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.

A meeting of the Golden Gates Knights. Instructor Alain Block (right) leads a class. Source: Associated press, image by Jeff Chiu.

***This is the first half of two part article.  However, readers may actually want to begin by reading my recent post  What are “martial arts,” and why does knowing matter?***

“It [Ludosport] started in 2006 in Italy. A few friends got some lightsabers as gifts and being into martial arts and re-enactment fanatics they decided to see if there was a way they could make it into a sport, and they did. They spent hundreds of hours consulting many different martial artists and fencing coaches to make sure that they got a really good sport.

It’s not a martial art. We’re not trying to teach people how to cause physical harm, in fact that’s exactly the opposite of what we’re trying to do. We want something that’s fast and fun, that people can enjoy.”

Jordan Court, Instructor of the Ludosport England, Lighstaber Combat Academy in Bristol (UK) as quoted in the Bristol Post, January 29th 2015.

 

“[Flynn:] People laugh at us and say, “That’s not a real martial art!” I say, why don’t you pick one up and try.

[Damon Honeycutt:] They can say all they want…you know what I mean. But the fact is we are practicing and they are not.”

“Flynn” and Damon Honeycutt. Reclaiming the Blade, DVD2. Bonus Feature: New York Jedi. 2009. Min. 4:14.

Introduction: What are Martial Arts?

Is lightsaber combat a martial art? This seemingly odd question may have important implications for how we understand critical concepts within the field of martial arts studies. It also promises to shed light on the fundamental processes by which the traditional martial arts have been revived, reimagined and invented in the modern era.

As both a relatively new and radically interdisciplinary research area, martial arts studies is currently enjoying a period of rapid conceptual development. Nowhere is this more evident than in attempts to define the term ‘martial art.’ While it is in many ways synonymous with the field, only a minority of the foundational texts in our literature have attempted to define this concept or to explore it in ways that would point to new avenues for research. Nor has the existing literature coalesced around a single definition.

In a previous post we saw that researchers have adopted at least three discrete strategies when attempting to craft their understanding of this concept. The first, and most widely used, might be referred to as the “sociological strategy.” It simply accepts the social or cultural consensus on the question as it has arisen within a tightly focused research area.

Given that everyone in 21st century Japan simply “knows” that kendo, karate and aikido are martial arts, there may not be an urgent need to further explore the matter when discussing some aspect of Japanese martial studies. This is especially true as so many works currently being produced adopt an “area studies” approach which calls for a deep examination of the historical, social or even linguistic forces affecting developments in only a single region or state. It may seem beyond the bounds of a given research project to deeply explore what characteristics make both kendo and karate “martial arts” given their many historical differences. The existing consensus is simply accepted as a social fact.

Nevertheless, future theoretical development within martial arts studies requires a greater emphasis on comparative case studies. This research strategy often necessitates comparing practices that have arisen in very different times or places. For instance, what makes both capoeira and kendo martial arts, and how can both be understood in light of the economic, political and social changes that swept the globe in the 19th century? In cases such as this it is no longer possible to avoid definitional discussion. For better or worse, classification and categorization are at the heart of the comparative enterprise.

Towards this end scholars have attempted to define the martial arts in at least two different ways. First, they have advanced short “universal” definitions meant to identify those activities deemed to be “martial arts” within the broader category of all social practices. Further, most of these authors have attempted to advance relatively abstract definitions that can be applied to any society, time or place.

As we saw in our previous post, such efforts can be challenging. And while identifying “martial arts” in the abstract, most of these discussions provide no way of knowing where one style ends and the next begins. Are wing chun, weng chun and white crane three different styles, or simply three interpretations of the same regional fighting tradition? Scholars need a concept that can help us to address questions such as this.

A second group of authors have developed definitions that seek to classify the wide range of observed martial arts along different metrics. Some authors, such as Donn Draeger, sought to separate the truly “martial” from the “civilian” fighting systems. Unfortunately his system seems to be based on a now dated understanding of Japanese military history. And in any case, it is not always possible to draw a clean distinction between the military and civil realms.

Other students have looked at the specific goals motivating individuals to practice the martial arts. Perhaps the most common division in the literature is a three part typology separating the competitive combat sports, traditional arts (focused on self-development and health) and self-defense or combat arts. While this cuts to the heart of the ways in which the martial arts are often discussed in popular culture, this approach has trouble dealing with the huge amount of variation found within any single tradition. In China it is not that hard to find Wushu coaches who approach the Taiji forms as competitive sports, while some of their students will go on to teach similar forms as traditional health practices.

Lastly, Sixt Wetzler has proposed that we move away from efforts to definitively place certain practices in one conceptual box or another. He argues that we should instead acknowledge that the martial arts owe much of their popularity to their fungiblity. The fact that a single set of practices can play many social roles in a student’s life gives them great practical utility. The social functions of a children’s afterschool Tae Kwon Do class might be very different from those pursued in the adult Saturday afternoon session of the very same school. It is precisely this multi- vocality that allows these hand combat systems to function as central organizing symbols in the lives of their practitioners.

Wetzler suggest that the best way to understand what a martial art is, and to compare various schools or approaches, is to examine their impact on five dimensions of social meaning. Briefly these are:

1. Preparation for violent conflict
2. Play and Competitive Sports
3. Performance
4. Transcendent Goals
5. Health Care

Unfortunately this is more of a framework for analysis than a traditional definition. And Wetzler freely admits that future researchers may find it necessary to add additional categories to his list.

Nor does his approach solve the problem of sociological relativism. The flexible nature of Wetzler’s concept opens the field up to a wide range of activities that not all researchers might be willing to accept as martial arts. For instance, would realistic combative movements learned from a video-game count as a “martial art” if their practitioner claimed them as such? What about the many apps currently on the market to help students learn taiji or wing chun? Is this simply a novel way of teaching an old art, or is it something very different? Do we simply accept as a martial art anything that claims to be one?

The problem of relativism can also be seen on the other end of the spectrum. Because the martial arts are often seen as somewhat “odd,” “eccentric” or “socially marginal” some individuals may try to evade the label all together. Students taking a “boxing essentials” or even kickboxing class at the local YMCA might claim not to be studying a martial art, even though any martial arts studies conference will include multiple papers on participation in amateur boxing and kickboxing activities.

It would seem that self-identification might be a poor metric to judge what activities qualify as a martial art, or how we as researchers should structure our case studies. Indeed, this has always been a potential weakness of the “sociological approach.” Lacking a universally agreed upon definition, how should we move forward?

This puzzle is a useful one in that it helps us to clarify our goals. When we ask “Is lightsaber combat a martial art?” we must be clear that this question does not intend to establish a value hierarchy in which the researcher draws on their expertise to offer a binding opinion on what does or does not qualify as an authentic combat system. Nor are we even asking whether a given activity is worthy of consideration in martial arts studies as a research area. After all, our interdisciplinary literature routinely tackles a variety of topics and sources (including novels, films, community festivals and public rituals) that are not the product of any specific training hall.

What this question really points to is the relationship between our object of study (in this case Lightsaber combat) and the theoretical toolkit that we have developed to explore these sorts of systems within martial arts studies. Put slightly differently, do we expect that our core concepts and theories will help us to make sense of lightsaber combat in the same way that they might be useful when thinking about the rise of judo or wing chun? And if they fail in this specific case (as theories often do), will the lessons learned improve our understanding of the traditional martial arts as well?

Within the social sciences progress rarely comes from theoretical development or empirical observation in isolation. It is the triangulation of approaches that is the most likely to lead to the development of a successful research program. Do all martial arts arise from authentic combat activities? Must they be historically grounded? Can an activity be a martial art even if its students and teacher do not claim it as such?

Ultimately these are all important questions as they help us to expand the borders of martial arts studies, and demonstrate the broader utility of our field. They are also the sorts of issues that deserve to be empirically examined rather than simply accepted or dismissed by definitional fiat.

Concept art by Ralph McQuarrie showing an early version of the lightsaber.

Getting a Grip on the Lightsaber

Towards that ends, the current post investigates the case of lightsaber combat. Any attempt to define these practices as an authentic martial art will face a number of obvious objections. The typical lightsaber class usually introduces students to some combination of forms training, practical drills, competitive fencing and stage combat/choreography. The emphasis on each activity varies from school to school and depends in large part on the goals of the instructors.

Yet the lightsaber is not a historical, or even a real, weapon. The idea that one might be able to systematically study “lightsaber combat” is a relatively recent notion inspired by a successful film franchise. In that sense we are dealing with a “hyper-real” martial art. By this we mean that it is an “invented tradition” that everyone acknowledges is based on a fictional text rather than a more or less accurate transmission of some historical practice.

Lightsaber combat presents students of martial arts studies with a set of theoretical fighting systems coalescing around the image of a (wildly popular) fictional weapon. Nevertheless, many of the individuals working to develop lightsaber combat programs are traditional martial artists with extensive training in both Eastern and Western fighting arts. Their historically grounded skills are being married to the mythos and world view of the Star Wars franchise and then marketed to the public. Finally, the resulting synthesis is presented to new students in classroom environments that practitioners of the traditional martial arts would find very recognizable.

Nor is the practice of lightsaber combat limited to a few isolated individuals. The renewed popularity of the Star Wars franchise following first the release of the prequel films in the early 2000s (Episodes I-III), and the Force Awakens (Episode VII) in 2015, has given rise to a dramatic increase in demand for “practical” lightsaber training. With a number of additional films already in the works, we may be well positioned to watch the birth of a substantial new hyper-real martial movement. But are these systems true martial arts?

What does the answer to that question suggest about the various ways in which the older and more established systems can also be understood as “invented traditions?” Should this change anything about the way we view the relationship between media portrayals of violence and the creation (or practice) of actual combat systems? How will our understanding of the relationship between the martial arts and the historical forces of ethno-nationalism and culture need to be adjusted when we see individuals turning to hyper-real martial arts to pursue their need for self-development or transcendence?

Using Wetzler’s five dimensions of social meaning I explore the various ways in which lightsaber combat functions as an authentic martial art for its practitioners. Some of these may be obvious, others will be less so. Ultimately this discussion suggests that a set of activities functions as a martial art not because of their historical authenticity or connection to “real-world” combat. Rather, the martial arts have always been defined primarily through their modes of social organization and the individual, group and systemic roles that they play. At heart they are social institutions rather than collections of isolated techniques. More specifically the modern martial arts are a social project by which individuals hope to secure multiple aspects of their personal and social destiny, and not simply their physical safety.

This should not be understood as a new development. We see this same pattern at the very moment of the genesis of the Asian martial arts. Japanese warriors did not need formal sword schools organized as ryu-ha to ply their trade or survive on the battlefield. They had succeeded in these tasks quite nicely for hundreds of years without them.

Rather, as Alexander C. Bennett has cogently argued, these social institutions were created as a means of demonstrating social sophistication and self-discipline when Bushi warriors found themselves transitioning to political roles in urban areas which brought them into direct contact with Japan’s highly cultured aristocracy. The original Japanese swords arts functioned just as much as a source of social legitimization as martial capital. These schools again saw massive growth under the later Tokugawa government, a period of protracted peace in which they once again served mostly social, cultural and economic functions.

While history is not unimportant (indeed, we will see that it is deeply implicated in the creation of even hyper-real martial arts) researchers may ultimately wish to pay more attention to how ideas and beliefs about the martial arts, as a social project, are created and transmitted from one generation to the next. Nor is this set of conclusions unique to the world of lightsaber combat. Instead the existence and rapid growth of hyper-real martial arts requires us to reevaluate what we think we know about the invention of the traditional martial arts more generally.

Luke receiving his fathers lightsaber in Episode IV: A New Hope (1977).  Its interesting to compare Luke’s lightsaber in this shot to the original concept art above.

Creating the Seven Classic Forms of Lightsaber Combat: A Very Brief History

While various 20th century science fiction stories had mentioned weapons like the lightsaber, the image of this now iconic weapon seared its way into the popular consciousness in 1977 with George Lucas release of his first Star Wars film (Episode IV: A New Hope). Luke Skywalker igniting his father’s arctic blue lightsaber (“an elegant weapon for a more civilized age”) in the presence of the mysterious Obi-Wan Kenobi became a symbol that defined the hopes and aspiration of an entire generation of film goes.

They too wished for an adventure that would allow them to take their first steps onto a broader stage. What better weapon for the knight-errants of the quickly dawning technological age than the lightsaber. It captured the romance and esoteric promises of our half-remembered, half-imagined, collective past, while pointedly reminding us that it was an “artifact” from the distant future. The symbolism of the lightsaber seamlessly combines a weapon of truly fearsome destructive potential with the promise of spiritual renewal. Once seen it is an image that is not easily forgotten.

The lightsaber’s strangely hypnotic blade has now gone on to colonize the imagination of multiple generations, spawning countless novels, comic books, video games, collectibles, sequels and most recently, entire combat systems. It goes without saying that in the absence of the Star Wars film franchise, and the immense marketing empire that surrounds and supports it, there would be no lightsaber combat training today. Our first conclusion must be that media generated images of lightsaber combat led directly to the creation of later combat systems, albeit with a somewhat puzzling delay.

I strongly suspect that the first fan-based “lightsaber duel” was probably performed with broom sticks the day after Lucas’ original vision was revealed to the public in 1977. Yet I have found very little evidence of organized attempts to institutionalize and spread specific ideas about what lightsaber combat might look like until the early 2000s. Systematized lightsaber fencing, as it currently exists, dates only to the middle of that decade.

This presents us with our first challenge. Given the immense popularity and huge cultural impact of the initial three movies, why did lightsaber combat organizations emerge only in the 2000s? More specifically, what was their relationship to the less popular, and critically reviled, prequel trilogy chronicling the Clone Wars and the rise of Darth Vader?

The answer to both of these questions can be found in the complex mix of materiality and mythos that lies as the heart of the Star Wars enterprise, as well as the efforts to market its merchandise to the public. After all, what is more powerful than a myth whose relics can be held in one’s own hands…for a price.

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

It is a proven fact that if you put replica lightsabers in the hands of any two normal adults, they will immediately try to beat each other about the head with them. The impulse to attempt to use a replica lightsaber seems to be an inescapable part of human nature. This actually makes replica and “stunt lightsabers” (simple sabers without elaborate sound effects created by third party vendors for the express purpose of dueling) somewhat dangerous. On the one hand their metal hilts and heavy, glowing, polycarbonate blades provide the same sort of psychological gratification that comes from handling any other sort of weapon.

At the same time, the fact that we all know that these replicas are “not real” can lead to problems. While not actually filled with jets of hot plasma, the purely kinetic energy that a rigid 1 inch polycarbonate blade can deliver is roughly equivalent to any wooden stick of similar length. It is certainly enough to cause pain or injury if full contact dueling is attempted without some basic safety equipment. In short, corporate liability issues may have initially limited the creation of licensed replicas of these iconic weapons.  The fact that large costuming groups, such as the 501st Legion and Jedi Council, have a no combat/choreography policy would also have diminished the demand for more durable prop replicas.

There would have been technical issues to consider as well. Most sabers today utilize LED technology to “ignite” their blades. These can withstand more forceful blows than delicate incandescent bulbs and they do not burn out. Integrated circuit boards with motion detectors can also be added to provide sound effects or special lighting effects. By the early 2000s the technology to mass produce convincing replica lightsabers became cheap enough to make the project economically viable while at the same time a new generation of (now adult) fans was in place to spend hundreds of dollars on each new model.

I hypothesize that it was the appearance of relatively high quality replica (and later stunt) sabers which sparked the sudden boom of interest in practical lightsaber combat. These marketing efforts were also supported by the expansion of other aspects of the Star Wars universe. In October of 2002 Dr. David West Reynolds (the holder of a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Michigan who went on to write multiple Star Wars reference books) published an article in Star Wars Insider (#62) titled “Fightsaber: Jedi Lightsaber Combat.”

While the movies themselves say almost nothing about the details of lightsaber training, Reynolds, drawing on his academic background, wrote an essay outlining the “Seven Forms” of lightsaber combat as taught within the Jedi Order. He provided each numbered form with a short description outlining its philosophy as well as its strengths and weaknesses. Later resources augmented these with exotic sounding names (such as “Shii-cho” or Form I), associated them with mythic creatures from the Star Wars universe in ways that seem to intentionally mimic the use of animal imagery in the Asian martial arts (Shii-cho is “The Way of the Sarlacc”). They also concocted increasingly complex backstories. While Reynolds is an archaeologist rather than a martial artist, he set in motion a story-development arch which created a rich body of invented lore around the seven forms, giving them an alluring feel of verisimilitude.

By the early 2000s Star Wars fans had been given access to both a steady supply of replica lightsabers, a new trilogy of films which featured many iconic lightsaber battles, and an increasingly complex system of invented traditions explicitly designed to create a history for lightsaber usage that would feel “realistic.” While the Star Wars franchise has always emphasized the role of merchandise, the situation for would be Jedi and Sith acolytes was more favorable in the 2000s than it was in the 1980s.

The next major step forward took place in 2005. Inspired by some short fan-films in which lightsabers had been digitally recreated, “Flynn” a founding member of the group NY Jedi, bought two Master Replicas lightsabers, took them to the roof of his New City apartment building at night, and began to duel with a friend.

The resulting enthusiasm on the part of his neighbors was great enough that he then decided to bring a larger group of sabers to the 2005 Greenwich Village Halloween parade where their demonstration was again met with great enthusiasm and numerous inquiries as to where one could go to learn to fight with a “real” lightsaber. The group NY Jedi was formed shortly thereafter, and has offered weekly lessons taught be a variety of martial artists, choreographers and stage combat coaches.

The simultaneous worldwide dissemination of the newly created mythos and marketing of replica sabers makes it difficult to reconstruct a single linear history of lightsaber combat. NY Jedi raised the profile of the practice and inspired the creation of a number of other similar groups all along the East Coast of the United States. Some of them emphasized costuming and performance, others attempted to focus on the creation of a “pure” martial art.

Only a few months later three friends in Italy (all trained martial artists) brought a bunch of replica lightsabers to a birthday party. They were impressed with the technical flexibility that this new training weapon allowed. Almost immediately they started to develop their own martial system (Ludosport) based on the physical characteristics of replica lightsabers as well as elements of the Star Wars mythos.

Most lightsaber groups seem to combine multiple elements in their training. While NY Jedi mixes traditional martial arts training with a heavy emphasis on stage combat and performance, Ludosport instead emphasizes the development of lightsaber fencing as a type of competitive combat sport. They have since opened branch schools across Europe and organized a system of international tournaments and rankings.

A match at the Combat Saber Tournament held in Singapore at Liang Court, on 20 Nov 2015. Source: http://www.thesaberauthority.com

One of the most interesting things about the recent spread of lightsaber combat has been its diverse and global nature. Clubs and schools dedicated to promoting the practice have been opened in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. Indeed, much of the early development of the art was taking place nearly simultaneously in the United States, Italy and South East Asia (where such groups have proved to be popular in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.)

These organizations approach lightsaber training with a variety of goals and methods. They also have a variety of opinions on whether or not what they do can be considered a martial art.

As the introductory quote suggests, Ludosport appears to have distanced themselves from the claim that lightsaber fencing might be considered a “martial art.” In their vernacular terminology, an activity only qualifies as a martial art if it is aggressive in nature and focused on causing harm. Thus for their own marketing purposes they seem to have decided to emphasize the athletic and competitive aspects of their practice.

Other groups, such as the Terra Prime Lightsaber Academy, have instead emphasized the degree to which lightsaber fencing is, and should be thought of, as a martial art. After all, the fight choreography that influenced the development of the Star Wars films was highly influenced by a variety of traditional martial arts including kendo, kali and historic European practices such as longsword fencing.

Many of the instructors teaching lightsaber combat today also bring their own background in the martial arts to the table. For them the challenge is to find a ways to recreate the “Seven Forms” of lightsaber combat outlined in the Star Wars mythology using historic techniques, concepts and strategies. Drawing on their individual training, and the unique physical properties of commercially available stunt lightsabers, they have attempted to “recreate” effective and historically grounded systems of lightsaber combat which are still true to the texture of the movies and the Star Wars mythology. All of this has then been packaged in a way that it can be taught to succeeding generations of students in something that very much resembles a standard classroom environment. Some instructors even see in lightsaber combat a possible tool for promoting, preserving and disseminating traditional types of martial knowledge.

If you enjoyed this discussion be sure to read the second half: Five Social Dimensions of Lightsaber Combat as a Martial Art (Episode II)

A choreographed reenactment of the final duel in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Public performances like these have helped to popularize lightsaber combat.  Photo by Jenny Elwick. Source: Wikimedia.

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Are you interested in taking a more detailed look at the world of Lightsaber Combat? If so start here!

