as a strong, mature and modernizing force in the region. Its military victories on the field reinforced the virility of its national image. Yet this growing strength came with an undercurrent of anxiety as to what it all meant for America’s aspirations in the Pacific, as well as its own sense of masculinity.

The appearance of multiple jiu-jitsu teachers in the United States further complicated this question. Working class Americans were very much invested in both wrestling and boxing as not just popular sports but signs of their collective masculinity. When the initial contests between American and Japanese fighters failed to demonstrate the inherent superiority of the former, the national press began to sit up and take notice.

In an era when national, racial and gendered hierarchies were so tightly tied in the public imagination, Japan’s success on the battlefield, and the success of individual Japanese martial artists on the mat, seemed to reinforce each other in a powerful and potentially frightening way. As Rouse notes, all of this tied directly into the ongoing national conversation on the “Yellow Peril.”

Another advertisement for the Yabe school, this time emphasizing the art’s value to women. This add ran in Black Cat magazine during the year 1905.

Exoticizing, Feminizing and Appropriating Jiu-Jitsu

In the second half of her article Rouse lays out the three main strategies by which American society seems to have come to terms with the Japanese martial arts in the early 20th century. Interestingly, both the supporters and opponents of these fighting systems employed all three of these strategies, and at times even adopted the same basic symbols. Yet variations in emphasis led them to sharply different conclusions.

The first of these strategies was to emphasize the exotic and alien nature of the Japanese martial arts. Secondly, commentators attempted to question the cultural values that they represented (by way of comparison western boxing was often seen as upholding the social values most important to western notions of “manliness”). As such, the popular press was full of both subtle and overt efforts to “feminize” the image of jiu-jitsu. Lastly, when it became clear one simply could not dismiss this body of practice on technical grounds, efforts were made to appropriate or co-opt the martial arts in ways that did not challenge the perceived dominance of western models on masculinity.

Rouse’s discussion of the exoticizing impulse when dealing with jiu-jitsu is perhaps the best developed and most interesting aspect of her paper. Both supporters of the system and detractors pointed to its foreign and esoteric nature, yet they drew very different conclusions as to what this implied for the practices worth. Both early American and Japanese martial arts teachers in the west immediately latched onto the public’s appetite for oriental mystery and romance and saw this as the key to successfully marketing their wares.

Yae Kichi Yabe, a jiu-jitsu instructor trained in the Tenjin Shinyo-ryu, set up shop in Rochester NY in 1904 and promptly began to advertise heavily in a number of national publications. In addition to promoting his school these advertisements attempted to sell books and correspondence lessons which could introduce one to the art of jiu-jitsu. While a number of different advertisements were produced, each of them promised to reveal fighting techniques which up to a single generation ago had been kept secret within Japan and were only now being taught to foreigners for the first time. Alluding to the recent victory over Russia, Yabe claimed that it was this secret knowledge (previously confined to a handful of Samurai families) which had been the key to his nation’s fighting prowess and their relatively few causalities.

Opponents of the new system also latched onto the exotic nature of jiu-jitsu, yet they drew sharply different conclusions. Rather than a contest of strength and endurance the Asian martial arts seemed to be based on skills that drew heavily on cunning and deception. In fact, it was not even clear that one could think of jiu-jitsu as an athletic sport at all. While a system of self-defense, it did not appear suitable for the sort of moral instruction of the nation’s youth that boxing and wrestling had offered. Of course a number of Western fighters loudly disagreed with the often heard assertion that these systems would allow a well-trained small individual (presumably one who was Asian or female) to beat a larger person (presumably a white male). Not only did this go against the basic logic of weight-classes in Western combat sports, but it seemed a direct challenge to racial and gender hierarchies at a time when upholding these systems was seen an as explicit goal of American physical culture.

Rouse’s discussion of the feminization of jiu-jitsu, while interesting, is less well developed. In this case almost all of her examples explore the ways in which critics attempted to discredit the art by feminizing it. Writers in the boxing press criticized jiu-jitsu as a proper fighting art after hearing reports of it being taught to female college students at Vassar. That example was fascinating as it actually brought together the trifecta of racial, class and gender anxiety in an explosion of animosity directed squarely at jiu-jitsu. Reading through a few such examples it is not hard to understand why the growing popularity of the art in some quarters might be seen as a threat to the masculinity of working-class boxing fans.

Unfortunately this discussion was not as detailed as the one that came before, and it left out what may have been one of the most interesting elements of the story. Both supporters of jiu-jitsu as well as its opponents seemed to collude in the feminization of the art. Yabe’s advertisements are once again quite instructive. Some of his pitches focused explicitly on female insecurity and the value of martial arts training as a means of self-defense for women. In other cases it was emphasized how a proper knowledge of jiu-jitsu would allow “boys” to overcome “men.” And his advertisements emphasized the small size and frame of the Japanese soldier who had humiliated their hulking Russian enemies.

Nor was Yabe alone in this effort. Inazo Nitobe discussed at some length the place of women in the Bushido philosophy and their sometimes extensive training in traditional hand combat skills. His widely read 1904 volume, Bushido: The Soul of the Samurai, actually places this discussion of women directly following his chapter on the sword as the “soul of the samurai.” Kano Jigoro included women in the Judo system from its foundation. Further, the suffragette’s also brought quite a bit of attention to jiu-jitsu. It seems then that women of Vassar were in good company.

The feminization of the Japanese arts was not just a slur.  It was a very effective advertising strategy which was actively pursued by their supporters. Following the lead of Dominic LaRochelle it may also be useful to ask to what degree these newly produced American manuals were following the lead of their Japanese language counterparts.  If so, the use of feminine imagery within the Japanese martial arts may be more complex than this discussion suggests.

A google N-gram chart showing spikes in the popularity of terms “jiu-jitsu” and “judo” in published English language documents during the first two decades of the 20th century. The blue line notes when Roosevelt began to publicly practice the art. The green lines demarcate the start and end of the Russo-Japanese War, and the Red Lines Mark WWI. Note the increase in usage of these terms around the start of both conflicts.

As above, but this graph looks at instances of the use of jiu-jitsu and judo in works of English language fiction. Note that in both cases we see a bump in fictional references after a corresponding rise in non-fiction uses. Neither term appears with any frequency in the google database of scanned publications prior to 1900, and both remain in circulation after 1920.

Lastly Rouse looks at the various ways in which jiu-jitsu was appropriated by the western hand combat establishment. This is a somewhat complex topic and probably could have been a paper of its own. While a growing number of individuals in the West were aware of jiu-jitsu, it seems that Roosevelt’s patronage of the art (starting in 1902) helped to spark a much wider (and more lively) national discussion of the topic. This was further elevated by Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and the perceived role of jiu-jitsu in its victory.

While jiu-jitsu became something of a fixture in popular fiction from that point onward, its popularity as a fighting system seems to have ebbed over the next five years. Yet it did not disappear. Its basic effectiveness led to a number of important western wrestling and boxing teachers adopting elements of it in their own teaching systems. Further, the specter of the First World War looming on the horizon led militaries in both North America and Europe to begin to look for more effective means of hand combat training. Jiu-jitsu excelled in this role. It also found a ready audience (willing to pay for instruction) among law enforcement officers who actually had to put hands on criminals on a regular basis.

By the end of the First World War jiu-jitsu had left a very notable mark on Western fighting culture. Yet, as Rouse points out, it was not usually adopted whole cloth. Nor were many individuals advocating the adoption of the Japanese value system that lay behind the art (of course the actual age and authenticity of Bushido is a separate question and one that goes well beyond the scope of this discussion). Instead, elements of jiu-jitsu were culturally appropriated in ways that augmented, rather than undermined, what remained an essentially Western understanding of violence.

Another classic Yabe School add. This one was seen in number of publications and it gave a clear overview of the schools aims and pitch. Source: Recreation, July 1905.

Conclusion

The conclusion of this article may seem anti-climatic. Yet one must wonder how it could be otherwise. As Krug has pointed, the cultural appropriation of the Asian fighting arts has been a long and slow process because certain types of deep knowledge and values are not shared across cultures. Thus when former boxing instructors begin to teach karate or jiu-jitsu, the structural content of their lessons will always have a lot to do with boxing. Or to put it in slightly more theoretical terms, one cannot change your “habitus” as quickly as you can change your “style.”

In that sense I am not sure that what Rouse describes is so much a defeat of the existential threat that jiu-jitsu posed to the West as it was the first step on a much longer adventure. Seeds that were planted in the 1910s began to sprout and grow in the 1930s-1940s. Those trees, in turn, did not begin to really bear fruit until the 1960s and 1970s. And at each step along the way new material was added to the process.

As I stated at the start of this discussion, I quite liked this article and would not hesitate to assign it to students. It provides an important overview of an era of the globalization of the Asian martial arts that does not receive enough attention.

Still, I suspect that to get the full benefit of Rouse’s effort we need to continue to connect the dots. We must ask ourselves how the lineages, social discourses and media images that attached themselves to the martial arts in the 1910s continued to shape the nascent understanding that each succeeding generation brought to their own encounter with these hand combat systems.

One cannot help but notice that the three part pattern of Orientalization, feminization and appropriation which Rouse uncovered in the early 20th century bears an uncanny resemblance to process by which the Chinese martial arts entered the public consciousness in the 1960s-1970s. Indeed, when one looks at Yabe’s advertisements for his various books and courses, with all of their promises of esoteric knowledge and commercialized self-confidence, we are seeing a template that would reemerge time and again to sell very similar visions throughout the next 70 years of American history.

On a more theoretical level, an awareness of the central role of Japan’s victory over Russia in shaping how the idea of the “Yellow Peril” was experienced in the early 20th century, and the impact that this had on the spread of jiu-jitsu in both practice terms and its discussion in the popular media, may affect how we think of events in the 1970s. It could be that the upsurge of interest in the martial arts and images of Asian violence that arose in the wake of the defeat in Vietnam was not an isolate event, but a script that had its own historical antecedents lurking in the background.

The work of a theorists like Sylvia Shin Huey Chong (The Oriental Obscene: Violence and Racial Fantasies in the Vietnam Era, Duke UP 2011) may apply to discussions of the globalization of the Asian martial arts more broadly than we generally think.  While her argument directly addresses a number of films of the post-Vietnam environment, the many striking similarities to social discussions that were happening in the post-1905 era suggest that her theory might have something to say on our understanding of these events as well. Likewise a better understanding of the early 20th century movement of the Japanese arts should improve our theorizing of events in later decades. The lasting value in Rouse’s work is to show us that many of these seemingly obscure pathways have been traveled before.  In fact, we have been on them for longer than we can remember.

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If you enjoyed this post you may want to read: Through a Lens Darkly (20): Ip Man Confronts the “Indian” Police Officer

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Feb. 1, 1963: Dragon, manipulated by 40 men, takes part in Chinese New Year parade for the Year of the Rabbit in New Chinatown.

Introduction

The Spring Festival (or “Chinese New Year”) is now upon us. The most important holiday of the Chinese social calendar, this time of year is also significant for students of martial arts studies. It is a busy time for Lion, Qilin and Dragon Dance associations, as well as the martial arts schools and community groups that sponsor them. Indeed, it is a time of the year when martial skills and values are on public display. They can be seen in the various sorts of street processions that have long been part of life in Chinese communities as well as in smaller martial arts and dance exhibitions celebrating the season.

In some cases the sheer number of individuals and groups taking part in these displays also leads to social tension and the memory of past community conflict. Stories of never quite forgotten fights seem to be most commonly associated with Lion Dance companies in large urban centers like Hong Kong or New York. Still, as the discussion in today’s post makes clear, such tensions play an important part in a wide range of traditional rituals designed to celebrate the lunar New Year.

Why this should be is something of a paradox. The Spring Festival is widely seen as a time from setting aside community conflicts and getting a fresh start. Such values are not only verbally taught, they are reinforced through ritual means. Why then do martial values play such a prominent role in these displays? And what does this suggest both about the nature of community life and the role of the martial arts in the selective suppression or expression of conflict?

To help us delve into these questions we will be taking a look at a paper titled “Dragon Dance in Tu Village: Social Cohesion and Symbolic Warfare” by Tu Chuna-fei, Thomas Green, Zheng Guo-hua and Feng Qiang. This article was published in the Ido Movement for Culture. Journal of Martial Arts Anthropology, 2013, Vol. 13 Issue 1.

The authors of this article begin by noting that while many martial arts, rituals and practices from the past have been preserved as part of the quest to safeguard China’s “intangible cultural heritage,” the actual activities themselves have almost always been divorced from the social context that gave rise to their creation. Further, these diverse practices have been re-imagined as “traditional” sports. Obviously this is a conceptual category that did not exist when such activities were being practiced by their original communities, and it further deemphasizes the original social context of such practices.

In an attempt to recover the lost social context of one Spring Festival celebration the authors of this paper conducted a number of interviews with individuals in the Tu Village area who were old enough to remember the original festival processions for which the town developed a regional reputation. Each of these individuals had been associated in some way with the local power structure (organized through the clan associations) in the area prior to the Communist takeover in 1949.

It was during the post-1950 era that the practice of the Tu Village Dragon Dance (like so many other traditional arts) first lapsed. Thus the reconstruction of the organization of this festival allows these scholars to tell us something about the execution and social function of a Dragon Dance. Their investigation also reveals details about the local power structure that might otherwise have been forgotten.

Lastly, this article also helps us to understand how traditional “martial values” can erase certain conflicts within a community while still acknowledging, or even exacerbating, others. After considering this case we can begin to make our own arguments as to why martial displays have been such an important part of festival displays.

Dragon dance at a public festival in San Francisco. 1965. Source: UPI press photo.

The Tu Village Dragon Dance

Durkheim famously argued that the sacred is, at heart, social. The rituals of traditional Chinese society, in which cycles of sacrifice unite families, lineages, clans, villages and even regions seems almost designed to illustrate his point. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Tu Village Dragon Dance.

In the 1930s and 1940s Tu Village (Nanchang County, Jiangxi Province) was a primarily agricultural rice producing area (the local economy has since diversified). The village itself was part of a regional economic network of other farming hamlets. In some cases it was on friendly terms with these settlements. Yet it engaged in fierce competition with its close neighbor, Deng Village, with which it shared a common water source. Obviously water is a critical element of rice farming and resource driven conflict between villages was a common feature of this era. Nor were such tensions always kept at bay. The historical record is littered with examples of similar tensions that suddenly escalated into real aggression.

This was not the only potential source of potential conflict in the region. Tu Village itself was structured as a typical “single surname” settlement. Yet upon closer inspection things were actually much more complicated. As one of the larger settlements in the region, it was also somewhat similar to a “temple village.” A large temple, complete with its own extensive landholdings and tenant/guardian families, was located within the village boundaries.

In actual fact there were three major surname groups within the village. These were Tu, Bao and Li. Both the Tu and Bao families maintained their own ancestral clan temples. Yet village residents, pointing to “ancient traditions,” noted that important ancestors of both the Tu and Bao families had intermarried. The situation with the Li group was similar, if a bit later. Thus the three surnames constituted a single “extended family” which was administered on a day to day basis by a group of clan elders, representing the more senior families in the village.

To better understand how a unifying identity within Tu Village was created (as well as how their conflict with the neighboring Deng Village was reinforced) it is necessary to turn to the local communal celebration rituals of the Spring Festival. Prof. Green and the other authors of the article discuss this in some detail. For our purposes we will simply touch on a few of the most relevant factors.

One of the larger and more prosperous local towns, the celebrations of Tu Village were remembered as being especially spirited and notable. The town even managed to draw in additional outside visitors eager to take in the celebration.

The heart of the event was a multi-day Dragon Dance procession which visited, in turn, the local temples (both of the gods and clans), the homes of notable residents, outlaying settlements with which Tu Village was on friendly terms, and lastly, the shared lake near Deng Village. This last stop represented the boundary of Tu’s economic and political influence. There the procession took on a more menacing character.

One of the reasons why festivals are of interest to students of Chinese martial studies is that such processions are often led by local martial arts schools or their various community associations. Avron Boretz has noted that there are very good ritual reasons that unmarried young men, who have little social status in a traditional Chinese community, are called upon to embody martial values in these celebrations. Further, this opportunity for community involvement under the guise of an alternate value structure can be an important engine for self-creation among marginal males. Boretz has also noted, somewhat ironically, that on the whole this usually tends to reinforce, rather than fundamentally challenge, the core values of the community. Thus individuals who might otherwise become alienated are tasked with reinforcing social order.

In the major case of his ethnographic research Boretz was looking at the martial and religious performances of relatively small temple associations embedded within larger, modern, urban communities. While the basic principles that he articulated are evident in this case as well, the details of the festival’s organization are quite different.

Put simply, the Tu Village Dragon Dance was an immense affair. Rather than being something that a single voluntary association might host, it required the active participation of practically the entire adult male population of the village.

The procession itself included a number of features.  The most important was a large wicker and paper dragon-lantern comprised on nine articulated sections and an ornate head. This was carried by a rotating group of middle aged, married, dancers drawn from each of the three surname households.

Next there were three palanquins that held the images of the gods normally housed in the village temple. The Dragon Dance was actually performed as a “sacrifice” to the gods who followed it along the route. These statutes were born by young unmarried (and relatively low status) men drawn from each of the three families.

In addition there were larger groups of male reserve dancers who could switch out when members of either group became exhausted. Readers should recall that the festival was a multi-day affair. There would also have been musicians, organizers and even a team of gunners who were responsible for firing the antique cannon that led the procession and announced its arrival the various stops.

Green points out that women, older men and children were also involved in the procession. In functional terms they were more than simply the audience. It was they who witnessed and bore testament to each element of the carefully scripted social drama which the procession played out.

The administration and management of the festival was also a complicated undertaking. It monopolized the attention of the town’s elite residents, albeit in a slightly different way. The festival itself was funded through the rents of the local temple’s generous land holdings. As such, actually financing the event was rarely an issue. The clan elders oversaw and managed all of the financial aspects of the performance. Green et. al. noted that the local elite were so highly involved in this particular event that it took on the trappings of an “official” event.

Nevertheless, the elders did not run the performance of the festival. The actual hosting duties associated with the festivals, as well as certain aesthetic and administrative decisions regarding how the festival would look in a given year, rotated between all of the heads of households for each of the three surnames found in the village.

Following the town’s creation myth, the senior lineage of the Tu family was the first to host the festival. The next year they were followed by the ranking representatives of the Bao and then finally Li groups. After that the task was returned to the second most senior household within the Tu clan before moving on to the other two groups. In this way every household in the village would eventually get an opportunity to act as the Dragon Dance’s host.

Not surprisingly, much prestige was associated with the responsibility to hosting the festival. While the procession itself was payed for by the Temple’s rents, families competed with one another to provide additional gifts, food, or some additional detail of performance to make their turn especially memorable.

There are some interesting dynamics at play in this organizational system. On the one hand the rotating responsibilities for hosting the festival serve to reinforce both the town mythos and clan based power structure. It is no surprise that the Communist party was so eager to do away with such practices.

Yet at the same time this rotation provided a ritualized basis for extending a fair amount of prestige to every household in the village. Further, it allowed newly ascendant families to show off their wealth, effectively converting it to social status, in a way that was socially acceptable to the village as a whole, rather than destabilizing to it.

Green and the other authors of this article repeatedly emphasized the role of gift-giving in this celebration. The Dragon Dance itself was meant to be seen as a gift. On one level it was a gift that was given by the villagers to the local gods who rode in the procession. The dragon was danced in front to the village’s ancestral halls for the benefit of the ancestors. It visited friendly local hamlets as a gift for Tu’s political allies in the region. And of course the Dragon visited the homes and streets of village residents.

A key element of the celebration was the widespread tradition of inviting in-laws to Tu village to also enjoy the display. This village celebration was seen as a gift that every family should extend to their in-laws. In explaining this aspect of the tradition Green et. al. note that the main handicraft industry of the region (the making of rice noodles) was relatively labor intensive. As a result it was common for families to call on their networks of in-laws to pitch in during busy times. Thus the gift giving embodied in the Tu Dragon Dance reinforced economic networks of vital importance that transcended the normal social barriers of household, clan or village.

Still, the story of the Tu Village Dragon Dance is not without a dark side. The creation of any social community is only possible by explicitly defining who lies beyond its boundaries. To whom do these networks of reciprocity not apply? Or following the economic logic of agricultural life, with whom do we compete for resources?

The procession of the dragon through its traditional route can be thought of as a ritualized pilgrimage tracing out and reinforcing the boundaries of the community. It is no mistake that the climactic moment of the final day of the event occurs when the group moves to the local lake (the main water source needed for agriculture) and performs their dance within sight of Deng Village.

This is no gift. Rather it is a taunt and an assertion of “ownership” over a shared resource that Tu village did not totally control. In this gesture the authors of the article see an example of “symbolic warfare.” To them this element of the display is just as critical to understanding its social function as the unifying aspects that came before. They note:

“Victor Turner characterizes ritual as a “social drama” which consists of three stages: a movement from structure to anti-structure and ultimately a return to structure. At the beginning of the ritual, participants are arranged in strict accordance with their social positions in everyday life so that the ritual conforms to the values and norms of the “structure”. During the peak of the ritual, the social positions of participants gradually disappear; distinctions between them are temporarily eliminated, and they become a community. At the peak of the festival (Lantern Night), “we” (Tu Villagers) confront our traditional enemies (Deng Villagers) via the Dragon Dance. Because the confrontation is merely symbolic, after the festival, participants’ social positions and original roles in everyday life are resumed with peace and order undisturbed. (Green et al. p. 8).”

