Jonathan Gottschall’s Professor in the Cage. 2015.

A Surprise at the Bookstore

A remarkable thing happened on the way to the airport. Knowing that I would be spending a disturbingly large amount of my summer on various airplanes, I decided to make the most of it by getting caught up on some light reading. This called for a visit to a local bookstore. Out of habit I found myself walking past the martial arts shelf on the way over to “New Science Fiction.” Needless to say, I did not really expect to find anything interesting.

I respect “how to books” more than most of the experienced martial artists that I know. For me they are an easily observed indicator of the economic strength of the martial arts marketplace and the fodder for future generations of historians and cultural studies students. Still, titles like 101 Warrior MMA Workouts or Tai Chi for Everyone are not exactly the sorts of books that were going to propel me across a couple of continents.

Yet as I passed by the section my eye was immediately caught by a crisp white human skull with a disjointed jaw set against a black background. I knew that this was the cover that Penguin had used for Jonathan Gottschall’s latest popular book The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight, and Why we Like to Watch (2015).

The volume had been languishing somewhere near the middle of my mental “to read” list for a couple of months. It seemed like the sort of thing that I should get to, even though it was not immediately relevant to my current research projects. What most outsiders do not realize is that academics is all about greed, and our most valuable commodity is time. So any book needs to promise quite a lot to get promoted to the top of the pile.

In this case what struck me was less the relevance of Gottschall’s project than what surrounded it on the nook sized shelf that had been carved out for martial arts books. The store had stocked at least eight copies of his book, each displaying a leering skull on its spine.

Nor were the self-help books and beginners guides nearly as numerous as I had remembered. Of the 30 or so titles that were being carried six were basically literary discussions of martial arts and biographies of important practitioners. Another four books were translations of ancient Chinese or Japanese military classics. Bruce Lee continued to be well represented with four titles of his own, and another three seemed to be dedicated to various meditation practices. Only four of the titles fell into the classic “how to genera” with another three books being dedicated to conditioning workouts. In short, the selection was skewing strongly towards books about the martial arts rather than of the martial arts.

This struck me as a potentially significant moment. Is it really true that the hunger for nuanced discussions of these fighting systems is expanding at a quick enough pace that it is displacing the more traditional “how to” genera which has dominated the page of Black Belt magazine’s advertising sections since the 1960s? Obviously we have seen a gratifying increase of interest in martial arts studies as an academic project. But is this mirroring a broader trend in the martial arts marketplace?

I was suddenly struck by the realization that if someone walked into a bookstore looking for a more intellectual (if not actually scholarly) discussion of the martial arts, there was at least a possibility that they would actually find something on the shelf. This particular store even carried a copy of Shahar’s Shaolin Monastery. This is vastly different from how things were when I was growing up.

And if they were to enter the store now, the book that they would find first would be Dr. Gottschall’s Professor in the Cage. So what would they learn? What sort of impression of the academic engagement with the martial arts would they walk away with?

Suddenly this volume vaulted to the top of my mental “to read” list. I grabbed a copy and walked towards the registers at the front of the store. As I waited in line I looked over only to be greeted by another stack of laughing skulls. Apparently someone had decided that a strangely confessional story of an adjunct English professor being repeatedly mauled after taking up MMA would qualify as an “impulse buy.” “Good clean fun” I thought to myself.

Jonathan Gottschall. Photo by Gilberto Tadday.  Source: Chronicle of Higher Education.

Broken Promises

I was once asked by a reader why I review so many books that I dislike. I can understand where this question comes from, but it is not actually all that accurate. Generally when I really dislike a book I do not bother to write a review at all. In truth I only sit down and seriously engage with a text when I think that it will be worth my (and by extension your) time; again, greed and all of that. I may like a work, or see serious problems with it. But if I am talking about it on Kung Fu Tea, it is because I think that there is something really interesting that is worth pushing on a little harder.

In general that push takes the form of criticism as we probe to find the limits of an argument. Or to discover exactly how much work a theory can do for us. Perhaps to question the substantive significance of an author’s finding. Being criticized is not the worst thing that can happen to you in academics. It simply means you are part of the discussion. Being ignored, however, is a different matter. That is deadly.

Gottshall’s recent work was one that I was very tempted to ignore. As I talked with some of my friends and colleagues who also engage in the academic study of the martial arts, that was basically their thought as well. This is a work that is so profoundly flawed, both theoretically and empirically, that it is difficult to engage with. I thought very seriously about just taking their advice.

Still, something about it did not sit right with me. Once I decided to read this book I had approached it with rather high hopes. While a highly controversial figure in his field, Gottschall has graced the pages of the New York Times and other major publications, earning the status of a “public intellectual.” Coming out of graduate school he noted the declining fortunes of the humanities in comparison to the STEM fields and declared that it was time for a change of approach. Or more properly, a shift in both the fundamental questions that scholars of literature should be asking, as well as the methods that they must employ in investigating them.

Drawing on fields like sociobiology and evolutionary psychology Gottschall argued that human beings are first and foremost animals, and that the stories that they tell are often best understood as expressions of the evolutionary pressures that shaped us as a species. The best way to test this theory and to explore its implications was by dumping the bloated and increasingly unwieldly frameworks of critical theory, feminist theory and various sorts of social constructivism that dominate the study of literature in favor of actual science and math.

Needless to say, his approach found little support among the professors of literature that he was attempting to convince, and Gottschall has never managed to find a foothold in the academy. For a summary of his larger academic battles and a discussion of his current place in the field, check out this recent article in the chronicle of higher education.

Not that any of this is fatal to his current project. The American academic system produces vastly more PhDs than it does tenure-track teaching positions. It is not all that odd to find an adjunct somewhere doing really interesting and potentially important things, and it is likely to become increasingly common in the near future.

Nor is a shift towards quantitative methods and assumptions the worst thing in the world. My PhD is in political science, and while the humanities appear to have decisively rebuffed this trend, it has been very influential throughout the social sciences. Most young scholars of international relations graduating today spend more time studying matrix calculus, game theory and advanced statistics than they do on German or French. “Methodological triangulation” is the watch word of the day.

In fact, my first big article revolved around predicting when political conflicts might emerge over free trade by using data based on the careful coding of keywords in party platforms, and then running all of that through a complex statistical model to generate a very precise measurement of a party’s position on a theoretical left-right spectrum. In some ways this wasn’t really all that different from what Gottschall had attempted to do in one of his more controversial publications promoting the coding and analysis of literary works. He probably would have fit right in at a sociology or political science department. But he proved to be on the wrong side of his field’s own methodological divide.

Still, Gottschall cannot blame all of his problems on his ideological enemies. Part of this trouble has been convincing skeptical allies that he actually has something interesting to say which is not derivative or trivially true. And while some have welcomed the attempt to bring formal scientific methods into the world of literature, they have been less enthusiastic about what they see as Gottschall’s attempts to move scientific debates or establish fundamental “facts” though his reading of literature. And as any reader of the Professor in the Cage will already know, Gottschall can be a difficult person. That probably did not make it any easier for him to win the most favorable hearing for his ideas.

In the current volume Gottschall attempts to take a step away from these controversies to write a purely popular book, largely devoid of explicit or sustained theoretical discussions. Drawing on some of his prior interests, and what can only be described as a midlife-crisis MMA attack, he decided to embark on a wide-ranging study of violence in both history and literature.

To get a better handle on the reality of violence he began a program of regular training at a local mixed martial arts school, while desperately attempting to line up the big final cage fight which was apparently needed for his book contract. Unsurprisingly most of the local fight promoters seemed uninterested in having him on their cards.

Gottshcall’s book at first appears to fit squarely in the growing literature on “carnal sociology.” As is typical for the genera we see the author mixing ethnography and some larger set of questions about the structure of society. The difference in this case is that Gottschall stuck to his ideological and theoretical guns. Rather than following Wacquant’s famous advice about such research projects (“go native, but also go armed” with an appropriate body of theory to help one interpret and make sense of this overwhelming experience) Gottschall continued to believe that the meaning of most things (certainly anything worth writing a book about) can be found solely in the Darwinian struggle for survival.

I have nothing against sociobiology as a field. Certain international relations scholars have done some interesting things with it. But after reading Gottschall’s latest work, it is pretty clear that this background did not prepare him to speak to the vast variety of social violence seen throughout human history, or to make sense of his personal experiences while training in an MMA gym.

Gottshcall’s book is not frustrating because it fails. In truth most books do that to one degree or another. The real problem is that his project started with such promise.

The idea of tying a personal engagement with the martial arts to an exploration of the larger problems of violence is a fundamentally sound one. His various critics are absolutely incorrect to dismiss this move as “stunt journalism.” There is a long history of empirically driven scholars doing just this.

Unfortunately Gottschall does not seem to be any more aware of their work than are his critics. The contributions of Wacquant and those who came after him probably fall too far outside his disciplinary interest. The real problem seems to be that, not grasping the possibilities for serious academic discovery, Gottschall treats his own project as a self-indulgent stunt to attract a book contract rather than as a serious research strategy.

Likewise the idea of bringing some math and scientific rigor into the study of social violence (and even the literature surrounding it) is a potentially important one. Martial Arts Studies is an inherently interdisciplinary project. This is practically mandated by the nature of the problems that we face. In truth a combination of methods and approaches are going to be the best way to get at this set of questions neglected by the traditional disciplines.

But this neglect does not mean that the questions are unimportant. Perhaps the most disheartening thing about this book was that Gottschall turned to the study of the martial arts and violence at the same time that he was moving away from more rigorous academic inquiry. He even goes so far as to describe the project as a sort of career or intellectual suicide.

Again, this sells what could have been a very interesting project short. Specifically, the sort of work that we see in Martial Arts Studies not only pushes disciplines to consider the adoption of new methods and theories, but as it asks different questions it begins to challenge some of the more fundamental (and artificial) boundaries separating the disciplines to begin with. But rather than engaging with this larger trend Gottschall’s eyes remain firmly fixed on his opponents and oppressors in English departments around the country.

While Gottshcall talks a lot about science, and he has footnotes to a fair number of studies of one sort or another, another big problem with this volume is that it does not actually do anything “scientifically” at all. Rather than constructing a tightly focused theory and using it to derive a set of hypotheses, Gottschall instead employs a wide range of preexisting theories as “just so” stories to help explain away the various problems that emerge through the course of a rambling book. In short, what he offers his readers is basically science as a metaphor and an appeal to authority rather than as a method to be rigorously explored and tested.

Of course one must immediately wonder whether this is a fair criticism. As I mentioned, this is not an academic work. While it is a text that the author uses to attack his academic enemies and rail against the injustices of the academy, it is basically a popular book that was never intended to plow new ground or make any novel discoveries. Don’t all such popular works basically use science as a “just so” story, to explain something about the reader’s life or daily reality?

Possibly. Yet many of the problems with Gottschall’s arguments are so basic that I am not sure that they can be defended by claiming that the author does not have to show his math. His treatment of both gender and culture will no doubt stand out to most readers as the most disturbing aspect of this work. Gottschall himself has nothing but scorn for those who doubt the essential, and to his mind genetically given, nature of gender. (In point of fact most of his discussions of culture also seem to go back to a very simplistic reading of Darwinian pressure which, if you spend even a few moments considering that proposition, should strike you as very strange).

Rather than seriously engaging with these debates he magisterially explains to his readers (with a few highly selective endnotes thrown in for good measure), that men are brave and women are weak (at one point he even seems to imply emotionally unstable) because of our genes. The fact that men love to fight and women tend not to be “real sports fans” (no matter what they say on surveys) can be totally understood through genetics. The pressure for survival is used as an explanation for duels, as well as the existence of left handed individuals. Gottschall even evokes it as an explanation for the popularity of team sports.

One could write an entire review article just of the problems found in any one of his chapters. Yet we can pretty much sum up this sad situation with the following axiom, something that should be familiar to most students who have actually taken a statistics class. “A constant cannot explain a variable.”

The real problem with Gottschall’s book is that it attempts to move beyond autobiography and meditation on the dark side of human violence. These would be perfectly respectable things for an English professor to write a book about. One could even do so using nothing but the the critical theories and qualitative methods that Gottschall seems to have such trouble with.

Yet once you take a step into the world of “science,” and dedicate yourself to the use of quantitative and empirical methods, you are basically moving into the realm of causality. Your task, as a scientist, is to explain what causes variations in outcomes across time and space. And to explain these differing outcomes, you generally turn to a set of factors known in these sort of discussions as “variables.”

Gottschall’s entire problem is that all of the talk of science notwithstanding, he seems to have no motivation to actually explaining anything of interest. To begin with, he appears to be incapable of seeing all of the variation that his own case studies (as short and poorly developed as most of them are) actually reveal.

Human genetics are a constant. They do not change all that much over the short term. But in 1790 men in Europe fought duels and by 1890 they did not. The basic evolutionary situation did not change over the course of this period of time. So what did?

Practically everything else. Forms of social organization evolved, the strength of religion diminished, literacy levels went up, health was generally better, economic growth and trade expanded. And governments were vastly stronger in 1890 than they were in 1790. Gottshcall discusses dueling in terms of an honor system that was necessary to maintain one’s prospects for sexual reproduction in a lawless world. He basically dismisses culture as being epiphenomenal to people’s behavior in this case.

Yet when noting the very rapid decline of dueling, he blames the growth of strong states for this turn of events. Would that not then imply that rather than focusing on the question of Darwinian fitness in the first half of his chapter, something which does not change, we should have instead been looking at the interactions between the state and society? These structures change, sometimes quite rapidly. And they seem more than capable of explaining the periodic rise and fall of dueling in human societies without any need to pontificate about our most ancient ancestors and their disturbing excess of semen.

Gottshcall would likely retort that the genetic codes which we all carry are what makes it possible for behaviors such as dueling to arise in the first place. We are, after all, just animals. Hence his contention that violence is, and must, be universal. Yet in reality this position explains nothing while steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the existence of much more interesting questions.

My basic genetic code has also allowed me to develop an interest in classical Spanish guitar music. Why some societies give their 15 year old boys guitars while other give them dueling swords and pistols (and yet others give them both) is a genuinely interesting question. Gottschall’s razor focus on a narrow interpretation of evolutionary biology draws him to the “constant possibility” of violence while dismissing the much more interesting questions of its many forms (and even occasional absence) as unimportant. Yet real science involves the explanation of variance rather than its ad hoc dismissal at the end of every chapter.

Another clear example of this dilemma arises at the end of chapter 5, titled “Survival of the Sportiest.” After an long and involved discussion of why men are not only better at fighting than women, but that they also enjoy it more, Gottschall is forced to confront a disturbing trend within the modern combat sports. Simply put, the number of female kickboxers and MMA fighters is increasing rapidly, as is female audience engagement with these sports. He even has to acknowledge the reality of one such athlete when Jena “Jenacide” Baldwin spends some time at his gym as an instructor.

The weakness of the ethnographic component of this work is evident in the shallowness of his engagement with the sudden appearance of a high level female fighter. It doesn’t appear that this new and potentially important development had any shaping effect on Gottschall’s beliefs about gender and the roots of participation in combat sports.

So does this trend suggest that we will see more women entering spaces traditionally defined as male (such as team and combat sports) in the future? And will the acquisition of new skills in these areas have any impact on the ability of these women to navigate their way through other traditionally male dominated areas of society?

Gottschall is skeptical on all fronts. Rather than admitting that a future may exist in which we see greater female participation in the Mixed Martial Arts he instead opinions that we are entering a new feminized age in which traditionally “female” virtues, such as the ability to cooperate and avoid needless violent conflict, will “allow women to outcompete men, and to bring about a close to the ‘age of testosterone.’”

There are a number of problems with these pages, but at the most basic level, if the “close the age of testosterone” really is possible, and all of this can happen through purely social and economic shifts, than maybe we should have spent the last chapter discussing the economic and social underpinnings of MMA (and other violent sports) rather than evolution and sociobiology. By his own admission this prior set of variables are the ones that are actually defining how society works in the current age, and when you get right down to it there is no good reason to assume that they were somehow unimportant in even the very recent past. Gottschall’s inability to explain observed change using his primary theory, his constant reliance on exogenous variables, indeed his inability to recognize an interesting research puzzle when he sees one, seriously undercut this work.