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***This is the second half of our exploration of lightsaber combat as a martial art.  Reader who have not yet read Part I are strongly encouraged to do so before going on. In the last essay we considering some of the basic strategies that scholars have adopted in defining the “martial arts.”  Following that discussion we briefly reviewed the emergence of the current lightsaber combat community.  In this post we attempt to test Wetzler’s theory of the “five dimensions of social meaning” as a strategy for understanding the martial arts by using it to explore various aspects of lightsaber fencing.  Enjoy!***

Five Social Dimensions of Lightsaber Combat
While it helps to ground our discussion, the preceding historical exploration does little to resolve the theoretical question of whether we should consider lightsaber combat to be an authentic martial art. At best we are thrown back on the statements of various practitioners. Some look to their own backgrounds and goals to assert that they are in the process of developing and teaching a martial art. In their view the media driven origins of these practices should have no bearing on our classification of the resulting institutions. What is important is the nature of the techniques used and taught.

Other individuals, even those deeply involved in the lightsaber community, are not so sure. Some see “combat sports” and “martial arts” as mutually exclusive categories. And given the degree of cultural discomfort that still follows the traditional martial arts, a few groups may have decided that it is economically more feasible to market lightsaber combat as a sporting, fitness or recreational activity.

Nor would it be difficult to find practitioners of more traditional sword arts who might claim that lightsaber fencing simply cannot be a martial art at all. So many of the small details that are critical in traditional forms training or cutting practice (e.g., edge control) simply disappear when we begin to discuss fictional all cutting plasma blades. For them the potent symbolism of a futuristic sword cannot displace the historically grounded reality of the blade.

This sort of indeterminacy has always dogged both the sociological and universal strategies for defining the martial arts. The current essay seeks to move beyond this impasse by empirically examining the practice of lightsaber combat in light of Wetzler’s theory of the “five dimensions of social meaning.” This will provide us with an appropriate baseline from which to explore whether the fictional origins of lightsaber combat alters the sorts of social roles that it plays in the lives of its students. It should also suggest something about the utility of the existing martial arts studies literature in making sense of these practices. As such we will briefly consider how lightsaber combat ranks on each of these five dimensions.

Early concept art by Ralph McQuarrie showing a Storm Trooper holding a lightsaber. In the Star Wars mythos a hero may well have to rely on the lightsaber as a means of self-defense.

Preparation for violent conflict: When interviewed, new students of the martial arts often claim that they have been inspired to join a school by a need for self-defense training. Indeed, there has always been a strong linkage between (some) martial arts and the perceived need to prepare oneself for the reality of violent conflict. Yet at the same time students of martial studies have noted that many of the sorts of techniques that are commonly used in these systems lack an element of “realism.”

Students of Japanese military history have noted that high-school kendo training did a poor job of preparing Japanese military officers to actually use their swords in the field during WWII. Practitioners of the Mixed Martial Arts often complain about the lack of “realism” in more traditional styles. Yet weapons are a sadly common element of actual criminal assaults and they are banned from the octagon. Indeed, one cannot escape the conclusion that the ways in which the martial arts attempt to prepare their students for the future cannot simply by reduced to “violence simulators” of greater or lesser degrees of accuracy. Equally important has been the building of physical strength, mental toughness and a tactical tool kit in environments that are quite different from what might be encountered in an actual attack.

Lightsaber combat also has a complex relationship with Wetzler’s first dimension of social meaning. The chance of an individual being called upon to defend themselves from an actual lightsaber attack today is only slightly less than the probability that they will encounter a villain wielding a traditional Chinese three meter long spear in a dark alley. Which is to say, few people take up traditional weapons training (such as swords, spears or bows) because of their great utility “on the street.”

Yet in a kendo class one will be called upon to defend against a mock (but still very spirited) sword attack. Likewise, in a modern lightsaber duel fencers will be called upon to defend themselves against a determined attacker who has been systematically trained in a variety of techniques. A failure to do so (especially if proper safety measures are not observed) might result in injury. In that sense lightsaber students are preparing themselves for combative encounters. All of this also contributes to the creation of a degree of physical and mental resilience.

Many forms of traditional weapons training have become functionally obsolete in the current era. Spears, swords and bows are no longer encountered on the battlefield and they play a limited role in any discussion of self-defense. While lightsabers can be placed further along the continuum of abstraction, these are fundamentally differences of degree rather than kind.

A Sportlight Saber League Tournament held in Paris, France. Source: http://www.themalaymailonline.com

Play and Competitive Sports: There can be no doubt that for most students the fundamental appeal of lightsaber combat is to be found in its recreational value. Indeed, the central mythos and symbolism of the exercise derives from the realm of film and commercial entertainment. Of course in the current era what most of us know about past military battles and personal duels is also heavily mediated by media representations rather than firsthand experience.

Even in Hong Kong in the 1950s-1970s, a supposed golden age of traditional martial arts practice, wuxia novels and martial arts films were the medium by which most individuals were introduced to, and developed an interest in, the martial arts. While not as frequently discussed, the traditional martial arts have always been closely tied to the worlds of physical recreation and story-telling.

The very nature of lightsaber fencing has also contributed to the development of a strong sporting impulse. Whether in the form of Olympic fencing or Japanese kendo, in the current era the sword arts have come to be seen largely as combat sports. Students of lightsaber fencing will approach their new practice with an already well established set of ideas about what a “proper” match will look like. Inevitably this includes safety equipment (eye protection, fencing masks, armored gloves, other protective gear), one or more judges to call points, a transparent scoring system and a limited number of timed rounds. All of these practices come from previous innovations in other arts, but they are immediately available to lightsaber fencers. The end result is that for many students lightsaber combat is primarily thought of as a faced paced, highly enjoyable, combat sport.

As I have interviewed various instructors in the field, some have pointed to these sorts of matches as sites for “technical research.” A few have asserted that the traditional martial arts might benefit from a “neutral” platform where students of western, Chinese, Japanese or South East Asian systems can come together to compare techniques with those whose training is different from their own. The physical simplicity of a stunt saber (which is essentially a smooth polycarbonate tube), and the ease with which it can be used by a variety of styles, has even led to some discussion of whether lightsaber combat might develop as a type of “mixed martial art” for swords (albeit one with a very different world view). While this possibility is not what attracts most new students to their local lightsaber combat group, it is certainly a possibility that is being considered by key teachers and promoters of the practice.

The Force is strong with this one. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKELWe6dACA

Performance: The anthropologist D. S. Farrer has argued at length that every martial system contains both a practical and performative aspect. Further, these two elements cannot easily be separated. While all sorts of practitioners may find that they have an economic or a social motive to promote their practice as a “pure fighting art” (or alternatively, and probably more lucratively, as “pure combat choreography”) this is usually far from the truth. Developments in the practical realm tend to drive new innovations in the “realistic” portray of the martial arts on stage, and the public discussion of these recreational images has inspired new thoughts about the more practical aspects of violence.

For example, throughout Asian history, archery did double duty as a cornerstone of public ritual as well as a critical military skill. Even the periodic military exams held by the Chinese government in the late imperial period tended to draw a large crowd and functioned as public spectacles as much as a rational mechanism for choosing the best military recruits (well into the age of the gun). Nor can we forget about the important social place of practices like “wedding silat,” dance like capoeira matches or the public performance of traditional martial arts styles on the stage of southern China’s Cantonese opera. All of this has a long and established history within the cultural realm of the martial arts.

Still, the relationship between the practical and the performative aspects of the martial arts is one of the most vexing aspects of these systems for current scholars. The development of lightsaber combat has the potential to contribute much to this aspect of the martial studies literature.

When looking at the variety of lightsaber combat groups, some individuals may be tempted to separate them into two categories. On the one hand we have those doing “real” martial arts, such as Ludosport, Saber Legion or the Terra Prime Lightsaber Academy. They focus almost exclusively on the practice of historically derived techniques and competition. On the other hand we have a number of schools, such as NY Jedi, whose main activities seem to be the staging of elaborate public spectacles through choreographed duels and storytelling.

Yet none of these groups function in pristine isolation. As a result innovations in one area tend to impact the others. While NY Jedi is known for its stage combat and public choreography, a number of its members are also martial artists. One such individual is Damon Honeycutt. A practitioner of the Chinese martial arts, he developed a basic lightsaber training form (or kata) called “Shii-cho” (based on Japanese and Chinese saber techniques) which has gone on to become perhaps the most widely distributed training tool within the lightsaber community. It is widely practiced by both theatrical and martially oriented groups and both seem to find it quite useful.

Nor is there always a clear division between the sorts of individuals who will be attracted to more “traditional” martial training and those who might find themselves making and posting fan-films on the internet. Rather than having two distinct sets of individuals, often what we see are related practices used to fulfill multiple sets of social goals by the same individuals. While on the surface this might appear paradoxical, it has always been part of the appeal of the traditional Asian martial arts. Current developments within the lightsaber combat community are useful precisely because they serve to illustrate the arguments of scholars such as Farrer and Wetzler.

Luke Skywalker meditating on the assembly of his new lightsaber. Image by Frank Stockton. Source: rebloggy.

Transcendent Goals: Even if lightsaber combat succeeds as a fast paced combat sport, or as a channel for martial performance, what psychological or spiritual value could it have? In the current era many individuals turn to the traditional (usually Asian) martial arts precisely because they see in them a font of ancient wisdom. For the less esoterically inclined, the physical and mental discipline of the martial arts has also been seen as a way to “develop character.”

While many actual martial arts instructors go out of their way to avoid discuss their practice in these terms, the idea that the martial arts should be a pathway to some sort of “transcendent attainment” seems firmly fixed in the popular imagination. It is one of the promises that draws students, in both the East and the West, to these practices. Much of the commercial success of the traditional martial arts appears to be rooted in a near mystical faith in their ability to promote balanced development in both children and adolescents. One wonders how much of this belief we can attribute to Luke Skywalker’s very public journey to adulthood aided by the dual disciplines of the Force and the lightsaber training during the 1970s and 1980s.

Can lightsaber students find transcendent values in a practice grounded in what they know to be a set of fictional texts? The fact that we now have a literature on the existence of hyper-real religions (systems of religious belief based on fictional texts such as Star War or the Matrix) strongly suggests that the answer is, “yes.” The underlying values that students can detect in a story or practice are more important for many people than its connection to an authentic ancient history.

My own, very preliminary, ethnographic research with a lightsaber combat group in a mid-sized city in New York State has revealed a surprising degree of dedication on the part of many of the students. The often repeated mantra that it is all “just for fun” notwithstanding, it is clear that many students are approaching lightsaber combat as a key organizing symbol in their lives. The weapons may be fictional, but the feelings that are invoked through practice are clearly authentic and deeply felt. Nor are the sorts of mentoring relationships that students seek from their instructor any different from what one might find in a traditional martial arts institution.

Given the resources being dedicated to lightsaber combat, it should come as no surprise that students so often see their norms and beliefs (or perhaps those that they aspire to hold) reflected in these practices. The Jedi and Sith themselves are readymade symbols ripe for spiritual or psychological appropriation.

When addressing a related point in an interview Damon Honeycutt of NY Jedi said:

“You can bring about things in a subculture; you can create change through that. You can elevate consciousness through it. That is what I would like to see it do, really bring people to a heightened potential of what they really are. To be a lens for that, outside of comicons or conventions or competitions or forms or fighting or sparring or whatever people think that they are doing with it. That really would be the greatest thing.

With NY Jedi we are making ourselves better people to serve humanity, you know, the same thing that I do with the Kung Fu school. In a lot of ways they are the same. Its just that the myth behind it is different. The lineage behind it is different. The world view is different. But the overall goal is the same.” Damon Honeycutt. Reclaiming the Blade, DVD2. Bonus Feature: New York Jedi. 2009. Min. 11:01-11:46.

 

This description matches my own preliminary observations. Future research might fruitfully focus on the underlying social changes that have opened a space for hyper-real martial arts to play these roles at this particular moment in social history.

A Jedi healing a wounded storm trooper through her manipulation of the Force. Current discussions of health in relation to lightsaber combat seem to be more focused on mundane factors such as regular exercise.  Still, there is a strong mythic association between the Jedi and accelerated healing. Source: starwars.wikia

Healthcare: As we have already seen, a number of factors separate the martial arts from simple collections of combat techniques. One of them is the multiplicity of social roles that these systems are expected to play in the lives of their practitioners. In the current era individuals often turn to the martial arts to defend not just their physical safety but their personal health.

Many martial arts studios offer basic fitness and conditioning classes. Weight loss is a frequently advertised benefit of all kinds of martial arts training. And every month a new set of articles is published about the medical benefits of taijiquan for senior citizens in both the Western and Chinese press.

This may seem like yet another example of the commercial appropriation of the martial art. Fitness is a multi-billion dollar industry and the average individual is constantly subjected to powerful media discourses extolling the benefits of athleticism. Is it any wonder that all sorts of martial arts teachers attempt to link their practices to the culturally dominant athletic paradigm?

In light of this it may be necessary to remind ourselves that the links between the practice of the martial arts and health promotion are actually quite old. Meir Shahar has demonstrated that by the end of the Ming dynasty unarmed boxing training was gaining popularity around China partially because of the unique synthesis of self-defense and health promoting practices which it offered.

While less pronounced than some of the other dimension of social meaning, it is clear that lightsaber combat is viewed as an avenue for promoting physical health by some of its students. In this case the emphasis is less on esoteric practices and Daoist medical ideas than western notions of physical fitness and exercise. Many of the students that I have spoken with mentioned the need to “get in shape” and “stay active” as primary motivations for taking up lightsaber combat.

A quick review of news stories in the popular press indicates that a number of lightsaber groups have been created throughout the English speaking world in recent years. While most of these are run by individuals coming out of the traditional martial arts, others are being started by Yoga teachers. Their emphasis is usually focused on the health and fitness benefits of lightsaber training rather than it’s more competitive or combative aspects.

Yet fitness also plays a role in the ways that lightsaber combat is discussed by more traditional martial arts instructors. More than one has noted that these classes attract individuals who might otherwise have no interest in setting foot in a martial arts school or gym. Lightsaber combat gives such students a means to stay active and an incentive to get in shape.

For some students lightsaber combat also sparks an interest in other martial arts. Indeed, one suspects that this is exactly why so many traditional martial artists are currently opening classes dedicated to the subject. They have the potential to expand the appeal of the martial arts to groups of consumers who might not otherwise have ever been attracted to them.

The health benefits of any martial art depend in large part on how it is introduced to students and subsequently practiced. The same is certainly true for lightsaber combat. Once again, when comparing this practice to historically grounded martial arts what we find are differences in degree rather than kind.

Stunt sabers and helmets at a Paris lightsaber tournament. Photo by Charles Platiau. Source: http://avax.news

Conclusion: Lightsaber Combat as a Martial Art

Is lightsaber combat a martial art? The answer is almost certainly yes. At its core are a group of combative and performance techniques, almost all of which have been gathered from previously existing martial traditions. These have been developed into pedagogical systems capable of transmitting not only physical practices but also elaborate pseudo-histories, invented identities and a mythic world view that seem to be a no less potent for their fictional origin. All of this provides students with a variety of tools to craft social and personal meaning in their lives.

An examination of Wetzler’s “five dimensions of social meaning” suggests that in its current incarnation students of lightsaber combat understand their practice in much the same way that traditional martial artists approach their training in the West today. More importantly, both set of activities play broadly similar roles in the lives of students, and respond to the same social forces in basically similar ways. As such we have no a priori reason to believe that the theories developed within martial arts studies cannot also be applied to the investigation of hyper-real combat systems.

More importantly, our brief investigation of lightsaber combat may suggest a few ways to improve our understanding of the social meaning of these systems. Martial artists are often reluctant to discuss the economic consequences of their practice. On the one hand many individuals make a living teaching these systems, and students sacrifice notable resources (in capital, time and opportunity cost) to practice them.

In the current era the distribution of martial knowledge is closely tied to economic markets. Yet openly discussing this fact seems like a violation of an unspoken norm. Among practitioners there is a strong presumption that the martial arts “cannot be bought or sold;” that the attainment of excellence transcends such “base” considerations. Given that many academic students of martial arts studies are also practitioners of these same systems, such attitudes can easily shape our own research as well.

The rapid growth of lightsaber combat over the last decade is interesting for a number of reasons. One of the most important is what it suggests about the power of economic markets to shape the development of martial arts systems and the ways that consumers encounter and experience them. At the most basic level there would be no lightsaber combat without the production of successive generations of Star Wars films and massively expensive campaigns to market them to the public. More specifically, the exact timing of the boom of interest in lightsaber combat owes much to the creation (and marketing) of high quality replica and stunt lightsabers in the early 2000s.

Economic variables can be seen to play important roles in other places as well. The major manufacturers of stunt sabers host message boards and social media groups that play an important part in creating a sense of community. Individual teachers have turned to lightsaber fencing as a means of spreading the message of the martial arts beyond the horizons of the normal reachable market. And it is sometimes surprising to see how much money individual students are willing to pay for a personally meaningful replica lightsaber or for the opportunity to attend a seminar with a specific instructor or group. It is even interesting to think about why different lightsaber organizations adopt the various economic models that they have.

None of this is all that different from what we see in the world of the more traditional martial arts. The ability to offer instruction can become an important source of personal income. The sudden appearance of a popular new action film can lift a little known fighting system out of obscurity. And economic markets strongly condition how the martial arts can be taught, and who they can potentially reach, at any given point in history.

While these sorts of considerations receive little attention in many of our studies, they simply cannot be avoided when thinking about the nature and recent origin of lightsaber combat. As such we should consider adding a sixth category to Wetzler’s discussion of social meaning within the martial arts. Economic markets are a means by which scarce resources are distributed within society. The martial arts have often served similar functions through their attempts to control community violence, support new status hierarchies and even create social capital. We should not be surprised to see powerful synergies emerging through the interactions of these systems. In fact, no student or teacher can approach the martial arts in the current era without taking their economic aspect into careful consideration. This suggests that students of martial arts studies should also be more mindful of this dimension of social meaning.

Critics of the time and energy being devoted to the development of lightsaber combat may voice a number of complaints. Stunt lightsabers, despite their seeming versatility, are essentially cylindrical sticks rather than copies of true blades. And given the unique mythology of this weapon, there is no incentive to imagine it as a metal sword for the purposes of practice and training. As such lightsaber combat is bound to depart from historically derived techniques in important ways. Ultimately an hour invested in the investigation of German longsword fencing, or even kendo, would probably grant a better understanding of real military history than an equal amount of practice with a lightsaber.

Though it may be possible to find key norms within the practice of lightsaber fencing, or while the rich symbolism of the Force and the Jedi may point some students towards transcendent themes, the development of these ideas within the Star Wars universe is still shallow compared to the depth of lived religious experience that can be found within real Buddhist, Daoist or Christian monastic communities. Again, why invest scarce resources in a second order reflection of reality when the real thing is almost immediately available?

These are valid concerns. And ultimately most martial artists will not be interested in lightsaber combat. Then again, most martial artists also have little interest in kendo, wing chun or any other specific style. Many of these objections also revolve around questions of taste rather than objective conceptual categories. Why practice that style when “everyone knows” that mine is superior?

The very fact that lightsaber combat can so easily be drawn into this all too familiar mode of debate is yet another indication that it is seen as residing within the set of practices which we call “martial arts.” Yet as Wetzler reminded us in his discussion, when it comes to definitions, scholars must rely on more objective measures. Ultimately the student of martial arts studies cannot become merely a critic of good taste in martial arts practice (Wetzler, 23-25).

Instead we should ask why, when so much information about many historical styles is readily available, these specific individuals are choosing to study a hyper-real martial art? Why are seekers suddenly more open to finding transcendent meaning in a fictional story than in actual organized religions which espouse many of the same values and views? Lastly, how have consumers appropriated the products of a vast commercial entertainment empire to create independent social groups that better allow them to exercise their agency in creating more empowered identities?

None of these puzzles are unique to lightsaber combat. In realty we could ask a very similar set of questions of most of the traditional martial arts that are practiced in the world today. Nothing simply arises from the past tabula rasa. We seek to understand the invention of the martial arts because every hand combat system must find a place for itself in the social system of its day if it wishes to survive. Their many solutions to this dilemma reveal critical data about the nature of social struggles.

All arts, even the most historically grounded, are caught in a continual cycle of renewal and reinvention. The study of practices such as lightsaber combat is valuable precisely because it forces us to focus on the details of how that process unfolds within specific communities. Yet to be fully realized, we must first understand that hyper-real combat practices can be authentic 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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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.

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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.

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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

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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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Sumatran Tiger. By Nichollas Harrison – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0. Source: Wikimedia

Introduction: “What’s your style?”