A Dragon Dance performed by the Ben Kiam Athletic Association in Manila, Philippines, sometime during the 1950s. Copyright Tambuli Media.

Why ‘Wu’ is the Transformative Element

This is a strong note on which to end their paper. And Victor Turner’s framework of “social drama” can do much to help us understand exactly what is at stake in the Tu Village Dragon Dance. Yet to actually answer the question that opened this article (why are specifically martial values central to these sorts of celebrations), we will need to push a little deeper.

First, it may be useful to think about the degree to which the Dragon Dance is best understood as an act of “symbolic warfare.” It is easy to see how the display could be taken as a threat. It gathers together the entire fighting age male population of the village. The dancers announce that they would like to get the attention of the residents of Deng village by repeatedly firing a piece of field artillery in their general direction. Finally, this explicitly martial display happens in front of a natural resource that Tu Village would very much like to monopolize. But in the majority of years it seems that the aggressive impulses behind this display were channeled into the dance itself and actual violence was avoided.

We can certainly analyze this event in purely symbolic terms if we would like. Yet before doing so it may be useful to delve just a little deeper into the history of such displays. In point of fact, they did not always remain as non-violent as one might like. Armed conflict and militarized feuding between clans and villages was a very real part of life throughout southern China during the Qing and Republic periods. While such conflicts were present in all of China’s regions, period commentators were clear that they were particularly serious in the south. Further, actual historical accounts confirm that simmering conflicts occasionally escalated to the point of violence following a dance performance or martial arts display by one group in territory that another also claimed.  The provocations involved in this ritual may be more serious than a casual reader might suspect. Nor can we ignore the importance of environmental variables. Behavior that might be ignored in good years would be much more dangerous in periods of drought or regional conflict.

This general pattern is by no means confined to the Dragon Dances of Jianxi Province. It appears to be a common feature of all sorts of processions. Lion and Qilin dancing also attempt to consolidate a community while defining its boundaries.

Historically speaking, outbreaks of violence between Lion Dance troops have been common in places as diverse as Hong Kong and New York City. Even in periods in which actual violence was uncommon, observers (including Anita Slovenz) noted that groups reacted to the meeting of competing performance groups on the street with great anxiety. Entire ritual codes were created to enable two lions to pass each other without incident (or instead to provoke one if the parties so wished). In the cases that Slovenz studied, these conflicts were basically a reflection of more fundamental economic and political struggles on the part of the social organizations who sponsored the various martial arts schools and dance associations in New York.

Thus the situation which we see in Tu Village is not simply an artifact of its geographic setting. Rather, what Green et. al. describe is a specific expression of a much more general pattern. Historically speaking, the possibility of violence was real. This must have colored the attitude with which the various dancers approached their task.

It might also be worth asking whether at the end of this festival the participants returned to their “normal place” in the social order, and life simply went on as before. In a sense we must disagree with this. One of the fundamental purposes of the Dragon Dance was to allow the host family to gain (or possibly lose) social status. Likewise the diplomatic and gift-giving elements of the Dragon Dance were designed to build and extend economic networks that were previously weaker or small. One gives a gift with the expectation of incurring a social obligation. Even low status unmarried dancers might compete for an opportunity to help carry the statues of the gods because, while physically exhausting, this increased his family’s reputation within the community.

In short, while the cosmology of the Dragon Dance might emphasize a return to a stable and unchanging social order, many individuals took part in the ritual precisely because they saw in it the possibility of better luck and increased social standing in the upcoming year. To understand the role of explicitly “military” (wu) social values in mediating this dialectic we must return briefly to the work of Victor Turner.

Turner noted that when functioning as a “social drama” ritual consisted of three stages. First a symbolic structure was established. Secondly, there was a movement away from structure toward anti-structure, a radical state where all social distinctions broke down. He referred to this phase as “communitas.” This then was followed by a reintegration back into the “normal” social structure.

It is easy to see how the Tu Village Dragon Dance reinforces the area’s existing social structure. It is payed for and supported by village elites using rents collected from the poorest elements of society. The rotating system of determining the host is designed to reinforce the village’s creation mythos and clan based power structure. Even the roles that dancers could perform were predicated on their marital and social status. Needless to say, no women were allowed to participate in what was explicitly a patriarchal affair. So the initial social structure and the return to that same state are evident in the ritual’s fundamental organization. But where do we see an anti-structure arising? Is there a true moment of communitas within this ritual?

The authors sensibly suggest that this state is invoked at the moment that the dancers enter their “confrontation” with Deng Village. Yet from an outside perspective, this aspect of the performance would seem just as structured as any other. Why might it be experienced differently by the dancers themselves?

This is where the historical reality of community violence becomes critical to our story. Much like Anita Slovenz’s Lion Dancers in the 1980s, no matter how peaceful things have been lately, it would be hard to discount the possibility of actual violence erupting again at some point in the unknown future. This would be especially true when engaged in what all parties agreed was an intentionally provocative set of acts.

The looming shadow of conflict is the key. While ritual may reinforce the nuances of social order, actual community violence is rather indiscriminate in the instant that it strikes. In that moment, when the entire male population of Tu Village lines up on the border of Deng Village and fires off their cannon, they are stepping away from the normal social conditions that define one’s fate in life. As a group they are moving into a different realm. It is a realm where any two men may be called upon to fight side by side, and any one of them may fall to injury. In this case it is the visceral possibility of violence that makes communitas real.

It is also the key to understanding the transformative power of these rites. Indeed, in Chinese culture role of Wen (or “civil values”) has traditionally been to judge and decide. Yet Wu (or “military values”) have always been seen as the means by which change is actually brought about.

In his critical examination of Republic era wuxia (swordman) novel Petrius Liu noted that often these stories centered on a conflict of values between the hierarchically organized principal of “all under heaven” (which was embodied in the Confucian social and political structure) and the idea of “between people.” The later idea was a more horizontal mode of social organization (characteristic of the literary realm of “Rivers and Lakes”) based on the idea of radical brotherhood and social values.

Such stories argue that by enacting these martial heroic values, justice can be restored in the community and change can come about. Returning to the structure of the Dragon Dance, those who provide “heroic” amounts of food and alcohol for the dancers will be remembered in the future. A successful host will go down in popular lore. And in a moment of conflict with the hated Deng Village a landlord and tenant may find themselves finally reconciled through a common purpose.

The changes that are brought about are real, and each is facilitated by an appeal to classical martial values. And when, at the end of the ritual, all of the individuals are reintegrated back into the social structure, local society itself changes. It is allowed to adapt to new social facts, but to do so in a way that reinforces the promise of a deeper, more fundamental, stability.

Why then are martial values central to these celebrations? Annual rites must always balance the competing demands of change and stability. Victor Turner gave us powerful models for understanding how this process can be negotiated within the pattern of community ritual. By embodying a separate set of norms and identities (those associated with the experience of communitas) martial values act as the engines of change within Chinese society. The importance of martial arts studies as a discipline goes well beyond the study of individual combat systems. At its best it can allow us to understand where society has been and where its values might take it next.

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If you enjoyed this you might also want to read: Lion Dancing, Youth Violence and the Need for Theory in Chinese Martial Studies

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Lee Fung, “Director of Chinese Lion Dance.” January 23rd, 1941. Source: Vintage newspaper photo. Author’s personal collection.

Introduction

Happy Lunar New Year!  In honor of the holiday I decided to publish a couple of posts that focused on the important role that the traditional martial arts, and martial values more generally, have played in the celebration of this holiday.  On Friday we looked at a reconstruction of a specific Dragon Dance festival in Tu village and asked what that could teach us about the place of martial values in building up social capital and shared identity within a community.  This topic is an important one as it helps to explain what benefits martial arts groups might bring to communities outside of the realm of pure defense.  You can read more about this topic here.

In today’s post we will focus on how martial displays in “Chinese New Year” festivals helped to spread the image of the Asian martial arts in North America during the 1940s and 1950s.  These decades are particularly important as many accounts of the global emergence of the Chinese martial arts do not begin until the late 1960s.  While it is certainly true that there was an explosion of popular interest in these fighting forms during the 1960s-1970s, it is not the case that no one was doing (or publicly exhibiting) Kung Fu in earlier periods.

While still relatively rare, the Spring Festival was one of the few times of the year in which martial values and practices were put on public display.  And because various Chinatown businesses and restaurants promoted Lion and Dragon Dancing, as well as the occasional boxing demonstration, as a way of attracting tourists to their neighborhood, these displays were more widely observed and reported on by the press than one might suspect.  In some important ways these events are the pre-history which shaped and conditioned the later explosion of interest in the Chinese martial arts.  Thus it may be fruitful to critically examine a few images of Lion Dance teams and martial artists that were produced and distributed in this period.  In this case we are interested in both the images themselves as well as how they framed these practices within the boundaries of mid 20th century consumer culture.

Who was Lee Fung?

That is not a rhetorical question.  If you have any information on this individual I would really like to learn more about him.

I have been looking for information about Lee Fung (so far with little luck) since I had the good fortune to acquire a somewhat faded photograph of him.  The picture was taken for a newspaper article and it came out of a press archive.  The nice thing about old press photos is that they often carry descriptive notes on the back.  This usually includes the name of the photographer, the subject, the date that it was used, the newspaper that ran the image and its caption (if any).  If you are particularly lucky it is sometimes possible to even find the original article that ran with an image.

This is what makes newspaper photos so valuable.  Like other forms of ephemera they capture a moment in time.  Yet the nature of the commercial and journalistic projects tie these images to important themes in popular culture while providing some additional clues about their subjects.

Verso of the Lee Fung Picture. Source: Author’s personal collection.

Unfortunately one does not always get so lucky.  In this case the back of the photo included a date indicating that the article ran four days before the Lunar New Year in 1941 (which was the year of the snake).  It also had the name of the subject and the picture’s caption.  Unfortunately the name of the newspaper was missing and I have not been able to locate the article that it accompanied.  Nor have I been able to find any additional information about Mr. Fung.

The photo itself is interesting and I quite like the detailed images on Fung’s shin guards and his old school shoes.  Yet what period readers would have noticed first was the large Dadao that he held in both hands.  The sword has a small guard (similar in size and type to those that were popular on the Vietnamese version of this weapon) and a pronounced sweep to the blade.

While the Dadao is not commonly encountered in Lion Dance performances today (at least not in any of the ones I have seen), it would have been an immediately recognizable and meaningful weapon to readers in 1941.  At the time the country was embroiled in WWII and discussions of the situation in China were commonly encountered on the front page of newspapers of the era.  A large number of articles had reported the existence of “Big Sword” troops within the Chinese army and their success in facing down the Japanese (armed with their own near-mythical swords) in close quarters combat.

Indeed, the Dadao had become an image of China’s anti-imperialist resistance in the face of Japanese aggression.  This discussion in the press helped to modify the common belief that the Chinese lacked the strength (either individually or collectively) to resist occupation. It was also one of the first images of the more modern (Republic era) Chinese martial arts to really find a firm place in the Western imagination.

The sight of a Chinese-American martial artist wielding a Dadao during the Spring Festival probably registered with American audiences on a number of levels that are not as obvious to us today.  To take up this weapon in 1941 was to make a political and cultural statement about the complex relationship between America, China, Japan and the Chinese-American community.

A vintage postcard showing Lion Dancers in Los Angeles. This particular card was used as an advertisement to attract visitors to Chinatown’s various markets and restaurants. While the photo has a copyright date of 1952 the picture could have been taken years earlier. Note the similarities in dress and costume to Lee Fung in the early 1940s. Source: Vintage Postcard. Author’s personal collection.

The next photo comes from a widely distributed vintage postcard.  It was part of a very popular series of images of L.A.’s Chinatown produced by the S. I. Co.  We know from the postmarks and inscriptions on some of these cards that they were in fact being sold within Chinatown’s various shops to the tourists who visited the district in the early 1950s.

While this postcard bears a copyright date of 1952, it seems likely that the photograph of the Lion Dance team is somewhat older, possibly dating back to the 1940s.  Note for instance the similarities in dress and foot-ware to Lee Fung’s more detailed photograph above.  One almost wonders whether he might be hiding somewhere in this group shot.  And while the Dadao is missing from this later image, the paired American and Republic of China flags (only a few years after the mainland fell to the Communists in 1949) would have invoked a similar set of political and psychological reactions in the viewer.

This is not to say that martial weaponry is missing from the photograph.  In this case the Lions themselves seem to blend into the background while the various pole arms wielded by the troupe are brought to the fore.  Again, the display of Chinese culture in this image is closely tied to the articulation of martial values.

All of this is given a strongly “Orientalist” gloss when we turn the card over.  It appears that all of the postcards in this series carried an identical secondary message, meant to advertise the allures of the city’s Chinatown to potential tourists.  In that sense these postcards are actually similar to Victorian “trade cards” which businesses of that era used for advertisement.   Here we read:

In a setting of Old China, with shrines, lily pools, and courts, the Chinese have gathered art treasures of the Orient.  Here is offered silks, antiques, jewelry, and thousands of beautiful souvenirs.  The delicacies prepared in the fine Chinese restaurants are fit for a Mandarin, and delight the palate as well as the eye.

Thus the complex political subtexts of the actual image vanish in a hazy vision of “old Cathay.”  Two themes dominate this short paragraph.  The first is the promise of all types of consumption.  The other is a powerful sense of nostalgia for China as the exotic “other.”  After all, by the 1950s China had been free of “Imperial courts” for some time. This card rectified that situation by provided a vision of China as a living antique rather than a rapidly modernizing nation.

When one turns the card back around a new message seems to emerge.  It is not simply the food and silks of China that are now available for Western consumption.  It is also cultural traditions and martial values.  All of this is being offered to the intrepid traveler who would set aside a day for patronizing the stores and businesses of Chinatown.  While a national political and diplomatic debate raged as to “who lost China,” American consumers were discovering a new realm of nostalgia and imagination.  It was more stable and immediate than the complex reality of events on the global stage.  In this vision one could experience the “essence” of Chinese culture through the consumption of its goods, values and practices.  All of this could be done without leaving home.

Conclusion

When did the Chinese martial arts finally make their presence felt in the Western marketplace?  Mass public awareness of these systems would have to wait for the dawning of the 1970s.  Yet the global journey of these systems began well before that.  Concepts, identities and institutions from these earlier eras had an important shaping effect on events to come.

We cannot really understand some of the details of the later Kung Fu Craze without first coming to grips with the slow accumulation of ideas and symbols that preceded it.  As the photographs in this post suggest, the martial values associated with the Spring Festival, and the way that they were marketed to mid 20th century tourists, helped to reinforce a specific cultural discourse that would later carry the Chinese martial arts to practically every corner of western popular culture.

Another photo auctioned on ebay. This one showed a Lion and Kung Fu performer in Honolulu in 1957. Source: ebay.

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If you enjoyed this post you might also want to see: Lives of Chinese Martial Artists (6): Ng Chung So – Looking Beyond the “Three Heroes of Wing Chun”

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Muay Thai Kickboxing match. Source: Wikimedia.

Conference Report:  Martial Arts Studies – Gender Issues in Theory and Practice
Brighton University (UK), 5^th February 2016

Introduction

On February 5th Brighton University sponsored the first in a series of specialized conferences and meetings funded by the Martial Arts Studies Research Network (MASRN). The title of the event was “Martial Arts Studies – Gender Issues in Theory and Practice.”  It was hosted by Alex Channon and Christopher Matthews, two recognized scholars in the area, and was attended by about 30 participants and observers.  By all accounts the event was lively with multiple papers sparking substantive discussions.   In short, I wish I could have been there.

Luckily for us, a number of individuals who attended the event have written conference reports, sharing some of the insights and conversations that these papers sparked.  Below I have reblogged Paul Bowman’s account which does a great job of introducing each of the presenters, reviewing the substance of their work, and telling us something of how the audience reacted to their presentation.

If, as you read through his report, you encounter a paper you might want to know more about, be sure to also check out this blog post on the event written by Kai Morgan.  She brings her own perspective and some additional details to the discussion.  Lastly, readers will also want to be aware of Luke White’s discussion of the event at his own blog “Kung Fu with Braudel.” His concluding thoughts on how these same questions may relate to martial arts studies are particularly important, and we will briefly return to them below.

A number of themes ran throughout this conference.  Obviously gender was the central organizing concern, but multiple papers looked more specifically at the possibility that the martial arts might be used as agents of positive social transformation.  From my perspective perhaps the most interesting finding to emerge from the conference was that researchers remain split on whether this actually happens in practice.  Dr. Jump’s ethnographic study of boxing and its impact on violent behavior and attitudes raised important (and troubling) questions about the social impact of youth involvement in combat sports in certain settings.

I look forward to reading her finished paper when its available.  Her findings are reminiscent of some of the connections between youth delinquency and the traditional martial arts which emerged in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s that I noted in my own study of the period.  It seems that this is an area that might benefit from some additional comparative case studies.

By all accounts this first event in the MASRN series was a success.  It engaged a dedicated group of scholars and facilitated conversations that will continue for some time.  It has also generated deeper questions about the nature of violence, identity, consent and social transformation that may contribute to a wide range of research projects within martial arts studies.

Female martial artists (including Chen Laoshi) from the Jingwu Association.  In the 1920s this group sought to use the martial arts to reform traditional Chinese views on gender and pursue “national salvation.”

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Martial Arts Studies – Gender Issues in Theory and Practice
by Paul Bowman

Friday February 5^th 2016 saw the first of our AHRC funded Martial Arts Studies Research Network events, at the Eastbourne campus of the University of Brighton. The organisers from the hosting university were Drs Alex Channon and Christopher Matthews. Professor John Sugden opened the event, entertaining the 30 or so people present with tales of his early research into boxing communities in the US, back when there was virtually nothing academic written about combat sports of any kind. I then gave a brief introduction to the research network and the emerging field of martial arts studies, before the conference proper began.

Chris Matthews gave the first paper, beginning from and overview of the history of various forms of exclusion in sports (the most glaring example being of course the fact that for a very long time sports have overwhelmingly been made for and played by men). However, there have recently been some significant social shifts, exemplified by the huge numbers of women in sports. Focusing next on his ethnographic research into boxing, Matthews introduced the idea of undoing the presumed essential link between boxing and men, arguing that a more nuanced understanding of exclusion is needed in order to have a clearer picture of the forces and relations of exclusion that currently operate in such environments. His own fieldwork in boxing gyms revealed a range of attitudes towards openness and closedness to non-hegemonic masculinities in these gyms, around different attitudes to women and gay men, as well as different attitudes to the question of trying to attract more women or more types of men into the gyms. The talk was too wide ranging to permit easy summary – however, the accompanying Prezi presentation is available here. And rather than reaching a firm conclusion, Matthews handed over to a local Eastbourne boxing coach who actively seeks to ‘practice inclusivity’.

The coach was Paul Senior, from Eastbourne Boxing Club, who gave a very interesting presentation on his outreach work, and the unique position that boxing seems to have as an activity that can appeal to and engage socially excluded children and teenagers. Unlike other forms of teacher or indeed adult generally, the boxing coach is often highly respected by the children and teenagers, and accordingly such figures can become the first real site of intervention into precarious and marginalised lives and social situations. To conclude the talk overall, Chris Matthews came back in with questions about how those who seek to ‘practice inclusivity’ might still inadvertently contribute to new forms of exclusion; after which a very lively discussion followed.

Professor Kath Woodward presented next, with a talk on gender and what’s changed in the discourses around women’s boxing since its first inclusion in the 2012 Olympics. Her animating question was that of how social change takes place, and her contention was that what happened around women’s boxing in 2012 illustrates the ways that boxing and martial arts can actually generate discursive change. Social and cultural change happens marginally and incrementally, she argued. But, at the same time, there can be events that essentially change the landscape in an instant. Referring to Foucauldian theory, Woodward suggested that the commentary around women’s boxing at that time demonstrated a dramatic transformation: beforehand, a lot of discourse had been sexist, focusing on the question of the risks to women’s bodies vis-à-vis child-bearing, their looks and their supposed fragility. But during the contests, this all evaporated and was replaced by commentary that demonstrated how seriously it was being taken. This, she suggested, evinced a cultural change in the way people think – a minor revolution that could contribute to the chipping away at patriarchal ideas about gender.

Anna Kavoura and Catherine Phipps presented their research into creating supporting environments for LGBT people in martial arts clubs. Phipps presented introductory and context-setting data on LGBT inclusion in and exclusion from sport generally. She defined key terms and discussed a range of different studies and surveys before proposing that, in her opinion, of all of the groups included in the term ‘LGBT+’, those who suffer the most exclusion are ‘trans’ people.