It goes without saying that this is a work without academic merit. That was never the point of this book. Yet I doubt this work is really going to do much to advance the popular discussion of the martial arts either. Rather than bringing his readers into a richer and more interested world (something that the combat sports and traditional martial arts have generally done) Gottschall instead leaves them locked in a shadowy and narrow Hobbesian cell. Luckily, if one were to push back against the prison walls it would quickly be discovered that they are much less secure than they first appear. Of course the trick is first seeing through the illusion of compelling prose.

We currently sit at an interesting moment in time. Rarely in the past has there been enough interest in the martial arts for publishers to support and heavily promote a book such as this one. I personally am very excited to see some of the academic work on violence and the martial arts being brought together and made available to the broader reading public. And there are many things about the basic structure of this project that are admirable. Yet I am deeply disturbed by the idea that this book might be taken as the public face of martial arts studies.

While energetic and engaging, the ideas behind this book are problematic. Not only does this volume fail to give readers a systematic framework for understanding the changes that they are seeing in the world today, ironically, it turns its back on this most basic of “scientific” tasks.

Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports

Five other Books to Consider

Simply telling someone that you do not like a book is not really all that helpful, especially if they find themselves standing in a bookstore wondering what they can read to deepen their appreciation for the martial arts and social violence. As Lakatos reminds us in his discussions of the scientific method, we do not dismiss a theory simply because its flawed. All theories are born flawed as, by their very nature, they are simplifications of realty. This is the original sin of the scientific method. Rather, we only dismiss something once we have found a better alternative. Or to put it another way, what should we be reading instead?

Recommended Readings

1. Autobiography and the Martial Arts:

Matthew Polly. 2011. Tapped Out: Rear Naked Chokes, the Octagon, and the Last Emperor: An Odyssey in Mixed Martial Arts. Gotham.

Polly must be a bit of a headache for Gottchall and his marketing team. A very engaging writer he also had a similar idea for a book and he got his out first. Like Gottschall Polly had a background in the traditional martial arts, and then turned to MMA in his late 30s. He presents a more tightly focused (and nuanced) narrative about the development of this sport and the UFC. Readers who are primarily interested in martial arts biography or the current combat sports scene will probably enjoy this work.

Polly was not the first author to write something like this. As Gottschall points out, this is actually something of an established genre among sports writers. So if you are looking for some additional reading, one of my favorites has always been Robert Twigger’s Angry White Pajamas: A Scrawny Oxford Poet Takes Lessons from the Tokyo Riot Police, (IT Books, 2000).

2. Culture, the Martial Arts and Social Violence:

D. S. Farrer. 2009. Shadows of the Prophet: Martial Arts and Sufi Mysticism. Dordrecht: Springer, 2009.

In many ways D. S. Farrer presents a nice point of engagement for those interested in Gottschall’s work. Farrer understands anthropology as a social science and his work is rigorously empirical. This volume, stemming from his extensive ethnographic fieldwork on Malaysian Silat, will help to illustrate the many ways in which culture, rather than simply biology, has impacted the expression of social violence around the world.

My only hesitation about this monograph stems from its price, which is truly epic. It is definitely something you will want to order from the local library. But I have it on good authority that we can expect a second (more reasonably priced) edition sometime soon. If you are looking for some additional reading that you can actually afford to order from Amazon, consider Phillip B. Zarilli’s 2000 Oxford University Press monograph, When the Body Becomes All Eyes: Paradigms, Discourses and Practices of Power in Kalarippayattu, a South Indian Martial Art.

3. Reality, Violence and the Martial Arts:

Sgt. Rory Miller. Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence. Ymma Publications Center, 2006.

This book is pretty well known in hand combat circles, and you will want to take a look at it if you have not already done so. It presents a number of comparisons between real world violence (which for Sgt. Miller does not mean a cage fight) and martial arts training.

Anyone interested in Gottschall’s extensive use of “the monkey dance” concept will be especially interested in this work. The term was actually coined by Miller, and one might as well go straight to the source to see what he actually had to say about it.

So how does culture interact with criminality? There are both universals and differences. For more on this topic see Boretz’s book Gods, Ghosts and Gangsters Ritual Violence, Martial Arts, and Masculinity on the Margins of Chinese Society (Hawaii UP, 2010) in which he looks at the life of petty thugs and toughs in Southern China and Taiwan. While an academic book this volume is pretty accessible. It is also a nice example of an important contribution being made by someone outside of the academic mainstream.

4. The Social Sciences, Violence and Quantitative Methods:

James W. Tong. Disorder Under Heaven: Collective Violence in the Ming Dynasty. Stanford UP, 1991.

One of the things that makes me uneasy about Gottschall’s work is that he tends to conflate his ontology (a sort of basic evolutionary reductionism) with his epistemology (scientific and quantitative methods). While often related, these are not the same thing. Specifically, social scientists have spent decades using formal methods to develop models of violence that do not boil down to genetics.

Students of martial arts studies may even find some of these to be quite interesting. Consider checking out James W. Tong’s Disorder Under Heaven. This book actually employs many of the methods that Gottschall has championed to investigate patterns of violence in Late Imperial China. Yet this author concludes that geographic and political variables are the most relevant.

This book is unapologetically academic in nature, but if you are actually interested in learning more about how quantitative methods have been used to investigate the causes of violence, that will probably not come as a surprise.

5. Gender, Combat Sports and the Martial Arts:

Alex Channon and Christopher R. Matthews. Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors around the World. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

This is a topic that Gottschall has some strong opinions on. Obviously sex and reproduction are issues that are critical to sociobiology. Unfortunately it does not seem that the author spent much time dealing with female martial artists or attempting to understand their actual (rather than simply their theorized) experiences with violence and competition.

It might be wise to get a second opinion on these matters. Luckily there is a new book out this week to help you do just that. The authors of this edited volume consider many of the same questions that Gottschall does while making numerous contributions of their own.

Unfortunately as a new academic book, this one is also going to be pricey. Bug your university library to buy a copy. In the mean time you might also want to check out Stephanie T. Hoppe’s (now classic) volume Sharp Spear, Crystal Mirror (Park Street Press, 1998) While the articles in this book are autobiographical rather than social scientific, it might be a great way to get acquainted with the personal narratives of actual female martial artists. It is also possible to find used copies of this book floating around at great prices.

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If you enjoyed this review and want to further explore “scientific” approaches to martial arts studies, you might also want to read:  Why do difficult and expensive martial arts thrive?

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Ip Man practices Chi Sao With Moy Yat.

Introduction

Rather than delving into a deeply historical discussion, today’s post is intended to be a personal reflection on the role of Chi Sao, or sticky hands training, in the modern Ip Man lineage Wing Chun. That is not to imply that there will be no history. There will, but I will try to keep it topical.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the practice, Chi Sao is one member of a larger family of “sensitivity training” drills that are seen in some (though not all) Chinese martial arts. Probably the best known example of this sort of training would be “Push Hands” in Taijiquan. Yet even that simple equation exposes the first of two problems that must be dealt with before we can proceed.

While in some ways similar, Chi Sao is not Push Hands. Both exercises represent an abstraction away from free sparring and seek to educate their practitioners about the proper responses to certain types of contact and pressures.  Yet they proceed with different assumptions and a logic of their own. There are a great many sensitivity games out there, and each one is unique. Worse than that, I suspect that even within the Wing Chun community there is sufficient variation in our understanding of what the goals of Chi Sao are, and how the game is most productively played, that it might actually be counterproductive to lump it all under a single label.

All of which is to say, it is difficult to speak in overly broad terms about Chi Sao. It is something that most Wing Chun practitioners spend a lot of time on, and so naturally everyone feels a sense of ownership over this distinctive training process. While the following reflections will try to be as general as possible, at the end of the day my remarks will inevitably reflect the lineage and philosophy that I have trained in. Your mileage may vary.

The second problem that arises when we attempt to speak of the place of Chi Sao in Wing Chun training is more historical in nature. I just said that this was going to be a personal reflection, but historical curiosity is an important part of who I am and how I approach my training. Simply put, while Chi Sao practice is at the heart of Wing Chun today (at least within my lineage and most of the schools that I am personally familiar with), this was not always the case.

A Social History of Chi Sao

What was traditional Wing Chun training like in the generation of Leung Jan? To be totally honest we have no idea, and I personally would be suspicious of anyone claiming hard and fast answers to that question. We have very few written sources from that period and most of the oral traditions that exist in the Wing Chun world today seem to have been massively overhauled in more recent decades.

But we can speak more reliably about the era of Chan Wah Shun. Accounts indicate that when individuals from Foshan (such as Jiu Wan as well as Ip Chun and Ip Ching) arrived in Hong Kong they were surprised by how Ip Man (Chan’s student) was presenting his art.

With all of the talk of “lost lineages” it is not uncommon to hear individuals questioning whether Ip Man “changed his art” in the Hong Kong period. Was he still teaching the sort of Wing Chun that he had learned earlier in the century? The various eye-witness accounts that we have from the 1950s and 1960s would seem to indicate that what he was doing was very clearly identifiable as Wing Chun. The biggest changes seemed to be in the process that he was using to present his art to a new generation of younger, urbanized and more modern students.

As many accounts indicate, Ip Man streamlined the presentation of material and adopted something like an informal curriculum. He jettisoned many of the cultural trappings of Wing Chun such as the rhymed couplets that had been used in Chinese martial arts training for hundreds of years, as well as traditional concepts including the eight trigrams and the five elements. And while Ip Man had some background in the traditional medical systems of his teachers, this does not appear to be something that he ever stressed in his Wing Chun training. Like many residents of Hong Kong at the time, he turned to western medicine when seriously ill.

Another change has less to do with what he taught than how he introduced material. As with other fighting systems, the sorts of Wing Chun instruction seen in Foshan during the 1920s seem to have featured long periods of stance and movement training prior to the introduction of more combative techniques. Realizing that his younger and highly mobile students in Hong Kong would not put up with this, Ip Man’s children have asserted that he introduced both single and double armed sticky hands training much earlier in his curriculum to help increase student retention.

This move makes sense on multiple levels. To begin with, sticky hands training can be a lot of fun. It is more of a game than a type of sparring, but it’s a game where someone can get smacked in the head quite hard if they aren’t paying attention to what is going on. While it teaches sensitivity, Chi Sao can also be a fast paced and competitive practice. Many schools today go to lengths to keep things calm, yet as more advanced techniques are brought into play, and more open (non-bridged) structures are introduced, what started out as a simple game can come to approach something that looks a lot more like sparring. It was hoped that these elements of Chi Sao would aid in students retention, and judging by the raw numbers, the plan worked.

Of course by introducing Chi Sao earlier Ip Man was also forced to teach basic offensive and defensive techniques right at the beginning of the instructional process. Gone were the weeks or months of stance training. Instead students could be equipped with a passable kit of self-defense skills in a few months.

A number of commentators (chief among them Leung Ting) have speculated that this change in the way that information was introduced was responsible for much of Wing Chun’s early success in Hong Kong’s marketplace. Relatively new students were given fighting techniques, a venue to hone these skills in a semi-competitive setting, and then plenty of chances to try them out in the unsanctioned rooftop matches that were so common in Hong Kong at that point in time. As they gained experience in both arenas they became noted as skilled fighters compared to other students of equal age. This reputation then attracted more athletic talent to Ip Man’s doorstep.

Thus the strong emphasis on Chi Sao training seen in much of Wing Chun today (certainly within the Hong Kong branch) appears to be an artifact of Ip Man’s desire to build a certain sort of school in a specific time and place. It might be too strong to say that Chi Sao made Wing Chun what it is, but it certainly gave it a push in that direction

In my (admittedly partial) reading of these events, Chi Sao probably functioned as an effective training tool for two reasons. After the first couple of years Ip Man’s efforts to build a school were pretty successful, so there were a large number of enthusiastic students to take up the practice. This is one of those activities where you definitely benefit from touching arms with a more diverse group of practitioners.

Secondly, a pretty high percentage of these students were actually involved in the bemio, or youth challenge fight, subculture that so vexed Hong Kong’s parents and civil authorities in the 1950s and 1960. Thus they had some actual fighting experience, and probably expected to receive more in the near future. I suspect that individuals with this sort of background might be better able to absorb the skills that Chi Sao is attempting to convey while not confusing the abstraction of the training exercise with the reality of a fight (at least as they experienced it).

So does that mean that Chi Sao always functions as an effective training tool? Probably not. As the previous discussion suggests, there are a number of factors at play.

Hong Kong in the post-WWII era was something of a special case for martial arts instruction. The sheer number of styles that were present in the city, the social tensions that resulted from the influx of refugees and other economic problems, and the area’s unique cultural history all helped to encourage the growth of a variety of martial arts traditions.

Yet this highly concentrated mode of development, in which we see many students flocking to established schools and styles, was not always the case in southern China. Consider once again the story of the Phoenix Village Boxing society, which I reviewed in a post earlier this year.

Ip Man and his best known student, Bruce Lee.

A Short Visit to Phoenix Village

An ethnographic account of Phoenix Village in Guangdong Province, completed during the 1920s, included a short but interesting discussion of the role of traditional boxing in the area’s social structure. What we saw in this case was an oscillation between two different modes of martial arts organization.

Most of the time, relatively few people seemed to be interested in boxing. Some of the aficionados likely found specialized employment as bouncers in the town’s two full-time gambling houses. The others were basically hobbyists who maintained a personal interest in some aspect of the martial arts, but lacked any larger collective institution or school to advance their practice.

Then, every so often, a social alignment would occur. One of the two clans that ran the village would decide, for whatever reason, to either tolerate or encourage the resurrection of the village Boxing Society. When this happened an outside instructor from a neighboring village was hired, regular classes were organized, and for a period of time a very large proportion of Phoenix Village’s young men would take up martial arts training.

Unfortunately the authors of this particular study were highly focused on the internal structure of this single village and so they did not have much to say on what might have sparked these developments. We know from other accounts that rumors or the actual appearance of bandits in the countryside could lead to calls for martial arts training. Periodic feuding with neighboring villages could also have the same effect. Both of these catalysts might negatively impact the wealth of major landlords, and this would probably explain their sudden enthusiasm for the martial arts. After all, one must protect your investments.

Then, after a period of time, the outside teacher would leave for a new job. His local students would continue on for a while, but inevitably disputes would break out. These were deemed to be socially disruptive to the village, and the entire Boxing Society would be disbanded and put into stasis until the next time that the local elites decided to support its rejuvenation. Anyone who maintained their interest in the martial arts did so as an individual with no institutional support within the village (though the authors hint at the possible importance of larger regional networks).

This account struck me as interesting as it showed two different modes of social organization that Phoenix Village’s boxers seemed to swing back and forth between with a fair degree of regularity. Most of the time they maintained their interests (and any studies) as either individuals or within very small groups. We will call this the “dispersed” model of social organization. In these cases personal efforts combined with some reference to wider (but relatively weak) social networks supported the existence of the martial arts.

At other times everything shifted. Suddenly the pool of potential martial artists expanded and became geographically concentrated in a single school or training ground. This all coincided with wider shifts in village priorities. The previously marginal interest in boxing now received the community’s full attention. We will call this the “concentrated” phase of social organization.

Two things struck me about this account. The first was the regularity of this change. The boxers of Phoenix Village could expect to live through multiple iterations of this cycle which was taken as the normal (if regrettable) state of affairs. Secondly, I noted how similar this was to accounts that I had previously pieced together of other martial arts associations in late 19th or early 20th century Guangdong.

When I was doing research for my recent book, I realized that a lot of the area’s martial arts organizations seemed to go through periods of intense activity followed by a prolonged hiatus. The account from Phoenix Village helped to make sense of this pattern and its underlying causes. While school and association lineage histories tend to tell a fairly consistent tale, the accounts given by outside observers have been, at times, markedly more cyclic.