A couple of months ago a conversion emerged between a few of my colleagues which got me thinking about the effects of personal training on those who wish to write on martial arts studies. Simply broaching such a question tends to elicit a number of knee-jerk responses.  These range from the ever popular “only a Grand Master of the system is qualified to discuss it” to, on the other side of the spectrum, “practitioners of an art are typically little more than apologists.” Variants of both of these ideas can be found in the popular and more scholarly discussion of the traditional fighting systems.

One does not have to delve very far into the actual process of conducting research before encountering problems with these sorts of initial responses.  My recent book on the social history of the southern Chinese martial arts ended up touching on the evolution of dozens of distinct styles and community organizations.  The world of the TCMA is an incredibly diverse yet highly interconnected place.  In practice it is impossible to discuss any individual style or practitioner in pristine isolation.  Nor is it even imaginable that a single researcher, no matter how great her level of dedication, could gain actual expertise in all of the arts practiced throughout a given region.  At some point it becomes necessary to write about things that one is not an expert in or nothing could ever be said.

If we are honest with ourselves, it is also apparent that this first set of objections is fundamentally about controlling who has a “legitimate right” to frame the public discussion of a given style.  Since the practice of the traditional martial arts are deeply embedded within both social and market structures, certain types of academic discussions might directly affect their cultural prestige or economic value.

This raises some interesting questions as to who “owns” a martial art.  That would make a great topic to explore in a future post.  Yet appeals to traditional modes of authority generally hold very little value in the social sciences or history, and it is not clear why the situation should be any different in martial arts studies.

Questions of objectivity are equally complicated.  The modern martial arts are, by their very nature, designed to transform the individuals who practice them. This is not simply an accidental byproduct of training.  It is the stated goal of a great many systems.

We know that individuals often seek out martial arts training because they feel somehow vulnerable or inadequate.  They are looking for the means to transform their position in their community, to improve their health or appearance, or even to find a way of transcending the self.  Many students of martial arts studies are drawn to the topic precisely because they want to better understand the nature and consequences of this transformational promise.  What happens to an individual when they become part of this community?  Yet once we as researchers enter the training hall we too become the medium upon which this transformation is worked.

Mandarin Rat Snake. http://www.iherp.com/Public/Blog/Detail.aspx?uid=167619

This can be construed as a problem as the culture of the training hall is not the same as the culture of the academy.  Specifically, researchers may pick up some of the beliefs, norms and biases seen in the community that they have become embedded within.

Sometimes we are aware of changes and can “control” for them when recording our observations.  Everyone in my school may believe that the Kung Fu of “lineage X” is superior to anything else in the style.  And I may even have come to accept on practical grounds that it is pretty impressive.  But my basic training as a scholar should prevent me from filling my academic work with all sorts of unsubstantiated value judgements.

Or will it?  More troubling is less explicit, though no less potent, ideas that are absorbed into our subconscious value structure.  Dr. Luke White recently critiqued the atmosphere of a martial arts studies conference that he attended on the grounds that it felt subtly “hostile” (especially to those who might no be martial artists themselves.  As various researchers inquired what fighting styles their counterparts studied, he detected both a competitive impulse and an accusatory finger.

It is well worth remembering that not everyone who writes within the field of martial arts studies is also a martial artist.  Indeed, if you research medieval military history or wuxia novels it is probably not even possible to practice most of what you read about (which, of course, is not to say that such a scholar might not take up some other aspect of the martial arts for the sheer enjoyment of it).

Nor are all of the norms and values of the training hall welcome in an academic setting.  While by no means universal, overly competitive, homophobic, sexist, classist, nationalist, and even “style-ist” sentiments sometimes emerge within elements of the martial arts community.  It may be the origins and cultivation of such socially marginal values that is the focus of our research. Yet we would do well to remember that no one is inherently immune to the pull of such ideas.

Is it better then to preserve a scientific distance from the subject of our study?  Is strict “objectivity” something to be desired in martial arts studies?  In more practical terms, can one do ethnography in a boxing gym from the sidelines?  Or must one actually put on gloves, do rounds with a trainer, and finally enter the ring before you can understand and successfully communicate what it means to be a member of that specific community?

The answers to these questions are not self-evident.  Various scholars have come to different conclusions over the years. I remember a conversation that I once had with my father, an anthropologist who works with Native American communities.  He mentioned an invitation that he had once received to join a secret “medicine society” in a community that he was doing ethnography with.

I realized how rare such an opportunity was.  As such I was shocked to hear that he had turned it down.  When I asked him why, he explained that everything comes with a cost.  Every new identity alters a pre-existing one.  And at some point we all (even ethnographers) have to think very carefully about what price we are willing to pay for knowledge.

On the other hand we have examples of researchers who have thrown themselves into extraordinary situations with abandon.   Loic Wacquant, in Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer, discusses some of the problems with the notion of “objectivity” in ethnographic research. He fully committed himself to membership in his new found community in a boxing gym within the Chicago ghetto and all that this entailed.  Wacquant has advised young ethnographers not to fear “going native.”  In his view, it is a necessity.  He does qualify this assertion by stating that the student should “go native,” but also go “armed” with the proper theoretical tool kit.  That way, when the time comes, they can make sense of what they have experienced.

It is not my intention to definitively resolve this debate.  Indeed, that would go well beyond what is possible in a relatively short blog post.  Instead I would like to use this essay to outline some ways that personal experience seems to affect one type of research that is produced in martial arts studies.  The exercise is purely personal and it is my hope that it will help me to work through some of my own struggles in understanding the value of discussing one’s background in the martial arts.

By Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE – Green Mantis (Mantidae), CC BY-SA 2.0. Source: Wikimedia.org

Unspoken Influences: Selecting a Research Topic

Whether we choose to discuss them or not, our own backgrounds can have a shaping influence on our research agendas.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the selection of a topic and the formulation of a basic theory.  While it is true that not all researchers within martial arts studies engage in personal practice, it seems clear that serious students of the traditional fighting systems are rather over-represented within our ranks.

This is not a surprise.  One of the challenges of an academic life is finding a research topic that can inspire fresh productivity and new publications year after year.  This is probably why a great many scholars choose to write about topics that touch on their own lives.

Yet this does not mean that they are always eager to place themselves at the center of the narrative.  A few months ago I was speaking with a colleague who has the sort of first hand training experience that most martial artists could only dream of.  His interest in writing about the martial arts is rivaled only by his dedication to practicing them at a high level.

He confessed that he gets annoyed when individuals approaching his historical research immediately begin by asking about his practical background.  Rather than second guessing his credentials as a “legitimate” researcher, he would prefer that readers simply engage with the substance of his work, judging both the arguments and data on their own merits.

A scholar’s personal background, even one as fascinating as my friend’s, rarely makes it into the discussion of most historical works.  Nor are they all that commonly seen in quantitative driven social scientific studies.

The reasons why are obvious.  If one’s field of study is the development of Ming era battlefield tactics no style, no matter how traditionally taught, can grant an accurate window onto the military training and life experience of General Qi Jiguang’s troops.  As a scholar you will instead be expected to introduce and interpret a wide variety of historical documents that come closer to capturing the essence of that time and place.

Likewise, students who do quantitatively driven sociological work know that their own life experience is a single (probably atypical) observation within a vast sea of data.  Successful theory testing requires the gathering of hundreds, or even thousands, of other data points before proceeding on to analysis.  To dwell too much on one’s own experience in these sorts of settings might be misleading. We should not be surprised that most historical and social scientific works makes little reference to the author’s personal practice.

It can be debated as to whether this is a good thing.  While these sorts of scholars may be reluctant to treat their own life experience as “data,” it might have had a profound impact on the subject matter they choose to investigate, the specific theories that were tested or even what literature they drew their inspiration from.

My recent work on the history of the Southern Chinese martial arts makes few explicit references to Jon Nielson’s and my own extensive training in Wing Chun.  Why? At the most basic level, solid “sticky hand” skills do not grant any privileged insight into the state of Guangdong’s gentry led militia movement in the 1850s.

Snow Monkeys, Nagano Japan. Source: Wikimedia.

Yet my background in this style did introduce me to the region’s colorful, and at times violent, social history.  It inspired to me to hypothesize that the formation of these fighting systems might grant us insight into a number of ongoing conversations regarding the spread of globalization and its attendant social disruptions.  Indeed, it even granted us an initial set of contacts from which to begin our research.  So while we did not devote all that many pages to a discussion of our combined years of practice, it was our relationship with Wing Chun that made this specific book possible.

The flip side of this insight is that our dedication to this specific fighting system inevitably foreclosed other possible avenues of investigation.  Consider simply the question of geography.  Wing Chun turned our attention to events in Guangdong in the 19^th century.  Yet would our study have been better served by looking at events in Shanghai during the “roaring 1920s?”  Globalization certainly played a role in the story of that city’s martial arts as well.

The economic development of the Pearl River Delta led us to investigate the urbanization of the TCMA as they found new middle class students in the Republic period.  Clearly that was an important development in the modern history of the Chinese hand combat tradition.  But in directing our attention to these issues we never addressed the much more plebeian Red Spear Uprisings that were ravaging much of the rural countryside of northern China at exactly the same time.

That is an interesting dichotomy precisely because the magical practices of the Red Spears, and Ip Man’s “rationalization” of his Wing Chun system, demonstrate two very different pathways by which China’s martial artists attempted to adjust to the challenges of social and economic upheaval.  Both are fascinating interludes in China’s modern martial arts history.

Nor is it simply possible to investigate everything within a single volume.  Every manuscript has a page limit.  The broadening of a study to include more regions or arts always requires a corresponding sacrifice of depth and detail.  At some point researchers must choose which cases allow them to best test their theories or develop their concepts.

The danger in writing about what we know is that we short-circuit this critical process.  Rather than choosing the best data to test our theories, we begin to select hypothesis based on the data that we already have and want to talk about.  And this can lead to all sorts of problematic tautologies.

In some ways the problem originates with our very concept of “objectivity.”  Short of random assignment, there simply isn’t an objective way to choose a research topic.

Once a research question and theory have been settled on, there are all sorts of checks and balances that can be put in place to try and make the research process more objective.  Yet most students are drawn to invest their scarce resources of time and research funding into those topics that already speak to them.

This suggests that we rarely approach our research questions as perfectly blank slates.  When beginning a “new” project, students will already have some idea of what the interesting puzzles are as they begin to formulate their research design.  As a result, some sorts of questions are never asked.  Or there may be certain types of data that are rarely considered.  These silences can have a profound impact on the sort of literature that develops and our overall level of understanding.

Objectivity is a more complicated subject than it first appears.  Bias can be introduced into a study not just in the formal ways in which theories are tested.  It can get baked into the very topics that we choose to investigate.  That fact that all of us bring our own life experience to the table when deciding what research projects to pursue suggests that we must proceed with caution when evaluating our own work.

In some ways I envy modern anthropologists.  The nature of the ethnographic method suggests that they must think deeply about how their own cultural background and assumptions affects their ability to observe and understand the communities that they seek to engage with.  In recent decades we have seen the rise of a somewhat “confessional” strain within the literature as anthropologists realize that they cannot treat their own backgrounds with silence.

Rather, to fully understand the ethnographic data that they seek to relate, readers must also know something about the individuals what produced the record.  What were their goals?  What theories shape their understanding of the tasks at hand?  What possible conflicts or sources of bias might color their presentation of the material?

The structure of your typical “Large-N” quantitative study does not provide much room for this sort of self-reflection. Yet at the bare minimum authors can discuss the hypothesis formation and data selection process. The Introduction or Preface of a historical work may grant a researcher more room to reflect on what drew her to a given project.  What sorts of theoretical tools and life experiences led her to the conclusion that the questions asked are significant ones?

Alexander C. Bennett’s recent historical study Kendo: Culture of the Sword (University of California Press, 2015) is an interesting example of how this sort of discussion might develop. While noting that modern kendo simply is not the same thing as medieval Japanese military fencing, the author goes to great lengths to outline both his personal introduction to the art as a high-school student living in Japan, and his subsequent professional engagement with the world of Budo.

Some of the stories that he relates in the first few sections of his book are helpful in giving readers the tools to understand the basic social and technical structures of a new martial arts system.  More importantly, these discussions create a window onto the background of the author who shaped this research, including his own training history, academic background and potential sources of bias as he discusses an art that has had a profound formative impact on his life.

Photo Credit: Alan D. Wilson.

Conclusion: “What is my style?”

Readers of even empirically grounded works might benefit from knowing a little more about an author’s personal practice.  Yet on a deeper level the individuals who would probably benefit the most from this exercise would be the authors themselves.  None of us approach our research as perfectly disinterested automatons.  In preparing to explain our backgrounds to others we begin the process of revealing to ourselves motivations that may otherwise have remained unspoken.

Only then can we start to ask ourselves some really important questions.  Have I really selected the best set of observations to explore my theory?  What unconscious assumptions have led me here?  Am I asking a question that is critical to the development of the literature, and if not, what would make it more relevant to my readers?

In short, I fully understand the unease that might be invoked by questions such as, “What is your style?” in an academic conference setting.  As was already pointed out, they can all too easily slip into a sort of posturing where reasoned arguments are replaced with appeals to authority that, while common in some training halls, may have no place in the lecture hall.

It is also well worth remembering that as we succeed in promoting martial arts studies as a research area we are likely to see an increasing number of scholars entering our ranks for purely theoretical, rather than personal, reasons.  Of course they will have their own unstated assumptions, biases and backgrounds that need unpacking.  Still, this would be an important sign that we are succeeding in demonstrating the utility of our field to the disciplines at large.  As such, this question may lose some of its salience in the future.

Yet at the present moment in time, it seems that most students in this research area have a strong personal attachment to one or more martial arts styles.  By design these are social institutions that promote a surprising degree of dedication and personal loyalty.  A number of studies in our own literature have shown the profound ways in which they can shape an individual’s norms, beliefs and identity.

We have no reason to believe that scholars are inherently immune to these processes.  This suggests that we also have no apriori reason to believe that an individual’s personal study won’t have some sort of impact on their research. Indeed, most social scientists long ago gave up the notion that something like perfect objectivity was possible or even desirable.

It may be bad form to go around challenging our colleagues by asking, “What’s your style?”  Yet the question is not without value.  It is one that we should constantly be asking ourselves.  How has my practice shaped my approach to martial arts studies?  It is a question with an almost infinite number of answers.  They may even evolve and change as we move from one project to the next.  Everyone will reap the benefits from these critical moments of introspection.

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If you enjoyed this post you might also want to read:  Lives of Chinese Martial Artists (12): Tang Hao – The First Historian of the Chinese Martial Arts

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

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!

Chinese Martial Arts in the News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

Kung Fury: Contemporary Debates in Martial Arts Cinema
Paul Bowman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Meaning of a Bruised Elbow

I have been working on a couple of projects that have taken me away from blogging in recent days.  These are the sorts of commitments that should bear fruit for the readers of Kung Fu Tea down the road, but in the mean time they are making it difficult to keep up with my regular writing schedule.  As such, this post may be a bit briefer and less structured than some of my other essays.

Even though my time has been tight, I still feel compelled to sit down and write about a subject that has come up multiple times, in different guises, over the last couple of weeks.  Specifically, how should we interpret instances of failure in when thinking about the martial arts?

Failure is a broad topic.  My right arm is currently sporting prominent bruises from my lightsaber combat class earlier this week.  They are an immediate reminder that I failed to properly defend myself from disarming attacks in a free-sparring session.  That in turn speaks to a certain failure in understanding of structure and range in a new style of fencing.  Had I been under attack from a real lightsaber wielding opponent, I likely would have ended up like Luke in Empire Strikes back or Anakin in Episode II!  Luckily in this galaxy functioning lightsabers are rare.

Practicing martial artists are quite used to dealing with these sorts of performance related failures.  It is a normal and expected part of training.  They point out areas where systemic effort can be applied and improvements in performance can be made.  In some cases they may even lead to a fundamental rethink of one’s basic concepts and approach to a problem.  Failure then becomes a valuable spur to new research that may lead to important innovation.

While I have no privileged knowledge of what actually happened in Bruce Lee’s much discussed duel with Wong Jack Man, it is interesting to note that the outcome of the fight is often discussed in these exact terms.  It was an instance of technical failure that led to a series of important innovations and eventually the development of a new combat philosophy, Jeet Kune Do.  In this sense the right sorts of failures are critical to both progress in our personal training and popular narratives about innovation in the martial arts more generally.

Yet failure is not always a strictly personal matter.  Scholars of martial arts studies can apply the “three levels of analysis” to an examination of this concept.  We might see failure as occurring at the level of individual practice (as in the Bruce Lee case), at the institutional level (such as the collapse of an individual school or lineage), or at the broader systemic level, such as the death of all the local folk arts in Guangdong following the 1949 liberation.

Just as an individual fighter might watch tapes of his or her previous fights in an attempt to improve their future performance, students might look at past failures of martial arts to create better theories of how they function and what social roles they actually perform.  Indeed, those of us in the social sciences often find ourselves in the rather paradoxical position of trying to create theories better able to “predict” instances of failure in the past, rather than talking very much about the future at all.

This sort of “post-diction” is one of the main ways that we attempt to test the actual strength of our understanding.  If I create a theory of institutional failure that can explain the decline of the Japanese martial arts in the current era, I would be more likely to put my trust in it if it could also be shown to also speak to their near disappearance in the middle of the 19^th century.  Can our theories grant us insight into past events?

Finding Failure amid Success

All of this sounds simple enough.  Yet as any graduate student in the social sciences will quickly tell you, the most challenging aspects of research projects are often not theoretical but empirical.  Is it actually possible to gather enough reliable historical data to test a theory in anything like a scientific way?  Lots of promising projects simply don’t happen because basic issues in research design cannot be overcome.

Data reliability can also be a critical issue when we start to think about trends in popular culture.  Again, the idea of “failure” is critical to this entire discussion.  By definition most of the organizations that we are aware of entered the historical record and our personal consciousness precisely because, to one degree or another, they succeeded.  Instances of institutional failure have a much harder time making it into the historical record.  As such they tend to be systematically underrepresented.

This is especially true as you go back further in time.  In the case of the Chinese martial arts it does not take all that many decades for the historical record to become very slim indeed.  When we consider the dozen or so manuals that have come down to us form the late Ming period there is a disproportionate probability that these ideas or movements were quite popular at the time and enjoyed a wide circulation.  That is precisely the reason that they are what managed to make it down to us.  Being steeped in this literature it is all too easy to forget that we know very little of the “also-rans” that failed to leave a mark on the literary cannon.

This historical distortion is compounded by the ways in which we talk about important teachers, masters and lineages in the Chinese martial arts in the present.  During the construction of our folk histories success is duly noted, but instances of institutional failure tend to be glossed over.

Interestingly these omissions don’t always apply to the personal or systemic levels.  Instances of massive institutional collapse (for instance the fall of the Ming dynasty, or the Chinese civil war) often become the backdrops for important lineage narratives.  And cases of individual technical failure (frequently a lost challenge match or some other personal setback) are often invoked to demonstrate the persistence and determination of the ancestors.  But there is a middle range of failure that these accounts are usually silent on.

Ip Man’s biography is particularly instructive in this regard.  The popular sketch of his life notes that in 1949 he moved from Foshan to Hong Kong, bringing his beloved Wing Chun Kung Fu with him.  Due to his diminished economic circumstances he was forced to take on students and he began to publicly teach the art.  His students spread the system through their success in challenge matches, and in a remarkably short period of time (30 years) Wing Chun went from being an obscure local style (unknown even in Hong Kong) to one of the mostly widely practiced forms of kung fu within the global community.

All of which is good so far as it goes.  Yet it is interesting to consider what this account leaves out.  Many of Ip Man’s classes were not particularly successful.  In fact, at the beginning of his career in Hong Kong he struggled with student retention.  Class after class failed.  One of the reasons why he was teaching in so many locations was that he was looking for an institutional formula that could catch on, and his early efforts (by in large) failed.  Simply doing what had been done in Guangdong a generation earlier was not going to work.

Nor did his problems with student retention vanish once he discovered new ways to make Wing Chun training more interesting to Hong Kong’s peripatetic urban students.  Retention again became a problem in the middle of his career following the advent of his relationship with another woman.  Then at the end of his career there were institutional disputes that led to him walking out on the VTAA, taking much of the organization’s teaching staff with him.

Anyone interested in exploring these instances further can do so in a number of sources, including my own recent volume which details much of Ip Man’s career. Yet the more immediate point is that we tend to remember only the success of the Wing Chun system and have forgotten many of the setbacks and early failures that it faced.  This creates a distorted view of the past.  Specifically, when we systematically disregard instances of institutional failure we often find ourselves creating theories that have no ability to accurately explain the system’s eventual success.