Anna Kavoura posed the question of why anyone would want to create supportive and inclusive environments in martial arts anyway. Legality was her first answer; followed by a discussion of the extent to which discriminative attitudes have negative effects and the extent to which prejudice can actually endanger is its victims’ health. Kavoura too proposed that the most excluded and overlooked group are the many kinds trans people – people who, as she reported one trans discussant said to her, are often terrified of leaving the house to go to the supermarket, never mind even thinking about participating in sports.

An interesting discussion about our encounters and relationships with various forms of prejudice as they occur in martial arts classes followed, which continued on in various ways throughout the day. But the next session was made up of group discussions of questions around engaging girls and women in martial arts clubs of all kinds. People suggested that role modelling seemed vital; Kavoura recounted a tale of how she had actively sought out new female training partners in order to broaden the pool of people she could spar with in class; others discussed the importance of having women in leadership positions; creating trusting environments; listening; questioning tradition; and trying to educate prejudiced people rather than simply confronting them directly or antagonistically; challenging preconceptions about motivations; and even renaming and de-gendering some of the different terms that are routinely used (‘women’s pressups’, for instance, was given as an example several times).

The criminologist Deborah Jump from Manchester Metropolitan University presented next, discussing her research into the narrative accounts of young men’s experience of violence, desistance from criminality and the place of boxing in these realms. Her research question was one of what impact boxing has on young men’s understanding of violence; and she had undertaken ethnographic studies using psychotherapeutic techniques rather than direct questioning. That is to say, her primary style of data gathering took the form of asking the question ‘tell me the story of how you got into boxing’. In interpreting the narratives, Jump found some regularly recurring themes: the denial of vulnerability, the attempt to compensate for a lack of social capital; the effort to try to embody masculinity, and specifically as a way to overcome vulnerability or lack of social capital. Jump discussed Wacquant’s notion of body capital and the received folk wisdom that the bigger you are, the more masculine you are.

Because in her findings the reasons given for taking up boxing always involved the effort to prevent repeat victimisation, Jump proposed that boxing is widely seen by its working class youth practitioners as a resource to command fear. Violence, in this regard, is seen as a resource. She then turned to the high incidence of the word ‘respect’ in so many young boxers’ narratives. Turning to Kant for a definition of ‘respect’, Jump observed that for Kant ‘respect’ refers to ‘being worthy of consideration’, and she tied this back to her findings and arguments about young men turning to boxing in order to gain some cultural prestige. Along with other terms that frequently recur (references to ‘respect’ and ‘disrespect’ as reasons for violence, and injunctions like ‘don’t be a pussy’, and so on), Jump proposed that the recurrence of these ‘street’ terms in the boxing gym demonstrated a problematic continuity of violent narratives. Specifically, given that there so often seemed to be a strong relationship between taking up boxing and the experience of prior domestic abuse, Jump proposed that it is problematic that the terms of street habitus are in effect reinforced in the boxing gym. Maintaining respect and avoiding shame is, she reiterated, a primary motivation for violence on the street – and this entire system of values and its logic is replicated in the gym. So, she concluded, boxing is perhaps good for primary desistance from crime (time spent training is time off the streets), but it doesn’t actually cause its young male practitioners to change their self-concept or their personal narrative.

Jump’s paper provoked lively debate, and set the scene nicely for the final paper: Alex Channon and Chris Matthews’ ongoing work into how to combat domestic abuse. Their project is called ‘love fighting, hate violence’ and their key question is that of how to decouple fighting and violence. Following on from Deborah Jump’s challenge to the idea that boxing can work against violence, Channon and Matthews proposed that fighting does not equal violence and that the mutual consent of sparring partners shows that there is no necessary violation and no necessary violence in martial arts training. From this position, they are currently seeking to explore how to leverage this moral distinction to good effect, and more generally how to do something as academics and researchers that will have an impact outside of academia. On this note, they turned the question over to the audience, and asked us all to assess their ideas and offer suggestions.

Several concerns were raised, such as the risk that this project either implicitly or explicitly risks falling into the trap of following normal gender assumptions, and also the idea that martial arts training does not involve violence was challenged. But in the end a series of suggestions was forthcoming too: educational workshops were proposed, film making, offering different narratives, etc. As Channon put it towards the end of this final session, their overarching aim is to try to initiate cultural shifts, or at least to generate discourse around these issues. This was an appropriate point to conclude, not least because it seems clear that this first martial arts studies research network event has already stimulated the thinking of those present, and undoubtedly begun to generate discourse. Indeed, this first martial arts research network event seem likely to be remembered as the start of numerous new endeavours, relationships and projects.

In conclusion, I would like to thank Alex Channon and Chris Matthews for their hard work in organising this event, and to all of the speakers and other participants, many of whom travelled significant distances to attend. I am now looking forward to the second network event, on contemporary debates in martial arts cinema, at Birmingham City University on 1^st April 2016.

Triva Pino (Left). The 2006 US Armed Forced Female Boxing Champion. Source: Wikimedia.

Conclusion: Gender in Martial Arts Studies

Finally, I would like to bring up one additional point.  In his own assessment of the meeting Luke White offered some additional thoughts on how these same concerns about gender, identity and inclusion might be playing themselves out in the conference halls and classrooms of martial arts studies as an academic discipline.  I encourage everyone read his report (which can be found here) but his concluding remarks are indispensable:

I also then found myself wondering about Martial Arts Studies itself as a gendered space. As part of our explorations in the day, we thought in some detail about the ways that women, or those from the LGBT+ community, are often excluded by aspects of the environment and ritualised behaviour of gyms and dojos. But what about our academic Martial Arts Studies events? How welcome do they feel there, and how deeply has that been considered by us? Though the event at Eastbourne – with a fantastic mix of people attending – felt very inclusive, my feelings about the conference in Cardiff last Summer were rather different. I spoke to a number of women attendees afterwards who pretty much all told me that they had found it a rather uncomfortably “male” space. And indeed, it struck me strongly that there was a certain machismo that surrounded a lot of the socialisation that took place around the conference. Often the first question asked was not (unlike most academic conferences!) what your paper is about or some such thing, but about whether you practiced a martial art, and if so what style. The effect of such a question can, perhaps, be a little like the aggressive questioning that Bruce Lee is subjected to by a white martial artist on the boat on the way to a martial arts contest: “What’s your style?” In the film, it wasn’t just a polite inquiry, it was also a challenge. In the conference, the question was clearly less intrusive, but I wondered how non-practitioners may have experienced this kind of question. Did it imply less of a right to be there? Some of the papers, too, seemed to include hints about “martial credentials” that came close at points to masculine “posturing”. One speaker (I shan’t name him), after an explicit denial of homophobia, followed this up, as evidence, with what was meant to be a joke but ultimately amounted to a homophobic comment. Were some of the gendered cultures of the training hall entering into the spaces of academic debate, too? It’s often small, banal, everyday, overlooked performances that inscribe gender on a space – often much more subtle than directly homophobic or sexist comments, often far more everyday than the spectacular examples of subproletarian boxing gyms discussed at Friday’s event, and often far more inscribed into the “normal” behaviour of “upright” citizens – and it seems to me that in order to safeguard not only the spaces in which we do martial arts, but also the academic spaces where we discuss them in this fledgeling discipline, we need a vigilance not so much on the “other” but on ourselves.

Obviously these are important concerns, and they deserve careful consideration.  The meaning of the question “What is your style?” at a martial arts studies conference seems particularly interesting, as does the place of personal experience in academic research.  Certainly much more can be said on these questions than can be inserted at the end of a conference report.  However, readers may wish to follow this discussion as it has unfolds at the Martial Arts Studies blog.

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If you liked this conference report you might also want to read: “The Gender of Martial Arts Studies“

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Source: https://sports.vice.com

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 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: 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.

Master Chen Zhonghua and Daniel Mroz playing Tui Shou, Daqingshan, Shandong, China, 2007. Photo by Scot Jorgensen.

Introduction

Welcome to the second entry in our series of guest posts titled “Doing Research.”  If you missed the first essay by D. S. Farrer (which provides a global overview of the subject) be sure to click here.

Compared to other fields of scholarly inquiry, Martial Arts Studies has a distinctly democratic flavor.  Many individuals are introduced to these systems while students at a college or university and are interested in seeing a more intellectually rigorous treatment of their interests.  And certain practitioners want to go beyond reading studies produced by other writers and undertake research based on their own time in the training hall.   The emphasis on ethnographic description, oral and local history, as well as the methodological focus on community based collaborative research within Martial Arts Studies (itself a radically interdisciplinary area), makes participation in such efforts both relatively accessible and highly valuable.

Or maybe you are a student about to embark on your first ethnographic research project.  With the growing popularity of this field of study we are increasingly seeing classes in Martial Arts Studies offered at the undergraduate and graduate level.  Some of these courses include a “research component” in which students are encouraged to go out and join a class or school in the local martial arts community and then to reflect on their experience.

What ever their source, a new generation of novice researchers is likely looking at the challenges that lay ahead and asking themselves, what comes next?  To help smooth these first forays into the world of ethnography, a number of researchers (most of whom have taught these sorts of classes in the past or have conducted extensive field research) have agreed to contribute to a series of short posts on this topic.  Each of these will attempt to pass on a single piece of advice, insight, or research strategy that the author wishes that they might have had when first setting out to begin their fieldwork.

With that in mind, the following essay is designed to help students in the very first stages of their research project.  How should one go about choosing a teacher or school for research purposes?  And how should you approach the uncomfortable and awkward experiences that arise whenever you begin a new activity?  In particular, what are the dangers of maintaining an “intellectual distance” from your subject of study?  Prof. Mroz has some great advice for new ethnographers, but in truth much of what he has to say applies equally well to anyone beginning a new martial arts style.

Daniel Mroz playing Choy Li Fut’s Muy Fa Do “Plum Flower Sabre” form. Photo by Laura Astwood.

Three Ideas for Fieldwork – Daniel Mroz

Ben asked me what suggestions I might offer to students preparing for fieldwork that requires participation in some kind of studio class, be it martial arts, dance, theatre or music. Having re-read Prof. Farrer’s essay, I’m not sure there’s too much else to say! My proposal is to take what might be described as an existential approach to Ben’s request.

The late Liu Ming (Charles Belyea, 1947-2015), an insightful Daoist and Buddhist initiate about whom my friend Scott Park Phillips has written , offered his meditation students a fruitful description of the qualities of a student-teacher relationship. I propose that Ming’s three ideas might offer helpful parameters for students about to engage in fieldwork that requires the practice of martial arts. While Ming’s propositions are about teaching and learning, rather then about teaching, learning and reporting, reflecting on my own experience I think they cover some essential requirements in a novel and pithy fashion.

1. Affinity

For your study, seek out a teacher with whom you feel a fundamental affinity. My experience is that affinity with a teacher is more important than one’s appreciation for a particular martial art or curriculum. Beyond auditing a sample class as an observer it is not usually easy to acquire much experience of the teacher.  So auditing a first class is vital to seeing if one detects the potential for affinity.

The detection of this potential is both pragmatic and intuitive. When I went to watch a Siu Lum Hung Sing Choy Li Fut Kung Fu class in Montréal in September of 1993 I noted that the teacher, Sui Meing Wong, was very exacting but also patient and impersonal. To students balanced on one leg executing a low sweep followed by a knee strike then a snap kick he said simply ‘don’t fall over; lean slightly forward.’ He made no comment on their abilities or lack thereof, only on their application. I noticed that while there was hard body-to-body contact, the attack/defense combinations and the Da Sam Sing / Guk Sam Sing forearm and shin conditioning were also being done carefully, incrementally and with close supervision from the teacher. I responded well to this quiet, tacitly supportive but overtly exacting atmosphere. Sui Meing Wong became not only my first principal martial arts teacher but also a kind of older brother. He expected perfect attendance and constant practice from me but was always supportive and available if I needed help. Usually, as I was a starving actor and a graduate student, help meant food; he bought me lunch three to six days a week for 13 years. When I first went into his studio, I had no idea what Choy Li Fut was. My theatre teacher had suggested I study martial arts; a room-mate who was a Tae Kwon Do black belt had told me that Chinese martial arts had the most complex movements; another friend had told me that Monkey Style Kung Fu was cool – David Lee Roth, the singer for Van Halen did Monkey Style! All of that benevolent if sophomoric nonsense went out of my head when I actually saw Sui Meing teaching. ‘I can learn from this person’ I realized and I signed up.

This anecdote likely tells you more about me than it does about how to judge your own affinity with a particular instructor. It will be up to you to determine what your own affinities are. Can you learn and do fieldwork in a situation where you have little or no affinity with the teacher? Of course you can. However, choosing the engagements and commitments you make in terms of affinity, especially early on in your studies will give you an optimal position from which to branch out into more difficult research.

Master Jason Tsou and Daniel Mroz playing Jianshu after Master Tsou’s 2013 workshop in Ottawa, Canada. Photo by Rob Dominique.

2. Danger

In tandem with affinity, a sense of danger should accompany a fruitful relationship with a teacher. The academic and general culture in which I live and work never uses the term ‘danger’ with any positive connotation. Institutional preoccupation with liability and societal preoccupation with comfort have made ‘danger’ a challenging term to use when discussing teaching and learning.

I’m using it in two ways here: in the abstract one’s relationship with a teacher should be based on the risk that if one follows that teacher one will be changed in unpredictable ways. However, I also mean actual physical danger, the presence of which is often an amazing catalyzer for change!

While what I practice daily is from the vast curriculum of the Chinese martial arts and qigong, I’ve also cross-trained with individuals who interested me and in styles that appealed to me. The best of these experiences were great because of the danger involved.

A few years ago I visited London, England to meet Japanese sword expert John Maki Evans.  John is a very quiet, polite and thorough person and I remain compelled by his intelligence, insight and restraint . I also had the oddest of experiences with him. While he was showing me some very rudimentary actions with a Japanese wooden sword or bokken, I was quite convinced, terrified even, that he could use his blunt piece of wood to cut me in half! I’ve fenced with Chinese wooden swords or mu jian for a long time and I’ve worked with other teachers who insist on using ‘sharps’ or actual edged metal weapons during partner practice, all without undue dread. Every time I think back my studies with John I realize that I was definitely in the right place, because of the acute sense of danger I felt and how it led me not only to experience John’s rare fruition in the practice of Japanese sword but also to consider my own trained habits and preferences from a new perspective.

Daniel Mroz playing Choy Li Fut’s Ke Lung Ma or “Dragon Riding Stance” in Brussels, Belgium in the 1990s. Photo by Satyanarayanan Nair.

3. Compliance

The last idea is perhaps just as unpopular as ‘danger’! In order to get anything out of a relationship with a teacher, one must put their instructions into practice. This sounds innocuous, but the injunction is ‘compliance’ not just ‘practice’. ‘Practice’ may be just too neutral and lacking in the sort of obsessive taking-on that seems to have characterized the behavior of martial artists who have achieved impressive fruitions. In both academic thought and contemporary liberal ideology it is considered positive to relativize different approaches to any given subject, including methods of training. Further we can now watch excellent and diverse examples of martial arts on the Internet and read all kinds of books, articles and blog reports about these practices. I do this myself all the time but much as I love my ‘information-seeking-and-hoarding’ habit, relativizing one’s practice while it is happening can remove one from one’s own direct experience and sabotage one’s ability to learn.

In 2005 I moved from Montréal to Ottawa. I thought it might be interesting to try a completely different martial art from Choy Li Fut and I chose to take Brazilian Jiu Jitsu; Renzo Gracie has a branch school in Ottawa and it was offering the amazing introductory offer of ten private, hour-long lessons for $200.00! Much as I eventually loved learning to wrestle on the ground, my lack of compliance made it a very daunting experience. I thought of myself as a very trained and coordinated person. I had excellent endurance and flexibility. Rather than accepting immediately that this was a new experience for which I was not particularly qualified, I distinctly recall lying crushed beneath my instructor, unable to orient my body to produce force or leverage while actually thinking about how good I was at martial arts when I was standing up! I also considered how while meditating I could slow down to an amazing one breath per minute even though at that moment I was starting to ‘gas’ and pant for air! Of course I was ‘compliant’ in learning the different movements suggested to me by my teacher, but it took longer than I ever imagined to convince myself to ‘play Jiu Jitsu while playing Jiu Jitsu.’

I write all this with a smile but in my experience the easy part of compliance is performing the modestly unpleasant task the instructor may have set. The difficult part is remaining in that experience when it reveals one’s inexperience, incompetence and reactivity.

To conclude, I hope that readers will consider how Affinity, Danger and Compliance can be functional principles in a student-teacher relationship.  If cultivated, they can allow the student to become a researcher who will wind up with something of depth and quality to report.

oOo

If you enjoyed this most you might also want to read: Will Universities Save the Traditional Asian Martial Arts?

oOo

Introduction

Welcome to the third entry in our series of guest posts titled “Doing Research.”  If you missed the first essay by D. S. Farrer (which provides a global overview of the subject), or the second by Daniel Mroz (how to select a school or teacher for research purposes), be sure to check them out.

Compared to other fields of scholarly inquiry, Martial Arts Studies has a distinctly democratic flavor.  Many individuals are introduced to these systems while students at a college or university and are interested in seeing a more intellectually rigorous treatment of their interests.  And certain practitioners want to go beyond reading studies produced by other writers and undertake research based on their own time in the training hall.   The emphasis on ethnographic description, oral and local history, as well as the methodological focus on community based collaborative research within Martial Arts Studies (itself a radically interdisciplinary area), makes participation in such efforts both relatively accessible and highly valuable.  Or maybe you are a student about to embark on your first ethnographic research project?

Dr. Jared Miracle has been kind enough to draw on his extensive research experience in both Japan and China to suggest some practices that can be called upon when facing the daunting task of learning a new martial arts system while also being immersed in a novel culture.  First time ethnographers will find much of value in this discussion, and even more experienced practitioners will likely discover some thought provoking ideas on how to better absorb and understand new martial arts material.

It’s My Way or the Wu Wei: A Note of Advice for Novice Field Researchers

Let us suppose you’re a student conducting fieldwork for the first time. You have a lot of questions.

Actually, no, you probably don’t.

As an educator, the most common issue my students have (other than not studying in the first place) involves coming to me for help only to realize that they don’t know what they need. You can’t find the answers to your questions if you don’t know what you don’t know. So rather than attempt to address frequent questions that you didn’t know you had, I would like to offer a set of solid practices for your first trip to the field. I hope this will be useful regardless of the project, but I write this with a specific set of circumstances in mind. This is essentially a letter to myself about ten years ago, when about to embark on research which called for learning both the lore and bodywork of an ancient Japanese sword system without the slightest idea what I was doing.

To begin with, let’s consider a far-too-neglected topic in the martial arts studies: choreometrics. The late, great musicology Alan Lomax was well-known for his recordings of traditional American music in an effort to preserve cultural heritage. Some of his later work led him to realize that music is often inextricably linked with dance. He began to question if lessons from folk studies and musicology may apply to the physical realm, as well. Lomax’s team conjured up an interesting notion called “choreometrics.” The idea was to take video recordings of movements in different cultures and then analyze them to find commonalities. Much like Draeger’s hoplology, unfortunately, it never seems to have hit the big time. There is something to be learned here, however, for our own endeavors: you need a system.

Dr. Miracle examining a set of traditional Japanese armor. Source: The collection of Dr. Jared Miracle.

The problem: why many Westerners can’t learn East Asian systems

One of the more popular topics in the early years of MMA forums was the lack of utility and student-driven pedagogy in “traditional” (read: East Asian) martial arts. This is not exactly true, but there is a very reasonable explanation for why a great many students struggle with especially foreign systems, such as my own choice of Japanese koryu. You see, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese pedagogy—among other cultures—has historically revolved around a pattern called shu-ha-ri or jo-ha-kyu in Japanese. First you must shu (守) or obey, then ha (破) or break away, and finally to ri (離) or separate and transcend. I’ve been a teacher and a student in both China and Japan and can personally attest that this ancient way of thinking is heavily embedded in the cultures, whether anyone wants to admit it or not. Contrast that approach with the Western European method of education in which students are challenged to become autodidacts, employ creativity, and think critically. If you want to acquire the martial arts skills of your interlocutors to a degree sufficient for analysis, you first need to understand how their brains are programmed, and this is a good starting point.

Next comes narrative structure. Martial arts training is nothing more than kinetic storytelling, but the means of doing so is markedly different in Western European cultures when compared with East Asia. Again, your teacher and fellow students may not be consciously aware of it, but they have been programmed from a young age to follow a certain way of developing narratives. In Japanese, the phrase is ki-sho-ten-ketsu. First comes ki (起), the introduction, then sho (承), the development, ten (転), a virtually unrelated turn in events, and ketsu (結), the conclusion. This is why storylines in films, novels, etc. that originate in places like Japan seem so convoluted to Western audiences. It’s also why so many Japanese exchange students can’t grasp why they receive poor marks on English-language essays. The concept even extends to the storytelling in video games. In your martial arts training, too, you can expect a slightly nonlinear road to your goal. Between the frustrating pedagogical structure and a confusing way to relate information, those who would conduct fieldwork in East Asia must steel themselves for something of a bumpy ride.