It is interesting to think of what all of this might have meant for Chi Sao and its place in Wing Chun. Admittedly, what follows is purely speculative. Yet it may help to make sense of why Chi Sao played much less of a role in the practice of Chan Wah Shun’s students in Foshan than it did in Ip Man’s pupils in Hong Kong. Clearly the exercise was present and a part of the Wing Chun system in both places. Yet the martial arts were not particularly popular in Foshan between 1900-1910s.

We know, for instance, that Chan Wah Shun only taught about 16 students during his career. Further, when Ip Man returned from his time as a student in Hong Kong he discovered that very little Wing Chun was being practiced in his home town except in Ng Chung So’s school. And even this was a somewhat elite and small scale affair. With relatively few other people to practice with, the gains from devoting all of one’s time to Chi Sao would be limited. Thus more of an emphasis on forms practice, weapons training, the wooden dummy, basic strength, movement and conditioning drills might make a lot of sense. That is where one might reap the highest return in a relatively “dispersed” training environment.

Eventually things would change. Later in the 1920s, and during the first half of the 1930s, Wing Chun, like all of Foshan’s martial arts, seems to have grown in popularity. More students from a wide variety of backgrounds began to enter the style. This trend was accompanied by a more pronounced debate on the relative merits of different schools of Kung Fu.

All of this came to a head in Hong Kong during the early 1950s. After another period of “dispersed organization” between 1937-1945 (thanks to the Japanese), huge numbers of martial arts masters and students found themselves tightly packed into a new space, competing for recognition while at the same time looking for a better way to organize their schools in a new commercial environment. The geography of Kowloon alone probably made the shift to a “concentrated” mode of social organization inevitable. Ip Man’s increased emphasis on Chi Sao was not so much an invention, as it may simply have been a realization of the changing utility of different training strategies in this new environment.

Ip Man visiting Ho Ka Ming’s School in Macau.

Conclusion: The Situation Today

It is always a dangerous thing to take a model (even a “back of a napkin” exercise such as this) that was developed in one area and apply it to a totally different time and place. Nevertheless, I wonder if the idea of “dispersed” and “centralized” modes of organization might not have some value for us, at least as a metaphor. It might also suggest something important for how we think about the place of Chi Sao in Wing Chun today.

When I was first introduced to Wing Chun about a decade ago I had the good fortune to study at a large and thriving school in an urban environment. My teacher (Sifu Jon Nielson) approaches Wing Chun as a self-defense practice and introduces his students to movement, punching and defensive structures on literally the first day of class. Chi Sao was a big part of what I did and, if I may be permitted to say so, I got pretty good at it.

Like so many others before, I found the game to be addictive. I was a serious student and so I ended up practicing my Chi Sao (and other related skills) multiple hours a day, five (sometimes six) days a week. Better yet, there were a lot of advanced (and very tough) students at this school who were perfectly happy to hand out thrashings.

In my personal experience that is the key to becoming really good at Chi Sao. It is not magic. I don’t think it takes any special genetic predisposition. You simply spend lots of hours a week practicing these skills with a really large pool of people, some of whom are a great deal better than you and few of whom are actually kind of scary. Under those conditions, it is amazing how fast you pick this stuff up. But is being good at Chi Sao the same thing as being good at Wing Chun? Or even being a good martial artist?

Those are somewhat abstract questions, but they are ones that I have found myself forced to confront after moving from Salt Lake City to a small town in rural Western NY. Unsurprisingly, there are no large Wing Chun schools with the same combative approach to Chi Sao within driving distance of where I live.

This is not to say that it is impossible to do Wing Chun. Taking my years of experience I opened my own, much smaller school. While it is nothing on the scale of what my teacher has back in Salt Lake, I have been able to find a handful of people to work with, and that has allowed me to stay involved in Wing Chun community.

Yet Chi Sao is a problem. It is not that I no longer do it. I still spend some time on Chi Sao.  Yet working with a very small number of people, all junior to you, is not the same. Whatever it is, Chi Sao is not like riding a bike. The sorts of skills taught in sensitivity drills absolutely can be forgotten and will go dormant very fast if not continually used.

Compared to a lot of former Wing Chun students in a similar position I am really lucky. Even in a rural environment I have been able to keep my hand in the game. But am I growing as a Wing Chun practitioner?

On some level I want to say yes, but doing so might require us to de-center Chi Sao from its traditional place in the Wing Chun universe. As I suggested above, I am starting to wonder whether the actual utility of certain skills is tied to the environment that they are practiced in. The situation in my Sifu’s school was just about ideal for developing varied and nuanced skills in Chi Sao. (Parenthetically I should note that we did practice a full range of other skills, from forms to free sparring to combative weapons as well).

My students in rural western New York can certainly still gain some critical insights from the Chi Sao that we do. But given the limited number of partners any of them will ever be able to touch arms with, one quickly comes up against the problem of diminishing marginal returns. At what point would an additional hour of Chi Sao be better replaced with an hour of ground work, the heavy bag or basic conditioning? What mix of skills will actually make me a better martial artist and student of Wing Chun where I am today?

I suspect that there may not be a single answer to this question. Instead the mix of things that work best in a densely concentrated training area might be different than those in a dispersed environment. Students studying in small groups or on their own may need to think creatively about how to interpret and apply Wing Chun in their situation, rather than just becoming discouraged that they cannot replicate the “ideal” seen in Hong Kong in the 1960s or the West in the 1990s.

For a variety of reasons, mostly social and economic in nature, I think that we are entering a period of dispersed social organization more general (and not just in the martial arts). Certainly in large urban environments we will continue to see healthy schools, yet increasingly students of a wide variety of combat arts will find themselves in less connected places without a ready-made support system. In some senses we are better positioned to ride out this cyclic change than past generations. The internet provides the opportunities to construct new kinds of communities while recording and dispersing all sorts of training information. And certainly the organization of small local study groups, combined with the occasional workshop, can be very helpful.

Yet making the most of these new resources will require a careful reconsideration of our goals and even what it means to be a student of Wing Chun. This is one area where a more detailed understanding of our history can be particularly helpful. The southern Chinese martial arts have always been very flexible and they have survived many swings between concentrated and dispersed modes of social organization.

Nor has Chi Sao always enjoyed the pride of place that it is currently afforded within Wing Chun. I suspect that all of the traditional arts contain a variety of training tools precisely because they were practiced in a wide variety of environments. When properly understood, and combined with all of the information that we now have at our finger tips, there is no reason why our practices cannot continue to thrive under relatively dispersed models of social organizations.

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If you enjoyed this you might also want to read:   Spiritual Kung Fu: Can Wing Chun be a Secular Religion?

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Youth engaged in militia training outside of Guangzhou in the 1850s. Note the long thin blade being held behind the rattan shield by the kneeling individual. source http://www.swordsantiqueweapons.com.

***For our Friday post we will be taking a second look at something from the archives.  That was not my original plan.  I actually had a great idea for a post all outlined, but my week turned out to be busier than expected and it has culminated in a pleasant, if not totally expected, road trip.  So we will have to wait until next week to explore some of that idea.  But this is not much of a setback as today’s post lays down much of the conceptual foundation for where we are going next.  Consider the following questions.  To what extent should students of martial arts studies think of the traditional hand combat traditions as social institutions?  And if we do conceptualize them in this way, what changes does this lead to in their expected behavior?  What could it help us to explain?  Hopefully we will be returning to these issues soon.***

Introduction

No assertion is more fervently advanced on behalf of the traditional Asian martial arts than assurances of their great antiquity.  The relative ages of these systems seems to have become a matter of increased discussion and competition in the early 20^th century.  Since that time their various creation myths have given way to a veritable antiquarian arms-race.

Some schools of Japanese swordsmanship and unarmed fighting can trace their histories back for hundreds of years through surprisingly well preserved written records.  Of course much of their nature and purpose has changed during the course of this history.

I recently read a discussion of modern competitive kickboxing in Cambodia that began by confidently asserting that the sport was based on an older fighting system which was at least 1,000 years old.  The author pointed to certain abstract reliefs carved on a temple and a few quotes by local informants as such strong proof of his assertion that no other discussion was necessary.

Writers on the Chinese martial arts routinely expound on Wushu’s long and illustrious history.  Even very respectable, historically sophisticated, authors like Prof. Kang Gewu seem to have no problem placing the genesis of the modern Chinese fighting systems in the distant past.  In fact, the first entry in his extensive time-line on the development of Wushu, titled the Spring and Autumn of Chinese Martial Arts – 5000  Years, dates to 1.7 million years ago!  This is more than one million years prior to the first emergence of modern humans on the planet.

He, as well as other Chinese authors, spends a surprising amount of time examining ancient lithic artifacts as a necessary part of the discussion of modern Wushu’s evolution.  After that exercise he moves into an even more detailed examination of “Chinese” warfare in the late Paleolithic and early Bronze Age.  In short, the title of his study is not simply an indulgence in rhetorical license.  He really does make an argument that Wushu has a history of over 5,000 years.

Nor should the Koreans be left out of this discussion.  In his extensively researched study of the origins and creation of Tae Kwon Do, Alex Gillis notes that many of this style’s schools emblazon their walls with the assertions that their art is “thousands of years old.”  In reality Tae Kwon Do is very clearly a post-WWII derivative of Japanese karate.  Worse yet, the “thousands of years” slogan was consciously created and promoted by exactly the same individuals who were busy transforming the local Karate establishment into a Korea’s new “national art.”

How should students of martial studies approach the persistent claims of ancient origins when dealing with modern hand combat traditions?  The following post argues that this ubiquitous phenomenon suggests some interesting truths about the nature and social purpose of these fighting systems.  Yet to really get at these questions we must first think more carefully about how we define the “martial arts” in an academic research program.

1860s photograph of a “Chinese Soldier” with butterfly swords. Subject unknown, taken by G. Harrison Grey.

Understanding the “Martial Arts” as a Technical Transmission

One of the most exciting aspects of martial studies as a research area is its relative openness.  Not only are scholars from a wide range of disciplines engaging in a discussion of these questions, but an unprecedented number of martial artists are becoming interested in the history and social meaning of their practices as well.  This convergence creates opportunities for discussions between practical and academic students of the martial arts that can be very fruitful.

I think that it is probably easy to overlook how rare this conjunction of interests really is.  Macroeconomist and workers at a fast food restaurant may both be very interested in whether the minimum wage will be raised in the next year.  Yet rarely do the later attempt to read, let alone seriously engage with, the academic writings of the former.

The academic literature on the martial arts is much more likely to inspire interest among its subjects of study. Researchers might even benefit from the historical data and social connections that lay readers can provide.  Still, all of this common ground can mask some important differences in how scholars and practitioners understand the “martial arts.”

The fact that many (perhaps most) academic students of martial studies are also practitioners of these disciplines, while useful in many ways, can also muddy the conceptual waters.  One of the places where these differences are the most pressing is in the conceptual vocabulary that the two groups use to express their understanding of these fighting systems.

Readers might not suspect that there is any tension at all as both practitioners and academic students tend to employ the same vocabulary when describing these arts in technical terms.  Yet problems arise when we push beyond the most immediate levels and ask what the two groups actually mean by the words that they use in common.

Take for instance the term “martial art.”  Rarely do we stop to define or discuss this most basic concept.  Students from various styles might have slightly different understandings of what constitutes of a “martial art” in the abstract.  But almost all of them will understand this term to refer to a body of techniques, concepts and philosophical ideas about fighting.  The martial arts, in short, tend to be imagined as physical and cultural technologies.

This sort of technology can be passed on in a variety of ways.  Teacher/student transmission within some sort of school seems to be the “gold standard.”  But given the mind-boggling number of instructional books, DVDs, seminars and apps that are produced every year, it is clear that consumers have faith in a wide variety of educational methods.

Of course it is precisely these sorts of teachers, books, apps and DVDs that are also likely to advance the claim that the martial arts are “ancient” practices.  If one actually stops to consider what is being implied, this is a truly remarkable assertion.  It is almost intoxicating.  What other meaningful objects or technologies do most individuals interact with that can also claim such antiquity?

Most of us are employed in occupations that didn’t exist a century ago.  We work for corporations that probably did not exist even a decade ago.  The most popular forms of entertainment (film, TV, computer games, even the mass marketed novel) are all relatively recent inventions.  Even the “nation state system,” which structures almost every economic and political aspect of our modern lives is only a few hundred years old.  Other than a handful of religious texts, what in our current world really has a genealogy as ancient as that claimed by the martial arts?

I suspect that this appeal to antiquity succeeds in large part precisely because of its audacious nature.  It wows the student with the promise of something truly transcendent, and therefore legitimate.  And given that most of us have trouble understanding how different (and in many ways fundamentally inaccessible) even the recent past really is, we have no actual frame of reference with which to judge the credibility of these claims.

Then there is the problem of “evidence.”  Of course we must first begin by specifying evidence of what.  Notice that this is a step that generally does not happen in most popular historical discussions.

Given that most dialogues on the martial arts implicitly understand them as technical exercises, when they assert that their practices are “thousands of years old,” what they are really claiming is that their current technology of violence is identical to, and directly transmitted from, the physical culture possessed by warriors or sages of the ancient past.  Occasionally a specific philosophy (the Taiji Classics) or social agenda (“Oppose the Qing, Restore the Ming”) is also said to have been passed along.  But what most practitioners really seem to care about are the similarity of their physical skills to those practiced by their forbearers.

If one approaches the martial arts as a primarily technical exercise, it may be surprisingly easy to find evidence of “continuity” over time.  To begin with, most of these arts come with an “oral tradition” that asserts or simply takes the antiquity of the system for granted.   This provides a framework that students use to organize historical observations, and their understanding of earlier fighting traditions.  Such a framework also facilitates the almost universal temptation of “confirmation bias.”  It is the psychological process by which researchers over-emphasize facts that seem to bolster their beliefs about the nature of the world while disregarding contradicting evidence.

Of course these sorts of tendencies are by no means confined to popular discussions.  They often bedevil academic writing as well.  Scholars attempt to minimize these biases through well-defined methodologies, being transparent about sources and relying on external institutions like “peer review.”  Even then it must be admitted that total objectivity is probably impossible, and may not actually be all that desirable.

The problem with these sorts of “quality control” mechanisms is that they tend to be either expensive or time consuming.  As a result they are rarely employed in more popular modes of writing.  However, certain sorts of authors, notably journalists, have developed their own methods for dealing with at least some of these problems.

Yet our issues here go beyond writing strategies.  The very nature of the combat arts tends to promote “confirmation bias.”  The author of one of the papers I cited above noted that one can deduce a relationship between modern Cambodian kickboxing and ancient Khmer martial techniques through the carvings depicting military figures on some of the region’s ancient temples.  In examining these images some other observers have noted instances in which figures seemed to be in the act of striking their opponents with elbows.  Of course similar attacks are also employed in the region’s modern kickboxing.  This has led certain individuals to deduce that this traditional sport had enjoyed at least 1,000 years of continuous transmission.

Nor is this an isolated incident.  Archeological finds depicting ancient warriors in the kingdoms located on the Korean peninsula have been used to bolster the nationalist claims of Tae Kwon Do practitioners.  And students of Chinese martial studies have demonstrated a great interest in the Middle Kingdom’s ancient patterns of Bronze Age warfare going back at least as far as the time of the Shi noblemen.

Despite China’s great literary tradition, we must acknowledge that the ancient historical record is actually pretty thin.  When discussing the events of past millennia the student is forced to account for long silences and disjoints in the documentary resources.

Yes we may see an unarmed warrior striking an opponent with an elbow in one panel, but there are actually only so many ways in which one can attack.  All human being have two feet, two knees, two fists, two elbows, and (in extreme cases) one head.  The fact that an elbow strike was observed in the distant past only confirms that both modern and ancient warriors fight under the same set of biological constraints.  More interesting is the fact that other temple panels showed Khmer warriors fighting demonic creatures, yet that tradition does not seem to have persisted into modern kickboxing.