The truly scary thing about the Ip Man example is how quickly all of this can happen.  A number of Ip Man’s personal students are still alive, as are his two sons.  These individuals have even offered (and sometimes published) very helpful accounts of his early years speaking to both his successes and failures.  Yet the sort of public discussions that have risen up around the style (even in more scholarly circles) exhibits an odd flattening of the historical record.  So often our discussions go from Ip Man arriving in HK in 1949, to his instruction of Bruce Lee, to the explosion of “Kung Fu Fever” in the 1970s while skipping all of the intervening moments in time.

The 1930s were another critical period in the history of the Chinese martial arts, as were the 1890s.  Yet every generation you go back the thinner the historical record becomes.  Most of the failures are simply lost to history.

Failure in the Age of Google

Dealing with these sorts of distortions is challenging.  But in truth historians of popular culture have been aware of these issues for some time.  Once we realize that our data tends to skew we can do something about it.

Some of my recent work looking at the development of “Lightsaber Combat” as a hyper-real martial art in the post-2000 period made me realize that there is another side to this problem that has generated less thought. The internet has had a profound impact on our ability to trace the genesis and growth of all sorts of recent movements.  Once again, this forces us to carefully consider how we interpret instances of failure.

While trying to understand a little bit more about the origins and nature some of the lightsaber groups that currently exist, I found myself going through cached threads on old discussion forums.  What I found was a painstakingly complete record of every to attempt to start a local meet up in the park, a new club or to resurrect a beloved organization.  And most of these efforts were, on an objective level, failures.

No one showed up to the park.  No one could agree on the goal of the club.  Or everyone suddenly remembered why their beloved group had exploded the first time after an ill-conceived attempt to “get the band back together.”  Some of these groups (if you were lucky) failed with a whimper, others went out with a spectacular (and probably scarring) bang.

One way or another, the message was clear.  The vast majority of attempts to do anything end, at one point or another, in institutional failure.

I would be lying if I said that just reading this stuff was not incredibly depressing.  I started to wonder “why did lightsaber combat fail so completely”….and then I caught myself.

This is not a movement that has failed (at least not yet).  From its birth, sometime in the early 2000s, it has grown incredibly quickly.  And as long as Disney keeps putting out blockbuster Star Wars movies (which they look set to do for the foreseeable future) it will continue to grow at a healthy pace.

Suddenly I had a sense that this is what it must have been like to be Ip Man.  Even in a period of active growth, failed schools and empty classes will always outnumber cases of spectacular success.  Entrepreneurs note that nine out of ten small businesses fail in their first year.  I would suspect that the same must be true of martial arts clubs and even casual meet-ups.  Yet this is not always a reflection of the health of a system, whether it is taijiquan, wing chun or lightsaber combat.  Often it just reflects the inherent challenges of putting together a new group.

The problem that students of popular culture face when they look to the more distant history of the Chinese martial arts is that many of the instances of institutional failure are self-erasing.  They just don’t appear in the historical record, skewing our understanding of why some groups actually succeeded.

Students of modern movements face the opposite problem.  Google forgets nothing…absolutely nothing.

Every failed school or meet-up is just as visible now as the day that it occurred.  Within this vast landscape of data it becomes increasingly difficult to make out the shape of the forest for the density of the trees (both standing and fallen).  It is ironic that the digital footprints of a movement which has died, and one that is still exploding, often look pretty similar at a certain level of granularity.

While the lineage myths of the past may further obscure this data, I personally have found that a few well selected “expert interviews” can do wonders for revealing the lay of the land in the post-google era.  In econometrics we often speak of the difference between “statistical” and “substantive” significance.  The former tells us that a trend is real, while the later suggests how big it actually is.  In an era of data overload, ethnography and expert interviews are important tools for actually establishing the direction of trends and their growing or declining magnitude.  Methodological triangulation can really help us to get a handle on some of these issues.

In our personal training we all want to know how to become better martial artists.  Likewise in our academic research we seek to understand why these traditional fighting systems have succeeded.  Ironically, in both cases, the key to understanding success is to pay much more attention to instances of failure.  In the absence of true large-N datasets, keeping it all in perspective is a challenge.

Either failure is too hidden by the historical record, or too eternally present in the collective machine mind that defines our virtual consciousness. Both of these possibilities create problems for those wishing to understand the inner-working of the martial arts.   Nor are there always easy answers to separate out the signals from the noise.  Still, the value of failure has always been in its ability to point out the areas that still need work. As such it is always worthy of our study.

oOo

If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to see: Why is Ip Man a “Role Model”?

oOo

A classic postcard, circa 1920s.

Kung Fu and the Marriage Market

Love and Kung Fu simply do not mix.  At least that is the strongly implied message to be found on the pages (and silver screens) of many traditional Chinese martial arts stories.  Things are different in the West.  In America audiences cheered when Daniel LaRusso walks away with both the tournament trophy and the girl after defeating the comically Californian villains of the Cobra Kai dojo.

In that case the hero’s mastery of the martial arts seems to be legitimated by his growing success in the romantic and social realms.  The result is a coming of age story in which the previously awkward Daniel is now seen as fully equipped to face the challenges of adulthood.   And it is clear by the end of the film that his girlfriend has decided that he is quite the catch.  That is a critical point which we will be returning to.

All of this makes a fascinating juxtaposition with the early Wong Fei Hung films produced between the 1950s and the 1970s.  In these films the hero goes to (what might appear to American audiences) ridiculous lengths to avoid even the appearance of fraternizing with members of the opposite sex.  In of my favorite scenes an older Wong has been badly beaten and is rescued by two women who find him unconscious in the street.  They tend to his wounds and give him a place to recover.  But upon awaking and finding himself in a woman’s bedroom the solidly patriarchal hero literally throws himself out a window to get back onto the street, where the bad guys are.  It is all done to great comic effect, but the underlying message is clear.  A woman’s bedroom is a greater threat to our hero than all of the sword wielding baddies that central casting can call up.

Or maybe Wong Fei Hung’s fears were more practical.  I am not a literary scholar, but I have noticed a few things when reading older martial arts stories.  Nothing good ever comes from romantic entanglements within the realm of the martial arts.  In general dedicated love stories seem to have focused on promising young scholars, headed off to the big city to make their mark on the world (usually through the examination system), and the various muses that inspired them.

Relationships in Kung Fu stories typically ended in either tragedy or treachery.  Water Margin, sometimes called the ‘Old Testament’ of the Chinese martial arts is a striking example of this.  Every appearance of a woman in the text (with one exception) is immediately followed by someone’s bloody death.  It is almost as though the narrator is trying to tell us something.  The Chinese hero stands at the crossroads of martial glory and romantic success, but he can only choose one path.

Various scholars have noted that this oddly persistent pattern in Chinese martial arts fiction reflects important underlying social patterns.  These, in turn, suggest some interesting conclusions about the social function of the traditional Chinese martial arts during the late Qing and Republic periods that are worth considering.

Specifically, the martial arts tended to attract socially marginal individuals.  These were the “bare sticks,” younger males from impoverished backgrounds with no prospects for an inheritance, marriage or families of their own (in point of fact these three factors were closely related).  These sometimes volatile young men made up the majority of many martial arts schools.

As Valerie Hudson has noted, historically there has been a strongly positive correlation between an increase in the percentage of marginal, unmarriageable males, and social instability in China.  In late imperial China this often took the form of community violence with an increase in the size and scale of clan warfare, salt and opium smuggling and both banditry and piracy.

The problems that these young men faced were not merely economic in nature.  Masculinity in Chinese culture was not seen as a default trait enjoyed by anyone who happened to be born male.  It was something that had to be socially enacted and accepted.  The highly Confucian society saw fatherhood and family leadership (and even waiting patiently to inherit such a role) as the only legitimate expression of masculinity.

Thus the “bare sticks” were forced to find alternate institutions by which they could construct a discourse arguing that they too were males.  The realm of the martial arts was an obvious choice.  Here they could literally embody male Yang energy.  And local society needed any organization that it could get to control and channel the disruptive potential of these young men.  At times the government would even open new militia units with the express purpose of keeping them away from banditry and off the streets.  If civil society decided that it wanted to finance very similar ventures in the form of boxing or crop-watching societies, so much the better.

Unfortunately the martial arts are associated with violence, and other social values that are not exactly “respectable” in Confucian discourse.  These negative associations again challenged the public honor (and masculinity) of students.  So what better way to demonstrate one’s capacity for self-control (and to reinforce the social values of the community as a whole) than to express an exaggerated dedication to chastity in other areas of one’s life?

Thus the traditional Kung Fu story does something pretty amazing.  It attempts to make a virtue of a necessity, and in so doing argues that individuals who are often dismissed as being useless and of no value to society should have a key role in upholding its values.  While commenting on this complex of stories and values, Boretz noted that the Confucian social system enjoyed so much stability for so long precisely because it transformed those groups most inclined to attack the status quo into its greatest defenders.  Wong Fei Hung was actually making a pretty complex argument about the role of martial artists in society when he threw himself out that window.

A vintage postcard showing a beauty in a western style dress. Circa 1920.

The Martial Arts, Marginality and Marriage

The best efforts of the Jingwu Association and other reformers notwithstanding, it is not clear that the modern Chinese martial arts ever managed to leave behind their association with social marginality.  Most of the students at the large Wushu academies in Henan and Shandong come from impoverished farming families who simply cannot afford better educational opportunities for their children.  My own research has shown a strong correlation between economic class and membership in certain martial arts organizations in southern China during the 1920s-1930s.  And when Dr. Daniel Amos revisited the same area to conduct his doctoral research 50 years later, even though society had been totally transformed by the events of 1949, the linkages between class and the martial arts were still firmly in place.  In fact, he dedicated much of his research to an exploration of marginality in the world of southern China’s martial artists.

Similar patterns can be detected on this side of the Pacific as well.  Professional boxers disproportionately come from challenged backgrounds.  And while different sorts of adult martial arts students are drawn to the martial arts for their own reasons, many of them share feelings of personal, economic or social insecurity.  Yet (returning to Daniel-san) perpetual bachelorhood has not typically been part of the mental image of the average western martial artist.

In fact, I know a number of couples who were brought together by their mutual interest in the martial arts.  This is pretty well attested in the more traditional arts, but I have even started to run across it in my recent lightsaber research.  I was reviewing old youtube footage of NY Jedi performances while a member of the organization narrated the action for me.  Over the course of our conversation I was struck by the number of marriages and relationships that seem to have come out of this single group of lightsaber practitioners.

Given the ostensibly celibate nature of the Jedi Order (a trait which seems to have been inspired by stories of chaste Christian knights and mysterious Shaolin monks) I found this to be ironic.  But should it have been?

In the West the martial arts have always promised a certain measure of transcendence. Yet they have found their greatest success as “coming of age” tools, initiating individuals into a more empowered role in society.  A black belt meant something when I was growing up because every other kid in school believed that it did, and so did their parents.

One wonders, however, if this is about to change.  For that matter, how generalizable are my personal observations?  Perhaps the social situation of the martial arts in the West has been (or is about to become) more similar to the traditional Chinese case than we care to admit.

Powerful and much discussed demographic trends are afoot in American society.  Oddly students of martial arts studies have remained largely silent on their implications.  The most important of these are the growing gap in income inequality and the declining number of children being raised in stable two parent homes.  In fact, individuals across the board are marrying later or not at all.

These facts, seemingly separate observations, were brought together by two law school professors (June Carbone and Naomi Cahn) in their 2014 Oxford University Press volume, Marriage Markets: How Inequality is Remaking the American Family.  To be clear, this frequently discussed book does not directly mention the martial arts at all, but it raises some interesting puzzles and possibilities for students of martial arts studies.

As was also the case with late 19^th century China, America today is witnessing rapid increases in income inequality.  Much of this can be traced directly to the decline in certain modes of employment as more of the domestic economy has been exposed to international markets and free trade.  All of this has created a fairly predictable pattern of winners and losers.  Highly educated professionals in the right fields are the big winners from this shift in trade policy.  But those without a college education have been hit hard by the collapse in the manufacturing sector.

While a complicated argument, and too nuanced to fully review here, the authors argue that the expected social results of this shift have been reinforced by the rational decisions that American adults have been making about the utility of marriage. [Interested readers can find a more comprehensive review of their argument here]  Whereas Americans once married across class lines, increasingly individuals are marrying within their own social groups.

This tends to compound the accumulation of wealth at the top of the pyramid as more wealthy people delay marriage while looking for suitable partners.  They also tend to hold liberal views about the equitable distribution of household responsibilities, have a lower divorce rate and enjoy greater economic resources to invest in their children’s future (thus ensuring their future economic success).

At the bottom end of the spectrum the situation is very different. Job security has always mattered more to working class families than pure income, and in the current economy that seems to be the one luxury that no one can afford.  The employment fields once dominated by men have been hard hit by declining wages, massive restructuring efforts and a general deterioration in reliable employment.  Women, however, have seen their ability to earn a living increase.  Thus for an increasing number of working class women investing in a marriage partner seems like a bad deal.

Yet children raised in single income households do not enjoy all of the same educational and social benefits as their more wealthy peers.  It turns out that the greatest predictor of living in poverty is having grown up in poverty.  In this way a self-reinforcing cycle is established in which social dynamics are accelerating the trend toward a growing intergenerational income gap between the haves and the have not.

In short, Carbone and Cahn are arguing that shifts in economic structure and social norms have probably made Daniel a much less attractive marriage partner now than when he first appeared in movie theaters in 1984.  For much of America that cute boy next store has become an economic liability.

Vintage advertisement, circa 1920.

Testing the Promise of the Martial Arts

It is important to remember that many of the martial arts (particularly the Chinese ones) were born during moments of cultural, economic and social crisis.  Hard times should not doom these systems.   They have thrived during similar periods in the past.  But why was that so?

Scholars have noted that the traditional martial arts have made a number of explicit and implicit promises to communities in an attempt to demonstrate their utility.  It is probably no coincidence that during the economic upheavals that accompanied the end of the Qing dynasty guilds and labor unions across southern China became major sponsors of martial arts schools.  And as I have shown in my own research, certain martial arts organizations even offered some of the same social benefits and safety-nets found in guilds.

Less obviously, martial arts schools also offered their members resources to develop their store of social and human capital. Each of these organizations had committees dedicated to charitable associations, lion dance teams or community affairs.  Rising through the ranks of a martial arts association might give someone their first exposure to management experience, or lessons in accounting.

Of course the martial arts have always promised a certain boost in social status to aggrieved young men, whether the “bare sticks” of 19^th century China or Daniel-san after his move from New Jersey to California.  In short, these sorts of arguments seem to imply that as more individuals find themselves falling into socially or economically marginal positions, the demand for membership in martial arts organizations should increase.  After all, these organizations have been promising to “make the weak strong” since at least the time of General Qijiguang.

Unfortunately I am not sure that recent history bears these expectations out.  A good many traditional martial arts organizations have been declining in the West at exactly the same time income inequality has been rising.  The economic uncertainty of the mid 1970s and early 1980s was in fact associated with a boom of interest in the martial arts, but the same cannot be said of the last decade.

Or can it?  While the fortunes of many traditional martial arts have declines, MMA, Krav Maga and BJJ have all seen their fortunes rise.  Successful film franchises have contributed to the growth of arts such as Wing Chun and Lightsaber Combat.  And parents seem just as interested in securing Taekwondo lessons for their children as ever.  That still seems to be regarded as a good “investment” in future success.

Has the economic downturn impacted the success of certain martial arts styles more than others?  Do some systems appeal to socially marginal individuals while other cater to the relatively well off (a situation seen in certain areas of China in early 20^th century).  And what about the promises of the martial arts?  Can these systems help individuals to rebuild their confidence, gain social capital, acquire new skills and ultimately improve their lot in life?

All of these are fascinating questions, and as a social scientist I would like to test them.  Yet how one would go about doing this is not necessarily obvious.  In ethnographic or case study research it would be possible to rely on one’s own observations to establish the degree of marginality found in a specific setting.  Yet if we wished to test these hypothesis in a large-N framework, establishing a reliable proxy variable would be a challenge.

Again, the work of Carbone and Cahn suggest why this might be the case.  Marginality is a slippery if useful concept.  It is certainly related to income, but it cannot be reduced to income.  An individual earning $30,000 dollars a year in a secure job might be less marginal than someone who earned $40,000 but who went through seasonal layoffs.  Likewise educational status, the social prestige of one’s occupation, family background, shared values and other factors all seem to contribute to marginality in their findings on income inequality. In point of fact, it might be impossible for researchers to create a single statistical metric that captures all of these factors.

Then again, the research of Carbone and Cahn also suggests that other individuals may have done much of the heavy lifting for us.  After all, their work shows that socially marginal individuals get married at much lower rates than other groups within society.  Better yet, data on marital status is relatively transparent, easily coded and readily available in many of the sources of survey data that social scientists already use.

While not a direct measure of marginality, Carbone and Cahn’s work suggests that marriage rates might be an exceptionally accurate proxy variable, capable of capturing the nuances of how this situation has evolved over time.  This, in turn, might suggest more accurate ways of measuring what sorts of students are attracted to different martial arts, how this has shifted over time, and whether these systems are delivering on promises of social improvement.

Qing officials in late imperial China were well aware of the complex links between marginality, marital status, the martial arts and periodic outbreaks of community violence.  It appears that at least some similar mechanisms are still in place today.  One wonders how growing income inequality in the West will affect the success of the modern martial arts.

Can we expect a new generation of boxing bachelors?  Will the supply of social capital built up in styles like Karate or Wing Chun allow their organizations to cross-cut this growing social division?  Or might martial arts classrooms succeed in developing alternate status hierarchies and authentic communities where normal social relationships can continue?  Keeping a close eye on marriage rates might give us a simple tool to address some very complex problems.  But what would Wong Fei Hung think?

oOo

If you enjoyed this discussion you might also want to read:  China’s One Child Policy and Martial Arts Studies

oOo

“Chinese Reoccupy Great Wall Area.” 1933. Still taken from Vintage Newsreel.

“In the west, Asian martial arts are everywhere.  They are part of the texture of popular consciousness.  Nonetheless I want to argue that they remain marginal.  That is to say, although Westerners may see them often, and all over the place, they are not simply the norm.”

-Paul Bowman, “the Marginal Movement of the Martial Arts: From the Kung Fu Craze to Master Ken.” 2015.

Introduction

Students of martial arts studies stand at a perpetual crossroads.  It springs from the very nature of our subject.  A great many of us are current or former martial artists.  We have an intimate understanding of the embodied physicality of these practices.  As much as I like talking about the history of Wing Chun, I will be the very first person to say that if you want to understand what the art actually is, don’t start by reading a book or blog post about it.  Not even one written by me.  Go and do it.  Experience the actual system.  Examine how it makes you feel.

At the same time I have to wonder why you are asking me about Wing Chun in the first place?  As a historian I can tell you that it was a pretty obscure art back in 1949.  Chances are good that you first encountered this style through the media, either on TV or film.  That is just fine as the martial arts, while a sensuous experience, have always existed as an aspect of popular culture.  That was also the case in historic Japan and China.  In those countries commercial visual art (woodblock prints), professional storytellers, printed novels and traveling opera performers, spread the stories of various heroes just as effectively as film or videogames do today.

This is why martial arts studies needs to remain an interdisciplinary research area.  It is unlikely that any single methodological toolbox can reveal all that this body of practices has to offer.  On the one hand no less an authority than Douglas Wile has argued that Universities have an unprecedented opportunity to become involved in teaching, preservation and analysis of actual martial arts systems and traditions.

Still, we would be foolish to assume that the physical practice of the martial arts is a self-interpreting process.  The popular literature is littered with experts, spiritual gurus and ethno-nationalist propagandists all of whom would like assist us in discovering the “true” meaning of our practice.  How could it be otherwise?  The martial arts exist as social institutions, and social power is always somewhat fungible in nature.  That makes it a valuable and contested resource.

This realization should also spark a moment of self-reflection.  Images of these practices were introduced to us through an (often media driven) social discourse long before we started to practice them.  And while our understanding of their nature no doubt grew exponentially as we engaged with them, how do these “first impressions” continue to color our understanding of our practice?  How do they help to explain why some sorts of individuals, and not others, tend to be drawn to the martial arts in the first place?

We probably cannot understand our personal experiences within the martial arts, let alone their broader social impact, if we ignore the discourses which bring new students to the school door.  This is not simply a theoretical question.  For anyone interested in the health and future survival of the traditional martial arts it is a vital topic.

Readers interested in exploring this subject more deeply would be well advised to carefully consider Paul Bowman’s recent conference paper from which the introductory quote was drawn.  I suspect that as we look back on the development of martial arts studies it will be remembered as one of the more important papers given this year, particularly for those interested in the global spread and appropriation of the martial arts.