Hokey tricks and nonsense vs. a good blaster at your side

Like all handsome, athletic young men, I was on my school’s chess team. Thanks to the coach’s son being one of those rare prodigies who populate the chess circuit, we were in the final round of a very important state-level tournament. I sat fourth board, meaning I was the worst player on the team, but they didn’t have enough warm bodies to compete otherwise. I opened the game with an advance of the king’s pawn, then center pawn, knight, bishop, and then knight again. My opponent was in check and I thought I’d won with a handy little trick known as “scholar’s mate.” It’s a kind of indirect flank that ends the game quickly. As it turned out, the other boy was not a complete rube and I ended up losing a few moves later. The lesson: a bag of tricks is worth precisely one empty bag.

A lot of authors these days are offering “hacks” or “one simple trick” to do any number of things. The result, more often than not, is a complete waste of time. If you would be an effective and efficient field researcher, it behooves you to ignore these traps and focus instead on crafting your own system in a way that works for you. My first efforts to learn the Japanese sword were complete failures. The classical method of training in my style calls for memorizing lengthy and complex forms, each following a theme. The forms are then to be examined for years to learn the embedded lessons. The trouble was that I’m not particularly inclined toward memorization. The Japanese answer, of course, was to keep hammering away. After a couple months of this, I bought a video camera and started supplementing the official instruction with my own ideas to much greater effect.

Source: Photo by Jared Miracle.

Systematize, systematize, systematize

To make my teacher and cohort happy, I continued to do as I was told each day during training, but I also secured permission to set my camera up in an inconspicuous corner of the room. Upon returning home, I would slice up the video so that I had the complete forms in a single file. From there, I broke them into pieces of three or four movements that I could then rehearse on my own, retaining each piece by associating it with a story I invented. For each set of techniques I made up a childish narrative like those used to teach shoe-tying. Luckily for me, it still works as an adult. Within a week I had sufficiently absorbed the same form I’d been struggling for over a month to remember.

The point here is not that video recording is the ideal way to study, but to figure out what works for you and follow it regardless of tradition. I began my sword studies with the foolish mindset that you must learn in the same way as your forbearers. I was wrong. What I learned in the process was not just to act outside the established means of knowledge transmission, but to accept that I needed something different from what my population was willing to offer. In Western-style education we refer to this idea as “differentiation.” After your differentiated education has taken you sufficiently far to catch up with your peers, a good teacher will then institute “scaffolding” by setting up a roadmap to your end goal so that you aren’t stuck in the remedial class for the rest of your life. For more on how to improve your internal learning process, I highly recommend Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning. Waitzkin was a world-class chess player as a child (see Searching for Bobby Fischer) before retiring to take national and international championships in taiji push-hands and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, so he knows what he’s talking about.

Be an idiot child

In order to make adequate progress in acquiring body skills (or any other kind of information, really) in a short amount of time, you need to revert to childhood. By that I mean you should approach your subject with an attitude of absolute ignorance. Take nothing as a given. This is a standard point of all good anthropological fieldwork courses, but it needs to be doubly emphasized in martial arts studies for two reasons. First, you will have a hard time synthesizing information and spotting nuances if you have preconceived notions. Second, people love to teach, and when they perceive that you need extra attention, they may reveal things of which you would not have otherwise been aware.

I managed to weasel my way into a very old-fashioned dojo to learn a five-centuries-old method of fencing. That was tough, and I naturally assumed that the training would also be a challenge. Then one of the senior students—a middle-aged man beset with the funkiest halitosis I’ve ever encountered—handed me my new trousers. Hakama are those many-pleated skirt-like garments worn in aikido and kendo. While I had worn them before, I suddenly noticed that everyone else tied theirs in a very particular way, forming a beautiful cross-shaped knot in the front. Rather than risk being called out during training, I asked for help. It took a fair bit of pride-swallowing to not respond when Mr. Mouthrot laughed a noxious cloud in my face while showing me how to put on my own pants. That knot turned out to be one of the countless unspoken transmissions of the art. And all it cost me was a breath mint.

Relax your way to success

There is a minor inconvenience of which you should be aware before traveling to Japan. Because of a powerful lobby benefiting the taxi companies, virtually every train in the country stops service around ten or eleven in the evening. The lack of trains isn’t much of an issue in metropolitan Tokyo, where you need only cough up a few more yen to catch a ride across town. When living in the boondocks, however, I soon discovered that one may find himself standing in an abandoned train station. On the top of a mountain. In the middle of the night. Alone.

Thinking that I was in for a lengthy hike down into my village in the dark, I zipped up my jumper, plunged hands into my pockets, and… realized that I had lost my house key. It must have fallen out while riding in a cab earlier that evening. Although I could recall the name of the company, I lacked any confidence in my language abilities, especially on the telephone. Not seeing any other way to return home, I picked up a payphone and dialed the taxi dispatch. Had I allowed nerves to overtake my thinking, I may have tried to force the unfortunate woman on the other end to speak what she could recall from her high school English class (always a bad idea). Instead, some special confluence of my exhaustion from a day of travel and passive absorption of daily conversation shone through and I managed to explain that I was a stupid, stupid man who was without his key. The kindness of the Japanese people was on full display as the operator contacted each driver working that night. Within ten minutes, that saintly gentleman pulled up in front of the station, handed me my key, insisted on driving me home, complimented my (atrocious) Japanese, refused to accept any pay, and then offered me a piece of candy as a parting gift.

The lesson? Your ability to absorb new knowledge and skills is quite prodigious if you just step out of your own way. Like a child learning to walk, don’t fear making simple errors or looking foolish. Martial arts field research demands that you lose all sense of pride and egocentrism so that you can do proper justice to your interlocutors. If you aren’t mindful to approach the situation with a sense of relaxed ignorance and trust your own intuitive learning process, you risk not only missing out on valuable knowledge, but also offending your teachers and fellow students by violating the social conditions. Be humble, be calm, and be a buffoon.

Photo of a training session in Shandong. Source: Field notes of Dr. Jared Miracle.

Learn to speedread

Speedreading is immensely useful, and not just because you can knock out over a hundred books a year like Theodore Roosevelt. Indeed, many of history’s great personalities were known to possess nearly superhuman reading abilities, sometimes on the order of two or three per day. Doubtless, this will prove useful to just about anyone. Graduate school more or less forced me to learn the skill. My mentor—who also happens to be a seminal member of martial arts studies since before I was born—instructed me to take all the courses offered by another member of the faculty whose interests did not appear to mesh with mine. After surviving the first of these, I spent the next two years trying to avoid the man, but to no avail.

The professor in question was known for being highly confrontational, racially and sexually offensive, and for assigning hundreds upon hundreds of pages of reading for homework each week. What graduate anthropology student has time to read all of The Brothers Karamazov, the complete collection of Skeptical Inquirer, and a dozen obscure research articles that you have to track down without the aid of a library (they pled “exhausted all resources”), all for a single class? In the end, my cohort and I did. I quickly learned the importance of speedreading, pre-skimming, and which parts of a scholarly book or article should be read in-depth or eschewed entirely. I have never looked back, either. I typically fill and empty my Kindle’s memory about once per month. Also, that nightmarish professor ended up on my committee and proved to be an incredibly valuable asset in the long run, as well as a valued friend and teacher.

But what else does one attain by mastering the ability to devour entire volumes in a day? There is a sort of unquantifiable skill to be found in relaxing the mind and flying through text. It almost feels the same as the much-touted “flow state” or one of those rare “Zen” experiences. When you attain true control over your reading speed, the world disappears, the pages pass by, and suddenly you’ve accumulated a mountain of data without realizing that you were trying. Because you weren’t. This skill transfers well to field research in the martial arts because many of us are learning the nuances of systems that take decades to grasp. Let me be clear: I’m not saying that the ability to apply speedreading-style cognitive methods to your training will equip you to suddenly learn entire systems and cultures instantly ala The Matrix. You will, however, see a notable improvement in your progress and feel less stress and frustration over the entire convoluted mess that is qualitative ethnographic research.

This has worked for me, personally, on a number of occasions. In a recent project, I studied the rudiments of taiji meihua tanglang quan (太極梅花螳螂拳), taiji plum blossom praying mantis boxing. This was part of the agenda during my year as an adjunct at a major university in China. Praying mantis is one of the local styles and one must strike while the iron is hot. In this case, the hard part wasn’t learning, but gaining access. More on that below. Once I connected with a willing master of the form, I ended up driving both him and the other students to no small amount of irritation because they only intended to share one movement with me at a time. When the combination of speedreading his technique and hours of practicing at home each night put me ahead of older students, a few became somewhat indignant. They asked if I was “cheating on” our teacher by attending lessons elsewhere. This is hardly to brag; any effort to demonstrate my meagre understanding of the praying mantis system would end in total embarrassment for me, my family, and eight generations of ancestors. The point is that you can learn how to learn more effectively than you currently do.

Transfer what you know

Whenever I give public talks about martial arts research, the first question from the audience is almost always the same, “So do you practice a martial art?” After some years of this, I still don’t see why that would be relevant for their ends. If a medical doctor were to make a study of dimple prevalence among conjoined twins, is it unlikely that someone in the audience will ask, “So do you have a former conjoined twin with dimples?” Either way, there are some aspects of the present concern that are directly affected by past martial arts study.

As I say, you need to have a system for acquiring body knowledge just as you do for intellectual knowledge. If you have past experience and interest in learning a combat system (and odds are you do, given how many of us got into martial arts studies for the money and fame), it can be quite valuable to determine that system’s approach to cognitive information transfer. One example of this may be the famous wing chun quadrant system. The body is bisected two ways to more easily get a handle on the style’s trademark intercepting maneuvers. In any event, it can greatly expedite the process of learning a new system when you have a solid grounding in another. The operative word here is “can.”

Many teachers will complain about students arriving with preconceived notions or ingrained habits. Those are definitely valid concerns (even Luke Skywalker was “too old to begin the training”), as they are in any kind of education. I would encourage any novice fieldworker to perform extensive reflection and self-examination in terms of prior experience. When you are aware of your habits and biases, they are both easier to overcome and you can leverage that experience to develop new habits. After all, if you already possess a habit then it is proof positive of a method’s effectiveness.

Dr. Miracle in the ring in Japan. Source: Collection of Dr. Miracle.

Done is better than perfect

In a perfect world, we would all have a wealth of time to spend with our interlocutors. The fact that you sometimes bite the inside your own lip indicates that the world is not perfect. Take into account the amount of time and energy you realistically have before even setting out on any field excursion. Whether at your neighborhood taekwondo academy or some remote temple in Shangri-La, the time from setting foot in the door to sending out your article for publication is finite, so plan accordingly.

To that end, I offer my own graduate school Prime Directive: Done is better than perfect.

Repeating that mantra on an hourly basis is one of the tools that helped me graduate from a rigorous PhD. program in seven semesters. It applies just as well in fieldwork. It is important to keep in mind that your own intimacy with the art and population about which you will be writing depends on time and access. Learn what you can, while you can, from whom you can and accept the rest as reality. Take notes and video if you can. Copy down every scrap of data that you collect before going to bed each night. Be appreciative of the opportunities that are presented, not the ones you wish for.

Think like a journalist

Finally, I would like to address the question of how to track down and make contact with individuals who may or may not be willing to spill the kung fu beans. In some cases it’s as simple as walking in and signing up, but I find that the most interesting and enlightening projects involve making good with people who are not interested in teaching. Case-in-point: Master Gu.

Looking for authentic Shandong mantis style, I set out to make connections. What I quickly learned upon arriving in Qingdao is that there are very, very few people actively practicing Chinese martial arts other than the ubiquitous morning taiji groups. Through those folks and a few personal contacts, I was able to find a group practicing plum blossom boxing, another highly regional style. That proved to be a dead-end, however, when a well-respected colleague and Chinese martial arts expert informed me that the club in question would be a waste of time. I visited them anyway, and their instructor demanded outrageous sums of money from the “wealthy foreigner.” It became obvious that I would make no headway on that front.

I told everyone I knew what I was looking for. I even began introducing myself with the usual name, rank, and whatnot, then immediately mentioning that I hoped to study mantis boxing. I dragged a few of my native speaker friends into the search and had them cold calling numbers of martial arts teachers from the public phone listing. Finally, after a couple of months, a friend of a friend told me about Master Gu, a taiji push-hands teacher who was also a master of mantis style. It involved getting up at some ludicrous hour every Sunday morning and committing to an all-day commute to a park where he teaches (sometimes, when he feels like it), but I did eventually get what I came for.

Other cases are more straightforward. Perhaps you know the teacher, have contact information, and maybe even know where to go, but he/she still refuses. Keep showing up. Keep calling. Don’t be annoying, but persistence pays off more often than not. Journalists are the best model for this kind of thing. If it works, it works, and no method should be put out of mind without trying it. With Master Gu, the key ended up being the use of social media. I canvased all of my online connections via the Chinese program WeChat.

Either way, it may be psychologically healthiest to view resistance as a test of one’s drive to learn. Personally, I always think about an atrocious 1991 film called American Shaolin in which the protagonist camps outside the eponymous temple for days until the monks agree to torture him. He does end up becoming a monk and getting the girl. I’m not quite sure how that is supposed to work, but it gives one hope.

So there you have it. The rest is situationally-dependent and may require a degree of creativity, but this should be more than enough to get you started. Below is a list of suggested resources for a more robust education on the topic. The key, however, is to get out and do the work, whenever, wherever, and however you can. Done is better than perfect. Best of luck.

oOo

About the Author

Dr. Jared Miracle is a social anthropologist who specializes in video games and education. He has a PhD (Texas A&M), he’s won tons of awards, and he wrote a book called Now With Kung Fu Grip!: How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America and has even given lectures on Pokemon. In short, he knows what he’s talking about. He has also been a regular guest contributor here at Kung Fu Tea.

oOo

Some Additional Reading and Sources:

Choreometrics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantometrics#Branching_out_into_Choreometrics

More on Josh Waitzkin’s work in learning and education:
http://www.joshwaitzkin.com/the-art-of-learning/

A nice primer of flow states:
http://positivepsychology.org.uk/pp-theory/flow/30-living-in-flow.html

I suggest “human guinea pig” Tim Ferriss’ thoughts on speedreading:
Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes

Some tips on getting started with investigative journalism:
http://www.icfj.org/sites/default/files/10_Steps_Investigative_Reporting_0.pdf

Some fun and terrible weekend viewing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Shaolin

The best book available on ethnographic fieldwork methods is still Bruce Jackson’s 1987 classic:
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/64nyb2bz9780252013720.html

It is both enlightening and cathartic to read others’ virgin field experiences. I thoroughly enjoyed and recommend an edited volume of such tales called Dispatches from the Field:
http://www.waveland.com/browse.php?t=151&pgtitle=Dispatches+from+the+Field+by+Gardner-Hoffman

A photograph (probably 1930s) showing a marketplace martial arts demonstration. Note the Shuang Gau led by the man on the left. Source: The personal collection of Benjamin Judkins

Introduction

 
Ephemera, such as postcards, tourist snapshots and newspaper accounts are an important (if often overlooked) source of information regarding the traditional Chinese martial arts. While a number of printed manuals and detailed philosophical discussions do exist from the period of the 1920s onward, I am always surprised at how difficult it is to find period accounts of a set of practices and organizations that have done so much to shape our modern perception of Chinese identity. When rediscovered, ephemera is fascinating precisely because it suggests something about the individuals who consumed it as well as offering a few nuggets of information regarding the social place of the practices that they report.

 
A Marketplace Demonstration of Heroic Kung Fu

The main image for today’s post is no exception. It records a fascinating snapshot of the modern evolution of the traditional Chinese martial arts. But which moment is it?

I first acquired this image in the from of a vintage photograph taken form a tourist’s travel album. Unfortunately, as is often the case, a dealer had already broken up the individual collection and was selling off the photos one at a time. While a common sales strategy this is regrettable as it deprives students of the opportunity to use the rest of the album to contextualize, and hopefully identify, the scene that we are interested in.

The photograph itself measures 3.5 by 5.5 inches and is in generally good condition. Its surface has been scratched in a few places and the scene is generally a bit overexposed. It was probably taken on a bright and sunny day.

The backside of the photo has no labels but does show signs that it was once pasted onto a scrapbook page. Images like this were often printed in large numbers by local photographers for sales to tourists and travelers. Unfortunately, the lack of studio marks means that we have no idea where the image was taken or by whom.

The label under which the photo was sold has also been singularly unhelpful. When it was first auctioned the photograph was said to show two martial artists training in Hong Kong during the 1940s.

Given the arid look of the landscape and the fortress walls in the background, I suspect that this is unlikely. The image was probably taken in Northern China at any point between the late 1920s and the 1940s. When I first saw this image my gut instinct was to date it to some point in the 1930s.

But again, what exactly is this a picture of?

At first glance we are meant to see a recording of a typical marketplace martial arts performance. As we have argued elsewhere, these were a critical element of China’s hand combat subculture and were the places where non-practitioners were most likely to actually see and be exposed to these systems. That may also help to explain (in part) the low esteem in which many ordinary citizens held the tradition martial arts at this point in time.

Yet upon closer inspection we immediately notice that the image has actually been rather extensively staged. To create a sense of “activity” the cameraman stood close to his subjects, requiring that they stand close to one another. A good swing from the sword held by the man on the left could take off the near child’s leg at the hip. Likewise, the sharpened tip of the spear held by this child is positioned only a few inches away from a spectator’s spleen. While this shot successfully conveys a feeling of drama and action, it is not an example of spontaneous “street photography.” Rather it is an attempt to convey the photographer’s impression of a dynamic and quickly moving hand combat demonstration.

A detailed look at a pair of Shuang Gau. This is pair measures 95 cm in length and may be of a similar vintage to the swords seen in these images. Source: http://www.swordsantiqueweapons.com/s1015_full.html

The most interesting element of this photograph is probably the matching hooked swords held by the instructor of the two young fighters. This weapon, referred to by a number of names including the Shuang Gau, or “tiger head hook swords,” is rarely seen in antique collections. Nor, for that matter, is much known about its development and use.

While commonly employed by modern martial arts practitioners today, there are only a limited number of antique examples available for study. Most of these date to either the late 19th or early 20th century. Nor are there any clear literary, military or artistic references to this weapon prior to the late 19th century. As such we can safely assume that these weapons were developed and popularized by civilian martial artists in Northern China during the late Qing revival of interest in boxing. In fact, the creation of such esoteric weapons and accompanying oral traditions may suggest something important about the fundamental nature of this movement.

This is not to suggest that these swords are not “real” weapons. They most certainly were.

While they were never issued by the military, reliable reports from those who have handled well-made period examples suggest that they could have been quite deadly in skilled hands. By the Republic period these weapons were being used in a few Northern styles including Seven Star Mantis. They later made their way south and were adopted into the Choy Li Fut system. Still, their appearance in this relatively early photograph further suggests a northern location.

Chinese martial arts display. Northern China, sometime in the 1930s.

 

Conclusion: Efficacy and Entertainment in Republic Era Martial Arts

It may also be of some interest to note that the very first photo published in this series also featured a martial artist wielding a pair of tiger head hook swords. Both of these images captured this rare weapon’s appearance as one element of a larger public performance. They collectively suggests an element of theatricality and possibly the ultimate reason why these swords began to spread throughout the Chinese martial arts world during the Republic period.

As D. S. Farrer reminds us, the martial arts are by their very nature social activities mediated by cultural forms. If this was not the case they could not be taught by one generation to the next. Yet this fundamental truth also suggests that every aspect of these systems, including their weapons, will include elements of “efficacy” and “entertainment.” Nor is it ultimately possible to disentangle these elements as an increase on one side of the equation leads to new possibilities opening up for the other.

The sudden appearance of the Shuang Gau in both the training halls and performance stages of Northern China suggests something about the fundamental trends that were driving innovation within the Northern martial arts during the Republic period. These photographs and postcards are valuable historical documents precisely because they grant insights into how both of these elements, the practical and the symbolic, were being framed for the audience at a specific moment in time.

oOo

If you enjoyed this you might also want to read: London, 1851: Kung Fu in the Age of Steam-Punk

oOo

Earl White, chief instructor,
Ijo Ija Academy (left), and author (right),
Capoeira Batuque, Los Angeles, CA, 2008. Source: http://abcclio.blogspot.com/2010/08/author-guest-post-thomas-green-on.html

Introduction

Welcome to the fourth entry in our series of guest posts titled “Doing Research.”  If you missed the first essay by D. S. Farrer (which provides a global overview of the subject), the second by Daniel Mroz (how to select a school or teacher for research purposes), or the third by  Jared Miracle (learning new martial arts systems while immersed in a foreign culture) be sure to check them out!

Compared to other fields of scholarly inquiry, Martial Arts Studies has a distinctly democratic flavor.  Many individuals are introduced to these systems while students at a college or university and are interested in seeing a more intellectually rigorous treatment of their interests.  And certain practitioners want to go beyond reading studies produced by other writers and undertake research based on their own time in the training hall.   The emphasis on ethnographic description, oral and local history, as well as the methodological focus on community based collaborative research within Martial Arts Studies (itself a radically interdisciplinary area), makes participation in such efforts both relatively accessible and highly valuable.  Or maybe you are a student about to embark on your first ethnographic research project?