In any event, these biological constraints dictate that all systems of armed or unarmed combat, despite their place or origin, will seem more similar than different.  Spears, swords and bows are more or less universally employed and studied around the world.  The same goes for boxing and wrestling.

Given how fundamental a concept like “wrestling” is, more than one society might create a set of very similar physical practices.  When we see different groups of individuals, widely separated by geography or time, doing the same thing, we should probably start by assuming by parallel evolution rather than “mysterious transmission.”

This is not to say that direct transmission never happens.  Certain Japanese arts do trace their roots to China.  Likewise Shaolin managed to create and export a fairly stable pole fighting tradition during the late Imperial period.  But these relationships need to be carefully established through detailed scholarship rather than being simply assumed based on a few suggestive archeological finds.

Modern students tend to think of the martial arts as technological systems because that is how they encounter them.  They spend their time learning to recreate the movements, flow and power that their teachers demonstrate.  Immersing oneself in this bodily experience can even be an important tool in certain sorts of ethnographic research, particularly if one is interesting in the field of performance ethnography or questions of “embodiment.”

This is certainly a valid way of understanding the modern martial arts.  But it is not the only possibility.  I suspect that for many researchers, particularly the more historically and social scientifically inclined, there may be a more promising alternative.

Arnold Genthe and Will Irwin. Genthe’s Photographs of San Francisco’s Old Chinatown. New York: Mitchell Kennerley. 1913. (First published in 1908). A high resolution scan of the original photograph can be found at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkley).

The Martial Arts as a “Social Institution”

Consider instead the martial arts as an “institution” as defined within the social scientific literature.  By this I mean that specific styles are understood as socially constructed bodies of practices, norms and identities that are conveyed over time.  Technical exercises may be part of the process of transmitting this institution, but there is always more to it than that.

I would posit that while most practitioners think of the martial arts as a purely “technical exercise” (including both a physical and cultural component), they actually tend to encounter and participate in them as “social institutions.”  One does not have to dig deep to find a certain hunger for discussions of modes of martial ethics, philosophical insights and a sense of shared community within most of the modern martial arts.  Nor is it a coincidence that the single most common sort of dialog pertaining to Kung Fu that one finds on the internet is a constant rediscovery and elaboration of the various creation myths.  After all, at their most basic level each of these stories is a parable of belonging and personal transformation.

A similar conclusion holds even if we consider things from a more materialist perspective.  Most of us gain access to a body of technical knowledge about the martial arts by joining a specific type of commercial network.  The public martial arts school is actually a relatively recent development in the history of Chinese hand combat.  These things did not appear prior to the end of the 19^th century and they did not become common before about 1920.

Today the commercially funded public school is the defining social institution of the Chinese martial arts.  Older sorts of institutions (such as the “discipleship system”) to the extent that they still exist, have been modified so that they reinforce rather than challenge the economic logic of these new organizations.

Even the most basic goals of students of the Chinese martial arts are different now than they might have been 200 years ago.  While certain aspects of technical practice have remained the same, very few modern students engage in training because they expect the village militia to be called up.  Nor are many modern students amateur opera performers or part-time bandits.

Physical fitness, spiritual development, sporting competition and civilian self-defense are the major reasons that individuals seem to take up a martial art today.  Yet in the case of the Chinese hand combat schools, these sorts of motivations reflect the reform movements of the 1920s and 1930s much more than they do the high Qing dynasty ethos of the 1720s or 1730s.  While we may share certain technical practices with the past, almost everything else about the modern experience of the martial arts has changed.  By understanding these practices as relatively newly created social institutions, scholars can ask better questions about how and why they evolved.

This somewhat abstract discussion actually has important implications when we start to think about the 19^th century history of some of today’s most popular martial arts.  Take Wing Chun for example.  The orthodox version of this style’s creation myth (popularized by Ip Man in Hong Kong in the 1950s) is interesting in that it does not claim great antiquity.

Instead it places the genesis of the art with the destruction of the Southern Shaolin Temple in the 1720s.  The fighting style was then passed down through a number of generations until the various pieces of it were brought together by the “Red Boat Opera Companies.” Following a socially disastrous local tax revolt in the 1850s, two opera performers taught it to Leung Jan, a pharmacist in Foshan, to thank him for offering them shelter.

Leung Jan had no intention of teaching the art publicly or opening a school.  Occasionally this is used as “proof” of his highly conservative ways, or the secret excellence of his Kung Fu.  In fact, there were no public martial arts schools during most of his life.  That most basic social institution, which structures our fundamental experience of the martial arts today, had not yet been invented.

One of the few individuals that Leung Jan did teach was a friend and neighbor from the marketplace named Chan Wah Shun.  Being younger his outlook on the martial arts was somewhat different.  During his generation the Hung Sing Association (the first large Choy Li Fut school in Foshan) proved that the local economy had monetized to the point that it was now possible to open something very much like a commercial public school.

Chan Wah Shun’s ambitions to follow in their footsteps were somewhat dampened by bad timing.  The early and late phases of his teaching career were separated by a long break caused by the social fallout of the Boxer Uprising.  The governor of the province, seeking to prevent copy-cat attacks on foreigners and Chinese Christians, moved quickly to suppress all local martial arts activity in the Pearl River Delta region in about 1900.  Even after it became possible to teach again, the reputation of the martial arts had been badly damaged.  In fact, 1900-1910 were probably the darkest years for the traditional Chinese fighting systems.

In total, Chan Wah Shun only taught about 16 students over the course of his career.  The last of these was the son of his landlord, a child named Ip Kai Man.  Unfortunately Chan soon fell ill and later suffered from a stroke.  Most of Ip Man’s training seems to have come from Chan’s second disciple, Ng Chung So.

The actual nature of Ip Man’s introduction to Wing Chun is somewhat hard to disentangle.  As the son of a rich merchant and landlord he spent most of his days studying literature rather than Kung Fu.  Then, as a teenager, he was sent to Hong Kong to attend a western high school.  This might have put an end to his Wing Chun training except that by an accident of fate he was introduced to Leung Bik, Leung Jan’s remaining son.

The elderly Leung Bik had never sought to teach Kung Fu and had not been involved with the new commercial institutions that were quickly transforming the world of the southern Chinese martial arts.  Instead his relationship with Ip Man seems to have reflected the older 19^th century patterns.  He moved in with new student, who provided him with food, clothing and housing, in exchange for tuition.  In short, Leung Bik became a temporary member of the wealthy young student’s household.

This actually puts Ip Man in a very interesting position.  Much has been made of the fact that he received both a Confucian and Western education.  But in terms of understanding his Wing Chun, it is important to realize that he likewise received both a modern early 20^th century and a more traditional 19^th century introduction to the martial arts as well.  Few if any of Chan Wah Shun’s other students (perhaps with the exception of some of those who had previously studied in another style) could say this.

Ip Man carefully considered what he learned from both Chan Wah Shun and Leung Bik.  By his own admission he thought deeply about not just their techniques, but how they taught as well.  Except for a brief episode in the 1940s, Ip Man avoided opening his own school in Guangdong during the volatile Republic of China years.  Yet after fleeing to Hong Kong in 1949 he was left with little other choice.

His innovations in teaching techniques and humorous personality made him a popular instructor during much of the 1950s and 1960s.  A combination of factors, including the suppression of Wing Chun on the mainland, the socioeconomic character of some of his Hong Kong students, and the eventual celebrity of Bruce Lee, all conspired to make his branch of Wing Chun the most globally popular martial art to arise from southern China.

Let us pause to consider the following question.  What kind of story have I just told?  Most Wing Chun students would recognize this as an abbreviated history of their style.  Indeed a narrative very much like this one is told on a daily basis in Wing Chun schools around the world.  But is this narrative really the history of “Wing Chun” as a martial art?

Leaving aside the dubious historical credentials of the Southern Shaolin Temple and its subsequent destruction, I would argue that the real issue here is Leung Jan.  He is the first individual in Wing Chun’s genealogy whose birth and basic life story can be objectively verified.  Leung Jan represents the moment when the orthodox creation narrative transitions from the realm of folklore to history (loosely understood).

There is not really much doubt that the range of technical skills that Ip Man taught in Hong Kong (while modified through his own experience) ultimately came through Leung Jan.  They were transmitted to Ip Man through his son (Leung Bik), his student (Chan Wah Shun) and his grand-student (Ng Chung So).  Ip Man had the singular advantage of being able to see three different dimensions of the master’s transmission.

So does it stand to reason that Leung Jan must be the first known practitioner of “Wing Chun?”  Here things get more difficult.  If one is only interested in the transmission of an “embodied technology” the answer may well be, yes.  But did Leung Jan know that the name of the art that he practiced was “Wing Chun?”

I doubt that there can ever be a definitive answer to this question.  The name “Wing Chun” does not appear in surviving records as the title of a martial art in Leung Jan’s generation.  The names of some of the central characters in the Wing Chun creation myth first appear in a Wuxia novel that did not come out until about the time of Leung Jan’s death.

Further, critical figures in this story, such as Ng Moy, actually bear a much closer resemblance to the way that these characters were reimagined by subsequent authors writing in the 1930s.  I think that there is a good chance that Leung Jan’s explanation of the origins of his art differed substantially from what is passed on to students today.

Nor would this be a unique situation.  Historians interested in the origins of Taiji Quan point out that while the art practiced at Chen Village in the 18^th century resembles modern Taiji in many respects, there are also some pretty clear differences.  Nor does it appear that the residents of Chen Village knew that they were practicing “Grand Ultimate Boxing.”  That name, and everything that it implies, was coined by a more elite individual who was watching Yang Luchan perform in Beijing at some point in the 1850s.  Nor is there any evidence of (most of) the “Taiji Classics” at Chen Village.  The literary and philosophical aspects of the art would have to wait to be “discovered” by the Wu brothers during the second half of the 19^th century as well.

The end result of all of this is that the Taiji Quan practiced in Beijing in early 20^th century was a fundamentally different sort of social institution than that practiced in Chen Village in the 18^th.  Yes, important technical aspects of the art remained unchanged, but it was now distributed through public commercial schools rather than closed village lineages.  It was now taught as a form of physical culture rather than as a type of military training.  It was accompanied by an elite literature and philosophical system that were previously unknown within Chen village.  Even the name of the art was different.

While less jarring I would propose that we can understand Wing Chun as having gone through a similar transformation following the Leung Jan’s generation (at least in his lineage).  Leung Jan enjoyed the martial arts, but he had no intention of teaching them.  For him this was a system of personal practice (and defense) which probably grew out of his experiences in the turbulent 1850s.

It was only after his death that Chan Wah Shun was able to turn his master’s once private practice into what was essentially the first public commercial Wing Chun School which openly exchanged teaching for monthly payments of silver.

This transformation would have had many effects on Leung Jan’s art, some subtle, some more obvious.  The style’s name and history, while not really all that important in Leung Jan’s personal practice, would have become critical.  Such things are an essential part of advertising a school in the newly emerging competitive marketplace, as well as explaining to students what sort of community they have just joined.

Students today experience and understand Wing Chun as a relatively open institution built on the exchange of embodied practices and money.  This basic structure dates to the time of Chan Wah Shun.  The creation myth and folklore that monopolizes so much of the modern discussions of the style is probably even more recent than that.  When we as social scientists attempt to understand the popularity of Wing Chun, what it reveals about the development of civil society in southern China, or how it has been carried on the waves of globalization, the “social institution” that we are looking at is fundamentally different from anything that Leung Jan was ever part of.

Another picture of the same young militia group. Luckily the hudiedao of the leader have become dislodged in their sheath. We can confirm that these are double blades, and they are of the long, narrow stabbing variety seen in some of the prior photographs. Source http:\\www.swordsantiqueweapons.com.

Conclusion: Focusing on Variables, not Constants, in Martial Studies

This should not be construed as an argument that everything in the Wing Chun system was invented whole cloth in the 1930s.  Neither social nor physical culture ever arises in a vacuum.  Everything has its antecedents.  Consider the role of pole fighting in the style.

Wing Chun’s famous “Six and Half Point Pole” form is actually shared with a number of other regional martial arts.  Given its widespread distribution, simplicity, and terrible practicality, I strongly suspect that it goes back to the days of mandatory local militia training in the 19^th century.  In fact, the actual techniques and understanding of violence behind this pole method is probably one of those elements of the southern Chinese martial arts that actually is hundreds of years old, maybe even dating back to the heyday of military pole fighting in the 16^th century.

Yet that is precisely the problem that we are faced with when attempting to define the “martial arts,” let alone date them.  Whatever modern Wing Chun is, it is clearly not a pure 16^th century military training exercise.  Certainly some of its techniques may be shared with practices from that period.  Yet a lot of history has intervened along the way.  It is this subsequent historical evolution that makes Wing Chun unique.  It is what defines it as a social institution, distinct and different from other styles that it may share a certain body of practices with.

When we, as social scientists, fall into the trap of defining the martial arts only in technical terms (rather than as historically and socially defined institutions) we are in danger of losing sight of precisely those aspects of these systems that account for their change and dynamism.  It is within moments of transformation that we may be able to open a window onto the mechanisms behind the development of Chinese (and even global) society.

Of course dealing with changing and evolving institutions is never easy.  Do they simply respond to the structural constraints of the systems that define them, or do they maneuver within their environment in strategic ways?  How great of a role does individual agency actually play in the creation or transformation of a martial art?  And how should we define the moment when one institution dies only to be replaced by something new?

These are all challenging questions, but their answers are potentially important.  Before we can tackle any of these problems we must start by accepting that the martial arts, as socially defined institutions, are different today than they were hundreds, let alone thousands, of years ago.  Persistent attempts to link this or that art to a famous Ming dynasty personality or text are bound to obscure much of what is actually interesting about these modern practices.

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If you enjoyed this post you might also want to read: Do the Chinese Martial Arts have One “Martial Culture” or Many?

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Residents of Ganxi Dong village demonstrating their martial arts skills. Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

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!

An older resident of the same village demonstrating a form with dual iron whips. Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Chinese Martial Arts in the News

A number of news outlets in the West took notice of a story that was making the rounds in China.  Its basically a photo essay shot in an ethnic minority Dong village in Tianzhu.    The upshot of the article is that the martial arts are very popular in this somewhat isolated agricultural community and a large number of styles seem to be practiced.  Recently the village has developed a reputation for its cultivation of the martial arts, but no one seems to clearly remember how this situation first came about.  The various versions of the article that I saw all relied on the sorts of Orientalist tropes that one tends to see in stories like this while resisting asking any of the more obvious questions such as the names of the style in question, or how their practice survived during the Cultural Revolution in this particular place.  Or maybe the real research question is why these romantic narratives surrounding the martial arts are so persistent in not only the Western but also Chinese accounts of these communities?  Interested readers can also see the South China Morning Post version of this story here.

Zhang Huoding rehearsing in Beijing. Source: New York Times.

The Chinese martial arts have also been making news a little closer to home.  Recently the New York Times ran a longer piece on Zhang Huoding, a famous Peking Opera star whose performance of the “Legend of White Snake” will be opening in Lincoln Center later this week.  Its an important article that touches of multiple aspects of her career and the current state of Chinese Opera.  I think that readers of Kung Fu Tea will probably be most interested by the accounts of her early training in both performance and martial arts.  It also looks like Wong Kar-wai, who produced the Ip Man bio-pic The Grandmaster, is currently working on a documentary of her life.  I really regret that I am going to miss her live performances in Manhattan, but at least we can look forward to a new documentary on a fascinating figure in the world of Chinese opera.  I also found it interesting that this article did not hesitate to tie her US performances to China’s current “soft power” diplomatic strategy.

Shi Yongxin, current, and somewhat embattled, Abbot of the Shaolin Temple.