This paper is also a fun read.  It diverges from the (ever serious) mainstream discussion of history and film, and instead takes a look at the evolution of martial arts humor in the West.  As Bowman reminds us, humor is a powerful tool of analysis because it points to deeply held, and widely shared, cultural frameworks.  If you want to know what the public at large thinks about the martial arts, start by considering what they find funny.  This often reveals more nuanced views than a simple opinion survey might be able to uncover.

Unfortunately Bowman notes that the public spends a lot of time laughing at martial artists, rather than with them.  While these systems have successfully spread themselves throughout Western society, with terms like “Kung Fu” and “Ninja” now being part of popular culture, they always seem to lose out in the realm of respectability politics.

Consider the following.  No parent needs to explain or rationalize their decision to send a child to a summer sports camp, or to push them to excel in gymnastics or basketball.  But parents supporting their children in a Judo class or Kickboxing tournament generally come well-armed with a litany of justifications for their recreational choices.  It keeps my kids active, it teaches them to fend for themselves, it prepares them for the ‘real world,’ and (my personal favorite) it ‘builds character.’  Basketball probably does a lot of the same things.  But no one feels the need to concoct elaborate justifications for allowing their kid to try out for the school team.  It is just a normal and expected part of childhood.  And it is fun.

This is where the martial arts run into trouble.  For all of their name recognition, Bowman notes that they remain separated from the norms and hegemonic discourses that define mainstream western society.  Ergo the constant need to justify them as vehicles for other values that society has deemed to be acceptable.  In that sense our justifications of our practices are very revealing.  They speak to the sorts of questions and concerns that our neighbors might have when they learn that we have just signed a child up for a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class.

The distance between the perceived cultural place of the martial arts and society’s dominant value systems creates a space of puzzlement, tension, and sometimes fear among non-martial artists.  Humor is important as it can be used to either subtly disarm these emotions, or to further marginalize the “deviant” behavior.

“London Sees Thrill of Japanese Sports.”
A Judo match between a British and German competitors. Taken from a vintage newsreel. 1932.

Towards a Media Archeology of Martial Arts Studies: Judo, Kendo and the Dadao on Film     

While I agree with the main thrust of Bowman’s argument I would like to push its application in a more historical direction.  His investigation of the evolution of martial arts humor seems to begin in 1974 with the release of the now iconic disco hit ‘Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting.’  Bowman points out that the meteoric rise of this song through the charts marked, in many ways, the high-water mark of the ‘Kung Fu Craze’ of the early 1970s.

Touched off by grind house Kung Fu films (especially those by Bruce Lee), this interest in the Chinese martial arts had been seen as edgy, counter-cultural and somewhat dark.  This same view was even shared by some in the mainstream martial arts world where Bruce Lee’s movies did not always make a good impression on the more conservative practitioners of the Budo arts.  Yet by the middle of the 1970s the Chinese styles seem to have accomplished what it took the Japanese arts decades to do.  They too became fixtures in the pop culture landscape, and ‘Kung Fu’ quickly joined ‘Karate’ and ‘Judo’ as household words.  Krug places an acceleration in the cultural appropriation of the Asian martial arts as happening in this same time period.

Still, high-water marks foretell an inexorable retreat.  As the Chinese martial arts became famous they quickly lost their aura of danger.  What had been “dark” and mysterious became just another consumer good.

On Main Streets across America, Kung Fu schools opened their doors to throngs of students looking to recapture Bruce Lee’s magic.  The humorous disco hit of 1974 both illustrated and advanced this process.  As Bowman puts it “…the song ‘Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting’ participated in the domestication, sanitization, depoliticizing and, ultimately, ridiculing Kung Fu.”

Nor were the Chinese martial arts alone in this.  As Bowman points out in the rest of the article, what pop culture humorists tended to latch onto after the 1970s was the exotic “Oriental” nature of the martial arts.  The specific culture that gave rise to a given movement tradition (Japan, China, or the Philippines) was less important to western audiences than their essentially “Eastern” nature.  While it often irks aficionados that popular songs or TV shows seemed to confuse Chinese and Japanese traditions Bowman notes that this is simply how these things were perceived by audiences in the West.

Yet what sort of pre-history exists behind all of this.  Is it really the case that the Kung Fu Craze of the 1970s was a totally unique event?  Was this actually the first time that audiences were exposed to the Chinese (or Japanese) martial arts on a massive scale?  And can we trace the often uncomfortable humor that surrounds the martial arts to earlier periods, facing very different political and social challenges?

It seems that one of the hurdles facing students of martial arts studies is a periodic amnesia that grips public discussions of many of these topics.  It is certainly true that Bruce Lee was a unique figure on the western cultural landscape.  Yet he was not actually the first individual to put the Chinese martial arts on film and expose them to national audiences.  Likewise, the Japanese martial arts had gained wide exposure on the silver screen long before Samurai films became favorites of the post-WWII art house theater scene.

While I am still mulling over the specific mechanisms behind this unique form of cultural forgetting, I expect that at least some of it has to do with very basic factors dealing with the advertising and marketing of popular culture products.  The first step in selling the public something “exciting and totally new” is to never remind them that they have actually been exposed to similar things before.  Likewise audiences, in their excitement to be part of a cultural moment, seem inclined to see novelty in places that leave historians and archeologists of popular culture scratching their heads.  Ernest Renan famously remarked that a nation is a product of both collective remembering and forgetting.  It seems that this same sort of forgetting also plays a part in the construction of “new” social and media discourses.

For many research questions the historical antecedents of a phenomenon may not matter.  But in some cases I think they can be quite illuminating.  While the past may be consciously forgotten, its path-dependent structure leaves patterns that shape future events in interesting ways.  This is certainly the case when we examine media representations of Chinese and Japanese hand combat systems.  Consider, for instance, the question of exactly when these things became “humorous” and what that implies about the cultural appropriation of these systems in the west.

“London Sees the Thrill of Japanese Sports.” A still taken from from a vintage newsreel showing a Kendo exhibition match. 1932.

Newsreels: The Japanese and Chinese Martial Arts on Films

Bruce Lee’s iconic ‘Enter the Dragon’ was probably the first Chinese martial art film seen by an entire generation of Americans.  Samurai films had been present in the West for a while, yet they generally reached a smaller audience.  Kyle Barrowman has reminded us that Western audiences were also exposed to the martial arts in a variety of Hollywood films. Yet it is critical to remember that feature films were not the only places where individuals might be exposed to gripping and informative images of the Asian martial arts.

As I have argued elsewhere, the public display and discussion of the Japanese martial arts goes all the way back to the heyday of the magic lantern display.  Heavy glass slides, often delicately painted, along with standardized scripts, provided many late 19^th century and early 20^th century entertainment seekers with their first glimpse of Jujitsu, Kendo, reformed Judo, Sumo Wrestling and the historic Samurai.  Such images and discussions were actually quite popular and widespread almost 70 years before the explosion of the Kung Fu Craze.  More importantly for students of the history of popular media, they also helped to establish basic patterns and audience expectations that shaped the developing film industry.

As such we should not be surprised to discover that the Asian martial arts also made early appearances on film.  Yet they probably had their greatest impact in the now, mostly forgotten, newsreels that ran before or between the feature films that audiences had come to see.

A few words of orientation may be helpful before proceeding.  In an era before television, newsreels were a profoundly important instrument in displaying the sorts of images that would shape public opinion on critical issues.  Prior to the fragmentation of the media market they also had the ability to directly speak to large audiences.  While old newsreel footage may strike us as quaint, we should not underestimate the effect that it had on shaping people’s views of the world.  In fact, newsreels were popular with audiences precisely because (like the magic lantern shows of old) they allowed for a quick glimpse into foreign lands.  For students of popular culture and social discourse they are critical, and substantively important, historical documents.

A full survey of all of the martial arts related newsreels put together in the first half of the 20^th century is well beyond the bounds of what can be done in a single blog post.  But for the purposes of exploring Bowman’s article I would like to ask viewers to consider four specific clips from the late 1920s and early 1930s (an era that is particularly important to my own research).  While I briefly describe each of these scenes I cannot directly host them on this on blog.  Readers are encouraged to take a few moments to view each of these segments as they are discussed.

“London Sees Thrills Of Japanese Sport.” A Vintage Newsreel. 1932.

We begin with two clips that deal specifically with the Japanese martial arts.  These are important because they illustrate many of the trends that Bowman introduced in his paper.  Already in the early 1930s the public discussion of the Japanese martial arts was characterized by humor.  And much of this bears more than a passing resemblance to the sorts of word-play focusing on cultural discomfort that will once again rise to the surface two generations later.

Perhaps my favorite of these clips is titled “London Sees Thrills of Japanese Sports.”  It ran in 1932 and recorded a martial arts exhibition and Judo tournament that pitted competitors from Germany and the UK against each other.  While the German fighters managed to score an upset by winning the tournament, most of the footage focused on the exhibition performances.

The footage is historically quite interesting.  It includes some Kendo Kata work, and a very spirited exhibition match.  Next a member of the audience was selected to try and score a hit against one of the Kendo masters with a Shinai.  Perhaps the highlight of the event was a self-defense demonstration in which a woman defended herself against repeated (somewhat bafoonish) attacks.  While a trained martial artist, the woman in question was an even better actor.  She showed a great ability to play to the audience and give them what they wanted.  And that was humor.  Note the gales of laughter that can heard as she deals damage to her unfortunate attacker, only to end by powdering her nose while standing over the body of her fallen foe.

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

In this case the narrator of the film did not make many jokes himself.  It seemed to be understood by the audience that what they were seeing was intrinsically funny.  And as Bowman suggested, much of that had to do with the western appropriation of Japanese practices and attitudes mixed with questions of gender performance.

In subsequent years the producers of these newsreels would not be so circumspect.  As the 1930s progress (see here, here and here) the humor becomes more pronounced and sharper in its focus.  Increasingly the narrator takes the lead in articulating and directing the humor.  Thus we can almost track the evolution of this particular discourse.  Yet by 1932 it seems to have been already firmly established

Schoolboys “Kendo” at Tokyo. Vintage Newsreel. 1934.

These newsreels are also informative in that they did not confine themselves to domestic subjects.  Like the magic lantern shows that preceded them they functioned as a form of virtual tourism for a public that was hungry for travel and worldly knowledge yet firmly grounded in their own lives.

Schoolboys “Kendo” at Tokyo. Vintage Newsreel. 1934.

Particularly important is this very short segment titled “Schoolboys ‘Kendo’ at Tokyo.” Distributed in 1934 this film offers an important view of the evolving role of the martial arts in the Japanese educational system during a critical decade.  Note that the class has been moved out of the Kendo hall into a training field where the “future soldiers” could acclimate to fighting on bumpy and uneven ground.  The mass engagement between the two groups of sword wielding students rushing towards each other at the end of the film is a great illustration of the sorts of reforms (and militarization) of the Kendo curriculum during the 1930s and 1940s discussed by authors like Hurst and Bennett in their respective histories of Japanese swordsmanship.  In that respect this is another important historical document.

Note that the overall tone of this discussion is once again one of humor.  Even though the practice of the Japanese martial arts by Japanese students should raise no questions of cultural discomfort, humor is still evoked as the dominant paradigm by which a (somewhat disturbing) scene is discussed.  One wonders to what degree imperialist attitudes, or possibly fear in the face of rising militarism, contributed to the establishment of this discourse.

Schoolboys “Kendo” at Tokyo. Vintage Newsreel. 1934.

This makes a fascinating contrast to the next two newsreels.  They show scenes of Chinese hand combat training.  In some ways their historical and ethnographic value is even greater than the preceding films.  Yet how would their Western audiences have described what they were seeing on screen?

An exotic form of military training?  Certainly.  A “martial art”?  Possibly, though that term was not yet as popular in the public discourse as it became after WWII.  A type of self-defense system that they could learn and study for their own betterment and enjoyment (such as Judo, or possibly even Kendo)?  Certainly not.

“Russo/Chinese War Scenes.” Chinese soldiers drill with Pudao. Vintage Newsreel. 1929.

The first of these films is the longest newsreel in the post, yet it is worth watching in full.  The final sequence shows a small formation of soldiers drilling with pudao (horse knives).  The form that they are doing is relatively short, clearly illustrated, and I suspect that someone could even teach it to themselves simply by watching this footage.  It’s a very nice demonstration.

“Russo/Chinese War Scenes.” Chinese soldiers drill with Pudao. Vintage Newsreel. 1929.

“Russo/Chinese War Scenes.” Chinese soldiers drill with Pudao. Vintage Newsreel. 1929.

Yet this is not simply an attempt by the imperial West to show the Chinese as militarily weak or backwards.  This “training exercise” was introduced only after the audience was shown footage of a warlord and his officers, iconic images of modern troops marching along the Great Wall, and ranks of modern machine-guns being deployed in field exercises.  The Chinese military is shown as efficient and well disciplined.  One suspects that a Westerner watching this footage would likely equate the sword drill at the end to the Kendo of the Japanese military.  Which is probably what both the newsreels producer and the Chinese officers who agreed to be filmed both intended.

“Chinese Re-Occupy Great Wall Area.” Vintage Newsreel, 1933.

A similar pattern is seen in our next film, “Chinese Re-Occupy Great Wall Area.”  Dating to 1933 readers of Kung Fu Tea will be pleased to note that the soldiers in this film are drilling with the classic dadao.  Whoever produced this footage went to great lengths to try and make a strong impression on the audience.  The clip juxtaposes images of a vast field of smartly dressed soldiers with close-ups of individual martial artists shot against the sky.  The effect is striking and serves to emphasize the acrobatic elegance of their practice.

“Chinese Re-Occupy Great Wall Area.” Vintage Newsreel, 1933.

The starkness of an individual soldier, engaged in dynamic movement, silhouetted against the sky reminds me of some of John Ford’s iconic WWII footage.  Like his more famous counterpart, this director also had an argument that he was trying to bring to the masses.  It sought to answer once and for all the persistent questions about the willingness and ability of Chinese soldiers to stand and fight.  As if to drive that point home the last sequence is framed by a pair of crossed dadao, inviting the audience to grab one if they dared.

I am interested in these two films because they seem to represent a point of departure in the discussion of the Chinese martial arts in the West.  In one sense what audiences are being exposed to remains remote, especially in comparison to Judo and Kendo.  It is not hard to find newsreel footage of both Western and Japanese practitioners of those arts in the 1930s.  Already they were moving into the realm of cultural appropriation, yet they remain outside of the hegemonic norms and identities.  The result is the emergence of exactly the sort of humor in the 1930s that Bowman predicts and explains in the post-1974 era.

In comparison there is nothing funny about the Chinese sword routines.  They are introduced not as sporting events or community interest stories.  Rather they exist in a grimmer world, one of international conflict, cities falling under martial law and modern armies on the march in Northern Asia.  There are no western practitioners of these arts, and so there is not the same sort of cultural discomfort that Bowman describes.  Those blades instead represent a forbidding reminder of the challenges facing the Chinese people during the 1930s and 1940s.  As such they may make audiences somewhat uncomfortable.  Yet there is nothing humorous about what they represent.

“Russo/Chinese War Scenes.” Chinese soldiers drill with Pudao. Vintage Newsreel. 1929.

Conclusion

Bowman is correct in noting that there is an important relationship between humor and the media driven global spread of the martial arts.  However, this post suggests that this basic pattern may have been established much earlier than the 1970s.  The newsreel footage demonstrates that these discourses were already in place (and even began to accelerate and evolve) by the 1930s.  If you are willing to go back and look at the writing in sports pages many of the same sorts of jokes and subtle concerns about identity masculinity and race can be found in the early years of the 20^th century, just as Jujitsu begins to establish its presence in the West.

The Chinese martial arts, on the other hand, do not seem to come into their comedic own until much later.  This should not be taken as an indication that they were totally unknown, or that Bruce Lee was the very first Chinese martial artist to do something amazing on film before Western audiences.  The newsreel footage that we have reviewed here probably had a striking impact on the audiences that saw it during the early 1930s.  Yet it did not generate the uncomfortable humor that Bowman is interested in as it posed no threat to the West’s identity or dominant values.  Nor was it remembered decades later.

This provides additional support to Bowman’s central argument that (with some notable exceptions) the comedic discourse around the martial arts does not seem to be driven by pure racism.  More important is a critique of how certain types of westerners (often individuals already considered to be marginal by their own societies) seek to live out their fantasies by appropriating alternate models of masculinity or mastery.

What is left unresolved by all of this is the question “why?”  Why is there less public engagement with the Chinese arts than the Japanese one from the 1920s-1940s?  The immediate danger is that students of martial arts studies will fall back on the old trope that prior to the 1970s the world of Kung Fu was insular because the Chinese themselves were racist.  Their arts were not spread because they refused to teach outsiders.

This narrative conveniently ignores the truth that it was the Chinese-American community itself that was being victimized by systemic racism during the 19^th and 20^th century.  It also seems to neglect the fact that while a great many westerners were interested in learning about the Japanese martial arts, very few people seem to have had any interest in the Chinese systems, even when they were advertised to the public through newsreels such as these, performed at the 1936 Olympics, demonstrated by Ivy-League Chinese students as part of popular flood and famine relief programs, or widely seen during Chinese New Year displays in major urban areas.

Ultimately these things were not hidden from the public so much as they were studiously ignored.  Bruce Lee turned out to be a pivotal figure not because he was first to teach the arts, but because he managed to change what an entire generation of people wanted.

Yet his was not the first invitation.  These newsreels are important as they record early attempts to shape a more favorable public opinion of China in the West by showcasing its traditional martial arts.  Together the Dadao and Pudao disrupted the notion that the Chinese people were weak, the so called “sick man of East Asia,” and unwilling to stand and fight back against imperial aggression.  They attempted to showcase a highly disciplined army that had mastered both the modern technologies of the machine gun and mechanized transport, while staying connected to the cultured heritage of its past.  While America may have awoken to the beauty and potential of the Chinese martial arts only in the 1970s, these newsreels are a fascinating reminder that the hand of Kung Fu diplomacy had first been extended to the Western public at least 40 years earlier.

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If you enjoyed this post see you might also want to read: Zheng Manqing and the “Sick Man of Asia”: Strengthening Chinese Bodies and the Nation through the Martial Arts

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The Seven Form of Lightsaber Combat

 

“When there is a fake—hippopotamus, dinosaur, sea serpent—it is not so much because it would not be possible to have the real equivalent, but because the public is meant to admire the perfection of the fake and its obedience to the program.  In this sense Disneyland not only produces illusions, but—in confessing it—stimulates a desire for it: A real crocodile can be found in a zoo, and as a rule it is dozing or hiding, but Disneyland tells us that faked nature corresponds much more to our daydream demands.  When, in the space of twenty-four hours, you go (as I deliberately did) from the fake New Orleans of Disneyland to the real one, and from the wild river of Adventure Land to a trip on the Mississippi, where the captain of the paddle-wheel steamer says it is possible to see alligators on the banks of the river, and then you don’t see any, you risk feeling homesick for Disneyland, where the wild animals do not have to be coaxed. Disneyland tells us that technology can give us more reality than nature can.”

Umberto Eco. 1986. “Travels in Hyper-Reality.”  In Travels in Hyper-Reality: Essays. Harcourt. p. 40.

“The speed, balance, the violence.  Kendo was everything that the Jedi and Sith are.”

Nick Gillard. 2015. The Evolution of the Lightsaber Duel.  ESPN. Min: 18:20.

Introduction

This post begins with a confession.  The question mark in the title is more honest than I am comfortable admitting.  On the surface it does not seem at all certain that the Star Wars films should be thought of as martial arts stories.  They are clearly a mash-up, a visual collage, showing many influences.  Their eclectic nature allowed George Lucas’ actual genius as an editor and compiler (the areas where I feel he truly excels) to shine through.

One does not have to look too hard to find the influences of the pulp science fiction serials of the 1940s and 1950s in the DNA of these films.  Flash Gordon is present, as are the ray guns and laser swords of that era. These films are also westerns, conveying more than a hint of the “cowboy ethos.”  More than anything else, they seem to be romantic adventures, deeply indebted to the swashbucklers of an earlier age.  That is a fine template of a quintessentially American “coming of age” story.

Yet I have never been able to shake the feeling that the Star Wars franchise played a critical role in aiding and abetting the cultural appropriation of the Asian martial arts in the West.  When Lucas released Episode IV: New Hope in 1977 (and even more, The Empire Strikes Back in 1980) he sowed the fields a subsequent generation of strip-mall Sensei would reap.

Historically speaking, the popularity of the Asian martial arts had been growing since the 1950s.  Bruce Lee’s release of Enter the Dragon in 1973 catapulted these fighting systems into the mainstream of popular consciousness.  Yet this newfound popularity came with hints of notoriety.