Prof. Thomas A. Green is no stranger to discussions of Martial Arts Studies.  Through both his publications and teaching he has demonstrated the importance of studying “traditional” fighting systems as a method of understanding current social and cultural conditions.  In the following essay he offers new researchers advice on the process of collecting folklore.  The Asian martial arts in particular are often said to be “oral traditions,” and gathering this material is a critical aspect of understanding any school or group of practitioners.  To help us better do this Prof. Green draws our attention to the importance of building the proper rapport while in the field as well as the need for flexibility and a healthy dose of respect.  Though critical advice for first time ethnographers, this essay also contains helpful hints for anyone wishing to get the most out of their time in the training hall.

Left to right Gurus Tony Valdez, James Leach, Maha Guru Clifford Stewart, Green, Guru Thomas Lomax, Los Angeles, CA. Source: Personal Collection of Prof. Thomas Green.

I’m Only in it For the Stories
Dedicated to the Memory of Zheng Xìujìng

“Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of ‘construct a reading of’) a manuscript—foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written not in conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of shaped behavior.”

-Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973)

I’ve always resisted the label of social “scientist.” Particularly since I focus on symbolic dimensions of folklore and characterize my approach as leaning toward the qualitative, I’m more comfortable conceiving of what I do as an art. After all, what I do is classified as ethnography: etymologically “writing a culture.“ How can we as outsiders write a culture? As ethnographers, we must keep a certain distance even when writing our native culture. Doing so is just as difficult as it sounds. Complicating matters further is an issue Bronislaw Malinowski addresses in his classic Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), “To study the institutions, customs, and codes or to study the behaviour and mentality without the subjective desire of feeling by what these people live, of realising the substance of their happiness—is, in my opinion, to miss the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of man”. Two points leap out: subjectivity has a place in the study of culture, and it is okay to practice our trade because we enjoy doing so.

I think it is fair, especially if we consider it reasonable to label qualitative field research as an art, to say that I’m just in this for the stories. That statement also has the advantage of being true. Who tells the stories? That can be a problem if the ethnographer refuses to tell the stories (beyond reading Geertz’ manuscript), but chooses to let someone else assume the role of narrator. To accomplish this one risks the possibility of falling into the narratives in much the same way that Alice fell down the rabbit hole (These tend to be the best ones, of course). In that situation, one cannot always know how (or if) a story begins, how it will develop, or where it will end. Returning to Geertz’ metaphor, I suggest that the ethnographer should stand behind the cultural interlocutors to read their stories over their shoulders as far as possible. If you listen closely and if you are lucky, they will tell you where to stand.

Let’s agree for the time being that we are “only in it for the stories.” In order to “ask” for a story, we must establish rapport. In my experience, establishing rapport in the field demands three qualities from the researcher. Two stories about getting the stories from the field illustrate these qualities.

My first real fieldwork took me to the town of Ysleta a few miles outside El Paso, Texas. I planned to write my dissertation on the ways that folklore, particularly folk history and festival, had facilitated social cohesion and fostered a Native American identity among the Tigua Pueblo of Ysleta del Sur. The Texas Tigua had become separated from their parent village in New Mexico following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. A series of historical accidents and social injustices delayed their official recognition and enfranchisement by the federal government and the state of Texas until the 1960s. Nevertheless, the Tigua had maintained their identity for over 300 years, and a cultural revival followed in the wake of recognition.

I arrived armed with a cassette recorder (we are talking about the 1970s, after all), a notebook full of questions, and a head full of hypotheses drawn from the literature on cultural revitalization movements. After checking in with the local representative of the Texas Commission for Indian Affairs, I was taken across the central plaza to meet the Cacique, the Tigua spiritual leader and patriarch. At a little before noon, the June sun pushed the temperature toward 100 degrees F. We found the Cacique, José Granillo, standing by an adobe building in the early stages of being converted to a multipurpose community center. He was looking up at a small group of men repairing leaks in its roof. On hearing that I was on hand to begin, in the TCIA employee’s unfortunate choice of verbs, ”studying” his people, the Cacique gestured with an upward tilt of his chin to a weather-beaten twelve foot ladder leaning against the dusty brown wall. Mr. Granillo told me, “To know about the Indians, you need to work like the Indians.” To show that I accepted the advice (or was it a challenge?), I climbed the ladder and asked how I could help. I came back the next day and the next and the next, etc.–wearing a hat to avert further sunburn and work gloves to cover my blisters, and sans recorder.

Word travels fast in a village. That’s true all over the world. In Ysleta, people began to ask questions. Then they began to answer questions. After a while, some people began to tell stories and share exactly the kind of knowledge I had come to gather. I never became much of a roofer or mason or cook or chauffeur or any of the other odd jobs that materialized over the next year. On the other hand, by means of this genuine participant-observation I began to hear in a more or less natural context (after all, they did know who I am and why I was there) the narratives I had come to collect. I was not always having fun; I was not using the research protocol I had been taught, but I was getting the job done.

Prof. Green attending a performance at the Spring Festival in Hou Ma (Henan Province). Source: From the private collection of Thomas A. Green.

Forty years later I was in another village, this one in Henan Province, PRC. I had traveled to Hou Ma with my colleagues Li Yun and Zhang Guodong in order to document Liangquan (“Show Boxing”) performances held by the Meihua (Plum Blossom) Boxers during Spring Festival (“Chinese New Year”). We had arrived a few days before the actual performance to interview local Boxers who Guodong (himself a well-known Mei Boxer) had identified during previous visits and to record coinciding events such as traditional popular opera.

A few days before Liangquan I stood as a conspicuous Caucasian in the festival crowd watching an opera performance when I felt a tug on the sleeve of my coat. I turned to see an elderly, but extraordinarily animated, lady speaking to me in the local dialect. I later learned that her name was Zheng Xìujìng, and she was 84 years-old. Guodong’s sister, who had come along to help with the translation, explained that the lady wanted me to know she was glad I came to her village, and that she wanted us to visit her house. We had a full research agenda, but rather than offending her, the four of us agreed to visit.

We followed the directions she had given us and arrived at a modest older style house in the heart of the village. We entered directly into the largest room of the dwelling—a general purpose room upon whose walls hung a large portrait of Mao Zedong surrounded by framed calligraphy and a variety of traditional weapons of indeterminate age, but obviously very old. Some belonged to Master Zheng, who we learned was a 13th generation master of Mei Boxing, and some had belonged to her late husband. She explained the rugged condition of most of the weapons by telling us stories of their having been buried in the fields along with ancestral tablets and other traditional treasures to prevent their destruction during the Proletarian Cultural Revolution. She and her husband, along with other members of Hou Ma’s Mei Boxing families, practiced at night in the same fields in order to preserve the embodied treasure that was their art without detection by authorities charged with eradicating this alleged relic of feudalism.

When I told her I was puzzled that she hung a picture of the leader who was, in the Western view at least, the face of the Cultural Revolution among martial treasures and over an altar used for ancestor veneration. Her response: After Mao came to power she was not hungry every day as she had been before the establishment of the People’s Republic. Then, she shrugged her shoulders beneath her heavy quilted coat and added, “Even the best people make mistakes.”

That day and on other occasions during our stay in Hou Ma, Master Zheng shared history, her own and Mei Boxing’s. She read through with us the frayed pages of a hand-written book that chronicled the lineage and original history of Plum Blossom Boxing. From Master Zheng we began to become aware of two distinct streams of Mei Boxing: Wu (physical techniques) and Wen (non-physical techniques; ritual, metaphysics). Because of her mastery of Wen, people regularly called on her for help, including members of the visiting opera troupe I had been documenting. The performers came to her house to venerate ancestors and petition for her blessing. Although we never saw her skills at Wu, her grandson’s demonstration of the guan do (Chinese halberd) suggested that her command of the physical combative side of Mei Boxing was equally well-developed. None of this could have been anticipated before she tugged on my sleeve to tell us her story.

A snapshot of Master Zheng as she shares the history of her art. Source: From the private collection of Thomas A. Green.

CREDIBILITY: The first questions any ethnographer encounters in the field relate to: Who are you, why should I believe you, and why should we trust you with our stories? Researchers, the illusory role of participant-observer notwithstanding, are bystanders at best and potentially intruders. Credibility, even to stand by, must be earned. This can be especially true in situations in which inter-group relationships have been strained, as was the case with the Tigua who had been the victims of both racial prejudice and political malfeasance since European contact. Subordinating myself to village authority, engaging in manual labor that apparently had no relationship to my research goals, and doing both repeatedly clearly demonstrated that I wanted to “study” the Tigua badly enough to undertake the enterprise on their terms.

On the other hand, credibility may come at a comparatively low price. In Hou Ma, I accompanied a trusted member of the Mei Boxing brotherhood, and I was willing to listen to an elderly lady who seemed an unlikely bearer of Meihuaquan tradition. In both cases, I could not play the role I had prepared; the roles were assigned by the host communities, and a role of some sort always will be assigned.

A viable role is crucial to success. In other research situations, even when sweating and occasionally bleeding alongside other martial arts students, I invariably have been categorized as unusual. Early on, Maha Guru Cliff Stewart tagged me as “Professor” and “Doc,” in group contexts at least. This went a long way to establishing my bona fides when I began working with his martial associates, and that was his intent, of course. The use of those titles suggests no deferential treatment, however, only difference and usually license to ask questions that would have seemed odd or intrusive had they come from either insiders or outsiders.

FLEXIBILITY: Reading over our hosts’ shoulders can demand unexpected contortions, and not a little endurance to maintain that reading posture. Obviously I never intended to collect my information on the roof, but since that was the only option I was given I did it. The only genuine “textbook” recorded interview I attempted at Ysleta was unsatisfactory. It was stilted, and my narrator Pablo repeatedly responded to requests for stories with something like, “Oh, I already told you that one.” That was true. Most of the folk history I collected at Ysleta came “on the fly,” in the context of other conversations.

Fortunately, I took notes as soon after hearing a tale as possible, have a better than average memory, and recorded my own recreation of what resulted from the notes and my memory as soon as possible. The fact that the really important narratives were repeated more than once by Pablo and other gifted storytellers helped, too. Conversation, not interrogation, was the proper mode for this situation. A lack of flexibility would have left me flailing in the dark.

The research project in Hou Ma was carefully planned. Guodong is an insider, a Mei Boxer who is the disciple of one of the most highly respected masters in China, and the author of a dissertation on Meihuaquan. He had visited the village before, and during these visits had identified the best resource persons. These factors helped us target those persons in the village who were most likely to help us answer our research questions, or so we thought until Master Zheng tugged at my sleeve and pulled us in a new and extraordinarily productive direction. Fortunately, we had the flexibility to stand where she told us in order to read her texts over her shoulder.

Serendipity was the catalyst for the success in both of these stories about stories. Need I belabor the point? Here we are back where this story began, with Alice. My advice to you? When you see the White Rabbit pause to wink back over his shoulder, drop your preconceptions and follow him down the hole.

Thomas A. Green
TAMU

Prof. Green at lunch, where lots of good fieldwork happens. Source: From the private collection of Thomas A. Green

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About the Author: Prof. Green (Anthropology, Texas A&M University) conducts research on African and African-descended martial culture in the Americas. The primary focus of this research has been the role of martial arts in African American cultural nationalism and the relationships among martial arts and expressive genres such as music, dance, games, and drama.

In 2012, he initiated fieldwork in northern China on traditional village martial arts with colleagues from the PRC. The projects in Hebei, Henan, and Shandong analyze of the use of vernacular martial arts in post-Mao northern China to confront the potential social fragmentation brought on by the rapid social change that characterizes modernization. Their current project investigates the Liangquan Festival of  the Plum Blossom Boxers of Hou Mazhuang Village as a vehicle to maintain group cohesion in the face of the social and economic pressures that encourage residents to move to urban locations. Following the recognition of Plum Blossom Boxing as an example of Intangible Cultural Heritage, local government entities intend to develop the shrine devoted to Zou  Hongyi, the patriarch of  this martial art,  into a tourist attraction. Future research will document the success of these efforts and the ways in which Liangquan and the performing community are affected.  

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If you enjoyed this guest post you might also want to read: Professor Thomas Green on the Survival of Plum Blossom Boxing, Martial Folklore and the State of Martial Arts Studies

A lush hillside. Source: From the private collection of Thomas A. Green.

The Nine Dragon Wall in the Forbidden City, Beijing. Note that the full beauty of the wall can only be seen if one takes a step back and looks at it from multiple perspectives. Source: Wikimedia.

 
Introduction

 
“Martial arts studies” is an eponymously named research area. This fact seems so obvious as to require no further exploration. But is it really so?

Why does no one write about “professional combat sports studies,” “kung fu studies,” “Budo studies” or “unarmed self-defense studies”? Most researchers and readers make two important judgements on an almost subconscious level before ever asking these sorts of questions. First, they conclude that each of these activities falls within a larger category that has come to be collectively identified as “martial arts.” Second, due to the shared history that connects these practices, and the shared social and media discourses that link their discussion, a collective definition is useful precisely because it facilitates comparative study.

What exactly qualifies a practice as a “martial art?” Even casual readers of this blog will have noted that we spend quite a bit of time discussing the subject, but I have yet to offer a definition or sustained discussion of the topic.

Nor is this a oversight. Readers familiar with my recent book, The Creation of Wing Chun, may have noticed that at no point did I offer a simple covering definition for the martial arts in that volume, even though I explored the processes surrounding the invention of these fighting systems in late imperial and Republic era China in some depth.

I am far from alone in this editorial choice. After spending an evening skimming volumes from my library it quickly became apparent that most authors discussing the history, sociology or theory of martial arts studies offer only a cursory treatment of subject or skip over it entirely.

Peter Lorge is notable as he provided a brief discussion which we will review below. Yet Meir Shahar never explicitly examines the subject in his groundbreaking work on the historical evolution of the Shaolin Temple’s famous fighting systems. Douglas Wile’s discussion of the Taiji Classics seems not to have suffered for his lack of a definition of the martial arts (or even an argument as to why Taijiquan qualifies as one.)

More recently, Alexander C. Bennett’s exploration of the history of Kendo begins with a bracing personal narrative. Readers are told of his introduction to the sport while a high school exchange student living in Japan. Yet while his younger narrative-self wonders aloud as to whether he is watching a real martial art or a scene from Star Wars (in which the club’s instructor plays the role of an imposing and sadistic Vader), Bennet as a mature scholar, never stops to define the martial arts as a whole.

Paul Bowman’s recent monograph extensively draws on the idea of the martial arts in his definition and exploration of “martial arts studies.”  Yet the prior foundational concept is never brought into clear focus. And in Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge D. S. Farrer and John Whalen-Bridge simply define them as “the things done to make the study of fighting appear refined enough to survive elite social prohibition.” While a rather shrewd observation on the social position of the martial arts (and perhaps the impossibility of designing a simple statement that captures all of their varieties) many readers may want something more.

While not a comprehensive review of the literature, my purpose here has been to demonstrate that it is entirely possible to write a scholarly book on the martial arts without first ever stopping to define them. Nor are we alone in this. Drawing on my own professional background, most books on some subject in international politics (trade disputes or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction) do not first begin with an exhaustive discussion of the nature of the international system. Nor, as a field, have we ever come up with a settled and universally agreed upon definition of “politics.” Similar puzzles can be found in all of the disciplines. Martial arts studies appears to be in good company. (Wetzler, 23)

Still, the body of specialized literature in political science attempting to define and explore concepts such as the “international system,” or even “power,” is more developed than what we currently enjoy in martial arts studies. Much of this comes down to resources and time. It has taken many scholars working over the course of decades to produce the degree of conceptual clarity that political science now enjoys. As a relatively new research area martial arts studies is still laying the foundations of future conversations.

Yet there are likely at least two other reasons why such an important concept often goes undiscussed. The first of these derives from the nature of the definitions that we do have. Broadly speaking scholars have used at least three different strategies in conceptualizing the martial arts. First, they have relied on (often unspoken) socially accepted practice. While there may be questions about some activities at the margins, everyone seems to accept Okinawan Karate, Chinese Wushu and Filipino Kali as “martial arts” with little or no discussion.

Many of the articles and monographs that have been produced within martial arts studies have focused either on an isolated style (Wile’s work on Taiji) or the fighting systems of a single state (Hurst’s work on the armed martial arts of Japan). As there is often a well understood agreement within these regions as to which activities are martial arts, and which are not, authors often find themselves implicitly adopting local vernacular definitions. I suspect that this sort of “pre-scientific” social categorization explains most of the absence of discussion within our field.

Nevertheless, at the margins this sort of approach can cause problems. Should we really accept historical Korean taekkyeon as a martial art or was it instead better understood as a game? What about combative displays within Chinese opera? How much of this qualifies as a “real” martial art versus a specialized acting technique? Without clear conceptual boundaries such questions tend to reinforce social hierarches and debates within specific martial arts communities rather than revealing any new information on the actual nature of these practices and the roles that they play within society.

Detail of the Nine Dragon Wall in the Forbidden City, Beijing. Source: Wikimedia.

The search for a Universal Definition

In an attempt to clarify this core concept, and resolve debates such as the one above, some authors have developed more explicit definitions which focus on how the martial arts relate to other bodies of technique within society. These discussions tend to be abstract in an attempt to describe events in as many countries and time periods as possible. Such universal definitions are usually also minimal ones. Some of these discussions are not all that different from what might be found in a dictionary.

The 2015 on-line edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the martial arts as:

“Any of several arts of combat and self-defense (as karate and judo) that are widely practiced as sport.”

This brief statement captures how most people think of the martial arts within popular culture. A nod to both combat and self-defense are noted, as is the transformation of these practices into recreational sports in the current era. Unfortunately this definition also includes some critical omissions.

What about elements that are not geared towards combat (such as most modern Taiji practice)? What role does social organization, teaching or transmission play in making something a martial art, rather than just a “self-defense technique”? Are all martial arts Asian in origin (as the example would seem to imply)? And more pressingly, how do we even know that karate and judo meet this somewhat tautological definition?

A more suitable, yet still universal, definition can be found in Peter Lorge’s Chinese Martial Arts:

“I define ‘martial arts’ as the various skills or practices that originated as methods of combat. This definition therefore includes many performance, religious, or health-promoting activities that no longer have any direct combat applications but clearly originated in combat, while possibly excluding references to these techniques in dance, for example. Admittedly, the distinction can be muddled as one activity shades into another. In addition, what makes something a martial art rather than an action done by someone who is naturally good at fighting is that the techniques are taught. Without the transmission of these skills through teaching, they do not constitute an ‘art’ in the sense of being a body of information or techniques that aim to reproduce certain knowledge effects.”

Peter Lorge. 2012. Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 3-4.

This discussion offers us a number of improvements. First, it de-centers Asia from the definition of the martial arts, recalling that similar combat practices have been observed in practically all human societies at one point or another. Indeed, the term “martial art” has a long and distinguished history in Europe where it has also been used to describe western fighting systems.

Secondly, Lorge directly addresses the fact that martial arts are, by their very nature, social activities. They are not simply random responses to acts of violence (no matter how effective they might be in the moment). A given body of techniques only becomes an “art” when it can be effectively transmitted from one individual to another. Still, as Sixt Wetzler has cautioned in his own discussion of this definition, the “transmission” of techniques is not always reducible to formal classroom instruction. (p. 24)

Historically, most martial arts existed as what Thomas A. Green has described as “vernacular” fighting systems, where instruction tended to happen in the field and be a good deal less formal than what we might expect today. On the other side of the spectrum, literate martial artists in Europe, China and Japan have been writing detailed fighting manuals for hundreds of years with the explicit goal of passing on techniques to fellow students who they would never meet in person. The current era of cheap video and social media has also revolutionized the way that techniques are shared, tested and debated. The insight that knowledge must be transmitted from one generation to the next seems to be at the heart of the martial arts.

While a notable improvement, this definition still presents scholars with certain challenges. It is certainly the case that many martial arts arose from combat practices. But is this central to our understanding of them? Archery may have been used in hunting and ritual before it was used in warfare. Indeed, it is interesting to note how much of Hurst’s discussion of the evolution of military archery in Japan actually focuses on hunting well into the medieval period.

How should we really think about the many unarmed arts? While wrestling has long been part of Western and Eastern weapons training (and so it could be argued to have real military value) boxing appears only sporadically and even then mostly as a type of recreational activity within military camps. Even General Qi Jiguang, who did more to promote the practice of boxing within the Chinese military than anyone else, saw it something with no actual place on the battlefield. He introduced it as a new type of training for his troops because of its ability to build mental and physical strength rather than its inherent martial value or long pedigree in combat. It would be possible to multiply examples, but the basic point is clear. The actual historical links between modern martial practices and their supposed battlefield origins is sometimes more complicated than current mythmaking might lead one to suspect.

Detail of the Nine Dragon Wall in the Forbidden City, Beijing. Source: Wikimedia.

Classifying the Martial Arts

 
This implies a second, slightly more theoretical, issue. Universal definitions, such as those discussed above, attempt to provide us with a framework for understanding the boundaries that separate the martial arts from other activities (or even types of violence) within society. This is critical work and a necessary first step. Yet there is more to the problem.