Our main story in the last installment of “Chinese Martial Arts in the News” focused on the brewing controversy surrounding Shi Yongxin, the Shaolin Temple’s so called “CEO Monk.”  As the Abbot of the venerable monastery he has raised eyebrows in the past with has adoption of modern business strategies and corporate practices to both build Shaolin’s brand and to extend its reach (most recently by building a daughter temple on Australia’s Gold Coast, a major tourist destination).  Question’s of Buddhist propriety and temple management strategies notwithstanding, Shi Yongxin has also been dogged by more serious accusations surrounding his personal life.  Recently a new row erupted when an anonymous source claimed to have evidence that the Abbot had both been living a double life (which included the fathering of children in violation of his monastic vows) and had been involved in large scale financial improprieties.  As a result the Shi Yongxin was forced to cancel an appearance in Thailand and was reported to have been brought in for questioning.

Over the last few weeks there have been fewer stories about the abbot, and those that have emerged seem to have split into two camps regarding his likely fate.  On the one hand the South China Morning Post reported that Chinese prosecutors had accepted complaints about the Abbot’s behavior for investigation.  Given the dual crackdown on corruption and religious institutions that are currently underway, this is probably not a favorable turn of events.  On the other hand, the Want China Times has reported that some of the accusations against the Abbot may not be as strong as were first reported and as a result he may be in a better position to survive this latest round of controversy.    It looks like it may be a little while longer before we will know how this story ends.

Students practice the traditional Chinese Martial Arts in Qufu, Shandong Province.

The Indian press has carried a number of stories on the Chinese martial arts over the last few weeks.  First off, the Hindustan Times has a short article on “Kung Fu Tourism” in Shandong Province.  Of course this area has long been a stronghold of martial arts practice in Northern China.  The main thrust of the piece seems to be the diversity of the international students flocking to the region.  Next, the Times of India has a brief report on a couple setting up Wushu training opportunities in Gujarat.  While both athletics and martial arts are popular in the region, they note that the development of Wushu has lagged behind.  Their program intends to do something about that.

A photograph of Liu Yongfu as an older gentleman. Source: The Manila Times

Perhaps the most interesting article in today’s review was published by The Manila Times.  While the article starts off with the report of a new highway being completed in China, the author quickly veers into more interesting territory with a discussion of the life and career of General Liu Yongfu, the “Tiger of Qinzhou.”  Of course he is best known to Chinese martial artists for hiring Wong Fei Hung, the famous Hung Gar master, as a medical officer and military trainer for his troops.  Definitely check this piece out.  I learned a couple of new facts and will need to read up on Liu in the future.

Is the Kunlun Fighting Championships going to be next big thing in the Chinese Combat Sports media market?  Will they be able to advance MMA in a marketplace where some other larger companies have previously stumbled?  And how will Sanda fare in all of this?  Check out this post to read more.
While not directly related to the martial arts, I also thought that some of you might also find this article to be interesting.  It is an examination of the rising popularity of Qigong in the US, and its reception in Houston’s medical community.

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

Both Kung Fu movie and Star Wars fans received some great news recently.  Confirming the rumors that had been circulating for about a month, an official cast list and photograph were distributed for the upcoming Star Wars Rogue One film which included Donnie Yen.  You can read my more detailed breakdown of the story here.

The press has largely interpreted this move as an attempt to appeal to the increasingly important Chinese film market, and I am sure that there is a large element of truth to that.  But as I argue in my own piece, Donnie Yen could bring a lot to this project that would be of great interest to the average Star Wars fan in the West as well.

One of the still unresolved questions is what sort of character he will be playing.  The Chinese press initially reported that Yen would be cast as a Jedi, but the directors of Rogue One have been adamant that their film will focus on the ground war against the Empire and the efforts of normal, non-force using, individuals to bring hope to the galaxy.

Still, Yen may have muddied the water with a recent Facebook post.  In it he posted a image of three prop Storm Trooper helmets (two of which were a pretty new design) with the following note: “I am the force and I fear nothing… Going to put this in my company’s display room.” So maybe his character will have some connection to the Force after all?  Or maybe he was just calling on the Force to protect him from the folks at Lucas Film who tend to take a rather dim view of unauthorized set pictures and spoilers.  After a flurry of phone calls Yen was later forced to take the picture down.

And for those of you looking for an update on Ip Man 3 (also starring Donnie Yen) be sure to check out this article as well.

Martial Arts Studies

The end of August is typically a pretty quiet time in the world of academics.  First everyone disappears on vacation.  And then when you return its to the crush of a new semester with everything which that entails.  But things have a not been so quiet on the publication front.

Rowman and Littlefield has another Martial Arts Studies book due out, this one to be released through their Lexington Books imprint.  Unleashing Manhood in the Cage: Masculinity and Mixed Martial Arts by Christian A. Vaccaro and Melissa L. Swauger is currently expected to ship on November 6th, 2015 (unfortunately there cover art has not yet been released).  The authors are both members of the sociology department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The publisher’s blurb is as follows:

Unleashing Manhood in the Cage: Masculinity and Mixed Martial Arts addresses the question “Why do mixed martial arts participants endure grueling workouts and suffer through injury, with little or no pay, just to compete?” The answer is because the participants enjoy a form of idolization from their supporters, each other, and culture more generally, which is linked to masculinity. In fact, MMA organizers, from the very beginning, purposefully created elements of the sport that are linked to dominant narratives about manhood. In this context, men don thin open-fingered gloves, lock themselves in a caged enclosure, and slug it out in a fight with few rules to see who comes out on top. This all occurs while “ring girls” in high-heels and skin-tight shirts and shorts stride around outside the cage holding signs and peddling t-shirts. The sum of these elements is the creation of a type of a publicly accessible and consumable form of masculinity. The sport of mixed martial arts is a rich and intriguing space where the construction of gender can be explored through a sociological and ethnographic lens.

Readers interested in this project may also want to check out my recent review of Gottschall’s book, the Professor in the Cage.  Likewise, Alex Channon and Christopher R. Matthews’ edited volume, Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sport, also promises to make important contributions to the discussion of gender in the martial arts.

Anthropologist and ethnographers interested in the martial arts will want to take note of a new edited volume by Kalpana Ram, Christopher Houston and Michael Jackson.  Titled Phenomenology in Anthropology: A Sense of Perspective, this edited volume is due out on October 19, 2015 from Indiana University Press.

This volume explores what phenomenology adds to the enterprise of anthropology, drawing on and contributing to a burgeoning field of social science research inspired by the phenomenological tradition in philosophy. Essays by leading scholars ground their discussions of theory and method in richly detailed ethnographic case studies. The contributors broaden the application of phenomenology in anthropology beyond the areas in which it has been most influential―studies of sensory perception, emotion, bodiliness, and intersubjectivity―into new areas of inquiry such as martial arts, sports, dance, music, and political discourse.

Of particular interest is the chapter by Greg Downey (a well known scholar to students of Martial Arts Studies) titled “Beneath the Horizon: The Organic Body’s Role in Athletic Experience.”  This will certainly be something to look forward to.

Striking Beauty by

Those more interested in philosophy will also want to remember that Barry Allen’s latest book, Striking Beauty: A Philosophical Look at the Asian Martial Arts (Columbia University Press) is now shipping with a truly impressive list of endorsements on the back and a very reasonable price tag (always a pleasant surprise when dealing with academic books).

The first book to focus on the intersection of Western philosophy and the Asian martial arts, Striking Beauty comparatively studies the historical and philosophical traditions of martial arts practice and their ethical value in the modern world. Expanding Western philosophy’s global outlook, the book forces a theoretical reckoning with the concerns of Chinese philosophy and the aesthetic and technical dimensions of martial arts practice.

Striking Beauty explains the relationship between Asian martial arts and the Chinese philosophical traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, in addition to Sunzi’s Art of War. It connects martial arts practice to the Western concepts of mind-body dualism and materialism, sports aesthetics, and the ethics of violence. The work ameliorates Western philosophy’s hostility toward the body, emphasizing the pleasure of watching and engaging in martial arts, along with their beauty and the ethical problem of their violence.

Paul Bowman has announced some detailes about his forthcoming volume titled Mythologies of Martial Arts.  It will be of importance to those who follow Critical Theory as well as global popular culture.

Explicitly inspired by Roland Barthes’ enormously influential Mythologies (1957), Mythologies of Martial Arts carries the spirit of Barthes’ incisive and engaging cultural and ideological criticism into the blossoming field of Martial Arts Studies.

Writing at the cutting edge of the emergence of both semiotics and deconstruction, in 1957 Mythologies pioneered an innovative and dynamic cultural criticism for the emerging post-war consumer culture. Six decades later, Mythologies of Martial Arts writes in its wake, long after semiotics and deconstruction have become ingrained in academic and intellectual discourses of all kinds, yet long before their questions and problems have become any less current. For, the questions and issues that Mythologies raised for a very diverse readership remain compelling today: what does this mean; how does this work on us; why do we desire this but not that; what effects do these images and practices have on us, and on others; where do these ideas, discourses and values come from, where do they take us, and where are they going?

Mythologies of Martial Arts focuses the key dimensions of the internationally circulating signs, signifiers and practices of martial arts in global popular culture. Informed by the author’s longstanding practical and professional experience in both martial arts (in which he has wide ranging experience) and academia (where he teaches, researches and publishes in cultural studies, film studies, media studies, postcolonial studies and martial arts studies), Mythologies of Martial Arts deploys the full range of resources that this personal and professional experience has afforded. It takes the form of short, engaging, accessible, yet fully referenced and academically informed essays on an extremely wide variety of subjects related to martial arts and the media cultures in which martial arts have always been steeped.

Cheng Man-ch’ing and T’ai Chi: Echoes in the Hall of Happiness. Via Media. Source: Amazon.com

Lastly, students of Taijiquan will be happy to see that Via Media is releasing a collected edition titled Cheng Man-ch’ing and T’ai Chi: Echoes in the Hall of Happiness.  This volume contains a number of articles first published in the Journal of Martial Arts Studies which approach the life, practices and legacy of Cheng Man-ch’ing from a variety of perspectives.  Authors include Barbara Davis, Benjamin Lo, Russ Mason, Robert W. Smith, Nigel Sutton, Yizhong Xi and others.  Obviously Cheng Man-ch’ing was also of more general interest as a critical figure in the spread of the Chinese martial arts in North America.

Chinese martial arts display. Northern China, sometime in the 1930s.  I particularly like the wide assortment of traditional weapons which can be seen in this photo.  Source: Author’s Personal Collection.

“War is a continuation of politics with other means”
-Carl von Clausewitz, On War

“A sabre,” said my teacher, Szabo,”is a tool for changing your opponent’s mind.”
-“The Sabre’s Edge” by Rogan Winter

Introduction

No topic seems to have grabbed the attention of so many martial arts thinkers, reformers and writers as “reality.” The concept enjoys a prominent place in the ongoing debates about the fate of the traditional hand combat systems in the age of the mixed martial arts and the UFC. Other individuals have employed the metaphor differently, emphasizing the importance of “real world self-defense.”

Nor is this a recent rhetorical innovation. It turns out that certain actors have been debating the reality of the martial arts since the early years of the 20th century. We often forget that the seemingly traditional disciplines of Judo and Kendo in Japan, or the Jingwu Association in China, were themselves reform movements. Their creators were quite concerned with the role of these combat systems in the larger “body politic” of the nation state. For them reality was a matter of modernization and reform.

The advocates of “reality” have never spoken with a single voice. Their discourse has always woven together competing demands and irreconcilable differences as to what the brave new future of the martial arts should hold. This is not to say that they were without some points of convergence. In fact, the one thing that seemingly everyone could agree on was that there was something seriously wrong with the traditional Chinese martial arts.

Secrecy was, and continues to be, viewed as the bane of these systems. Techniques passed on only to favored disciples can imperil the survival of a lineage. Likewise, the inability to standardize practices and the principles of advancement seriously hampered the state’s ability to co-opt these systems of regional knowledge and redeploy them as tools of government policy and nation building. Indeed, the continuing struggle to reform and expand the duan system in mainland China today demonstrates that this has been a long term problem for generations of reformers.

Needless to say, modern combat sports practitioners question many aspects of traditional training, including its emphasis on the learning and performance of various sorts of forms. While weapons play an important part in criminal violence, most schools continue to teach focus on skills such as the sword, spear and tiger fork rather than the more commonly encountered knife, handgun and crowbar. Other modernizers question whether activities such as meditation, internal training or lion dancing should even be associated with the “real” martial arts at all. Where some see cultural richness and heritage, others perceive only techniques that have no place in the octagon.

The following essay will argue that the idea of “reality” is probably doing less to advance our popular (and occasionally even academic) discussions of the martial arts than is generally thought. Or perhaps it would be better to say that our notions of “reality” are sadly under-conceptualized. Violence may be a reality of life. But even a few moments of thought should be enough to convince us that the sorts of violence faced by a modern fighter pilot, a member of a prison cell extraction team and an MMA athlete have very little in common. Each of them might be seriously injured in the pursuit of their occupation. Yet one suspects that their “personal realities” are better defined by their differences than similarities.

It then stands to reason that if we are going to speak about “reality,” particularly as it applies to the traditional Chinese martial arts, we must first begin by being very clear as to who we are talking about and what sorts of situations they actually face. Once we do this a number of complicating factors emerge. Many of the most traditional and seemingly backwards aspects of these social organizations may serve important social function. Finally, I suggest that concepts like “credibility,” “reputation” and “costly signaling” may do more to advance our understanding of the TCMA as a community based strategy for dealing with social violence than the ever shifting mirage of “reality.”

A 1920s postcard showing traditional practitioners performing in a marketplace. Note that both the previous images rest on the assumption of an unseen audience who observes and evaluates this performance. Source: Author’s Personal Collection

Consider the Ants…

Ants are one of the most successful species to ever inhabit the planet earth. Like humans they are social animals that depend on complex systems of communication and specialization for the survival of the community. They also resemble us in having found ingenious ways to colonize and utilize a remarkable percentage of this planet’s landmass. In fact, their sheer population density can lead to some other, less charming, parallels. Certain types of ants commonly engage in border disputes with neighboring colonies.

In a recent review of The Professor in the Cage (Penguin 2015), I criticized a number of aspects of the Jonathan Gottschall’s theoretical and empirical approaches to the problem of social violence. Simply put, I do not believe that evolutionary biology can explain nearly as much about the varieties of violence as the author does.

Still, Gottschall is an engaging writer and I actually liked quite a few things about his sixth chapter titled “War Games.” My initial review of his work ran longer than anticipated so I did not get a chance to explore a few of his insights there. While I continue to disagree with him as to the ultimate cause of these variables, I agree that his observations here raise important issues to consider when studying the problem of social violence. Of particular importance was his discussion of warfare among ants.

As a student of international relations I have spent a lot of time reading, thinking and teaching about war. While my personal research has been in the subfield of political economy, basic IR theory has always been dominated with questions of war and peace. Classes on foreign and security policy tend to generate the sort of student credit hours that cash strapped departments are looking for. And it turns out that we and ants have reached many of the same conclusions about fighting.

The basic problem with warfare, as any scholar of international relations (or soldier ant) can tell you, is that it is very costly. This is a result of the private information (or secrets) that each side hold about their true capabilities. In a world with no secrets, where both sides knew the others’ exact strengths or weaknesses, actual combat would probably never happen. Both sides would be able to calculate with precision who would win, and what the costs would be, in advance of an actual fight.

In this case fighting is not only mathematically irrational, it is just plain dumb. Knowing the outcome in advance the losing side should just hand over what would have been taken. The unpleasantness of war is averted and neither side suffers the material destruction that combat always bring. In short, both sides are better off if you reach a deal rather than fighting. Just like you learned in kindergarten.

Unfortunately we do not live in a world with perfect information about what all actors are actually capable of. Given that no one has a magical crystal ball, everyone will have a very strong incentive to make themselves appear to be stronger than they really are in an effort to convince the others to back down. To further complicate matters, we realize that everyone else is probably lying about their true capabilities, just as we are. As such their shows of strength, giant military parades or promises of bloody retaliation lack credibility.