Not everyone in the America of the 1970s was equally enthusiastic to see legions of young people imitating Bruce Lee on playgrounds.  And to the extent that his message of liberation was taken up in the African-American and Latino communities, the spread of the Chinese martial arts played directly into the social cleavages and racial fears of the decade. [Nor should we ignore the important work of the African-American martial artists who predated Lee.]

Luke Skywalker’s appearance a few years later both benefited from, and served to accelerate, the social normalization of the martial arts in America.  As the spread of the Asian fighting systems became more popular and commercial, the entire project started to seem less threatening.  It began to resemble something that could be integrated into the economic and social structures of the day, rather than being a threat to them.

Yet there was still the question of why?  Outside of the sheer coolness of the exercise, why would someone dedicate themselves to training in the arcane arts of hand combat in an era whose anxieties were dominated by the Cold War and the prospect of a nuclear holocaust?  Given that most potential martial artists were rather young, why should worried parents in expensive neighborhoods be willing to bankroll any of these activities?  I suspect this is where Star Wars really enters the story of the Western martial arts community.

Luke receiving his fathers lightsaber in Episode IV: A New Hope (1977).

An elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

One of the immediate objections that I have received when raising the possibility of thinking of the Star Wars franchise as martial arts films (or at least putting them in dialogue with the genera) is that they contain no actual hand combat.  Where is the kung fu, the boxing, the grappling?  Indeed, the climatic final battle of the first film happens as the protagonists match their piloting skills against the Empire’s best and brightest.

While a reasonable critique, I suspect that this takes too narrow a view of what a martial arts film can be.  Given my research background I have acquired a great respect for southern Kung Fu films, especially the older ones with their tales of local lineage feuds and rival schools.  Yet there have always been other strains of martial arts story telling.  In Japan Samurai films tended to focus almost exclusively on armed combat and various forms of dueling.  We know that Kurosawa’s films, such as the “Seven Samurai” and “The Hidden Fortress,” had a formative effect on Lucas’ development as a film maker.

The Chinese populace also showed considerable variability in their cinematic tastes.  During the 1960s the Shaw Brothers produced a large number of Wuxia (or Swordsman) films that tended to be both more romantic in nature and to place a greater emphasis on weapons (which were always present in earlier eras) rather than boxing.  The One Armed Swordsman (1967) is a classic example of such a piece.

Thus the lack of fisticuffs alone cannot disqualify the Star Wars films as representative of the martial arts genera.  Perhaps the most important thing to note is that the way that combat is portrayed in each of these films represents cultural traditions and values.  When we see dramatic shifts in the sorts of representations of violence that are popular, it often pays to ask whether social values are changing. In the case of Hong Kong, the influx of massive numbers of non-Cantonese speaking refugees in the 1950s and 1960s does seem to have had a substantial impact on the sorts of martial arts stories that were told and how combat was imagined within them.

In a period of rapid change within American society (growing globalization, the Vietnam War, evolving gender and race relations) a return to the sword, and to the traditional values of “a more civilized age” that it represented, may have been deeply comforting to white middle class audiences.  This is not to say that the story-line of Star Wars is universally reactionary in nature.  Being fundamentally a visual collage it actually strikes me as rather hard to characterize.

Lucas was far from the first storyteller to draw upon the “romance of the blade.”  By his own admission he had grown-up watching pirate films and Errol Flynn features which promoted this same myth. As a symbol of Western knighthood, and often incorporated into Christian religious iconography, the symbolic background of the sword is far beyond anything that could be explored in this essay.

Yet if the youth of America were about to embrace the martial arts as a tool for stepping onto the stage of adulthood, one suspects that the image of a lightsaber was more in keeping with Western society’s hegemonic values that the battered and bloodied boxers popularized by Bruce Lee.  In short, while Lee may have massively popularized the martial arts among minority and economically disadvantaged communities, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda made them acceptable for the kids in the suburbs (or at least their parents).

As Bowman observed in a recent paper, the Asian martial arts, while widely known in the West, have never been accepted as representing core social values.  Their spread has caused a certain amount of anxiety which often manifests as a nervous humor.  More often than not martial artists have been laughed at rather than with.

The focus on the lightsaber seen in the Star Wars franchise does something very interesting.  While strongly suggesting Samurai and Wuxia traditions, these images were presented in such a way that they moved the discussion of certain aspects of the martial arts out of counter-hegemonic discourses and into the mainstream of Western popular culture.  Perhaps this is the reason why it is difficult to see the basic parallels with Asian martial arts films.  It all seems too familiar.

Yet there is much more to the Jedi and Sith than just the knightly traditions of the West.  The discussion of the Force, and the many force abilities displayed in the films, strongly suggested the more mystical aspect of the Asian martial arts.  All of this was happening at a time when there was unprecedented interest in Daoism, Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies.

Star Wars helped to normalize and familiarize an entire generation of film goers with these basic concepts.  It did not teach the details of any particular system, so much as it created a social space in which ideas about Qi, or the practice of Qigong, could be personally and then commercially explored.  By packaging these concepts in a way that was entirely acceptable to Western consumers, it created more of a demand for them than would otherwise have existed.

It also provided a lens through which various Asian martial arts traditions could be viewed and initially explained.  How many times have we have heard Star Wars metaphors invoked within traditional martial arts classrooms?  Krug has identified this growing acceptance of Eastern metaphysical systems (including the idea of Qi) as one of the core elements that ultimately allowed for the cultural appropriation of the Asian fighting arts in the West.

It is hard to imagine that George Lucas, if asked in the year 1972, would have admitted to making a martial arts film.  While he is happy to explain the various sources of inspiration that he drew on (including the Samurai films of Kurosawa), he seems to have always perceived his work as falling more in the category of romantic adventure.

This brings up the sticky question of authorial intent.  To what degree should the author’s view of his own work constrain our interpretation of it?  I would respectfully suggest that when engaging in social history a much more important set of questions might be, how did audiences see these films?  And why did they react to them in quite the ways that they did?

The Jedi vs. The Sith

Hyunseon Lee recently presented a paper titled “Martial Arts Film as Global Cinema” which may help to bring some of these questions into sharper focus.  Her research, presented at the 2016 “Kung Fury: Contemporary Debates in Martial Arts Cinema” conference, dealt extensively with the relationship between Chinese opera and martial arts films.  It also noted the ways in which both have transmitted similar cultural values.

Given the importance of Cantonese opera traditions to the development of multiple southern kung fu styles, such discussions have always interested me.  However, she also presented another observation more relevant to the question at hand.  In her research she has identified a list of five core story elements that are central to traditional Chinese martial arts films, and not usually seen (at least as a complete set) in other types of action films.  They are:

1. Conflicts between rival martial arts styles/clans
2. Climactic duels
3. A strong emphasis on the relationship between master and student
4. A discussion of how self-mastery leads to victory over one’s external opponents, which can be seen as an extension of the Confucian “Doctrine of the Mean.”
5. A romance of the hero, either engaged with or turned away from

It is not hard to find each of these elements in every one of the Star Wars films, prequels and now sequels.  The Empire Strikes Back comes the closest to fully embodying all of these points to the exclusion of practically all else.  Yet they define the development of each of the stories in some way or another.

The Star Wars myth is structured by the Manichean struggle of the Dark and Light sides of the Force as manifest by the competing martial and mystical traditions embedded in the Jedi and Sith.  The fratricidal competition between these two groups of warriors drives much of the action in the Star Wars mythos.

Every film features a climatic, mystical, duel.  In the original offering this takes the form of a battle between pilots who seek to employ the Force to guide their actions.  Yet in each of the subsequent films lightsabers are employed as the major tool by which the plot is advanced.

Luke’s relationships with Obi-Wan and Yoda practically defines the first two films in the franchise and has generated a huge amount of fan enthusiasm.  Much of the teaching bequeathed by these masters focuses explicitly on the importance of self-mastery above all else.  Indeed, Anakin Skywalker falls to the Dark Side precisely because he cannot embrace this principal.

Lastly, princesses (or queens) in distress are featured prominently in both the original films and the prequels.  It is however notable the degree to which The Force Awakens, the most recent offering in the series, has attempted to problematize this aspect of the archetypal story-arch.

In short, it should be no surprise that the Star Wars films have managed to capture the feel and texture of martial arts cinema.  While clearly translated into a different cultural context, the plots and story-lines employed parallel the conventions of a typical martial arts film to an almost uncanny degree.  It is thus no coincidence that so many viewers have watched the films, and then wondered what it would be like to embark on Jedi or Sith training.  Recently large numbers of people have gone so far as to invest substantial resources into the construction of hyper-real martial arts movements seeking to answer this very question.

Conclusion: Kendo Conquers Star Wars…Sort of.

I suspect that the initial affinity between Star Wars and the larger world of martial arts cinema was basically a coincidence.  Or more properly, we might say that it was an artifact of the diverse images and types of storytelling that Lucas was drawing from.  Vader’s mask is reminiscent of the ancient Samurai, but his helmet was also distinctly Teutonic in outline.

As the series expanded and evolved there appears to have been more of an effort to “Orientalize” its feel.  Yoda is an almost perfect embodiment of the Western ideal of the mystical Chinese sage, or as Adam Frank would say, the eternally vital and wise “little old Chinese man.”  By the time we get to Qui-Gon Jinn it is hard to believe that we are dealing with anything except an oddly Caucasian version of a wandering Asian swordsman.  While we can never quite place its origin, audiences would find it hard to imagine that his name could be anything except Asian in origin.

The prequels feature what must be considered one of the most gripping retellings of the “Burning of the Shaolin Temple” ever seen on screen.  In many ways Lucas’ adaptation of the famous incident is superior (at least for Western audiences) to the original published versions of the story in 19^th century Chinese Wuxia novels.

In those novels the Shaolin monks are haughty and aggressive.  They are prone to bickering and feuding, often violently, among themselves.  This reflected the fiery temper and fierce independence that Guangdong’s residents (and publishers) valued in their own culture.  It also makes them difficult heroes to sympathize with.  When their Emperor managed to assert control over the situation and burn the renowned temple to the ground, most readers are forced to admit that Empire (evil or otherwise) has restored order to the land.

Much as Eco suggests in the opening quote, Star Wars draws off of these traditions and suggests that they can be improved upon.  We can have heroes who are “more” culturally accessible, princesses that are “more” relatable, and villains that “more” dastardly.  As the Star Wars franchise evolved it deftly identified much of what viewers found interesting in the martial arts films, and then if offered them “more.”  This was the same “more” that Eco identified as being at the root of American consumer culture; more immediacy, more accessibility, more excitement and meaning in life.

By bringing all of this back into the sphere of hegemonic western social values, and aggressively marketing his vision to a public eager for relics of that far away galaxy, Lucas promised that his stories could be “more” than the originals that they were based on.  Eco would surely have been impressed with his efforts.  He might even have declared Star Wars to be a hyper-real martial arts film.  Nor would he have been at all surprised by the immense amounts of money that Disney would be willing to spend to acquire this franchise.  In this regard the two entertainment empires have always been uncannily similar.

It is interesting to consider Nick Gillard’s introductory quote in light of Eco’s observations about the nature of hyper-reality.  Gillard was a fight choreographer who worked on the Star Wars prequels and he recently discussed his body of work on a short documentary, aired on ESPN in late 2015, titled “Star Wars: The Evolution of the Lightsaber Duel.”

This feature was part of the publicity effort that preceded the recent release of the Episode VII: The Force Awakens and focused almost exclusively on the lightsaber.  In many ways this was an obvious advertising ploy.  Not only is the lightsaber one of the most iconic and popular images to emerge from the original franchise, but Luke’s once and future weapon would play a critical role in the plot of the upcoming film.

Still, the ESPN program did not focus exclusively on lightsabers.  Instead the documentary began with an extended discussion of traditional Japanese fencing in the form of Kendo.  Kendo masters were interviewed in Japanese.  Black and white historical footage was shown.  Scenes from classic Samurai films were cut into the action.

Nor was this interest in Kendo limited to the introduction.  Again and again the documentary came back to footage of Kendo experts.  Actors appeared on screen and testified that they had been diligently trained in the art of kendo in preparation for their roles.  Fight choreographers testified that what audiences were watching in various iconic duels (such as Count Duku’s showdown with Yoda) was in fact kendo.  The documentary even came to a close with footage of the American Kendo team being defeated by the South Koreans in the 16^th World Kendo Championship.

By the end of the documentary it was clear that audiences were expected to have absorbed a single message.  The fantasy of lightsaber combat was based on a real martial art.  It had been practiced and drilled and actually performed for them on film.  And that art was kendo, the swordsmanship of the Samurai.

This is a fascinating development in the way that the creators of Star Wars stories (now owned by Disney) have decided to talk about their efforts.  An Asian martial art has seemingly been fully embraced and acknowledged as the root of Star War’s visual power.

Yet is also leaves us with a paradox.  The documentary features so many actual kendo sequences that it would not take an expert to realize that the kendo performed by the masters, and the supposed kendo being choreographed by the actors, bears strikingly little resemblance to each other.  Indeed, the fencing styles used in the various Star Wars films shows heavy inflection from a wide variety of martial arts styles (including European Longsword, Wushu and Filipino arts) as well as different schools of stage combat choreography and a generous dose of special effects wizardry.

Earlier discussions of the lightsabers by the film’s creators did not share this same emphasis on the appropriation of kendo, or any other Asian martial art.  Even a few years earlier they tended to treat the creation of lightsabers as mostly a special effects challenge.  Yet clearly a demand to identify and explore the “reality” behind the lightsaber has been identified.

Perhaps the most interesting moment of the ESPN documentary occurred when Gillard explained how Kendo had come to be put on the screen.  He started by demonstrating a simple overhead, double handed, strike and parry, exactly as you might actually see it in a kendo class.

He then adapted the same set of movements to show what it would look like in the Star Wars universe.  This involved manipulating the sword with a single hand, using different angles, and finally spinning it behind the martial artist’s back in a movement that many Chinese students call the “plum blossom.”  The same movement was used so many times (often somewhat inexplicably) in the prequels that practitioners of lightsaber combat have started to refer to it as “the Obi-Ani.”

The audience is left with no doubt that the new and improved sequence is vastly more entertaining than the original that (may have) inspired it.  It is faster, flashier and requires far greater dexterity to perform.  In line with Eco’s argument, it identified what was interesting about traditional swordsmanship and then offered the audience “more.”

This throws Gillard’s subsequent statement into sharp relief.  Note his telling use of tense:

“The speed, balance, the violence.  Kendo was everything that the Jedi and Sith are.”

Once kendo has been “improved” to the point that it is no longer present, except in a few opening stances or generic movements, what are we watching?  This puzzle is precisely what drives students of lightsaber combat to try and locate the mythical Seven Forms of Lightsaber Combat in the films, rather than to read the movements in terms of an existing martial arts style, as this recent documentary would seem to demand.

All of this suggests a growing appetite for “authenticity” and a deeper engagement between Star Wars and the martial arts.  Casual fans want to know more about the martial arts that went into the making of these films, both as storytelling elements and on a technical level.  At the same time students of lightsaber combat are demanding a greater degree of in-universe coherence in the various fencing sequences featured on film and in other supporting media (videogames, cartoons, novels, comic books).

In this essay we have traveled far down the rabbit hole of hyper-reality.  One is now forced to wonder what direction these searches for “authenticity” will take us next.  It seems possible that the very success of the lightsaber duel has created a demand for something new.  The next film to be released, Rogue One, will revolve around a bloody ground battle fought by normal, non-Force sensitiveness, beings.

It seems unlikely that it will feature a lightsaber duel of any kind.  But we can be sure that the Asian martial arts will be present.  Not only will Donnie Yen appear in this film, but a scene from the recently released teaser trailer shows him putting down multiple Storm Troopers while armed only with a wooden staff.

In this new search for authenticity we may find the Star Wars franchise taking a step away from its own highly successful brand of hyper-real martial arts, in an effort to recapture some of the original excellence and energy that launched this enterprise close to 40 years ago.  It seems that the franchise may yet be willing to accept its identity as a quintessential martial arts story.

Donnie Yen. The calm before he the storm…

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If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to see:  Through a Lens Darkly (20): Ip Man Confronts the “Indian” Police Officer

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Source: http://tribune.com.pk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chinese Martial Arts in Film

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

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

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

An astronomical clock in Prague. Photo by Andrew Shiva. Source: wikimedia.

Your mission, should choose to accept it…

Recently I have been invited to contribute chapters to a number of upcoming projects.  I am still attempting to decide what some of these should be, but in two cases the editors of the volumes in question have approached me with specific requests.  For instance, in the next few months I am going to be putting together a generously sized chapter on the history of the Chinese martial arts.

This is a great opportunity, especially as I am coming off a major project of my own and have been thinking about the social history of these fighting systems for a few years.  And it is nice to be presented with a very specific brief.  It saves one the mental energy of having to dream up a project that will fit the larger mission of an edited volume while still advancing your own research agenda.  That can be a tricky. Finally, after spending so much time on regional and local history, it will be nice to get a chapter out articulating a more global view of the Chinese martial arts.

Still, an assignment like this is not without its challenges.  Over the last week I started to do some background reading and research.  That basically means rereading the classic books, looking for new publications, revisiting some of my favorite articles and reviewing what I have already said about the topic elsewhere.  This sort of review is a great way to discover where my personal views have evolved over the last couple of years.

Nor can we afford to ignore some of the very nice treatments of the history of the Chinese martial arts that are already out there.  As I have mentioned before, Stanley Henning’s “The Martial Arts in Chinese Physical Culture, 1865-1965” in Green and Svinth’s Martial Arts  in the Modern World (Praeger, 2003) provides a great introduction to the subject.  It has always been my “go-to” recommendation for someone who thinks they might be interested in learning more about Chinese martial arts history.

More committed readers would do well to check out Lorge’s Chinese Martial Arts (Cambridge, 2011) for the best single volume treatment of the subject.  And those interested in delving deeper into the Republican period (the era I find to be the most interesting) must familiarize themselves with Andrew Morris’ chapter on the topic in Marrow of the Nation (California UP, 2004). Interested readers already have a number of good options to draw on as they explore the development of the Chinese martial arts.

Yet as I reread these and other sources over the last week it occurred to me that there is something else that these works have in common besides their quality.  All of them present a fairly linear, straight forward, account of the development of the modern Chinese martial arts.  Various authors might choose different start and finish dates, yet the feeling of chronological progression pervades all of these works, especially as we come to the more “modern” eras.

This is quite understandable.  In many ways the present really is a product of the past.  It is not unreasonable to see a degree of casualty in the march of time.  Yet if we are not careful our accounting of chronology can quickly slip into a sort of martial teleology, where these fighting systems are inexorably drawn through history, shaped by shadowy forces, and destined to assume some predetermined final form.

This tendency is most clearly visible in some (though not all) historical accounts produced by academics in mainland China.   In this case the source of their theoretical slant is fairly obvious.  The Marxist forces of “historic materialism,” that are believed to have shaped every other social institution, have evolved the Chinese martial arts from a state of lower barbarism (e.g., there is a very good reason that so many of these histories begin with totally improbably accounts of kung fu having been invented to fend off wild animals) and ending with the inevitable triumph of state sponsored Wushu.

I have discussed the shortcomings of these sorts of accounts elsewhere. As students of martial arts studies we should acknowledge that national sponsorship of, and involvement with, the martial arts has often been a powerful force in reshaping them to fit the perceived needs of the state.  These same social and political forces have also had a powerful impact on the ways these arts are discussed in some corners of the scholarly literature.

Nor are these tendencies restricted to socialist states.  Indeed, the demands of modernization and nationalism (as seen in cases of 20th century Japan, Korea and Indonesia among others) have also had a substantive effect on how the martial arts of these states are viewed by their citizens and discussed by scholars.  One suspects that even modernization and secularization theory (touchstones of sociological thought in the West) have had a profound (and less visible) effect on the ways that the martial arts are discussed among scholars.

The unavoidable problem in all of this is the necessity of simplification.  The martial arts of even a single country (in my case China) are a frightening large subject.  Nor are trends always headed in the same direction.  A close examination of the “facts on the ground” will show that many individuals can be seen to harness these social institutions in the pursuit of their own agendas.  For every reformer that advances in public sphere another teacher will emerge demanding a return to a remembered or (more likely) imagined past.

Making sense of this mass of often contradictory data is the job of a historian, and some sort of theoretical framework is the intellectual tool that is employed in doing that.  As such we cannot avoid the necessity of either simplification or theory.  Yet is a linear chronological framework, heavily inflected with either modernist, nationalist or Marxist assumptions the best way forward?  To answer that question we would first have to consider some alternatives.