Within our literature we do not want to simply identify instances of the martial arts. Once we have found them our attention immediately turns to the tasks of either descriptive or causal analysis. Where did a given art come from? Why do some people, but not others, practice it? What is significant about the ways that it is discussed in popular culture? What unique social roles does it play within a given society?

These are very basic questions, yet each of them raises issues of comparison, classification and typology. Or to quote the old social scientific dictum, we find ourselves asking “what is this a case of?”

In my recent study of Wing Chun I found that these sorts of questions could only be answered in a useful way by comparing one particular style to the other martial arts that surrounded it. Wing Chun existed as a distinct entity, but one that was defined in large part by its relationship with a complex system of other martial arts and types of social conflict.

Nor is this example unique. In some respects we will only be able to explore and understand the nature of a martial art through comparison to other systems. Yet where do we draw the boundaries between styles, and how should we analyze them? This set of questions has led other authors to suggest definitions of the martial arts geared towards comparative study.

An early attempt, and one that affected the subsequent development of the literature, was advanced by Donn F. Draeger.
Table 1: Draeger’s Classification of Fighting Systems

Martial Arts                                                                        Civilian Arts
Promote group solidarity                                                 For self-protection and home defense
Designed for battlefield use                                             Largely urban based
Designed and practiced as weapon arts                        Mainly ‘empty handed,’ limited weapons use
Designed for natural terrain and climate                     Designed for ideal surfaces, roads, streets and floors
Designed for wearing armor                                           Designed for civilian clothing
Use a wide range of weapons and skills                        Skills (and weapons) use is specialized and limited
Use genuine weapons rather than domestic tools      Weapons tend to be domestic tools
Developed by professional fighting class                      Part-time training is best

Donn F. Draeger. 1981. “The Martial-Civil Dichotomy in Asian Combatives” Hoplos. Vol. 3: No. 1. pp. 6-9

Reflecting Draeger’s own military service in both the Second World War and Korea, his discussion focuses primarily on Asian combative systems and attempts to classify them based on their origin and purpose. On the one hand he proposes the existence of a group of “true” martial arts based on real world combat skills (even if they are rarely practiced in that context in the modern world). He then contrasts these to “civilian” fighting arts that are essentially hobbies rather than the concern of “real” warriors.

One does not have to read too far down the list, or be overly familiar with the outlines of Draeger’s biography and background in the martial arts, to see the emergence of an implicit hierarchy within this exercise. Indeed, this is a danger that must be confronted in any attempt to formally define or classify our object of study. Such exercises can easily turn into an opportunity to impose one’s own values on an unsuspecting readership.

Much of Draeger’s own research in the martial arts focused on the idea that it was possible to empirically “test” various styles or approaches to judge their reality and effectiveness on an absolute scale. For Draeger it was the (often Japanese) military practices that came out on top while civilian boxing traditions (such as those found in China) were seen as having little worth. Indeed, this overly narrow understanding of how the martial arts developed and the roles that they were meant to play in society seem to have strained his relationship with his friend R. W. Smith. As Sixt Wetzler reminds us, ultimately “The [academic] researcher has to refrain from being simultaneously a critic.” (p. 30)

There are other issues with this list as well. Even if we were to restrict its application to “traditional” styles there are a number of martial arts that it would seem to misclassify. Entire schools of civilian fencing and knife fighting have existed in the West that focuses exclusively on real weapons. Nor is it clear that “group solidarity” is any less a goal for a village Dragon Dance society than it is of a military combatives classroom.

While it is tempting to think of the Bushi or later Samurai as “professional warriors” who dedicated their lives to swordsmanship as a battlefield skill, both Hurst and Bennet would remind us that this is not actually an accurate reflection of history. Swords were of relatively limited use of the battlefield and the Samurai were as much professional bureaucrats as anything else. Except for a limited number of specialists, the amount of time that most Japanese warriors dedicated to swordsmanship training could only be described as “part-time” at best.

Indeed, this definition’s most valuable contribution to the current literature might be to illustrate the degree to which our current understanding of the history and sociology of the martial arts has evolved in the last three decades. If nothing else it illustrates the dangers that arise when we tie our understanding of a universal concept to a narrow (and ultimately flawed) reading of history.

Nor is it immediately evident that the military/civilian dichotomy, while commonly made in certain sorts of historical and popular discussions, accurately reflects what we see in the global martial arts community today. More recent discussions tend to propose three or more categories in an attempt to be sensitive to a wider range of the social functions that the martial arts routinely fulfill. [For another approach this problem readers may also want to investigate this article by Joseph Svinth in the 2011 summer volume of InYo.]

In their review of the martial arts studies literature Alex Channon and George Jennings propose their own definition and classification system. Their discussion reads in part:

“Thus, we have adopted the aforementioned term ‘martial arts and combat sports’ [MACS], which we propose be used as an inclusive, triadic model encompassing competition-oriented combat sports, military/civilian self-defence systems, and traditionalist or non-competitive martial arts, as well as activities straddling these boundaries.”

Alex Channon and George Jennings. 2014. “Exploring Embodiment through Martial Arts and Combat Sports: A Review of Empirical Research.” Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics 17.6, 773-789.

Here we see Draeger’s two categories folded into one encompassing any system that is concerned with non-consensual violence, either at the personal or social level. This is juxtaposed with those arts that focus on “traditional” goals (health, personal development) on the one hand, and competitive combat sports on the other. Indeed, this tripartite system seems to do a better job of capturing the full range of social functions that the martial arts are routinely called upon to serve. A single community center might have a “Taiji for seniors” class running at the same that a “boxing essentials” outreach program is happening in the basement. And all of this is quite distinct in the minds of most of the patrons from the “women’s self-defense” programs that are hosted in the gym twice a year.

While intuitively appealing, this sort of exercise quickly runs into problems when we start to ask on what grounds a specific art should have been classified as a “combat sport” verses a “self-defense” system. Here we run up against the immense degree of internal variation that we see within individual styles and even specific schools. While one teacher may emphasize the health benefits of traditional karate training, another individual might be coaching his students to participate in local kickboxing tournaments. Some Wing Chun teachers approach their style as a primarily self-defense art, while others argue that in the modern (relatively safe) world health preservation should be our main concern. Nor, as Wetzler argues, is it all that difficult to find a single school pursuing all three of these functions at the same time.

While this definition appears to offer us objective standards by which a researcher can classify certain activities as belonging in one box or another, one suspects that in practice many such decisions will end up devolving to the level of popular perception (e.g., “everyone knows that Kung Fu is not a serious self-defense art!”) or pre-scientific bias. The entire exercise also has the unfortunate side-effect of erasing or obscuring much variation in behavior and practices that academic students might be interested in exploring.

How did Taiji come to be so closely associated with health practices? What should we make of Taiwan’s large competitive push-hands tournaments in light of this evolution? Such conversations become difficult when our basic definitions and concepts presuppose certain answers.

Detail of the Nine Dragon Wall in the Forbidden City, Beijing. Source: Wikimedia.

From Definition to Exploration

One does not have to read very far into the existing literature before concluding that it may be impossible to propose either a universal definition or simple set of categories that perfectly describes the ever shifting practices, identities, institutions and discourses that make up the martial arts today. Perhaps we should consider abandoning the idea of classifying the martial arts themselves and instead turn our attention to the sorts of social functions that they perform and the ways in which they are encountered. When tied with an existing minimal definition, this might give researchers an adequate toolbox to begin the process of comparison, description and explanation.

Towards these ends Wetzler proposes the following:

“Instead of creating boxes to put the existing styles in, we could rather search from common, recurring qualities in the martial arts. A discussion of a given style can then analyze how these qualities are fulfilled, and to what degree.” (Wetzler, p. 25).

He then goes on to define five possible “dimensions of meaning” that often characterize the social function of martial arts. While many arts may contribute something in each of these five dimensions, he warns us that others will not. Further, Wetzler suggests that his list is in no way definitive and later scholars may discover additional dimensions. Again, the purpose of his exercise is to facilitate comparison within the set of activities called “martial arts” rather than to discriminate between which activities are to be included or excluded from the exercise based on some objective and unchanging set of criteria.

The five dimension of meaning which he finds within the martial arts are as follows:

1. Preparation for violent conflict: This can occur in either a civil or military context and includes efforts to not only increase one’s physical integrity but also to destroy an enemy’s capabilities as well as to resist fear, fatigue and imagined violence.

2. Play and Competitive Sports: Any type of voluntary physical struggle or competition bounded by rules and regulated through consent.

3. Performance: This includes displays that happen before an audience (entertainment and ritual) or activities undertaken for the martial artists own aesthetic satisfaction. While many popular discussions of the martial arts seek to explicitly exclude these practices in their attempt to focus on “real” violence, D. S. Farrer reminds us that these elements can never be totally separated.

4. Transcendent Goals: This includes the spiritual, physical and cultural aims of the martial arts. Also included in this dimension would be pedagogical connections that are often made to nationalist themes or mythological (but highly inspirational) figures or images from the imagined past.

5. Health Care: While great emphasis is often placed on the combative origins of these practices, many practitioners today take them up with an explicit eye towards increasing their physical health and maintaining a sense of bodily well-being. Nor can the psychological benefits of training be neglected. (p. 26)

Where should researchers look for evidence to help them evaluate a martial art’s engagement along each of these dimensions? Or put another way, what sorts of observations should be collected when attempting to define or classify a martial art? Wetzler suggests nine types of phenomenon that should be considered. These include: the body, movement techniques, tactics or concepts, a styles material objects and weapons, its media representation, teaching methodology, mythology or philosophy, its social or institutional structures and lastly its place within the wider social context. While this list is not meant to be exhaustive it points to the types of observations that could be made that would allow us to define or classify martial arts in ways that are not tautological or dependent on the researcher’s own unexamined biases.

For instance, a wide variety of martial arts claim to be dedicated to the pursuit of self-defense. In the 1960s Karate clubs were seen as a solution to the problem of personal security. In the 1980s Wing Chun gained popularity as a “street fighting art” while Karate increasingly took on other social functions (such as building “character” in young adults.) In the current era individuals who are most interested in self-defense seem to turn to systems such as krav maga and various forms of MMA training. Media discourses and the allocation of social resources strongly suggest that, the protests of traditional practitioners notwithstanding, the center of gravity of the first dimension has shifted noticeably over time. Better yet, these categories suggest avenues of investigation to determine when, and why, this may have happened.

A final panel bringing two dragons together.

Conclusion: Moving Forward Through Empirical Investigation

Unfortunately no definition of the martial arts is perfect. The universal definitions that we began with were parsimonious and directly addressed what activities lay outside of the category called “martial arts.” Yet their systems of classification were often flawed and they did not provide researchers with any tools to either compare classes of martial arts or to understand in theoretical terms where one system ended and the next began. The more complex definitions offered by Draeger and Channon and Jennings allowed for comparative study, but they still tended to be tied to certain preconceptions in ways that diminished their usefulness.

While Wetzler’s five dimensions of meaning avoid these pitfalls, they are also the most distant from what we might think of as a conventional definition. His framework allows for an almost infinite range of comparative investigations. As I have argued elsewhere, this will be critical to the development of martial arts studies going forward. In fact, one must wonder whether the reliance on historically and culturally bounded understandings of the martial arts has not been one of the factors in suppressing the development of a more rigorous comparative case study literature. Wetzler’s definition, on the other hand, strongly encourages focused comparative analysis.

Still, it does not really solve the fundamental problem of defining what is or is not a martial art. To do this his more complex framework probably needs to be tied to a universal definition of the researchers own choosing. In that sense it is less of a definition than a theoretical exploration of how this concept manifests itself within the social world.

Lacking any way to make firm statements, Wetzler also seems to find himself backed into uncomfortable situations where we come up against his conceptual limits. He asks, for instance, if movements learned from sophisticated fighting video games can count as martial arts techniques. After all, motion capture of real martial artists employing historically derived techniques are increasingly employed in the production of these games. And if books count as a means of transmitting information about hand combat training, why not video games?

Taken to its natural extreme this leads to a crisis of relativism. Is anything a martial art simply because someone claims that it is? Must we accept as a legitimate any “lost lineage” that is advanced in the marketplace no matter how shaky its historical foundations or apparent practice? Such questions will cause many researchers discomfort, yet Wetzler himself seems to imply that we must have a theoretical framework that is broad enough to accept these arguments and proceed on from there (p. 24).

Even more disturbing are the possibilities that arise on the other end of this spectrum. Paul Bowman has recently argued that the martial arts, as practiced in the West, will always been seen as a subaltern and culturally marginal practice. While relatively few individuals see them as dangerous or sinister, they cannot escape their frequent associations with orientalism and anachronism. This makes people uncomfortable and humor is a commonly employed defense mechanism in these situations. Nor does one have to have a degree in media studies to notice that most of this humor is laughing at martial artists rather than with them.

Should we then be surprised to see a variety of individuals actively dissociating their activities from the martial arts in an attempt to find greater respect or a more open audience? MMA and kickboxing students might more readily identify as practitioners of “combat sports” as it seems to emphasize the athletic and physically aspects of their practice. And while students in an “executive boxing” class might fit an academic definition of martial artists, I doubt that most would see themselves in the same light. Yet any academic conference on the martial arts will feature a number of papers on various aspects of boxing.

While flexibility is a necessary aspect of any definition of the martial arts, it remains the responsibility of the analyst to determine which activities meet a given set of criteria. That is not a function that can be delegated to the subjects of an academic study. While it may be interesting to understand why certain kickboxers refuse to self-identify as martial artists, as researchers we are under no obligation to base our core concepts on their vernacular definitions.

How then should we proceed? On the surface it may seem that we are no closer to a single, parsimonious, definition of the martial arts than we were when started. While true in some sense, this discussion has done much to enrich our conceptual understanding while highlighting dangers that must be guarded against in any such exercise.

Each of the preceding authors has made a valuable contribution to our overall level of understanding. Further, Wetzler has provided us with a conceptual framework for dealing with a wide range of activities that may previously have been overlooked while at the same time developing rigorous comparative case studies.

Perhaps the most fruitful avenue of investigation would be the systematic testing of “hard cases.” A hard case is one that is designed to explore the limits of a concept or hypothesis. Rather than simply wondering whether a martial art could be developed from a video game perhaps we must find someone who has claimed to have done just that and examine the results along the five dimensions of meaning proposed above.

Is there any validity to the common assumption that “proper” martial arts must emerge from historically grounded combat systems? Again, that seems like the sort of question that should be investigated rather than simply assumed away by definitional fiat. The discovery of true “hyper-real” martial arts might have a substantive impact on our understanding of both the actual development and social functions of these practices.

It may be that we have come to the point in our discussion where further theoretical and conceptual developments cannot happen in the absence of new empirical findings. Luckily Wetzler has provided us with a framework for discovery.

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If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to read: Martial Arts Studies: Answering the “So what?” question

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A now iconic image of Bodhidharma as imagined by the Japanese Woodblock Artist Yoshitoshi, 1887. Source: Wikimedia.

***For the Friday post we will be revisiting a classic (and very popular) article from the archives.  I originally posted this essay almost two years ago and recently I have found myself thinking about it again.  It will also be good to review as it introduces some concepts that are key to a larger project that I am working on at the moment.  While I have completed most of the rough draft for an initial post on this topic I am still waiting on a few sources, and I don’t want to rush things.  Hopefully it will be ready by next week.  In the mean, time please enjoy this discussion of Bodhidharma and then take a quick look at the recommended post at the end.  With both of them under your belt you should be well prepared for what is coming next.***

Introduction

I was recently exchanging emails with a martial arts instructor and reader who suggested that I address the historical facts behind the “Bodhidharma myth.” This is a critical topic for anyone interested in either the historical or cultural aspects of Chinese martial studies. Bodhidharma is a shadowy figure. A Buddhist missionary to China, he is often credited with the importation of Chan Buddhism sometime in the 5th or 6th centuries.

As Meir Shahar and others have already pointed out it, is hard to take these claims literally. Chan Buddhism is an indigenous creation which reflects then current trends and debates within China’s social environment, not India’s. It would not even arise as a religious movement until more than a century after the “First Patriarch’s” death, though there are some who have argued that his teachings may have been important to the eventual emergence of Chan.

Even Bodhidharma’s origins remain a mystery. Chinese tradition holds that he was a native of India. Japanese schools, on the other hand, assert that he was a Persian.

Of course the venerable patriarch also has a longstanding association with the Shaolin Temple in Dengfeng county of Henan province. Later myths, first appearing in the late 17th century (and still promoted by many modern martial artists today) claim that he brought some sort of unique fighting system to Shaolin which has subsequently become the basis of all traditional Kung Fu.

Even before the emergence of this story Bodhidharma had a complicated and evolving relationship with the region surrounding Shaolin. As Shahar relates, none of the earliest records of the temple mention his presence. It is not until after the advent of Chan Buddhism that he begins to make an appearance in retrospectively produced historical accounts. In the earliest stories he only visits the capital, then a few years later his journey takes him to Mt. Song. Only some years after that did accounts of him visiting Shaolin first appear. In short, while the Indian Saint has long been associated with the religious reputation of the Shaolin monastery, few scholars seem to accept the popular accounts of his life or teachings (all of which are anachronistic) at face value.

The stories of Bodhidharma teaching the Indian martial arts (or even Yoga like exercises) at Shaolin are, if anything, even more outlandish. The earliest religious myths associating him with Shaolin seem to date to the 8th century. The accounts linking him to the region’s martial arts do not make their first appearance until the start of the 17th century. Nor do the many Buddhist chronicles produced through the intervening years contain any hint that the wandering Indian genius was also a martial artist.

In short, stories linking Bodhidharma to the creation of the Chinese martial arts are clearly problematic. This is not a recent revelation. Practically every historian or student of Chinese religion to have looked at these issues has already debunked this legend. Douglas Wile, Stanley Henning, Dominic LaRochelle, Meir Shahar and a host of other have already pointed out the myriad of inconsistencies in these accounts.

As Henning reminds us, one of Tang Hao’s first contributions to the modern study of the Chinese martial arts in 1930 was to demolish the Shaolin-Bodhidharma connection. Shahar points out that even as early as the middle of the Qing dynasty, Chinese historical scholars and biographers were well aware that the central texts linking the Indian missionary to the martial arts were poorly executed forgeries, probably produced by “village masters” in the early decades of the 17th century.

So much has already been written on the historicity of Bodhidharma by so many other competent scholars that I was hesitant to jump into the fray. It is actually hard to imagine any Kung Fu legend that has been more frequently “debunked” than this one. It is not even a question of “modern research.” Almost from the day that this story first began to circulate during the Late Imperial period, well-educated historical and literary scholars knew that it was a forgery.

Still, if I have learned one thing during the course of my research, it is that the traditional Chinese martial arts community will never let “mere” history get in the way of a good story. And the Bodhidharma myth is just that. It’s a fascinating story that has remained in circulation for about 400 years. Nor has globalization and the easy availability of reliable historical sources slowed the spread of this myth. In fact, there are probably more people around the global who now “know” about Bodhidharma’s role in the creation of the martial arts than at any time in the past.

Given the mountains of evidence that we now have at our fingertips, why do modern martial artists, both in China and the west, still insist on linking the “Shaolin Arts” to an ancient Indian missionary? How is it that the numerous critiques of this legend, in the 18th, the 20th and 21st centuries, have had practically no impact on the growth and spread of this “folk history?”

It would seem redundant to recount in detail all of the arguments as to why the link between Bodhidharma and the Chinese martial arts is spurious. Anyone interested in reviewing this debate is more than welcome to check out practically anything ever written by Tang Hao, Stanley Henning or Meir Shahar. In my view the more interesting theoretical question is the odd persistence of this legend in modern martial arts folklore. Why is it that so many well-known martial artists continue to produce books and articles that all take this story for granted?

In order to get a better understanding of this phenomenon the following post begins by examining the first appearance of Bodhidharma in the martial arts literature of the early 17th century. Of special importance is the question of how this sage’s martial contributions came to be attached to (and accepted by) the monks of the Shaolin Monastery. While this figure had long been regarded as the founding patriarch of Shaolin’s transmission of Chan Buddhism, Shahar reminds us that his cooptation into the temple’s martial tradition was far from inevitable. In some ways it is even a bit puzzling.

The second section of this essay turns to the idea of “hyper-real religions.” This recently developed concept from the religious studies literature attempts to describe spiritual movements that are consciously founded on the basis of fictional texts. Jediism, a “new religious movement” that is based on George Lucas’ Star Wars film franchise, is a typically cited example of this sort of movement.

Hyper-reality, as a conceptual category, owes its existence to post-modern arguments about the nature of perception. Particularly important is Jean Baudrillard’s contention that culture is inherently a form of representation, or a “simulacra.”

Current scholarship tends to apply this idea to the various “post-modern” new religious movements that appear in the western world today. Nevertheless, this concept might help us to make sense of a number of puzzles in Chinese martial studies, including the odd persistence of the cult of Bodhidharma. I also suggest that certain structural similarities between the Ming-Qing transition period, the early 20th century, and the modern western world today, might help to explain why individuals in these three different epochs accept a story that is widely known to be fictional.

A Japanese painting of Bodhidharma with a wild staff.