In practice both sides of any conflict have difficulties calculating what the true probabilities of victory are, or what they stand to lose when they tangle with an opponent of unknown strength. And that is a problem because history has shown that these sorts of calculations on the part of political elites really matter. Countries don’t necessarily go to war because they think they will win. They go to war because they think that they will profit. Actually, China’s long history of negotiations with bandit warlords is a fantastic illustration of this very principal, but that is a topic for another post.

The basic problem then is that under the shadow of incomplete information, talk is cheap. Neither side has an incentive to believe that the threats or promises of the other are legitimate, and so both may miscalculate what they will gain in absolute terms from fighting. Or in the words of one of my teachers “war is in the error term.”

What is really painful about this situation is that diplomats have sensed this, at least on some level, for a very long time. Yet there are no quick and easy ways to escape this problem. Promises lack credibility, and verification schemes can easily be spoofed.

What is needed is some way to bring credibility to the bargaining table. Specifically, genuinely strong parties need to be able to send a signal that everyone can observe which cannot be spoofed. The classic solution to this dilemma is to turn away from promises to inflict pain on the other guy, and to instead do something which inflicts a little pain on yourself.

In the political science literature we refer to these efforts as “costly signals” and it is hoped that they will do at least three things. First, they demonstrate the reality of your resolve. Second they signal your ability to actually pay the costs of carrying out the threat in question (most threats are inherently incredible, but again, that is a post for another day). Lastly, they establish your reputation among other player who may be watching this conflict, but who are not directly involved in it. By creating a strong reputation now you lower the probability of future conflict.

How all of this plays out in the world of modern diplomacy can be somewhat abstract. For instance, economic sanctions are generally only credible (and effective) if the target believes that they are the first step on an escalatory pathway that goes someplace very bad. Sanctions programs that only impose pain on foreign companies are generally seen as lacking this sort of credibility. But if the sending country is willing to impose the sorts of sanctions that would materially damage one of its own important industries, then other players generally sit up and take notice. That is a pretty clear sign that something much worse is coming in the immediate future if steps are not taken now.

Likewise if a leader responds to an attack against their national interest by flying some isolated drone missions, what the antagonist may perceive is that she does not care enough about this issue to risk putting lives on the line. As such they should push forward with their provocations. However, placing “boots on the ground” (and hence in harms way) generally sends a much louder signal about one’s resolve. Again, it is often the costly signal, the one that imposes a certain amount of political or economic pain on yourself, that helps to clarify the problems of incomplete information and avoid needless conflict.

Remarkably the ants have come to the same conclusions without the aid of game theory or formal mathematical models. Gottschall points out that when the worker ants of two competing colonies encounter each other in the field they do not simply engage in total war. That would lead to highly unpredictable and needlessly costly outcomes for both sides. Instead each faction summons its specialized warriors. They form lines, march back and forth, show off their mandibles and engage in limited raids.

This behavior is highly stylized and is notably different from the ant version of “real” warfare. But to say that their behavior in this instance lack “reality” would be to miss the point of what is actually going on. It is still a form of costly violence. Mounting the appropriate mock skirmish lines sacrifices colony resources and it reveals information about the number, variety and strength of the communities in question that is very difficult to fake. In short, it moves the ants out of the realm of incomplete information, and a little closer that theoretical space where the “error term” goes away and unnecessary conflict disappears. A few very weak colonies might simply be overrun after failing to mount a mock defense. But the more usual situation is that both sides sense the relative strength of the two communities, and the shared resources are reallocated towards the stronger party without damaging conflict.

Not bad for a group of insects that have never had the benefit of an intro IR course. Of course the ants have had millions of years to develop their own unique approach to intra-species diplomacy. Gottschall concludes that since similar behaviors can be seen in a wide range of species, from humans to ants, that they must have some sort of basis in evolutionary biology.

I disagree with the last part of this chain of reasoning. Genetic pressure seems like an odd thing to turn to in this case as humans and ants are not particularly closely related and experience selective pressure quite differently. Instead the logic of costly signaling stems from the problem of limited perception and incomplete information. It is fundamentally a paradox of meaning and communication that has been predicted, explored and explained in painstaking mathematical details by theorists such as James Fearon (who developed this concept) and Kenneth Schultz. The mathematical models of both of these scholars would seem to indicate that these patterns of behavior arise out of a very specific sets of structural constraints rather than Darwinian destiny.

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

Lion Dancing and the Reality of Kung Fu

Still, these questions of ultimate origins are much less important when we stop to consider how these same principals might apply to the social role of Lion Dancing in the southern Chinese martial arts. I suspect that students of Martial Arts Studies always suffer from what might be called “technical envy.” By this I mean that we tend to be really curious about, and latch onto questions concerning, techniques and practices that are not part of our specific training. In general this expression of human curiosity is a good thing as it helps to avoid too narrow a sectarian view of the martial arts.

Most Wing Chun schools in the Ip Man lineage are not involved with Lion Dancing; so that has always been something that I have struggled to wrap my mind around. In my research I have been particularly interested in accounts of the sorts of social violence and competition that accompanied Lion Dancing in Guangdong during the 1920s-1930s, Hong Kong in the 1950s-1960s and even New York City in the 1970s.

The political scientist in me is fascinated by the fact that a lot of this conflict was rooted in questions of territory and often seemed like an outgrowth of social competition between other important factions or players in local society. Simply put, martial arts schools in southern China during the 1920s-1930s did not exist in a vacuum. They were supported by clan associations, guilds, secret societies, criminal groups, social movements and even political factions.

While not everyone in a given martial arts school might be equally aware of these meta-structural issues, these larger players seem to have benefited from having access to a body of disciplined, somewhat militarized, young men who could project their image in the local community. I think that it goes without saying that there was always a tacit threat in this. But these groups also played a more positive role during community festivals and possibly through their civic associations.

Still, the example of the ants and their solution to the dilemma of incomplete information might help to illustrate certain aspects of what was going on in those tense minutes when two rival Lion Dance troupes met in the street. The size and discipline of each group, as well as their subtle performance of signs of respect and disrespect, were the elements that comprised a form of territorial conflict. Many of these groups were competing for turf. Business owners had to pay for performances and these activities were never without the occasional accusation of being a protection racket. Yet on a more fundamental level one wonders whether this was really about the Lion Dancers at all?

When two troops of Lion Dancers met in the streets of Foshan in the 1920s, was this really a stylized competition between groups of independent martial artists? Or was it a meeting between the much larger Hung Sing and the Zhong Yi associations who organized many of these troops? Or were they simply a cat’s paw for the more deadly conflict between the leftist labor unions and local KMT party machinery that backed these larger community organizations?

In short, individuals who worry about the “reality” of the traditional Chinese martial art and their association with practices such as Lion Dancing, may need to take a step back and reevaluate some of their more basic assumptions. As I mentioned in a discussion with a friend the other day, many of the current uses of the term “reality” seem to focus rather narrowly on the athletic prowess of individual athletes. And there is absolute nothing wrong with that. If your goal is to win a match in the octagon (as was Gottschall’s) then it would be counterproductive not to spend a lot of time and effort in an MMA gym.

Yet the prevalence of costly signals in all sorts of situations where we also see traditional martial artists should cause us to pause. As Clausewitz observed in his opening quote, violence does not happen in a vacuum. In the political arena it is only one part of larger project of getting what you want. Or to put it another way, picking up a sabre is just as much a means of changing someone’s mind as potentially killing them. The fact that costly signals are being sent through the use of certain sorts of force means that there is an intended audience which we should also be paying attention to.

Violence is often an inherently social act. The world of martial arts fiction is replete with stories of lone heroes who take down their nemesis. Yet if history has shown us anything, it is that conflict is usually much more complex than this. Sometimes it engulfs whole communities pitting them against one another. The stakes are much higher in these sorts of encounters, and it should not surprise us to discover that traditional martial arts organization may have had strategies for dealing with these situations. In fact, these were likely the sorts of events that allowed other community actors to justify supporting potentially problematic martial arts schools in the first place.

One of my younger brothers has just started law school in a medium sized city with a history of violence in the neighborhoods surrounding its university campus. A few weeks ago a classmate and his wife were surrounded by a group of seven attackers and viciously beaten while leaving a café near the campus. There was no particular economic, ideological or racial motivation for this crime. It was purely social, and one suspects territorial, in nature.

I bring this event up only because I think that it bears on the question at hand. The victim of this crime was in some ways far from the average guy. He was young, healthy and a military veteran who had returned from combat service in the Middle East. He was familiar with many different levels of “reality based combat training.” And none of that mattered.

Why should we expect it to? Getting ambushed by seven determined attackers is pretty much an impossible situation for an individual to recover from. I think that on some level we all know this. Yet many individuals join martial arts schools precisely because they fear such attacks.

How can this help us to understand traditional Chinese martial arts schools as they evolved during the early and middle years of the 20th century? I suspect that we have a tendency to misunderstand period accounts of these communities because we subconsciously project our own preoccupations and goals onto them. Attacks like the one described above were not uncommon in the various neighborhoods of Hong Kong, reeling as they were with social resentments and a refugee crisis in the early 1950s. Accounts indicate that young men often responded to such events by joining a local martial arts school. Interestingly the police (and often their own parents) viewed this as a form of gang activity. And they may have had very good reasons for doing so.

Can even the most excellent Kung Fu protect you from an ambush by a dozen attackers intent on doing you harm? Probably not. But having a gang of guys at your back, or being a member of group willing to inflict huge costs on those who attack one of their own, does tend to work.

Once we start to think of the basic unit of self-defense as being group rather than the individual, many of the “less realistic” methods of the traditional schools, and even organizations like the Red Spears, start to make a lot of functional sense. Individual athletic prowess, while good, is no longer the most important factor. One wants to be sure that new members of the community will be loyal and disciplined, and so those values are explicitly selected for and tested in training. Public feats of strength, numbers and pain endurance (whether through roof top fights or temple processions) help to build the group’s reputation. Activities like Lion Dancing not only builds morale, but they also provide a valuable venue for broadcasting costly signals about your strength and resolve throughout the community. In that way they become an exercise in reputation building that does not depend on the actual use of force.

I think that it would be too simplistic to say that there is a single discourse that has dominated the conversations surrounding the martial arts in the West. Obviously the individuals who take up these pursuits are motivated by a number of factors. Yet it is interesting to me that the TCMA are so often seen as a vehicle for a purely individual type of self-expression or self-realization. And the sorts of violence that are most popular in the public imagination at the moment are the ones that occur in the ring or the octagon. These are, after all, environments that celebrate a more individualistic set of values.

The rhetoric of self-actualization is by no means absent in the traditional southern Chinese martial arts. But the martial clan or family has always played a much more pronounced role in the narratives that emerged from southern China, South East Asia and Hong Kong. Often it is through engagement (and sublimation) with the group that individual transformation is achieved. And many of the tales of actual fighting that emerge from these same areas emphasize the reality of social violence and the importance of a strong and skilled community as the actual unit of self-defense.

In some ways this may be a reflection of cultural values. It would certainly not be the first time that Eastern and Western individuals have diverged in their assessment of community values. Still, as a political scientist I am more inclined to see in these differences self-conscious strategies meant to accommodate the varieties of social violence have emerged in a variety of times and places.

All of this should make us a bit more skeptical of the uncritical use of “reality” in descriptions of the martial arts. The “reality” faced by a single individual versus a group may be quite different. It simply does not make sense to discuss “reality” without first defining our actors and their goals. Yet one suspects that “the real world” is occasionally invoked as a rhetorical strategy specifically to avoid such questions.

When looking at a number of issues in the historical development or comparative analysis of hand combat systems, we might instead benefit from enlarging our conceptual vocabulary to include ideas like “credible threats” and “costly signals.” They remind us that we cannot ignore the fundamentally social nature of a lot of violence in our quest to finally capture reality.

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

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“Peking Police Force” (of the older Qing variety). Keystone Viewing Company, 1919. Source: Digital Collection of the Library of Congress (Public Domain). Given the popularity of these slides, this was probably one of the most widely distributed images of traditional Chinese swords in the West during the 1920s. Unfortunately I have yet to find a copy of this side in decent condition to add to my own collection. Note the variety of blade profiles apparent in this photo.

The Creation of Beijing’s Police

Given that this is a holiday weekend, what follows is brief but topical. Labor Day is an ideal time to look back and remember some of the hard working individuals who helped to both promote the practice of the martial arts and contributed to the construction of their image in the collective imagination.  Unfortunately the contributions of police organizations in the development of the Chinese martial arts is often overlooked.

In this post I would like to take a closer look at a couple of images recording specific moments in the building of modern law enforcement institutions in early 20th century China. New methods of “scientific” police work were adopted first in Beijing, and soon spread to other major cities, following the destruction and massive social disruption that accompanied the Boxer Rebellion.

Initially each of the foreign powers involved in this dispute was responsible for establishing some form of law enforcement in their respective occupation zones. For the most part this does not seem to have been viewed as a high priority, though certain countries (notably the UK and Russia) had previously raised private military, paramilitary and law enforcement organizations of their own. Some of these had even fought on their behalf during the Uprising.

In the aftermath of the fighting, many western powers where simply content to hire displaced soldiers and other individuals off of the street to act as rudimentary police officers. The Japanese took a different approach. Having just completed a major round of law enforcement reforms of their own (based largely on French and Prussian models) they were eager to demonstrate the advantages of the new “Japanese model.” In little time they managed to establish a highly professional force and created a law enforcement academy. Their efforts later became the foundation for Beijing’s first modern municipal police department.

Prior to this time law enforcement in the city had been left to groups of soldiers which were specifically assigned to the area (and periodically rotated out in a mostly futile effort to prevent corruption) as well as local guards units, yamen officials and their personal. Nevertheless, both of these forces, the older Qing troops and the modern Japanese inspired civilian police units, had at least one thing in common. They shared an apparent devotion to the sword as a central tool of law enforcement.

It is not particularly challenging to find pictures of law enforcement agents, or members of para-military groups, armed with swords and walking the streets of China’s cities. I suspect that these images would have been familiar to at least some western readers curious about the state of urban life in China during the early 20th century. Perhaps the most common of these images were the grisly postcards and tourist photos depicting judicial executions, usually by decapitation with a sword. Yet Western consumers also had the opportunity to purchase magic lantern and stereo-view slides showing Chinese law enforcement officers displaying long and heavy blades for inspection.  Both of the images reviewed in today’s post fall into this later category.

It should go without saying that these were not the only weapons that police officers in cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou carried. A great many other officers were issued clubs (some in the form of long walking sticks) and police departments certainly had access to modern firearms. Indeed, images of patrolmen walking the streets with rifles in the early Republic era are also pretty common. But there can be no doubt that the sword retained a special cache.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to stop and consider the reasons why. These may suggest something about the nature of the ongoing relationship between Chinese law enforcement agencies and the traditional martial arts during the early 20th century.

To begin with, many of the law enforcement officers that one encountered during the final years of the Qing or the early Republic period were former Manchu Bannermen or displaced soldiers. The aftermath of the Boxer Uprising led to unemployment among soldiers, and the termination of the Bannermen’s stipends in 1905 forced both groups to look to the new law enforcement organization as a potential means of employment and a way to regain some lost social status.

Sabers have never struck me as the most effective law enforcement tool. But in purely practical terms they existed in abundance, and practically everyone being hired into the new police forces was already trained in their use.

There is also another issue to consider. Many Chinese law enforcement reformers looked directly to the Japanese model for both inspiration and technical guidance. As we have already seen, fencing (or Kendo) was an important part of both the development and subsequent ideology of Meiji era law enforcement in Japan. Indeed, the Japanese exhibited just as much enthusiasm for the sword as a tool of law enforcement as the Chinese. I am thus forced to wonder if at least some of the embrace and retention of the sword among Chinese law enforcement personal stemmed from their initially close reliance on Japanese organizational and training methods.