Clockwork gears at the Liverpool World Museum. Photo by Somedriftwood. Source: Wikimedia

Ordering Principals: The Levels of Analysis

The “Levels of Analysis” is a conceptual tool that students of sociology and political science have used for grouping and evaluating families of theories for decades.  I have discussed different variants of this idea in previous posts.  It may also be able to offer some insight into our current dilemma.

The Levels of Analysis framework traditionally suggests that sociological theories can be divided into three (or possibly four) categories.  In my field these are “systemic” theories (those that seek to understand the nature of complex systems as a whole), “institutional or domestic” explanations (attempts to understand the roles of various social groups) and lastly “individual level analysis” (typically focusing on cognition, decision making and psychology).  While the passage of time does not vanish in any of these categories, it can be understood in different contexts and in less reductive ways.

Let us begin by considering some approaches to the problem that might be classified as residing at the “systemic” level.  Recent trends in Asian Studies have emphasized the need to move beyond an emphasis on events in individual states and to look instead at the complex political, social and economic interactions that were often affecting an entire region.  For instance, during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, events and attitudes in Japan and China were not as independent from each other as many nationally focused histories would have us believe.  Developments in one state often had a profound influence on every country in the region.

This was certainly true of the Chinese martial arts community.  Reformers were very much aware of what was happening in Japan.  They noted the Japanese government’s more robust support of Budo with envy.  They were aware of Judo’s growing popularity within the international community.  Tang Hao specifically championed many of their methods during the early days of the Central Guoshu Institute.  Yet very few studies have taken up these influences, and I am aware of no substantial comparative case studies.

Thus one possible approach to the problem might be to reject the notion of writing an isolated history of the Chinese martial arts at all.  Instead a regional study, focusing on why similar trends found often very different expressions in even close neighbors, might be more interesting.  At minimum, developments in China should be plotted against, and compared to, events elsewhere in Asia.  An emphasis on strategic forms of social and political influence would replace simpler notions of the “progress of history.”

Another systemic approach might reject the state or the nation as the ultimate unit of analysis.  In my own research on the Chinese martial arts the urban/rural cleavage that dominated so much of popular culture in the late Qing and Republic eras has emerged as a powerful analytical lens for understanding the essential nature of these fighting systems.

More specifically, this conceptual framework problematizes the assumption that the Chinese martial arts share a single historical trajectory.  While urban reformers in the 1920s and 1930s struggled to create secular and scientific fighting systems at the disposal of the state in its revolutionary struggle, their rural counterparts in northern China were busy creating Red Spear units, employing the martial arts to reinforce local leadership structures and promoting magical practices (such as spirit possession and invulnerability techniques) that had not been seen in the region for generations. Both of these strategies were responses to the economic and social strains of “modernization.” Yet they suggest that single linear narratives of the “evolution” of the Chinese martial arts are leaving out some of the most important parts of the story.

The situation is similar at the domestic level of analysis.  Perhaps the most obvious approach here would be to focus on the state/society cleavage.  Indeed, the nature of the martial arts at specific points in time might be a valuable tool for understanding exactly how much influence that state actually commanded.  It might then be possible to group together periods when the state was particularly strong or weak, and to think more carefully about the impact that this had on the development of the martial arts.  Such an approach might also reveal underlying patterns in the relationship between the civilian martial arts and the realm of civil society that might not otherwise be apparent.

The domestic level of analysis is often said to include norms or beliefs about how various social institutions should function.  A discussion of the martial arts in the modern period could be organized by the emergence of certain strains of thought at various points in time.  The popularity of modernist philosophies has come and gone.  Likewise, the fortunes of certain notes of cultural fundamentalism have risen and fallen.  How can these trends (not all of which are linear in nature) help us to understand the history of the Chinese martial arts?

It is not hard to imagine what an “individual level” approach to this problem might look like.  “Great man” biographies have been the stock and trade of historical accounts for decades.  Their stories provide a level of granular discussion and detail that is often missing from systemic or institutionally focused accounts.  Not only can this give us a sense of what it was like to actually be a martial artist at a given moment in history, it can speak directly to the sequence of events leading up to important moments of change.

Nor do the Chinese martial arts lack for important figures demanding greater examination.  Sun Lutang has always struck me as a seminal figure whose life illustrates many important trends in the Chinese martial arts.  In the South Gu Ruzhang plays a similar role.  Likewise the career of the groundbreaking historian Tang Hao, while tragic, illustrates critical trends in the social discussion of the Chinese martial arts.

The challenge with biography is extrapolating from the realm of specific events to general conclusions.  And the life of any single subject is limited in length compared to the scope of even the recent history of the Chinese martial arts.  Still, the social and highly networked nature of this community suggests that if a historian were to skillfully choose two or three figures whose lives intersected, it might be possible to tell much of the story of the modern martial arts while remaining grounded in actual biographical detail.

Nor should historians feel the need to focus only on famous personalities.  Students writing social histories might gain inspiration from the lives of lesser known figures such as the reluctant rebel Zhao San-duo, Fei Ching Po (an ill-fated professional gambler) or the southern martial arts teacher Li Pei Xin. Marginal individuals often face similar struggles, and turn to the martial arts for remarkably similar reasons, even at different points in history.  This illustrates some important structural facts about these fighting systems and their role in Chinese society.  Indeed, some of these patterns have proved remarkably resistant to the “march of history.”

Deconstructed clock gears. Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia.

Conclusion: Moving Beyond the Levels of Analysis

Each of these approaches to discussing the development of the Chinese martial arts has strengths and weaknesses.  None of them are perfect.  As with all such frameworks, each will leave out some part of the story while drawing our attention to a variable that is usually neglected.  This is the original sin of all theory.  I suppose that it can also be thought of as “employment insurance” for academic writers as it strongly suggests that a single account of a phenomenon will never be satisfying.  Students will always prefer to have (and debate) a variety of perspectives.

Perhaps the greatest benefit in moving away from a purely chronological account of the development of the Chinese martial arts is simply to present these systems in a new and exciting way.  One that will spark renewed interest and novel insights on the part of the reader.  They might also move us out of the realm of teleology, reminding us that these fighting systems have been many things in the past, they constitute a vastly complicated realm in the present, and they are likely to take on many new forms in the future.

The conclusions of Marxist or modernist historians notwithstanding, the development of these systems has never been linear so much as it has been “rhizomatic.”  When one pathway has been obstructed seemingly dormant and forgotten possibilities have sprung forth.  While we can always reconstruct a linear “just so” story about how we got here, I doubt that the same logic would ever allow us to extrapolate very far into the future.

Nor should we forget that there is more to the Chinese martial arts than states, voluntary associations and individual practitioners.  Beliefs about these practices have also been carried throughout history on the powerful currents of vernacular opera, wuxia novels and most recently film.  Indeed, the very thought that something now “lost” must once have existed has proved to be a powerful incentive to engage in the re-invention of “tradition” within the Chinese martial arts.

It would be hard to imagine the state of the modern martial arts in China today without the release of the Shaolin Temple in the early 1980s, or Jin Yong’s various novels in Hong Kong.  The Chinese martial arts exist in a perpetual state of revival precisely because individuals find social meaning in the act of reviving them.  They are seen as a source of cultural heritage because they have been accepted as such by vast audiences who do not practice them and know them only by their media representations.  Nor is the current situation all that different from the world of professional story tellers, operas and wuxia novels in the 19^th century.

Finding a way to better integrate these discussions of media discourse and popular culture into individual, institutional and systemic histories remains a challenge.  It is difficult to construct a single framework that can account for both institutional and cultural variables.

Frequently cultural trends appear within accounts of practicing martial artists as exogenous shocks (or vice versa).  Understanding how to bring these two types of discussions together is one of the more important challenges facing martial arts studies as an interdisciplinary field.  As we structure our regional accounts, institutional explanations, or biographical explorations of the martial arts, we cannot afford to lose sight of their origins and place in popular culture.

oOo

If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to read:  The Book Club: Chinese Kung Fu by Wang Guangxi

oOo

The Creation of Wing Chun by Judkins and Nielson.

I recently received a letter from SUNY Press letting me know that The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts, will soon be released in paperback.  This is wonderful news and due in no small part to the enthusiastic support we received from members of the Wing Chun community and Kung Fu Tea readers.  While the original hardcover edition of this book was quite expensive (at a suggested retail price of $90) the publisher actually had trouble keeping up with demand for it.  I am sure that this inspired them to make the book more widely available.

This brings us to our next big announcement.  SUNY Press is currently having a substantial sale on all of their Asian Studies titles, including our book!  If you order through their webpage and use the coupon code ZAAS16 before May 12th you can get up to 40% off the cost of a hardback edition, or 20% off your pre-order of the soft-cover (which is due to ship on or before July 1).  That brings the price of the hardback down to about $54 and the paperback to a very comfortable $22.  We are confident this new release and sale will make our study of the Southern Chinese martial arts available to much larger audiences who may not have had easy access to a university library.

To briefly summarize, we review the social, economic, and political forces that fostered the development of Wing Chun and the other southern Chinese hand combat systems.  Our book also provides an extensive biographical discussion of Ip Man looking at both his introduction to the martial arts in Foshan and his subsequent efforts to introduce Wing Chun to a new generation of students (including Bruce Lee) in Hong Kong.  If you would like to learn more about the contents of this book you can read the first chapter here.  However I suspect that this interview, which we did with Gene Ching of Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine, will probably give you a better sense of our aims and the book’s contents.

Readers interested in the theoretical questions which drive this project may also want to watch my keynote address at the 2015 Martial Arts Studies conference titled “Imagining Ip Man: Globalization and the Growth of Wing Chun Kung Fu.”  Lastly, Douglas Wile wrote a review of the volume from a martial arts studies perspective.  Collectively these sources should give you a pretty good sense of the topics we covered in this project.

Ip Man and his best known student, Bruce Lee.

A young TY Wong, right, at the 1928 Central Goushu Institute’s national martial arts demonstration in Nanjing, China. Source: From the Collection of Charles Russo.

The Sturdy Citizen’s Club circa 1965. TY Wong, top row second from right, with students in his basement studio in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Source: From the collection of Charles Russo.

Working the Beat: One Journalist’s Efforts at Perfecting the Fine Art of Hanging Out

So I’m up to my elbows in cobwebs chasing down a dead man in a nearby Necropolis…and to be honest, it’s all really a lot of fun.

Let me rephrase that: I’m in Gilman Wong’s garage in the city of Colma, California, trying to find a picture of his dad – TY Wong. For almost a century now, San Francisco has buried its dead in the city of Colma, just a couple miles to the south. At present, there are about 1,500 living souls in Colma and 1.5 million dead ones. That’s quite a ratio, and driving over to Gilman’s house past the massive graveyards, it’s easy enough to daydream in the direction of a zombie apocalypse.

TY Wong (or, Wong Tim Yuen) is one of the pioneering martial artists that I profile in my book, Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America.  A Sil Lum master who was quickly recruited by the local branch of the Hop Sing Tong upon his arrival to San Francisco, TY – along with his senior contemporary Lau Bun – oversaw the martial arts culture in Chinatown for more than a quarter century. Despite his many key contributions to the martial arts in America, TY has mostly fallen through the cracks of popular memory. So now, I’m in the graveyard city of Colma, trying to pull him out.

It’s taken me two years to get in touch with TY’s son Gilman. And after letters and phone calls and go-betweens, here we are in his garage dusting the cobwebs off of a photo from the 1940s in a broken frame beneath cracked glass…and it’s a real gem.

If you would ask who my favorite practitioner was that I profiled in my book about the pioneering martial arts scene on San Francisco Bay in the early 1960s, I’d have a hard time settling on just one person. From the old guard in Chinatown, to the innovators in Oakland, to a young trash-talking Bruce Lee, one figure was more compelling than the next. But when it comes to photographs, all of my favorites seem to involve TY Wong.

There’s the 1965 photograph of of him with seven teenage students in his Chinatown school: the Kin Mon Physical Culture Studio (or, The Sturdy Citizen’s Club). Here, TY is pictured next to his one white student at the time: Irish teenager Noel O’Brien. Beginning in 1960 with Al Novak, TY was known to accept the occasional non-Chinese student despite the prevailing exclusionary etiquette of the times.

A true martial artist, there is also the photograph of TY playing the violin in his living room (“he was self-taught,” according to Gilman). But best of all, is the image of TY at the 1928 Central Guoshu Institute’s national tournament in Nanjing, China. TY is on the right in a tai chi pose, with his teacher Long Tin Chee in the center, and senior student Chew Lung on the far left. It’s just a beautiful glimpse of martial arts history, and up to now that image has been my standout favorite.

However, looking through the cracked glass at this photograph of TY, it might just be a contender for my new front-runner. It’s a parade scene from San Francisco in the 1940s, and TY is surrounded by a large team of martial artists. He stands at the center of the entire congregation all in black, holding butterfly swords. Despite the many men around him and his slim stature, TY looks quietly authoritative and formidable.

Gilman and I retrieve this image and several others from the garage, including what we originally came for – the photos from the Arlene Francis show (more on that later). We then proceed inside to talk shop for a few hours. As I said, it’s all quite a lot of fun.

TY Wong standing with butterfly swords, center, during a San Francisco street parade during the 1940s. Source: Photo courtesy of Gilman Wong.

Celebrated veteran journalist Gay Talese once said that good journalism is predicated on “mastering the fine art of hanging out”…which of course, is possibly the least academic sentiment ever written, though that’s not to say it’s without merit.

Working a beat as a journalist is a simple enough concept. It means to cover a particular topic thoroughly and on a consistent basis. You get to know the people, the places, the issues, and the nuance by frequently putting yourself in close proximity to them. In this sense, Talese was talking about investing enough time so that something or someone can be seen from many angles; the myriad facets beyond the cultivated identity that is projected to the world.

For my book, I applied a beat reporter’s approach to this particular era of martial arts history. I suppose that is a more formal way of articulating my efforts at perfecting the hangout. Whatever you want to call it, here are a few aspects of the approach that seem the most essential.

Bruce with his new girlfriend (and future wife) Linda Emery, along with James Lee, Ed Parker, and Ed Jr., outside the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium in December of 1963, where Parker was set to launch his inaugural tournament. Bruce and Linda had traveled south from Seattle to Pasadena over Christmas recess (picking up James Lee in Oakland along the way) presumably to watch the Huskies in the Rose Bowl. But really, Bruce just wanted an excuse to visit Ed Parker. Source: Photo courtesy of the Parker Family.

The Horse’s Mouth

While studying History (for my grad and undergrad) I kept noticing something peculiar. It was constantly being explained to me how important primary sources were, of seeking out the accounts of people who experienced events first-hand. Yet, there was zero emphasis on actually talking to those people. You could read their books or archived papers, but no one ever picked up the phone to speak with them directly. Once, when a classmate was discussing his questions about the aging author of a labor struggle memoir, I blurted out – “Why don’t you just call him?” The whole seminar turned around in shock and glared at me, as if I had said – “Why don’t you just assassinate him?”

Over in the journalism department, it was the opposite. My professors berated me for not having enough sources, for not trying hard enough to track people down. It knocked me out of my comfort zone, but in the long run I knew they were right. After all, you can’t ask follow up questions to a book, only to it’s author.

In 2012, tai chi master James Wing Woo published a really nice book about his career and method, titled SIFU. Woo was a perennial figure of the West coast martial arts scene dating back to the late 1930s. His book contains a short interview conducted by well-known journalist Ben Fong-Torres, in which Woo comments briefly on his time amid the martial arts culture of San Francisco’s Chinatown, including his experiences with Lau Bun and TY Wong. Upon reading this, I instantly had a wealth of questions for Woo, and living up to my history seminar point-of-view, I contacted James and was down at his studio in Los Angeles four days later. Woo answered all of my questions, explaining the delicate relationship between TY Wong and Lau Bun, the culture of Chinatown’s little-known Ghee Yau Seah (“The Soft Arts Academy”), and the quiet resurgence of opium in the neighborhood throughout the 1940s. He also conveyed some incredible stories of how TY Wong was the Hop Sing Tong’s go-to enforcer for whenever U.S. servicemen on shore leave got too rowdy while carousing the neighborhood’s Forbidden City nightclubs.

Sadly, James Wing Woo passed away just a few months after I interviewed him. I hate to think how much more information went with him.

Martial artists, even retired ones, are fairly easy to find. They are almost always tied to a school in some capacity, and tracking them down isn’t that difficult. Someone will refer you to them  if you ask, and they love discussing their careers. This is not always the case with sources. Once while writing an article about the Zodiac Killer, I had to track down a former SFPD Homicide Inspector who retired on bad terms. No web site, no school or association, no interest in being found. That was difficult. Finding a martial artist is not.

Long Beach: “He just started trashing people.” A young Bruce Lee, bottom row second from left, standing with other presenters at Ed Parker’s inaugural Long Beach International Karate Tournament in the summer of 1964. J. Pat Burleson, Bruce Lee, Anthony Mirakian, Jhoon Rhee. Back Row, Left to Right: Allen Steen, George Mattson, Ed Parker, Tsutomu Ohshima, Robert Trias. Source: Photo courtesy of Darlene Parker.

Interview Off the Beaten Path

Here’s a quote you’ve probably never heard before: “People were practically lining up to fight Bruce Lee after his demonstration at Long Beach.”

That’s from Clarence Lee, a karate master who taught in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 50 years. He was a judge at Ed Parker’s inaugural Long Beach International Tournament in the summer of 1964, and he knew the martial arts culture of the era inside out. They don’t quite make ‘em like Clarence anymore. He is now in his late 80s, has luminous eyes, stark white hair, and curses like a drowning sailor. (When I asked him about the reasons for the Bruce Lee / Wong Jack Man fight, he quickly shot back – “Have you ever heard of macho fucking bullshit?”) I don’t doubt Clarence’s opinion on Long Beach, yet I feel like I’m the only person who has ever really asked him.

In this sense, I think that some of the best and most colorful details often come from the supporting cast, as much as the lead; from the batboy, as much as the All-Star shortstop.

Take Barney Scollan for instance, who was an 18 year-old competitor at Long Beach in ’64. Although Scollan had been disqualified early in the day (“for kicking a guy in the nuts”) he anxiously hung around to watch Bruce Lee, particularly after witnessing his dynamic demo the night before in the hotel. Bruce’s actual tournament demonstration had a far more critical tone from the evening prior, and it struck Scollan as a revelation. “He just started trashing people. He got up there and began to flawlessly imitate all these other styles,” Scollan explains, “and then one-by-one he began to dissect them and explain why they wouldn’t work. And the things he was saying made a lot of sense.”

This is all a bit different from what I had been reading for years on Bruce at Long Beach in 1964. The prevailing narrative has asserted that Bruce did a bunch of fancy stunts, and was so fast and so charismatic that everyone quickly fell in love with him. For some reason, I’ve never been told that Bruce challenged the merit of everyone’s approach, and then half the placed wanted to kick his ass afterwards. There were a lot of people at Long Beach in 1964, is it possible that we’ve been relying on the same few sources over and over, and as a result have failed to grasp the complete story?

Oddly enough, it was another unlikely source –  TY Wong’s student Joe Cervara – who summed this all up for me in a perfect sound bite, when he explained to me that his teacher was never fond of Bruce Lee, and considered him – “A Dissident with Bad Manners.” I’ve had never heard that quote before either.

Bruce Lee with Barney Scollan during impromptu demonstrations the night before the first Long Beach International Karate Tournament in 1964. Source: Photo courtesy of Darlene Parker.

Ask Outside the Box

So I’m sitting opposite Dan Inosanto in his office and my first question is simple enough: “Can you tell me about your early martial arts background?” To which he replies, “Yeah, so I first met Bruce in ’64, during the Long Beach….”

I interrupt, “I’m sorry, I wanted to know your background in the martial arts.”

He looks puzzled but a bit relieved, “Oh…ok. Well, my uncle came back from World War II and he started teaching me Okinawan te, they didn’t call it karate back then.”

I cringe to think how many times Dan Inosanto has been asked the same questions regarding Bruce Lee over and over and over. This predictable line of questioning is unfortunate because not only is Dan an encyclopedia of martial arts knowledge, but his CV is literally a who’s-who of early martial arts pioneers in America.

After talking about his earliest days training with his uncle, Inosanto explains his time in the service training with Sergeant Henry Slomanski, an early western karate champion who ran rough-and-tumble training sessions in the U.S. military. Slomanski is one of those often forgotten figures that played a key role in setting the stage for a thriving martial arts culture in America , and Dan Inosanto can talk at length about training with him.