Bodhidharma and the Sinew Transformation Classic

The very first text to claim Bodhidharma as a martial arts master was the Sinew Transformation Classic. While historically spurious this work (according to Tang Hao and Meir Shahar) probably dates to 1624 in Zhejiang. The book is interesting for another reason as well. It is a good example of the multiple types of syncretism that became popular in late Ming thought. It also demonstrates that these traits, well documented among elites, were influencing patterns of belief and behavior in society’s more plebeian levels as well.

Most of this manual is dedicated to a series of “internal” (or neigong) exercises drawn from Daoist longevity practices. For our purposes the most interesting aspect of this work is its various introductory prefaces. In addition to giving us certain hints as to the text’s authorship, they also help to situate this book in late Ming popular culture.

Shahar has noted that the introductions to the Sinew Transformation Classic are typical of certain strands of late Ming thought in the degree to which they freely mix and draw from Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. All three of these religious and philosophical systems are seen as means to a similar end. Bodhidharma, a Buddhist saint, is introduced as the teacher of what is clearly a set of Daoist gymnastic exercises.

Still, there is another type of syncretism at play that is of more interest to students of martial studies. The pseudepigraphal authors of these prefaces are great generals from China’s distant past. Their testimony attest to the awesome power of the practices contained within the book. They leave the reader with no doubt that they attained their military and worldly success by following the qigong-esque exercises laid out in the manual. Yet at the same time they lament that they never pursued the equally potent “spiritual truths” contained in these sets. Readers are instructed to learn from their example, and to cultivate their spiritual powers as well.

Students of modern martial arts fiction might not find this sort of a creation narrative to be all that surprising. Yet as Shahar points out, this is the earliest manuscript we have that clearly states that the practice of a single set of physical exercises will lead to both martial and spiritual attainment (not to mention increased physical health).

This synthesis of interest around a single set of practices is incredibly important. The great popularity of this work and the exercises that it suggests indicates that this view found a ready audience. It is also the first foreshadowing that we have of trends within the hand combat community which would become more pronounced as the second half of the Qing dynasty wore on.

Still, there are some puzzles that need to be dealt with. To begin with, the prefaces of the Sinew Transformation Classic explicitly attribute these practices to Bodhidharma. That is not totally surprising. Other novels and texts dealing with various esoteric arts (including gymnastics) being produced in the late Ming also saw him as a teacher of mystical self-cultivation techniques. Interestingly most of these were associated with Daoism. In this way Bodhidharma, a Buddhist missionary, became an embodiment of the values behind late Ming syncretism. I think that it might also be fair to say that he became a symbol of a certain vision of Chinese cultural identity.

Yet this manuscript tradition tends to have a somewhat hostile view of the monks of Shaolin. It attributes what martial genius they have to their remembrance of these practices, but it also claims that they have lost the ability to read and understand the original text. They are, in essence, the inheritors of an empty practice. Readers of this text are promised that they will excel far beyond what the monks of Shaolin have achieved. So given the hostility of these texts, how did they, and the image of Bodhidharma as a martial teacher, come to be adopted into the Shaolin tradition of the 17th and 18th centuries?

A different, yet related, question has to do with the social transformation of this text in the wake of the Ming-Qing transition. A literary analysis of this work indicates that it was produced by an only marginally educated individual early in the 17th century. As such we can assume that it reflects a body of popular practice at that point in time.

Prior to the fall of the Ming dynasty few elites concerned themselves with the martial arts, and those that did (particularly the ones from military families) tended to focus on either weapons training or serious military service. Given the turbulent final years of the dynasty this emphasis makes a lot of sense.

The situation came to look very different in the years following the Qing rise to power. With the nation pacified military training was less pressing. At the same time, the Confucian educated social elites faced a series of serious existential challenges. What had gone wrong in both statecraft and social values at the end of the Ming dynasty? How had the Middle Kingdom been conquered? What value was there in Chinese society, and how should one go about rebuilding and strengthening it?

A new generation of educated students began to take a serious second look at martial and physical training during these years. But rather than going back to previous practices, they continued to push forward with the trends that had just been emerging at the start of the 17th century. Shahar contends that they were fascinated with the possibility of combining military, philosophical and medical training in one place, much as the Sinew Transformation Classic promised. It was during the middle years of the Qing dynasty that more educated elites began to seriously promote this work in both manuscript and printed editions.

This creates a paradox. Classically trained individuals might be enthusiastic about the ideas behind the text, but they were also the most likely to see through its highly problematic facade. In fact, Shahar reminds us that a number of Qing era researchers did conclude that the book was a forgery based on sound scholarship. Still, their efforts did not seem to have much of an impact on the spread of the legend.

Why would these educated individuals, who were at least likely to understand that they dealing with a fictional text, be willing to go along with it anyway? Likewise, why would the Shaolin monks, who probably knew more about Bodhidharma than any other group in China, have felt comfortable appropriating a work like this, and making its mythology part of their own religious heritage?

The answer seems to be that the symbolic value of the story of Bodhidharma displaced the patriarch’s historical legacy in the wake of the Ming-Qing transition and the existential crisis that it unleashed. At a time when individuals were doubting the reliability of the Chinese cultural tradition, and blaming the lax attitudes of the Ming for the defeat of the Han people, Bodhidharma seemed to embody values that were capable of saving the nation. On the one hand he had already become a symbol representing a synthesis of what was good and essentially “true” in Chinese culture. On the other he offered a pathway to mystical attainment that promised not just spiritual salvation, but military prowess as well.

The monks of Shaolin were faced with a similar dilemma. With the defeat of the Ming dynasty their temple could no longer depend on the imperial patronage of their martial system as a means of support. The monks would have been forced to teach what was popular in the area, and increasingly that was unarmed boxing. Shahar also speculates that the mixture of martial, philosophical and medical knowledge offered by traditions like that preserved in the Sinew Transformation Classic may have been of great interest to them.

One might also speculate on the role of market incentives in all of this. The creator of the Bodhidharma tradition had sought to appropriate and denigrate the martial prowess of Shaolin to promote his own system of internal training. In the wake of the temple’s destruction at the end of the Ming, warnings of the monk’s empty practices looked as though they had come home to roost.

In this new environment Shaolin may have been forced coopt the Classic and eventually venerate Bodhidharma as the author of their martial arts tradition, even though at least some of these individuals would have known that he was not thought of in these terms during the final years of the Ming dynasty. In short, a subset of both cultural elites and Shaolin monks likely invested themselves in the promotion of the Bodhidharma system even though they would have known (or had strong reasons to suspect) that the prefaces to the Sinew Transformation Classic (the text that started it all) were essentially works of historical fiction.

A painting of Bodhidharma by the renown Japanese swordmaster, Miyamoto Mushashi. Source: http://www.musashi-miyamoto.com

Kung Fu as a Hyper-Real Religion
There are lots of different ways in which one could interpret or make sense of the situation that I outlined above. When attempting to understand why individuals hold certain fictitious beliefs about the past one could start with functionalist explanations. Perhaps these beliefs, if they come from the grassroots levels, are examples of “folk histories,” what James C. Scott has called “weapons of the weak.”

These stories are essentially normative argument meant to re-balance prestige or power within the community. Perhaps this is a good way of thinking of the Sinew Transformation Classic’s plebian roots. Alternatively such stories might be thought of as “invented traditions” in the vein of Hobsbawm and Ranger if they instead reflect elite interests.  I have explored both of these concepts in other places.

In the current essay I would like to consider another possibility, drawn from the field of religious studies. Both “invented traditions” and “folk histories” see the perpetuation and acceptance of historically dubious stories in essentially materialist and strategic (one is tempted to say Machiavellian) terms. While individuals in the distant future might come to accept an invented tradition as legitimate, the creator will always be aware of the truth. He is much more likely to be incentivized by either economic or political struggles.

Yet what if the creator of the story actually “believes” it? Or to turn the situation around, what if future generations acknowledge that the story is essentially fictional but structure their identities and norms around it anyway?

In the west we have a very strong tradition of believing that our religious communities are based on historical events. But is this really the case? Jesus of Nazareth may have been a historical individual, but he left no modern witnesses. His life story was interpreted years after his death in four gospels, each of which is strikingly different. In some fundamental ways they are simply not telling the same story. So how is it that a believer can accept each of these four accounts?

The answer appears to be “easily.” The human mind has a great capacity for synthesizing and resolving these sorts of differences. It must, because all we will ever perceive are imperfect representations of the universe. Jean Baudrillard has discussed at length how in the modern age our experience of “reality” tends to collapse beneath the weight of increasingly abstract representations of the world. Obviously certain trends in the modern media accelerate this, but it should not be thought of as an exclusively “post-modern” issue. Some areas seem to be more susceptible to the rise of hyper-reality than others.

Consider religion. How many of us can actually claim to have felt a divine presence? And how many times within our lives has this happened? The central objects of religious performance are rare indeed, but their representation in art, liturgy, myth and ritual are ubiquitous. One suspect that for most people the “representation” of the truth is all that they will ever actually experience.

Adam Possamai, a sociologist of religion, has applied these basic insights to understand a growing group of new religious movements which are founded on avowedly fictional texts. Star Wars, Harry Potter, the Matrix and the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien (to name just a few examples) have all spawned religious or spiritual movements in recent years.

The adherents of these “hyper-real religions” are not delusional. They are very much aware that Star Wars is just a movie, and that the remains of “elves” will never be found in the archaeological record. Yet in their consumption of this material they have sought to weave together underlying mythic fragments in such a way that elements of the story, or its characters, become embodiments of important social values.

The popular nature of these stories allows for the creation of new types of communities built on a shared reverence for these values. Interestingly enough the norms that these groups espouse tend not to be particularly novel. One can usually identify “old religions” that teach the same basic tenants. Yet for some reason the myths of these older social communities have become “disenchanted.” They have ceased to open a space for wonder, or even imagination, in the hearer. It seems to be at these moments that individuals strike out, and begin to look for new stories.

In this sense it doesn’t really matter whether a myth has a historical basis or not. Chronological accuracy is not what determines how a symbol functions within a faith community. Fictive power is most important.

In a chapter titled ‘“A world without rules and control, without boarders or boundaries.”: Matrixism, New Mythologies, and Symbolic Pilgrimages.’(Adam Possamai (ed.) Handbook of Hyper-real Religions. Brill. 2012) John W. Morehead has offered some guidance as to how fictional stories function in the construction of a religious community.

One of his central points is that to be effective such stories are often nested symbolic systems. There must be an element of the story that focuses on personal transformation. This is what holds out hope for individual renewal and empowerment. Yet at the same time the story must also work on a macro-social level.

The types of scripts that are adopted by hyper-real religions in the west today generally tell a very strong cosmic story as a way of addressing the larger social situation. They graphically illustrate the decay and corruption of the old system, while holding out hope that it could be transformed or remade. In essence, the new myth must explain why the previous system of finding meaning in the world has failed.

Lastly these stories tend to provide a bridge between the individual and the social/systemic level. By engaging in a course of personal transformation one furthers the process of systemic evolution or change. The story gains its psychological power by ushering its listeners onto the cosmic stage.

One does not have to be an expert in peasant uprisings or late Qing history to hear much that sounds vaguely familiar in this description. The many rebellions, tax revolts and armed insurrections that wracked northern China in the 18th and 19th centuries often coalesced around millennial outpouring of popular spirituality or new religious movements. At least some of these, most notably the Boxer Uprising, saw individuals adopting the social scripts of, and in some cases even being subjected to spirit possession by, entirely fictional characters from popular theatrical performances.

It is possible to argue that impoverished peasants may have had such a poor grasp of history that they did not known that figures like Wu Song were fictional. Still, most of them were farmers, and very familiar with farm animals. It is hard to imagine that any of them thought of “Monkey” and “Pigsy” from Journey to the West as historically real personages. Yet they were among the most popular figures employed in spirit possessions.

Historians have long debated how to deal with the various accounts of spirit possession that we see arising out of these episodes. Likewise how many of the individuals involved in “White Lotus uprisings” were really fervent believers? The logic of hyper-real religions suggests that we may be asking the wrong questions. Rather than seeing 19th Chinese peasants as exceptionally deluded when they become involved in new religious movements, we might instead take this as opportunity to reexamine some of our own assumptions about what “real” religion is, and the role that it plays in society.

Bodhidharma as an abstraction.  Notubata (1565-1614)

Conclusion: Bodhidharma’s Never Ending Journey into the West

These same ideas have interesting implications for our understanding of the role of Bodhidharma in the modern martial arts. His story first arose and galvanized individuals behind a narrative of personal transformation at a time when the Ming dynasty was coming under stress. He exploded in popularity among more educated martial artists and readers when the basis of the old social system was disgraced and facing an existential crisis. Likewise in the modern era his memory has thrived among communities of martial artists who are looking for a remedy to the woes of post-industrial capitalism.

In each of these three eras the figure of Bodhidharma, as a fictional rather than a historic construction, has been imbued with certain key social values. In times when other avenues of social expression were becoming stale, his memory continued to open a route to personal transformation and empowerment.

Students of hyper-real religion have noted that these spiritual systems tend to generate their own types of pilgrimage. Fan conventions seem to be a way to both boost group identification and to engage in a collective reaffirmation of the central values that individuals find within the shared myth. Morehead notes that pilgrimage, as a religious journey, involves more than just geographic travel. It contains a deeply personal element.

In writing this essay I have started to wonder if perhaps martial training serves as type of “perpetual pilgrimage” for certain students. The creation myths and legendary figures of the Chinese martial arts embody values that we yearn for. In pilgrimage and ritual we engage in “rites of passage” that allow us to approach the abstract values that motivate us.

It does not take a great leap of imagination to see the process of martial arts training as a ritual of personal transformation. Students are separated from society so they can enter a liminal state. There they are deconstructed and rebuilt through both physical and psychological challenges. These come with the promise that when they renter society they will be different. And because of them the community will be different as well.

The genius of modern Asian martial arts training is that it can become an initiatory ritual that never ends. It allows the student to prolong that liminal state, to remain in contact with those core values and identities that motivate a quest for transformation.

Myths, regardless of their historicity, are a central part of this process. On a personal level they explain to the student the social meaning of their actions. They help to make sense of the many embodied experiences that go along with martial arts training.

On a broader social level they have an ability to travel through society, expanding the size and the scope of the community of practitioners. This in turn grants a sense of expertise and an increased measure of social status to those who have previously joined and started their training. The growth of the system becomes a testimony of its legitimacy.

Stories and legends, such as that of Bodhidharma, allow for the creation of new social communities where none had existed before. They open a space for individuals to cultivate and experiment with different values. Almost nowhere else in the modern world can an ordinary individual be so completely transformed, or assume the aura of a “master,” as in the Asian martial arts.

We have now come full circle. Why has the Bodhidharma legend survived more than 300 years of continual debunking? As a myth this fictional story powers the creation of social groups that have a very real impact on the lives of individual practitioners. Many of these students will be somewhat marginal. They will have entered the group precisely because the orthodox social ways of explaining the world no longer worked for them. The martial arts become a ritual that allows for the perpetual reenchantment of their lives.

Historical or academic critiques aimed at disrupting this are by definition coming from a different value system. Sometimes, as in the case of modern professional historians, this process is “entirely academic” (if not always benign). In other cases, such as the writings of Tang Hao, one suspects that his historical arguments were being marshaled as weapons in a conscious attempt to destroy the social world of the traditional martial arts so that it could be remade in a way that the Chinese state would find more useful. In either case practitioners are unlikely to accept a historical critique precisely because it is coming from a social position that they have already rejected in favor of something that they find more subjectively meaningful.  In short, never underestimate the power of motivated cognitive bias to shape the world we inhabit.

The rise of the myth of Bodhidharma was one of the most important developments in the martial arts of the Late Imperial period. Not only is it still with us today, but it has spawned an entire genera of other stories (most notably the Taijiquan legend of Zhang Sanfeng) which have helped to buttress it, creating a rich and complex world view. The concept of the “hyper-real religion” might help to explain how a clearly fictional tradition has continued to be so influential for so long. The same idea might also help us to think more clearly about the relationship between fiction and popular religion in a number of other areas that relate to the Chinese martial arts.

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If you enjoyed this post you might also want to read: Can Donnie Yen Bring Kung Fu (Back) to the Star Wars Universe?

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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!

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.

Breaking ceramic action figure by Martin Klimas. Source: http://www.whudat.de/exploding-porcelain-action-figures-by-martin-klimas-7-pictures/

Introduction

Welcome to the fifth entry in our series of guest posts titled “Doing Research.”  If you missed the first essay by D. S. Farrer (which provides a global overview of the subject), the second by Daniel Mroz (how to select a school or teacher for research purposes), the third by  Jared Miracle (learning new martial arts systems while immersed in a foreign culture), or the fourth by Thomas Green (who is only in it for the stories) be sure to check them out!

Compared to other fields of scholarly inquiry, Martial Arts Studies has a distinctly democratic flavor.  Many individuals are introduced to these systems while students at a college or university and are interested in seeing a more intellectually rigorous treatment of their interests.  And certain practitioners want to go beyond reading studies produced by other writers and undertake research based on their own time in the training hall.   The emphasis on ethnographic description, oral and local history, as well as the methodological focus on community based collaborative research within Martial Arts Studies (itself a radically interdisciplinary area), makes participation in such efforts both relatively accessible and highly valuable.  Or maybe you are a student about to embark on your first ethnographic research project?

Dr. Daniel Amos is a pioneer of modern ethnographic research on the Chinese martial arts.  His work opened a window onto the social world of southern Chinese martial artists (both in Hong Kong and Guangzhou) during the late 1970s and early 1980s.  This was an incredibly important time in the spread of the modern Chinese fighting styles, making his detailed observations all the more important.  His work was hugely helpful to me when I began my own writing on the region a few decades later.  As such I am thrilled that he has agreed to join this discussion.  In the following essay Dr. Amos will tackle a number of questions regarding a researcher’s ethical responsibilities as they first become members of, and then report on, various (often marginal) communities.  While the political situation in China following the end of the Cultural Revolution threw these issues into stark relief, they are a topic that no ethnographer can afford to ignore.

Lies I have told about martial artists

by Daniel M. Amos, March 17, 2016
hungchongshan@yahoo.com

Recently, I joked with a friend of mine that I did not actually do ethnographic fieldwork in Post-Mao, Guangzhou, China and the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, but rather invented my studies of Cantonese martial artists while enjoying the sunshine of Santa Monica Beach.  At the very least, I can be thought of as a suspicious character.  My schoolmate at UCLA was Carlos Castaneda.  We shared the same graduate student mailbox (for surnames A-C), the same dissertation chair, and had many of the same anthropology faculty members on our dissertation committees.  Carlos was accused of poetic license, of embellishing the details of his well-known accounts of flying Yaqui brujos who perform magic in the Sonoran desert.  In his review of Castaneda’s first book, Edmund Leach, the eminent social anthropologist, observed that “…this is a work of art rather than of scholarship, and it is as a diary of unusual personal experiences that the book deserves attention (Leach 1969).”

Carlos frequently visited the UCLA anthropology department during my early graduate student days there, and he spoke with and cultivated a number of graduate students, mostly women.  I was not a member of Carlos’ inner-circle and only vaguely associated with him.  Yet it is probable that our ethnographic writing shares at least one trait: All the characters that appear in my ethnographic descriptions of martial artists in southern China during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s are fiction.  My fiction, however, differed from that of my famous schoolmate in that I considered my study to be largely a political study.  During the time of my dissertation research (1976-1981) in two neighboring Cantonese cities, impoverished socialist Guangzhou and comparatively wealthy colonial Hong Kong, I felt that Chinese martial arts in both places could be partly understood as a form of cultural play that illuminated and revealed conflict between social classes.

Ultimately, the fictionalization of my ethnographic writing about Chinese martial artists was generated out of concern for protecting the privacy and personal identities of the participants in my study.   In Hong Kong from the beginning of colonial rule through the end of British rule in 1997, practitioners of Chinese martial artists who belonged to martial arts brotherhoods were suspected by the colonial government of being involved in criminal activities, organized crime, members of Triads.   A Hong Kong police report prepared in the 1970s by the Hong Kong Triad Society Bureau for Hong Kong police officers at the rank of lieutenant and above, for example, stated that one-third of independent Hong Kong martial arts brotherhoods were associated with Triads and engaged in criminal activities.

“In many cases local gymnasia, particularly gymnasia associated with the more traditional forms of Chinese martial arts training, serve as the local headquarters for Triad society factions, especially in respect of local enforcement work.  A percentage of the staff, managers, and instructors of such establishments are known to be or are suspected of being Triad officials or active Triad members.   Of the 419 such establishments in the Colony, 141 are suspected of Triad associations (Hong Kong Triad Bureau 1974:54)”

Although I could not definitively prove it, my own biases led me to feel that the strong official association of martial artists with criminality was exaggerated, generated out of natural fear by the ruling and middle classes of a mobilized and semi-militarized segment of the impoverished and working poor.  In a society where there were no guns except those carried by the local British-led military and police, the higher social orders felt anxiety about working class youth and adults who developed martial skills within their own voluntary associations.