Were these swords ever used in self-defense or the apprehension of criminals? Newspaper articles, court cases and eyewitness accounts from the period all indicate that it was not uncommon for a police officer’s sword to be unsheathed. Consider the following:

Police Violence and Moral Theater

Given the degree of discretion intrinsic to the role of mediator and buffer, a policeman might abuse his power. Police brutality was a particular feature, as we have seen, of the relationship between policemen and rickshaw pullers. An extreme example took place one afternoon in February 1925 when a policeman accosted a rickshaw man who had just dropped off a fare. The policeman shouted, “Get the fuck out of here fast. Don’t you know you are blocking traffic?” The puller, who was still trying to catch his breath, replied angrily, “Let me tell you something. You don’t scare me, I’ve done police work myself. I was a policeman for three years. I know the regulations. I parked my rickshaw on the proper side of the road. How is that blocking traffic?” The quarrel between the two became heated and a crowd gathered to watch. But, as the newspaper account of the incident lamented, the bystanders “looked on without even lifting a finger.” Finally, in anger, the rickshaw man turned to grope in his rickshaw for a club he kept there. As he did, the policeman drew and raised his sword. When the rickshaw man whirled around, club in hand, the policeman struck the puller in the temple with his blade. The rickshaw man fell bleeding to the ground and died almost instantly. Horrified by what they had witnessed, the crowd turned and fled, with people crying out that a policeman had killed someone. A nearby patrolman and his sergeant heard the commotion and hurried to the scene, where they arrested the policeman. The local prosecutor’s office could not immediately identify the dead man. But the department announced that it would supply a coffin and pay the costs of the puller’s funeral.

A rough sort of justice, or injustice, sometimes prevailed on Beijing’s streets. Policemen with clubs or swords at their waists faced rickshaw men who kept clubs in the trunks of their vehicles, groups of laborers willing to fight as a gangs if provoked, students who fought for the right to present their views in public, the occasional common criminal armed with gun or knife, and most threatening of all, bands of armed soldiers accompanying sojourning militarists. On the other hand, the streets and public spaces of Beijing could also provide a congenial environment for confrontations in which policemen, willingly or not, played a central, mediating role. The success of the police depended, in part, on their ability to incorporate elements of moral showmanship into the actions they took. In Erving Goffman’s terms, the policeman was called upon to devote considerable energy to “dramatizing” the role he played so as to “manage the impressions” he made on both miscreants and audience. Since spectators and the accused were bound to have a strong sense of how a policeman as mediator or junzi manqué ought to behave, the patrolman filled a role “socialized” or “idealized” by public expectations. Policemen who misbehaved, stood mute, or said the wrong things risked becoming villains in these set piece social dramas.

…Police reformers in Beijing used the myth of government as a moral project, and policemen as junzi, to establish a police presence in the city with minimal reliance on coercion and a maximum appeal to residents for active cooperation in maintaining social peace. A policeman completing a training program of only a few months could hardly replicate a lifetime of self-cultivation by a scholar-official. On the other hand, even in dilute form, the Confucianist mentality, with its inclination to scold, meddle, and mediate, inspired effective police work. (Strand, 82-83).

Chinese police officers employed by the Russians, probably in Port Arthur. Circa 1900. Note the modern, western style swords, that have been issued to this unit. The transition to western arms was almost complete by 1890. Source: Image taken from a vintage stereoscope slide.  This would have been another easily available image of Chinese law enforcement.

The Sword as Moral Theater

David Strand’s work Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (University of California Press, 1993) is exactly the sort of book that I like. It provides a focused social history of few groups in order to create a new lens for understanding a turbulent and important time in Chinese history. As the title of this work suggests, Rickshaw pullers are the major focus of the study. Yet Strand also has an important story to tell about the evolution and social function of Beijing’s modern police institutions.

As the previous quote notes, Beijing could be a difficult, even perilous, environment for law enforcement. The actions of police officers were often determined as much by the social expectations of the always present crowds as they were the logic of the situation at hand. This suggests that perhaps the swords of these patrolmen can also be understood as part of an ongoing social drama rather than as a simple budgetary expediency. Perhaps the sword was retained and displayed by law enforcement, at least up through the 1940s, because of its unique meaning in the social dramas of order and disorder explored by Strand above.

This also has potentially important implications for the ongoing relationship between law enforcement organizations and martial arts teachers during this period. With one or two exceptions I have yet to explore this relationship as deeply as I would like. Certainly police academies were important employers of martial arts teachers. Nor is it difficult to come up with a purely tactical explanation of this. Such organizations still rely on hand to hand combat training in the execution of their jobs. Yet one wonders what role social expectations played in the maintenance of these relationships in the 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, law enforcement’s engagement with the traditional martial arts actually seems to have increased as the first half of the 20th century wore on.  More importantly, what do these shifts suggest about the public perception of the martial arts at that moment in time?

Chinese law enforcement officers were often recognized by their swords. Yet the most important function performed by these weapons may have been to make real the relationship between the existing moral order (as imagined by society) and the new set of political institutions which were being rapidly developed by successive governments during this period. It may be that the sword survived so long into the age of the rifle and the handgun precisely because of what it implied about those who carried it.

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

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If you ejoyed this post you might also want to read: Ip Man and the Roots of Wing Chun’s “Multiple Attacker” Principle, Part 1

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“Local Militia Shandong. 1906-1912 by Fr. Michel de Maynard.

“No man can do justice to another’s human total.”
-Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols (1967, p. 150).

Introduction

If culture is understood as a system of interlocking signs, a complex of meanings, beliefs and practices that function as “man’s adaptive mechanism” in an ever changing world, it is hard to ignore the power of words. Nor can we deny the centrality of memory as communities grapple with the twin problems of meaning and power in the complex societies in which they are embedded. Indeed, the keeping and perpetuation of this collective memory is often a highly charged topic. In some instances anyone is free to enter the fray, while in other situations only certain individuals have a legitimate right to curate or interpret this corporate knowledge.

The saying that “knowledge is power” is not simply a truism. It is a profound reality that every politician, social reformer, religious leader or community organizer is forced to wrestle with. The “problem” with knowledge is that it knows no boundaries or borders. It is nearly infinitely reproducible, and yet ever so prone to mutating in unpredictable ways. It is perhaps the most slippery of all forms of human capital. And yet it is vital.

Nowhere are these possibilities and dilemmas more obvious than in the realm of martial arts studies. Often there is a tendency to get too caught up in the minutia of an individual study, to focus strictly on historical issues in a certain dynasty, to write a paper that discusses only folklore, or to look exclusively at problems of agency and embodiment in the gym. More rarely in the academic literature, fraught as it is with preexisting theoretical debates and publications pressures, do we step back and take a look at the big picture. Yes, every martial artist is indoctrinated into a certain understanding of history, just as their bodies are trained to echo the sedimentary deposits of previous social, national and economic upheavals. But there is almost always something more at stake.

These are simply two (self-reinforcing) sides to the same coin. A close reading of both embodied practices, or patterns of esoteric cultural transmission, lead to the same set of questions. Given that the martial arts are voluntary actives, why do individuals seek out these often difficult, painful and expensive practices? How do they contribute to the creation of new “adaptive mechanisms” in the actual lives of the individuals who practice them? Or to put the question slightly differently, why do some people choose to become experts in “martial culture?” What social situations do they emerge from, and what do they hope to accomplish?

Lastly, how does all of this change when we add the figure of the anthropologist, social scientist or historian to the mix? What happens to a community when a new source of information or memory becomes available? This question is especially interesting as the sources of legitimacy that gives credibility to an academic project are often quite different from anything available to the more traditional teachers and masters of the art.

Nor are most of the authors writing in these area’s pure outsiders or “armchair theorists.” Many of them can draw on years, if not decades, of personal practice as they draw up their theories. And yet these academic projects, while bringing a certain type of recognition and transparency to the art which many will find helpful, are almost always focused on questions different from those that consume the attention of most practitioners.

What responsibilities, if any, do students of Martial Arts Studies bear towards the communities that they study? More specifically, should we strive to produce academic work which (while not compromising its basic integrity) is both intellectually accessible and physically available to the communities that helped to produce it? In short, as D. S. Farrer recently asked, does martial arts studies have a responsibility to engage in “studies with” our key informants rather than simply “studies of” questions that motivate only the academy?

I should say at the outset that this is a question that has arisen from time to time here at Kung Fu Tea. Paul Bowman has already argued that hand combat practices imagined within the confines of academic theory will always, by necessity, be a distinct “disciplinary object” and hence bound to disappoint most practitioners. And I think that his answer basically holds true for many higher order discussions that seek to problematize the practice of the martial arts using the tools of philosophy, cultural theory or even broad overviews of social history.

Yet to my mind these questions become much more pressing when we look at a different class of research projects. Do our responsibilities change when we instead switch to detailed discussions of specific and recognizable communities? Anthropologists concerned with the ethics of field work have long wrestled with the responsibilities that exist between an ethnographer and his informants. Likewise sociologists and historians who focus on specific communities often find themselves being called upon to explain key events to outsiders or to act as advocates in times of crises.

In my reading of the literature it seems that the idea that one can maintain an objective relationship with the community being investigated has long since passed. Advocates of reflexive ethnography have instead demonstrated the value of turning the lens back on the researcher to expose some of her possible attitudes and biases as she moves through the process of learning as a better interim solution to these dilemmas. Yet are there advantaged to going beyond these simple exercises in reflexivity and considering that perhaps the subjects of one’s research should also be part of the audience that one is writing to? What would this look like in the field of Martial Arts Studies?

A typical market place demonstration featuring socially marginal martial artists.

Muchona the Hornet and Social Marginality

It is not uncommon to come across an interesting idea when sitting down to read a recent publication in the Martial Arts Studies literature. Yet in my experience the much more important ideas begin to flow when (through happenstance or poor planning) you find yourself reading two totally unrelated texts at the same time.

Over the last week I have made a couple of futile efforts to sink my teeth into Prof. Lee Wilson’s recent book Martial Arts and Body Politic in Indonesia (Brill, 2015). I had been looking forward reading this book for a while. After all, there are not that many other individuals coming out of political science departments who are writing on the martial arts. And so far I have really like what I have seen.

Unfortunately I haven’t actually managed to read all that much in absolute terms. This is mostly my own fault as I have been spending lots of time on the road, in the gym and working on other projects. But in all fairness, it is also clear that this book is not going to be an easy read. The basic ideas behind the text are fairly accessible, and the author is engaging with theorists (Geertz, Anderson, Foucault) that most political scientists, anthropologists and social theorists will already be familiar with. Indeed, these names have all come up in the course of a well-developed debate on the nature of power in the Indonesian state, and Wilson makes an impressive argument that a better understanding the historical development and practice of Penak Silat can actually bring clarity of this ongoing conversation.

In itself this is very exciting. It is great to see Martial Arts Studies being used in a sophisticated way to clarify a high profile discussion with broad theoretical implications for a number of fields. I think that many of scholars will probably get a lot out of this book.

Yet I doubt that many practicing martial artists will walk away from it feeling equally excited and invigorated. Admittedly, I am only two chapters into the project, so it may be too soon to judge, but this is a text that never fails to use abstract jargon when a clear statement of a simple idea could have sufficed. Again, the basic thrust of Wilson’s argument is not all that complicated, yet it is protected by a disciplinary fence that seems almost designed to keep the (academically) uninitiated out.

This struck me as rather odd. And it is interesting to stop and consider why. I am no stranger to baroque jargon. It is the stock and trade of academic writing. From the “R values” of statistical research to the canon of critical theory, most scholars end up becoming “multi-lingual” just so we can read all of the articles, written from different theoretical perspectives, in a single issue of our favorite journals.

Judged by these standards the jargon in Wilson’s book is not particularly remarkable. If anything it reads a bit like a dissertation. It wasn’t until I picked a totally unrelated book that my concern started to come into focus.
In the Company of Man: Twenty Portraits of Anthropological Informants (Harper, 1960) is a now classic collection of chapters in which a prior generation of anthropological theorists wrote what amounted to personal essays discussing their relationships with, and the contribution of, their key informants. One can almost think of it as a forerunner of the more “confessional” school of ethnography that later became popular.

Perhaps my favorite essay in the volume is titled “Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion” by Victor Turner. This is a fascinating paper that I think should be required reading for anyone who is doing ethnography related to the Chinese martial arts. It should go without saying that Muchona is not Chinese (he lived in what was then Rhodesia) and he was not a martial artist. Rather he was a chimbuki, or a spiritual doctor, who had been initiated into a large number of local cults or medicine societies that dealt with the treatment of both biological disease and what anthropologists call “culture bound syndromes.”

Muchona was also one of Turner’s most knowledgeable and important informants. In this essay Turner reflects on his friend and colleague, asking what made Muchona an expert of esoteric Ndembu religion and medicine. Certainly he was philosophically minded. That is important. Most western anthropologists spend their lives investigating a class of highly abstract questions that their fellow countrymen care little about. Is it so odd then to discover that the average Ndembu farmer, school teacher or office worker also has relatively little interest in this same class of issues? Almost by definition a good informant is someone who is an expert on things that most people do not care for and know little about.

We have a word for such people in the social sciences. They are described as being “marginal.” Indeed, no concept has been tossed around in discussions of the Chinese martial arts with quite as much vigor as that of marginality. How do individuals come to be seen as marginal? Do the martial arts act as pathway out of economic marginality? Or do they in fact reinforce an individual’s social marginality? Can Kung Fu be understood as an alternate pathway for self-creation for marginal teenagers?

Turner’s essay is deeply human and moving. It’s a profound reminder that there is almost always an emotional cost associated with really getting to know another person. But it is also a brilliant discussion of why marginal individuals, specifically those who sit both inside and outside the dominant social institutions of life, are so often exactly the sorts of informants that an anthropologists needs.

Muchona’s story is instructive in this respect. To begin with he was not actually a fully accepted member of the tribe that he lived with. He and his mother had been captured in a slave raid while he was a child. Muchona had an unusually close relationship with his mother, and it was she who had insisted that he be inducted into a number of medical groups as a child. Yet she died young leaving him to negotiate a life of slavery.

At about the age of 30 Muchona managed to buy his freedom and established a career as a healer among the Ndembu. He moved through a number of communities and was thus exposed to a variety of local languages and cultural systems. This gave him a comparative understanding of the area’s beliefs that most of his fellow villagers did not share.

Nor was his intelligence (which Turner informs us was truly great) always appreciated by his neighbors. Muchona managed to carve out a niche for himself as an expert in esoteric matters. Yet the better elements of local society always looked on him as both a buffoon and a potential threat. Turner’s sudden interest in the village “Witch Doctor,” and his extensive patronage of someone who was clearly “socially inferior” (even if he was also an acknowledged religious and medical expert) did not do much to improve Muchona’s social position. In fact, it even led to some instances of tension and a witchcraft accusation towards to the end of Turner’s stay in the community.

It is clear from this essay that Turner wrestled with the ethical implications of this relationship with Muchona. What had started out as a simple matter of economic exchange (Turner payed Muchona-who was a religious professional-for the tutelage needed to complete his research) quickly became a friendship. Muchona himself may have learned quite a bit about the anthropological method from his work with Turner.

He probably acquired a new set of concepts including ideas like “culture” and “symbolism” (as used by anthropologists). Not only was Muchona teaching Turner about Ndembu religion, but as he answered questions, organized lectures and discussed the material with someone from a different background he learned to understand his own society differently.

In a simple sense we might say that Muchona was made complicit in the project of objectifying his own society. That is certainly true as far as it goes. But Turner also notes that the depth of his understanding of this material evolved as the relationship progressed.

Why? Muchona the Hornet gained a new asset, something that he had never had before: a student and a friend. Whereas the villagers saw him as essentially a specialized (and low-caste) craftsman, when he was with Turner Muchona became a philosopher. Suddenly he, a marginal individual, was empowered to act as the interpreter for Ndembu religion. Of course Muchona was never a fully accepted member of Ndembu society. He was always a bit of an outsider. Yet it was that exact quality that provided him with the motivation to really wrestle with what he saw in the local environment.