We then move on to his time with kung fu master Ark Wong, and then Ed Parker. When I ask him about Wally Jay, he responds “Well, Wally Jay is sort of like my own personal hero,” before delving into the specifics of the jujitsu master’s exalted career. When I ask him about Leo Fong, he laughs and explains that by coincidence, Fong had actually been his family’s church minister back in Stockton. James Lee? Sure, he remembers James hardening his forearms by banging them against the telephone pole outside Ed Parker’s school in Pasadena. There’s a treasure trove of information here….and to think that I could have vaulted past all of this and just started with, “Tell me when you first met Bruce?”

I once read a piece by William S. Burroughs, written very late in his life, when he said that the questions asked of him by journalists and documentarians had gotten so predictable that he felt inclined to just refer them to other articles and documentaries that already contained the information. In this sense, researchers and journalists need to advance the line of inquiry beyond the obvious.

In Colma, when I arrived at Gilman Wong’s house he a had a variety of images and photo albums laid out on the living the room table, many of which I had seen before. I looked them over and asked, “Are the Arlene Francis photos in here?” He smiles, “No, but I think I have them in the garage.”

In 1955, TY Wong and his students from Kin Mon appeared on the Home show, a popular daytime “magazine program” hosted by Arlene Francis and Hugh Downs. A full decade before Americans were introduced to Kato on The Green Hornet, TY and his Kin Mon students had performed kung fu on NBC. Kin Mon’s appearance on Home is significant not only as a milestone in American martial arts (and broadcast) history, but as yet another prime example of TY evolving the culture beyond the old Tong code of not exhibiting the Chinese martial arts to the non-Chinese.

I don’t think Gilman had ever thought of digging up those particular photos, so it took an alternative line of inquiry to unearth them.

Images from TY Wong’s Kin Mon school performance on NBC’s Home show with Arlene Francis, top left, in 1955. Source: Photo courtesy of Gilman Wong.

The Myth of the Mundane

History isn’t boring. It only seems that way when we’re not looking hard enough.

Think about Colma, for instance. Most people outside of the San Francisco Bay Area have probably never heard of this quiet town two miles south of one of the more colorful cities in the world. Even still, it’s a super interesting place. Consider this: traffic problems in Colma are typically caused by funeral processions. In fact, residents receive text messages to warn them of particularly large ones.

Some of the most notable of Colma’s (deceased) residents include Joe Dimaggio, Wyatt Earp, and William Randolph Hearst.  Many of those who died prior to 1920 were originally buried in San Francisco, before they were (in all-too-modern fashion) priced out of the city’s real estate market, and then relocated to Colma during the middle part of the century.

The advantage of steady beat reporting is that it inevitably shakes the more fascinating details from hiding, even with topics that seem mundane on the surface. And while this can often require a journalist or researcher to take frequent trips back to a certain location, or numerous follow-up interviews with any given source, it seems to always render far more compelling material than first expected.

Together with Lau Bun, TY Wong would oversee the martial arts culture in San Francisco’s Chinatown for more than a quarter century. (Photo courtesy of Gilman Wong)

 
I leave Gilman Wong’s home with some photographs and several pages of notes. It’s all excellent material that has exceeded my expectations, from the Arlene Francis photos to the image of the 1940s street scene, to the subtle nuances of this history that Gilman has conveyed to me. In this regard, the beat has rendered some great results.

If I am in fact getting better at “hanging out,” it is due to some of these approaches that I have learned over time. And in case I lost you on all the graveyard talk (or, you just got caught up staring at TY’s butterfly swords), here is a recap. First and foremost, when it comes to sources, make a wish-list of who you would ideally like to speak with and then pursue each of them individually until they tell you – “no.” (And then politely pursue them a bit more.) The more primary sources the better. Next, look to speak with the fringe players as much as the principal characters, they will give your work unique details and nuance. Do your homework on what is already out there, and ask questions that advance the topic forward. If you need to cover well-tread material, find a new angle at approaching it. Finally, remember that even the most mundane topics can render fascinating details if you invest the time and look hard enough.

As the graveyards stream by on my right, I feel like TY Wong’s legacy is slowly ascending from obscurity. TY is buried out here. So is Lau Bun. I drive out of Colma fascinated with the people and places this history has presented to me. When it comes to the fine art of hanging out, this is easily one of the best beats I’ve had the good fortune to cover.

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About the Author: Charles Russo is a journalist in San Francisco. He is the author of Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America (available July 1^st from the University of Nebraska Press). For more photographs and materials related to the book, see the Striking Distance Instagram account (@striking_distance) or the Facebook page.

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

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

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

Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Pagoda Forest at the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province. Source: cnn.com

“Inoue said the Japanese style of judo traditionally focused more on quantity rather than quality, trying to instill a tough mentality. But in Europe, which Inoue describes as “the mainstream of judo today,” judoka train more efficiently.

“A balance between efficiency and inefficiency and a balance between scientific things and unscientific things — you have to look at those, otherwise there’s no progress for our game,” Inoue said. “We’ve switched our mind-set that way.”

“Inoue Determined to Help Japan Keep Pace.” Japan Times, 5/2/2016.

Introduction

 
Who owns a martial art?

On the surface this question would seem to have an obvious answer.  Most of these systems come with a specific name (kendo or taijiquan), and they fall into generally accepted categories, such as Japanese Budo or the Chinese martial arts. The very act of describing these systems in the English language seems to underline an obvious fact.  The martial arts are best understood as the technical and cultural property of the previously mentioned nations.  It is all a matter of common sense.

Unfortunately “common sense” has a nasty habit of transforming itself into complex assumptions that no one ever questions.  For students of nationalism, a fairly modern political ideology spread and popularized in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, an assertion like the one above might begin to raise eyebrows.

While Chinese citizens during the Qing dynasty were certainly aware of the existence of the state and their responsibilities to it, most contemporary accounts indicate they did not think of themselves as members of a unified, polyglot, “Chinese nation” during the late imperial period.  Instead they were much more likely to organize their identity around lineage groups, regional locations and patronage networks.  Strong feelings of national identification didn’t really grip the populace until the founding of the Republic in the post-1911 period.  And yet many of the traditional martial arts (including systems like taijiquan and wing chun) were already well established through local and regional networks prior to the rise of the “the nation.”

The case of “Japanese” Karate makes an even better case study of the complex relationship between the emergence of hand combat systems and national identities.  As many of us already know, this art first came to Japan from Okinawa.  There it went through a process of fundamental transformation, rationalization, and even renaming, before it was determined that it could be a vehicle for the new strain of Japanese nationalism that was then insinuating itself into the martial arts.

So does that mean that Karate is originally an Okinawan martial art?  Possibly.  Yet again the story is more complicated than our nationally focused narratives might suggest.  Hand combat was particularly popular in a couple of areas of Okinawa, and it is not clear to historians that all of these practitioners shared a common style.  And various arts from Southern China (including White Crane Boxing) likely played a critical role in popularizing these modes of hand combat in Okinawa.

So does that mean that Karate is really a Chinese art?  Probably not.  When we push historical arguments to their logical conclusion we find that knowledge about a practice’s “genetic origin” are often unhelpful in understanding how a community actually understands itself and functions today.

While a regionally focused approach to understanding the development of the Asian martial arts shows a lot of potential, the ancient origins of individual techniques have little bearing on their current identity.  This point seems obvious enough.

When a modern American undergoes genetic testing and learns that a certain percentage of his DNA originated in Poland, he may be able to claim previously unknown Eastern European ancestry.  Yet he can’t really claim to now possess a “Polish identity.”

That is a matter of deep cultural knowledge and life experience.  If you are depending on a blind genetic test to discover some aspect of your genetic heritage, we can safely assume that it plays little role in your actual cultural identity.  Nor would most people make the mistake of conflating these two categories when talking about genealogy.

So why do we tend to conflate similar categories when discussing the martial arts?  Why do we routinely assume that some quirk of our wing chun practice shows its deep “Chinese heritage,” particularly when hung gar and taijiquan people do things very differently in similar situations?

A hand colored magic lantern slide, produced in Japan, showing both Judo and Kendo. Source: Author’s Personal Collection.

Nationalism, Globalization and the Martial Arts

I blame nationalism and, more recently, globalization.  Let’s start with nationalism.

When a country sought to enter the nation state system during the 19^th and 20^th century their acceptance was not assured.  One joins this club by being accepted by the other members.  As certain students of nationalism have observed, potential nations had to clear a couple of barriers to justify their claims.  First they had to prove that they possessed a unique culture (often in the form of a print language and folklore), a homeland, and a population.  In short one had to demonstrate that your national identity was unique, and not simply a variation of some larger identity.

Yet in joining the international system Benedict Anderson keenly observed that one accepted that your “unique nation” was now on equal footing with every other nation.  To be a member of a nation is to realize that every stranger that you encounter is also a member of an equally august body.  So while on one level all nations are unique, on a more fundamental level they are also interchangeable.  And this realization cleared the way for a certain sort of competition between them.

One of the reasons that I am interested in the Asian martial arts is that they grew up in conjunction with this new category of “nation states.”  While we tend to assume that both of these things are impossibly ancient, emerging from the mists of time, in truth they are fairly recent.  Still, the roots of these combat systems in the late imperial period were well enough established that reformers could offer them up as proof of an “ancient and continuous” body of unique cultural traditions which supported the claims of legitimacy of the newly established national identity.

Why then do we believe that Karate reveals something essential about the “Japanese character”?  Or that Taijiquan is the key to understanding the Chinese “national experience”?  Because people have been repeating these assertions since about 1920.

Nor do I expect that these patterns of belief will change any time soon.  We now have a sound understanding of the actual historical development of these combat systems, and this is a good thing for those wishing to develop an academic discussion of the martial arts.  Yet the accelerating process of globalization has only served to reinforce the fundamental dilemma that popularized these myths in the first place.

A celebration of the 2011 “world tai chi day.” Source:www.chineseartsalliance.com.

Global Decentering of the Asian Martial Arts

Global markets demand a degree of conformity between states that was previously unimaginable.  Nevertheless, national identity is not fading from the stage of history.  The incentive to argue for one’s uniqueness in the face of corrosive global pressures is accelerating rather than vanishing.  The research of martial arts studies scholars notwithstanding, I suspect that many practitioners will continue to seek “the essence” of ethno-nationalist identity in practices far divorced from the communities that actually created them.

Ironically, this quasi-fundamentalist turn in the development of the martial arts may arise from the very trends that seem to be pushing the development of the martial arts in a more open direction.  The creation of free markets, relatively inexpensive travel and virtually free communication via the internet has created a situation in which all sorts of once local identities now have an ability to migrate to new locations, effectively establishing transnational communities.  In many ways the traditional Asian martial arts are ideally situated to take advantage of these openings.

The types of institutional organization established during the early 20^th century were designed to facilitate the creation of branch schools and “franchises” as a way of spreading an economically lucrative and politically advantageous movement.  Further, having students outside of one’s own ethno-linguistic group reinforces the perception of value, and hence legitimacy, of this body of practice.  Cultivating certain sorts of over-seas teaching opportunities generates not only income but social prestige.  Lastly, cultural factors in the West following WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the counter-culture explosion of the 1960s and 1970s ensured that these practices would find a receptive audience.

The end result has been an almost unparalleled growth in the global martial arts movement.  This change has been so rapid that many arts have become “decentered.”  If one were to plot the median geographic location of their practitioners on a map it would be clear that their social center of gravity has moved out of their country of origin.

The quote at the start of this article is taken from a recent newspaper profile of the new coach of the Japanese men’s judo team.  In it he is forced to confront the fact that Japan’s standing at the highest levels of international competition has been challenged in recent years.  They simply are not winning as many gold medals as the folks back home demand.

The reasons why are clear.  It is not that the quality of the Japanese Judo community has degraded.  Rather, as he plainly states, the center of Judo practice is now found in Europe.

In a sense this should not be a surprise.  As any of its citizens will be quick to remind us, Japan is a “small island nation.”  Its total population is limited.  This also constrains the number of youth that are available to go into serious Judo training at any point in time.

Further, its approach to training has often prioritized cultural factors over scientifically rational innovation.  Given the huge number of practitioners now found in the rest of the world, the end result seems obvious.  The era of Japan monopolizing the medal podium in this sport is probably over.  Yet the close connection between Japanese nationalism and their years of success in judo (the only Japanese sport to be accepted as an Olympic event) suggests that this realization is likely to be somewhat painful.

Nor is this decentering limited to the case of judo.  Alexander Bennett concludes his recent history of kendo (California UP, 2015) with an argument that the spread of Japanese Budo practices abroad will always be limited by the intimate connections of these practices with identity and nationalism in the eyes of many of their Japanese supporters.  While they may be forced to acknowledge their losses in global sporting events, it is simply too easy to say that on a fundamental level, the “foreigners” will never understand the “true essence” of the art, while leaving all of the relevant terms undefined.  In Bennett’s view this corrosive discourse (something that he has had the chance to observe first hand) may end up limiting the ultimate growth of sports like kendo.

This general pattern is not limited to the Japanese arts.  Despite the old trope of Chinese masters who refuses to teach “outsiders,” huge numbers of students have taken up various aspects of the TCMA since the 1970s.  Most of the traditional Chinese systems have been very supportive of the growing size and sophistication of their foreign student bases.  After all, they have the potential to increase both the prestige and revenue flowing to a given style.

Still, it is not uncommon to hear worried discussions that at some point Shanghai, Henan, or Hong Kong will no longer be the center of a given practice.  What will happen to the Chinese martial arts when, in an ethnic sense, they cease to be “Chinese?”  One of the very first reviews I did for this blog actually looked at a (nicely produced) Wing Chun documentary in which this exact possibility was debated by some masters in Hong Kong.

The case of Wing Chun is actually particularly interesting as this is not simply a “Chinese” art.  It is even more strongly associated with the region surrounding the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong and (since 1950) Hong Kong.  Both shifts in the global economy and a changing relationship with mainland China have sensitized individuals to the value of these local identities.  As such, the growing overseas popularity of Wing Chun has reinforced the area’s claim to possessing an independent and distinct cultural heritage while, at the same time, threatening to decenter one of its most important elements of cultural heritage.

But we should be clear about the facts on the ground.  It is not the case that at some point in the distant future the geographic center of Wing Chun might shift out of southern China.  That probably happened during the 1990s.

Once again, I think that we can thank Europe.  It is not a case of Hong Kong’s martial excellence declining.  Rather Europe has a huge (relatively unified) market for martial arts training, and Wing Chun has now been established abroad for enough years to develop some real expertise.

This general pattern of cultural drift is in no way unique to the martial arts.  It is a mathematical fact given the way that globalization works.  Any product which gains a degree of popularity will quickly discover that the size of the potential export market (the entire world) is by definition larger than the size of the domestic market (a single country).  This basic fact is why the domestic price of a good always goes up when you open the market to exports.  It also helps to explain why America’s most talented jazz musicians spend their summers in Europe and much of our best single malt whiskey ends up in Asia.

We return then to the essential paradox that has been driving this discussion.  On the one hand national identity has not vanished in the current era.  In fact, the challenges of globalization have made some elements of the national discourse more popular than ever.  Yet the nature of global markets dictate that the transnational demand for many of these most popular symbols and practices will always be greater than the domestic audience in any single city, region or state.  To paraphrase Adam Frank, we live in an era when identity moves, whether you want it to or not.

Hong Kong Airline flight crews practice Wing Chun. Source: South China Morning Post.

Conclusion: The Rise of Intangible Cultural Heritage

This brings us to the final point.  The acceleration of globalization after the 1990s has coincided with the rise of what scholars have called the “cultural heritage” discourse.  Here we see more state and local governments seeking to identify, label and curate either places or practices seen as worthy of protection by the international community.

I recently had an opportunity to watch a lecture delivered at Cornell University by Prof. Yujie Zhu on the various ways in which the cultural heritage discourse has affected communities in China.  It has been posted online and anyone interested in these topics would be well advised to take a moment and check it out.

One of the points to merged from this discussion was that the movement toward designating practices as examples of “intangible cultural heritage” (as opposed to simply concentrating on historic locations) was driven in large part by lobbying on the part of China, Japan and Korea.  They noted that in many cases it was the Confucian value of “faithful transmission” of past beliefs and practices that constituted examples of “heritage” within their cultural framework.

Further, with the massive disruption of China’s urban geography during this period of rapid growth, one suspects that the people were forced to turn to practices, beliefs and identities in an effort to both establish a relationship with the past as well as to build new social networks in the present.

It is interesting to consider the global movement of the Asian martial arts in light of the rise of ICH discussions.  As I have reported in numerous news updates, there has been a lot of pressure to include various martial arts styles, and even specific lineages, on ICH lists drawn up by national or local governments in China.  This has certainly been the case in Hong Kong which, in the last few years, seems to have awaken to the heritage of potential of such quintessentially southern arts as Hung Gar and Wing Chun.

Yet Hong Kong’s government has generally taken a “market led” approach to preserving the past.  They have ignored repeated calls (often coming from individuals within the martial arts community) to provide actual funding or material support to preserve these practices, and have instead claimed that their intention is to establish a list so that private citizens, firms and donors will have a better sense of where they wished to invest their scarce time and money.

On the mainland the support for ICH practices has been somewhat more robust, especially in those cases where a local practice can be tied to heritage tourism (the martial arts at Shaolin or Mt. Wudang are classic examples of this).  Yet given that this same situation is unlikely to play out in Hong Kong (where martial arts tourism is not a large part of the city’s economy) what else could be gained from winning ICH status?

In thinking over Prof. Zhu’s fine talk I began to wonder whether ICH status was not in some way seen as a counterweight to the decentering effects of globalization.  Yes, the basic laws of mathematics dictate that most of the individuals who practice and teach Wing Chun must live outside of the city of Hong Kong.  Yet the establishment of an ICH discourse around the art affirms that it is not simply a self-defense system, or even a pure martial arts tradition.  Rather it is a matter of cultural, regional and ethnic heritage.

Whether this is true, and if such a declaration would have convinced a skeptical middle class in the year 1950 (when the martial arts tended to be much less popular in Hong Kong), is an interesting question.  But this is not today’s question.  Rather, once we have established that a given martial art is linked to traditional cultural values (as defined by the appropriate government committee), after sufficient repetition, it becomes a social fact.

This has the effect of creating a zone within the Wing Chun community that cannot be decentered.  No matter what level of technical excellence is achieved in a school in Germany or San Francisco, one must always return to, and look towards, the art’s “traditional home” to discover its essence.  And to the extent that Hong Kong and Foshan may find themselves competing for the scarce dollars of Wing Chun tourists, an ICH designation cannot hurt!

In some senses this is a very positive development.  Wing Chun has become a critical part of Hong Kong’s identity and that should be emphasized and defended.  And I think that any martial art community will be made stronger through the establishment of a rich web of exchange and travel.  Finally, the historian in me loves the idea of “preservation.”

Yet as a social scientist I know that these topics must be approached critically.  The establishment of an ICH discourse does not just “preserve,” it also changes, sometimes in fundamental ways.

Its aim is to take that which was “threatened” and create “stability.”  Items of low social status are transformed to become centers of  cultural complex programs.  Practices that were economically marginal are redefined as upstanding middle class behaviors.  And in the martial arts it might take what was once a simple hand combat system and transforms it into a bastion of values and identity.

This is all particularly interesting as there are ongoing debates within most martial arts systems as to what their goals should be.  What values should they advance?  Are they effective self-defense mechanisms, or ways of learning about traditional culture?  It is hard to imagine that the establishment of an ICH system would not somehow shuffle this deck and deal out a new round of winning and losing hands.

In conclusion, the complicated discussions that surround identity in the martial arts are, on some level, an inheritance from their brush with nationalism.  The acceleration of these same trends in the current era of globalization has led to the geographic and cultural decentering of many arts.  This is a trend that will likely continue in the future.

Within this context we might be able to understand the sudden interest in ICH labels (even in places where there is no immediate payoff in terms of tourism) as a way of resisting these pressures and reclaiming cultural ownership over a set of practices.  Yet the inherently political nature of this process guarantees that ICH designations will change certain aspects of a given martial arts community while attempting to preserve others.

This complicated balance between local and national identities (seeking to reinforce their own legitimacy) and the transnational communities of students who actually practice and financially support these arts, suggest that it is not really possible to know who “owns” kung fu.  But this debate has been underway (in one form or another) for some time, and it has done much to shape the arts that we currently know.  As such it is a question worth asking.

oOo

If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to read: Producing “Healthy Citizens”: Social Capital, Rancière and Ladies-Only Kickboxing

oOo

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

Introduction

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

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

News from All Over

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

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

Is this the future of the UFC in China?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A still from the five deadly venoms.

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

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

Martial Arts Studies

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

Here is the publisher’s blurb:

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

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

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

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

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

An assortment of Chinese teas. Source: Wikimedia.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

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

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