However, I knew Hong Kong martial artists who, while not members of criminal Triad gangs, would suffer physical, psychological, social, economic, or legal harm, or damage to their dignitary if my writing exposed their identities and behavior.  I knew Hong Kong martial artists who were alcoholics, opium users, organizers of dog fights and gambling, butchers and sellers of dog meat, gay and transgender martial artists, frequenters of prostitutes, those with sexually transmitted diseases, martial artists who could not read, unemployed martial artists and martial artists who were undocumented immigrants.  For this reason I wrote fiction, not identifying individuals, but attempted to describe a variety of cultural scenes related to martial arts in Hong Kong.

Already sensitive about the potential harm to those who participated in my study of martial artists, my concern about protecting the identities of the participants in my study of martial artists in Guangzhou was heightened because of the Mosher Affair.   Steven Mosher, a Stanford University anthropology graduate student had conducted research in a Guangdong village for several months, from the end of 1979 to the beginning of summer 1980.  He was the first anthropology graduate student from the United States permitted to do ethnographic research in mainland China since the end of the Cultural Revolution.  The Chinese authorities repeatedly complained about Mr. Mosher’s behavior during his time in Guangdong province.  They abruptly ended his study and he was not permitted to remain in China.

As far as I am aware, I was the second U.S. graduate student ethnographer to do research in China during this time.  Although my stay in Guangdong province (June 1980 – August 1981) was of longer duration than Mr. Mosher’s, it caused far less controversy with the Chinese authorities and with fellow anthropologists.

During the time of Mr. Mosher’s project and my research project in China the fundamental rule taught to every beginning ethnographer and formally accepted by all in the field was that researchers were obligated to protect the participants of their studies.  The code of the American Anthropological Association at the time clearly stated this most basic requirement: “In research, an anthropologist’s paramount responsibility is to those he studies.   When there is a conflict of interest, these individuals must come first.  The anthropologist must do everything within his power to protect their physical, social and psychological welfare and to honor their dignity and privacy (Van Ness, The Mosher Affair, The Wilson Quarterly, 1984:160-172).”  

During his stay in the village where he did his research, Mr. Mosher discovered that some Chinese women had been forced by local officials to undergo involuntary abortions, sometimes late in pregnancy.  In May 1981, writing under the name Steven Westley, Mr. Mosher described forced abortions in Guangdong province in an article he produced for a popular Taiwanese magazine (Ibid.).  Taking no care to disguise their identities, in the same article he published photographs of women who had been forced to undergo this procedure (Ibid.).  By publishing their photos, clearly identifying and exposing those who had undergone involuntary abortions, Mr. Mosher subjected the women he wrote about to punishment by the Chinese government.

Both the Stanford University academic committee investigating his case and Mr. Mosher separately interviewed me about the incident.  I had nothing to add to their investigations.  Chinese officials had not shared information about Mr. Mosher with me, a lowly U.S. graduate student.

Based on information gather during the academic committee’s investigation of the affair, Stanford University produced a report, shared it with Mr. Mosher, and expelled him from the university’s anthropology program.  Neither side has revealed the contents of the report.

The fates of the women Mr. Mosher exposed to harm are unknown to me, but it is my hope that the damage they experienced from his selfish, reckless actions was not severe.  Clearly, they were the most important actors in this event, and had the most to lose.

At present, because of irresponsible researchers in the past who showed no concern about the consequences of their research on those who participated in their studies, there are now more rigorous institutional safeguards for research which use human subjects.  Researchers affiliated with a university or government agency must have their research projects approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB).   Research participants need to be informed and consent to research which involves them. They should understand the purpose and nature of the research, and their role in it.  Before proceeding with their investigations, researchers must rigorously assess and minimize possible harm to participants, and assure the confidentiality of their identities, including protecting them from exposure through photographs, videos, audio recordings, and computer records (Robert Yin, Qualitative Research from Start to Finish, 2016:49).  Hopefully, contemporary undergraduate martial arts researchers experience more rigorous human subjects training and research review of their projects than anthropology students of 40 years ago.

When I was in Guangzhou, I knew many martial artists who would suffer physical, psychological, social, economic, legal harm or damage to their dignitary if my writing exposed their identities, thoughts and actions.  Some hated Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, others engaged in gambling and fighting, some were alcoholics, others had pre-marital sex, then an illegal activity, and many others had positive, uncritical fantasies about developed, capitalist countries and hoped to emigrate.

The first several months I lived in Guangzhou I practiced kung fu with a private martial arts brotherhood.   Most mornings I awoke at 5 a.m. and rode my bicycle several miles into the city from Zhongshan University.   1980 was before the massive growth of Guangzhou, and at that time the university was on the outskirts of the city.  In my early ethnographic writing about Chinese martial artists, because of the sensitive nature of my research, none of the martial artists with whom I practiced kung fu appeared in the pages of my dissertation and early publications.  The identities of the martial artists I wrote about were changed.  Further, in my early publications all the martial artists from Guangzhou whom I described in detail had left the People’s Republic of China, and were residing in Hong Kong, Macau, overseas or were deceased.  In summary, my ethnographic descriptions did not portray any martial artist then living in the People’s Republic of China, and any similarity to any individual residing in China was strictly unintentional and coincidental.

When I finished my fieldwork, I brought home dozens of recorded interviews and translated and transcribed interviews with martial artists, articles and works in Chinese about martial arts, books of field notes, photographs, Super 8mm film, and video-recordings.    My primary field advisor, Barbara E. Ward, a brilliant, generous, creative anthropologist, with an appointment at Cambridge, and founder of the Anthropology program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, asked me what I was going to do with all my marvelous ethnographic data.   I did not have the slightest idea of where to begin, and was immobile, petrified, buried under a mountain of stuff.   Barbara said, “OK, start with this,” and handed me a copy of James Liu’s work, “The Chinese Knight-Errant (1967).”  Liu discussed how martial arts have long been associated in Chinese culture with knight errantry, an ancient symbol of resistance against social constraints.  He described the Chinese knight errant as a playful warrior who is rebellious, loyal to friends, altruistic, courageous, an extreme individualist who despises society’s conventions, but desires honor and fame.  Liu’s Chinese knight errant sounded a lot like some of the martial artists I knew in Hong Kong and Guangzhou.  Even more Chinese martial artists told stories about people who were similar to the Chinese knights Liu described.

The point that Barbara was making when she handed me James Liu’s book was that you can have a mountain of ethnographic data, but if you don’t come around to having an accurate and useful understanding of what you’ve discovered, it can be useless.   Like many anthropologists of my generation, the work of Victor Turner helped to illuminate my data.  Carlos G. Velez, one of my dissertation committee members, greatly influenced me on the topic of social marginality, as did the work of my friend Jean DeBernardi on social marginality in Penang’s black societies.

I have used the ideas of my mentors and friends and of the scholars that I admire to analyze the data about martial artists that I brought back with me.  It is my hope that the lies I have told about Chinese martial artists have been honest ones, protecting them, while adding some light to the field.

oOo

About the Author: Daniel M Amos has practiced martial arts for forty years, and has taught social science courses or been a faculty researcher at five Chinese and five U.S. universities, including the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Beijing Normal University, Wuhan University, Clark Atlanta University, and the University of Washington. He was awarded a PhD degree in Anthropology from UCLA in 1983.

oOo

If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to read: Dr. Daniel Amos Discusses Marginality, Martial Arts Studies and the Modern Development of Southern Chinese Kung Fu

oOo

Yu Chenghui with one of his painting. While a martial artists he was also an accomplished poet and calligrapher. Source: chinadaily.com.cn

Introduction: The Shadow of History

None of the short, English language, biographies of the respected martial artist and actor Yu Chenghui (1939-2015) have much to say about his struggles or activities during the Cultural Revolution.  Yet even a brief glimpse at the timeline of his career suggests that these events had a notable impact on his evolution as a martial artist.

How could it be otherwise?  The social foundations of the traditional Chinese martial arts were effectively destroyed during the era of High Socialism that followed the 1949 liberation of the Mainland.  Once the social and economic ecosystem that had supported and promoted these fighting systems was destroyed, the public practice of the folk martial arts vanished with surprising speed.   The newly instituted state sponsored Wushu framework, including regional tournaments and both local and provincial teams, grew throughout the 1950s and 1960s.  Yet these state sponsored institutions also found their legitimacy challenged during the period of disruption that followed.

Daniel Amos has argued that the actual impact of the Cultural Revolution on the survival and evolution of the Chinese martial arts is a much more complicated subject than it might first appear.  He has demonstrated that the folk arts disappeared with so little protest in large part because new social institutions were put in place that provided many of the same sorts of assurances that they had previously provided.  And, at the risk of oversimplifying, staying in the Party’s good graces was the key to maintaining access to these benefits and enjoying a safe and relatively stable life after 1949.

The Cultural Revolution was such a disruptive event precisely because it did not only focus its attacks on the artifacts of traditional Chinese culture.  Rather, once unleashed the Red Guards also turned their attention to many of the newly created social institutions and bargains that a previous generation of revolutionary leadership had put in place.  As former folk martial artists and repentant gangsters saw their positions of stability eroded during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution they began to actively reform their social structures and to restore their practices.  Private patronage and teaching networks that had previously been sidelined by social reforms once again looked like a possible survival strategy.

At the same time that official Wushu was coming under increased scrutiny, the groundwork was quietly being laid for an explosion of interest in the China’s older historic and folk styles.  While the sudden emergence of a “public park” Taiji and Kung Fu would have to wait for the end of the Cultural Revolution, it would be hard to underestimate the importance of this period in sparking the “era of restoration” that followed.

I have occasionally wondered whether and how the folk arts would have been able to reemerge on the mainland without the Cultural Revolution.   One suspects that if it had happened at all, it would have occurred much later and by very different means.  It seems doubtful that the “Kung Fu Fever” that gripped China in the early 1980s would have emerged in the absence of the Cultural Revolution.

These large scale political and social shifts might at first appear to play little role in Master Yu Chenghui’s life.  Yet as we will see they helped to shape the historical stage upon which his martial genius could expand.

Before proceeding with this discussion a few of my regular disclaimers are in order.  I do not claim any relationship with Yu or his martial clan, and I have no private knowledge about his life or teachings to divulge.  Instead I am interested in exploring what the distinct stages of his career suggest about the evolution of the Chinese martial arts in the 20^th century.  Most of the biographical material in this essay can be found in various published articles and obituaries that came out following his death in 2015.

Yu Chenghui on a poster for Yellow River Fighter (1988). Source: chinadaily.com.cn

 
The Life of Yu Chenghui

Yu Chenghui was born on August 16^th, 1939, in Penglai, Shandong Province.  A port city on the Pacific coast, it was the sort of environment that might nurture dreams of knight-errantry in the young and a yearning to reconstruct the region’s lost military history on the part of the more educated.  The city had once been a fortified naval base and it was rightly famous for its stone towers and walls in addition to its historic courtyards and gardens.  It had even been home to the illustrious “wall builder” and martial arts innovator General Qi Jiguang.  He was famous both for his work on the expansion of the Great Wall during the Ming era and for publicly advocating the use of boxing as a training tool in the Chinese military.  For these reasons, as well as the beautiful views, Penglai had actually been something of a minor tourist attraction for over 500 years before Yu’s birth.

Unfortunately this was not to be.  Yu’s father was forced to leave the area and fled to Taiwan while his son was still very young.  I am not sure whether this happened during WWII or the Chinese civil war.  One way or another it changed Yu’s fate.

The young boy was sent to Qingdao (another coastal city in Shandong) where he was put to work on a local farm.  There he exhibited an early interest in the martial arts and the village elders allowed him to begin his formal training.  In a feature article (based on an interview) in a 2012 issue of Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine, Yu states that his first teachers were Li Shuzan and Hong Junsheng.  The later appears to be the longtime student of Chen Fake who had recently relocated to Shandong after also falling on hard times.  Yu was 11 years old when he began his formal training (probably sometime around 1950).  Shortly thereafter he was accepted as a student at the Qingdao Amateur Sports School where he studied the martial arts within the newly emerging Wushu sector.

From a young age Yu showed great aptitude in his new profession.  In 1959 he won a championship title at a regional Wushu event held in Qingdao after competing successfully in four categories.  His performance in this venue led to a number of offers, and in 1960 he accepted an invitation to enroll in Shandong Sports University and join the Shandong Professional Wushu Team.

According to accounts related later in his life, it was at this point that Yu began to develop a sustained interest in various double handed longsword styles.  At the time there were no competition routines featuring two handed straight swords (shuang shou jian) within the Wushu establishment.  Yet long sabers, and to a lesser extent swords, had been objects of periodic fascination within Chinese martial circles for some time.  One of these cycles had occurred during the Republic era when a number of martial artists had started to reconsider what was by then an obscure, largely forgotten, weapon.  In fact, one of the very first images I ever posted on this blog includes a 1930s era swordsman holding a shaung shao jian on stage at some sort of public demonstration, probably in northern China.

Chinese martial arts display, northern China, sometime in the 1930s.  Note the individual holding the exceptionally long jian in the center of the back row.  Source: Vintage Postcard, author’s personal collection.

This interest was especially pronounced in Shandong Province.  Local Mantis Boxing traditions had developed a number of long sword styles. A quick search of youtube verifies that these are still widely taught and practiced today.

While researching the historical background of these weapons, Yu states that he studied the classic works of Cheng Zhongyou, the seminal Ming era martial arts writer and recorder of the Shaolin staff method.  Cheng had also written on the subject of two handed sabers (a topic of increasing importance with the sudden appearance of large numbers of Japanese pirates along China’s coastal waterways).  In his discussion of long, two handed weaponry, he stated that the shuang shou jian had fallen out of use after the Tang dynasty.  From that point onward its method had been “lost.”

Cheng’s works were subsequently reprinted in the Republic era.  While I have always suspected that most readers are most interested in his commentaries on life and training at the Shaolin Temple during the Ming Dynasty (which Shahar summarizes quite nicely) it seems that his work also fed a revival of interest in long swords and sabers among some practitioners.  Could the lost Tang era methods be rediscovered?

Yu’s interpretation of the shuang shou jian method was slow in developing.  The early 1960s were a time of great highs and lows in his career.  In 1963 he won top honors in the traditional division of the Hua Dong Wushu Competition with this Drunken Jian routine.  Unfortunately, later that same year he injured his leg in training.  After not receiving timely medical attention he was told that his injury would effectively end any hope for a livelihood in the martial arts.

Following this blow Yu took a factory job and tried to focus on the task of recovery.  While he had been told that he would never compete again, he also maintained an interest in the martial arts, continuing his own research and making contacts with other practitioners who shared his interest when possible.  In total, Yu would spend close to a decade away from the official martial arts community.

Still, if one were to take a ten year break from publicly practicing the martial arts in mainland China, you would be hard pressed to think of a better time to start than the middle of the 1960s.  Within a few years of his leg injury the Cultural Revolution erupted vastly complicating China’s social and martial landscape.  This should not be taken to imply that all practice ceased during this period.  As we saw in our introduction there was actually an uptick of activity and network formation as the folk arts began to reconstitute themselves.  Still, all martial artists found it advantageous to keep their heads down and their practice private.

By the first half of the 1970s a sense of social normalcy was slowly restored.  The death of Lin Bao in 1971 signaled the end of the active phase in the Cultural Revolution, and the trend towards restoration was accelerated in 1976 with the arrest of the Gang of Four.  Most historians place the de facto end of the Cultural Revolution in this year.  Yet the end of one era saw the birth of another.  Increasingly citizens began to look to the past in an effort to save and reevaluate the cultural history that had survived.

This was a broadly based trend seen throughout Chinese society.  A number of projects aimed at documenting the nation’s surviving folk martial art traditions were launched by Universities in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  It was in the midst of this collective striving to reclaim the past that Yu’s shaung shou jian method finally came to fruition.

An interesting example of a “village made” shuang shou jian. Source: http://forum.grtc.org/viewtopic.php?t=893

Yu had spent the last 14 years studying related methods and materials.  His form draws movements and inspiration from other late Qing/Republic era approaches to the problem.  Indeed, when attempting to “resurrect” a lost method, in the absence of detailed manuals, there are very few other sources to draw on.  Still Yu seems to have been determined to offer a complete and original rethink of the problem, drawing on his own research, and building a new longsword method from the ground up.  What was still missing was a unique movement pattern to shape his developing swordplay technique.

His inspiration came with the end of the Cultural Revolution.  After returning from a movie with his wife on the night of September 15^th, 1975, a massive thunderstorm broke.  As the rain fell Yu spotted a praying mantis (a totem insect for much of the region’s martial arts tradition) and observed the ways in which it responded to the onslaught of heavy rain drops.  The result was an epiphany, a moment of sudden enlightenment.  That night he completed his now famous longsword form.

Afterwards he recorded his insights in a classical Chinese poem titled “Realizing Swordsmanship.”  In his feature with KFTC magazine Yu identified this as a pivotal moment in his life’s work.

Still, Yu’s  shuang shou jian method meets the basic definition of an “invented tradition.” His explicit goal was not just to improve upon the other longsword forms that circulated throughout the region to during the Republic Period.  Rather he sought to restore a complete method of manipulating two handed weapons that, according to no less an authority than Cheng Zhongyou, had been lost following the Tang Dynasty.  With no written manuals to rely on he was forced to look at a variety of other sorts of documents, artifacts and still existing forms.  Yet the critical ingredient seems to have been his own martial genius.  Elements of his choreography have shown up in an increasing number of places over the years.

Nevertheless, the actual hurdle when promoting the restoration of a “lost technique” is convincing other individuals to accept it as such.  Yu was remarkably successful in doing just this, but the process was far from automatic.  He spent the next few years demonstrating and promoting his new method, and building enthusiasm for it.  In 1979 he published a book titled “Shuang shaou jian 20 Methods.”  Interestingly the text was written in rhymed classical Chinese couplets, much as a classic Ming era sword manual might be.

In the same year he was offered a position as the coach of the Ningxia Professional Wushu Team.  Yu used this as a platform to perfect and popularize the public performance of his long-sword method.  And when judges in regional competitions refused to allow competitors to perform his new form on the grounds that “no such weapon exists,” Yu would show up and give exhibitions to convince them otherwise.  It was while giving one such performance with a borrowed Japanese Katana at a regional Wushu tournament that Yu was first spotted by two directors looking to cast the various roles of a new film titled “The Shaolin Temple.”

When approached Yu agreed to show up and demonstrate some of his sword work.  At the time he had no idea that his life was once again about to change.  How could he?  The “Kung Fu Fever” that this film would unleash remains a unique phenomenon in modern Chinese popular culture.  Yu’s role as the evil “Wang Renze” opposite Jet Li (along with his subsequent appearances in the next two Shaolin Temple sequels) made Yu a star in a film genera that did not yet exist in the Peoples Republic of China.  It also spread images of his beloved long swords to audiences of a previously unimaginable size.

From this point forward Yu’s sword form became a regular and accepted feature of Wushu competitions, and the master himself made regular appearances in the world of film and later television.  Over the next three decades Yu would be involved with a big project every two or three years.  Starting in the early 2000s he increasingly turned his attention to wuxia style TV dramas including works based on Jin Yong’s incredibly popular novels.  Readers with an interest in Wing Chun may note that in 2008 he played Ip Man in the TV series “Legends of Bruce Lee.”

A mural showing Zhou Tong in the Yue Fei temple in Hangzhou. Source: Wikimedia.

Conclusion: The Beard of Zhou Tong

While Yu’s sword work was iconinc, among movie and TV fans he was perhaps most easily identified by his beard.  Yu famously refused to shave it even when various directors asked him to.  When asked about its significance in a 2005 interview Yu gave an answer that that may be useful in attempting to understand both the sources of his inspiration and subsequent legacy.  He was reported to have said that he refused to shave his beard because he was hoping that one day he would be approached by a director who wanted him to play the role of Zhou Tong, another individual who is remembered as having a very fine white beard.

The historic Zhou Tong is better remembered as the legendary Yue Fei’s archery tutor.   This alone would make him worthy of veneration, but Zhou’s significance has been vastly expanded in Chinese martial art fiction.  In a series of steps he has progressed from being merely an archery tutor to a master of all sorts of martial arts never mentioned in the historic record.  Likewise Republic era story tellers and later novelists dramatically expanded the field of martial fiction that Zhou could be found in.  Eventually he even came to be seen as the instructor of a number of heroes popularized by Water Margin.  Interestingly Yu also identifies Zhou as a figure associated with the characters from this classic novel.

One suspects that in directing the reader’s attention to Zhou Tong, the highly literate Yu was making an argument about his own martial ideals.  In his life he also strove to balance the martial art and the civil, both in his professional research and his artistic pursuits (as a prolific poet and calligrapher).  Like the later renditions of Zhou (who was famous for his spear forms) Yu had also created something new with the express goal of restoring elements of a more glorious past.  And while audiences saw Yu primarily as a performer, it seems likely that he wanted to be remembered as a gentleman who had preserved China’s martial traditions by acting as a tutor to the upcoming generation.  While, to the best of my knowledge, Yu never had a chance to play Zhou on screen, he embodied many of the values associated with his literary hero in the practice of his daily life.

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If you enjoyed this you might also want to read:  Lives of Chinese Martial Artists (8): Gu Ruzhang-Northern Shaolin Master and Southward Bound Tiger.

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