Turner’s return to the world of writing and teaching ended his relationship with Muchona. As his essay makes clear he was worried as to what would become of his friend and fellow student of religion. With Turner, Muchona had been a philosopher who had come to see his world differently. What would happen when he was forced back to being the village “Witch Doctor?” Turner had gleaned critical insights from his informant, but at what cost?

As a personal essay I think that this is a brilliant piece of writing. But equally important is its role in foreshadowing a weakness with the sorts of overly “confessional” ethnography that would follow in the coming decades. So much of this essay focuses on Turner’s relationship with Muchona, and even his feeling about certain events, that it fails to take into account some more fundamental structural issues which can be seen emerging from behind the corner and the cracks of his narrative.

To begin with, Turner’s relationship with Muchona was always mediated by two other figures. They are the ones who we must look to in order to answer the fundamental question that this post starts off with. The first of these figures is a local social and political informant named Kasonda. He has a long standing dislike of Muchona, a low status member of his own community, which he expresses in the form a vicious rumor campaign.

The other figure is named Kashinakaji. He is almost invisible in Turner’s account, yet he is actually the linchpin of everything that follows. Kashinakaji is both a Christian and the senior teacher at the local mission school. This provides him with a healthy amount of social clout as the Ndembu villagers fully appreciate the value of a solid education in their children’s prospects for getting ahead in the world.

Yet Kashinakaji enters our story during a crisis of faith. As a child he was totally isolated from the “pagan elements” of his own culture. Lately he has started to ask uncomfortable questions about the larger workings of the mission system and has started to doubt the Christian talking points on the value of the local traditions. It is he who decides to initiate a study of local religion, he who introduces Turner to Muchona (who had only seen him once before in passing), he who provided the actual translation of these discussions and he who smoothed over the situation with the local villagers when Turner’s interest in Muchonda raised suspicion. And while Turner and Muchonda may have recognized each other as fellow travelers on the esoteric pathways of religion and ritual, Kashinakaji also developed a sympathy and respect for his fellow villager.

The one disappointing aspect of Turner’s essay is that it focuses so tightly on his personal relationship with Muchonda that it fails to recognize that a more fundamental shift is in progress. Was Muchonda really left alone and marginal when Turner left? Probably no more than he ever was.

After all, during the preceding months he had acquired a powerful new friend and supporter in the form of Kashinakaji. Kashinakaji’s influence in the community, while substantial, was probably limited by his lack of understanding of his own culture. Yet he gained tools for thinking about culture in abstract terms from Turner, and a huge body of more specific knowledge from Muchonda. And Turner’s involvement in these discussions was really only possible because there were other individuals in the community who were increasingly interested in these same matters who invited him to participate in the discussion since it facilitated what they were already planning on doing.

At the time that Turner left Muchonda was already an older and somewhat sickly man. It seems entirely possible that his story might not have had a happy ending. Yet was he more marginalized because of his contact with Turner? Clearly the answer has got to be no. The pushback from the villagers that Turner describes (somewhat deflected by Kashinakaji) is actually pretty good evidence that the status quo had been upset. More importantly, Muchonda had become part of a conversation that could possibly have far reaching effects, regardless of what the final few years of his own life held.

A martial arts performance at a marketplace in Shanghai, circa 1930. Source: Huan Fei Hung Museum.

Martial Arts Studies: “Study With” vs. “Study Of”

While the details are unique, the basic structure of this narrative should sound familiar to many students of martial arts studies. Hand combat teachers are frequently (though not exclusively) marginal individuals living on the edge of their own communities. This is often the case in China, and even throughout South East Asia. While martial values may be seen as important in the abstract, for both cultural and tactical reasons the individuals who convey them are often viewed as somewhat “expendable” by the rest of society.

While lacking the dramatic backstory of Muchona’s childhood in slavery, this means that many martial artists are also by necessity “inside outsiders.” They are forced to navigate multiple competing cultural systems (or perhaps multiple interpretations of the same set of cultural values). While many individuals may never stop to think about these issues in explicitly philosophical terms, some will. And Victor Turner’s essay should help to remind us that their insights may be critical to not just understanding the details of martial arts culture, but the larger social systems that it is embedded within. In fact, as I was rereading the details of Muchona’s life I could not help to notice so many parallels with informants who have helped to advance the discussion of the martial arts.

This brings me back to the first few chapter of Lee Wilson’s book. I think that the robustly academic nature of his writing stood out to me because so much of what we see in martial arts studies is written with a dual audience in mind. Certainly we expect that most practitioners of a given style will ignore what we write on it. For most individuals the academic discussions of the culture, history or sociology of the martial arts are not all that relevant to their actual practice.

Yet we all have our own Muchona. Those of us who have immersed ourselves in specific communities for years at a time have found fellow travelers on the martial way who share not just our passion for practice, but our hunger for understanding what it all means. For that matter, many of us have witnessed the growing excitement when a key informant discovers that their interest in the martial arts suggests other historical, cultural or philosophical areas for exploration. Indeed, a hunger to find meaning in life has drawn many individuals to the traditional fighting systems, just as it has to the other systems of esoteric knowledge that anthropologists, like Victor Turner, have studied.

One might argue that there is a danger in empowering the Muchonas of the world. They are, after all, marginal individuals. Their interests, like those of the Martial Arts Studies researcher, likely do not reflect the actual beliefs of the community in practice. I can write any number of essays stating that the “Red Boat Opera Rebels” are basically historical fiction and it won’t really affect anything that happens in a given Wing Chun school. This folklore is just too essential to the identity of the art.

Or is it? Maybe the greater anxiety is that as academic narratives enter the mainstream, and as the Muchonas of the community are progressively empowered and heard, we will increasingly feel their sting. Will the academic study of thee martial arts fundamentally change them? Could the demystification of these communities even hasten their eventual demise?

Again, these are questions that anthropologists and sociologists have dealt with for some time. Even some historians have increasingly become suspicious that no matter how much time they spend in the archives they fundamentally end up writing books about the future rather than the past.

Turner’s essay is instructive on this point. Reading between the lines it is clear that he has entered Ndembu society at a time of change. While his work focuses exclusively on Ndembu religion, powerful members of the community are Christians and have been for some time. Yet the mission system is showing signs of strain, and suddenly there is new interest in esoteric knowledge.

This reminds us that culture is not a static thing. Only in that way can it fulfill its role as an “adaptive mechanism.” The ability to adapt and change is a feature rather than a bug in cultural systems.

And it is this underlying process of change that point to Kashinakaji the school teacher, rather than Muchona the local expert or Turner the anthropologist, as the central figure in the entire episode. It is Kashinakaji who is struggling with what it means to be Ndembu in the post-colonial period. Turner will leave and at some point the older Muchona will pass on, and it will be Kashinakaji’s responsibility to take what he has learned, adapt it to the circumstances that he finds himself in, and relate some elements of it to the community at large.

The traditional Chinese martial arts currently find themselves at a crossroads. Certain models of economic and social development have played themselves out, and some individuals are actively questioning what these systems mean in the current era. Or as the cultural theorists Megan Morris recently put it in a conference address, “What is the point of Kung Fu?”

This is a question that must be answered by each generation for itself. Indeed, the survival of the enterprise depends on it. It would be foolish to think that our era is somehow uniquely exempted from the task simply because we have better technical tools to “preserve” the past. The question at hand is really one of social meaning.

While insightful I doubt that the work of martial arts historians and anthropologists actually contain the answers to these questions. It will be up to a new generation of reformers, teachers and entrepreneurs to work this out for themselves within their local communities. Yet a better understanding of the fundamental social, cultural, economic and political forces at work may be a precondition for better decision making. Properly understood, comparative and historical accounts can offer models of both success and failure.

Many of the individuals who engage in these sorts of participant-observation ethnographies count themselves as serious members of the communities that they study. The development of reflexive ethnography suggests that a certain involvement in promotion and growth of these pursuits may ultimately be both acceptable and ethically laudable. Making a conscious effort to produce academic studies that are accessible to certain members within these communities may be one of the best ways to accomplish this goal. While many of us find ourselves writing, at least in part, for our own personal Muchonas, we cannot neglect the more important task of reaching out to the Kashinakajis of the coming generation. As the layers of social marginality around the martial arts are deconstructed, the University may yet play an important role in the advancement of these “traditional” systems of knowledge.

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

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Statue with Sword and Wine Gourd. Another figure in China’s long tradition of eccentric warrior-sages. Source: Vintage German Postcard.

Introduction

Our essay for today is a guest-post of sorts, reblogged from Paul Bowman’s always excellent (and aptly named) Martial Arts Studies.   He sent me a link to this post and I have been giving it a fair amount of thought since then.  Readers of Kung Fu Tea, particularly those who are interested in the history of the Chinese martial arts, will enjoy his straight forward and refreshing approach the thorny issues that arise when we talk about the origin accounts of individual styles.

I was also interested in this essay as it began with a very generous engagement with a prior post that I published dealing with the problem of lineage, social organization and artificial kinship structures in the Chinese martial arts.  After reading through Paul’s argument I began to outline a post that would address some of the issues that he brought up as well as hopefully clarifying the competing ways that we think of “lineages” in conceptual terms.  Or perhaps it would be more proper to say I would like to make an argument about how we might want to unpack this term and go forward with it in the future.  I will also explore the nature of hyper-real history as it appears in lineage myths and how it tends to actually function on a social level.

Yet after doing my initial writing on that post I decided that it was not going to do justice to the conversation that is currently unfolding.  At least not yet.  Instead I have included Paul’s full remarks below so that readers can take the time to fully absorb his argument, on its own terms, rather than relying on my own summary of it.  For that matter, those really interested in this subject will want to start by going back and reviewing David Brown’s chapter “Body-experience Lineage in Martial Arts Culture” which appears in Keith Gilbert’s edited volume Fighting: Intellectualizing Combat Sport (Common Ground, 2015).  My own contribution to this discussion actually started off as a critical response to Brown’s argument.  Sometime next week I hope to explore the differences in Brown’s, Bowman’s and my own approach to the concept of lineage as a way of exploring some of the many things that this common concept denotes.  As Paul will remind us a simple word, such as “leaf,” can serve to conceal the infinite variety of specific leaves that one might actually encounter while walking through the woods.  But in the mean time, please take a few moments to enjoy an important essay which asks us to consider a martial artist’s relationship with history.

On Knowing Your Lineage

As part of a larger reflection on transmission and lineages in martial arts, Ben Judkins recently pondered two attitudes towards lineages in martial arts circles. His own discussion covers more ground and a wide range of themes and issues around community, identity and the transmission of martial knowledge, but I want to focus on the two issues he identifies early on in the article.

The first attitude is the one he has long been most familiar with: that of knowing at least something about the long linear narrative story of one’s martial art – the tale told by its practitioners, that starts from its origins, passes through legendary masters and sequences of teachers, and culminates in one’s own instructor. The second attitude was one he encountered only recently, when talking to a kickboxing instructor. The kickboxer knew nothing about the history or lineage of what he was practicing. He knew about his own instructor, obviously, but not about anything or anyone further back.

Because of his long involvement in traditional Chinese martial arts (TCMA), where lineage-narratives seem to matter so much to so many practitioners, Judkins evidently found this insouciant attitude towards history rather surprising. He certainly did not deem it representative of his own experience of traditional stylists’ relationships with their own martial arts.

As I say, Judkins’ discussion is not entirely structured by these two attitudes, but I want to reflect on them further. For, it got me thinking. I myself have tried my hand (and foot) at a range of martial arts over the years, and Judkins’ surprise at certain styles’ or stylists’ lack of reflection on their own history made me realise that I had never really thought about the topic of martial artists’ relationships to history. However, what jarred with me, on reflection, was my sense that, contrary to Judkins’ starting position, in my experience, many practitioners of traditional styles seem to have little to no awareness of either the actual or the mythological history of the style they study.

For instance, my first Shotokan karate instructor demonstrated next to no knowledge of either the history of karate, nor of the rationales underpinning many of its conventions. For example, when, as beginners, we once asked him why we had to bow on entering and exiting the dojo, he said something about keeping the ‘room gods’ happy. Worse, some of the other ‘knowledge’ he imparted – innumerable times, in every class – went on to have much more embarrassing consequences for me. What happened was this. For many years after my first foray into karate, I believed myself able to count to ten in Japanese. It was only when, quite recently, I was greeted by a confused look on the face of a Japanese child, in the company of her father, a visiting Japanese dignitary, his wife, and several fluent Japanese scholars, that I realised that none of the sounds coming out of my mouth made any sense to Japanese speakers.

So we should be careful what we take on trust. Of course, quite how we verify the status of the ‘knowledge’ being passed on to us is another matter – a huge question, which I will only be able touch on briefly and tangentially, below. For now, some questions about lineage will be foregrounded.

Many years after taking karate classes, while I was studying taijiquan, I did encounter the attitude that Judkins describes – the one he characterises as commonplace in TCMAs – in which teachers and students learn lineage narratives and certain selected anecdotes about famous figures in ‘their’ lineage. However, that attitude seemed to me to be particularly prominent only among certain sorts of practitioner: senior (male) instructors, some other men; but very few women, maybe none; and not many of my peers. In fact I was probably the most widely read of my peers on matters of TCMA and taiji history. But none of the names of the key figures in our lineage would ever stick in my head – not because they were Chinese names (although that didn’t help), but rather because most kinds of factual information don’t stick in my head. Principles, theories, arguments normally do; names and dates don’t.

My instructor was one of the few who certainly knew the official histories and characteristics of different styles of taiji, kung fu and Xing-I, etc., especially those of the styles he practiced. But other than him and the other senior instructors in the association, no one else seemed to know or care about taiji’s history. Indeed, whenever there were conversations about any aspects of taiji other than practical, technical and aesthetic matters, my classmates would often express the most vague and nebulous ideas about ancient misty mountains and mystical magic. (To be fair, had I not encountered the work of Douglas Wile very early in my studies, I would almost certainly have remained just as orientalist as my peers (Wile 1996, 1999).)

Anthropologists have termed this kind of attitude allochronism (Fabian 1983). Allochronism refers, ultimately, to imputing a timelessness to something, and thereby refusing to acknowledge that it has and is always within a history. History, in this sense, refers to a process of change, movement, modification, development, transformation, and even of huge tectonic shifts. Accordingly, allochronistic perspective do not allow the object to have a history, in this sense of having developed and changed.

My argument, then, is that a focus on lineage often functions as a force of allochronism. That is to say, allowing a martial art to have a history can be very different to knowing its lineage. For, this sense of history implies change, even massive and radical transformation and revolution. Lineage-thinking, on the other hand, does not as easily lend itself to an understanding of ongoing transformation.

In the case of taiji, Adam Frank (Frank 2006) argues that there have been massive changes in its form and content, even in comparatively recent history. As he observes, if one reads any of the ‘Tai Chi Classics’ (the nineteenth century taiji manuals that are often claimed to be very much older than they are), it is very difficult to recognise much about taiji as we know it or think of it today. If one were to try to reconstruct a martial art based on the evidence of these manuals alone, one would be likely to come up with a very different beast to anything walking the Earth called ‘taiji’ today. As Nietzsche argued, one word, one name – let’s say, to use Nietzsche’s own example, the word ‘leaf’ – covers over and denies an infinite array of differences between this leaf and that leaf (Nietzsche 2006). The same goes for the name ‘taiji’. One name; many things; and different things at different times.

The key point is, taiji has a history. In Adam Frank’s work, he presents the current shape and characteristics of the taiji forms currently practiced around the world as palimpsests of different additions and modifications that have taken place in different periods for different socioeconomic, ideological and political reasons. To cap it off, we might add, all of these historical residues of different versions of taiji have come to be elaborated and performed according to contemporary understandings of what taiji should look like and be like – and contemporary understandings are accompanied and in large part enabled by fantasy constructions of what the past ‘was like’. Taiji has been rewritten and can and will continue to be rewritten and transformed.

This kind of proposition is very different from focusing on the lineage of a contemporary style. For, most commonly, the attribution of a lineage goes hand in hand with the idea that its current form is a direct or pure transmission from some mythic founding father. Jacques Derrida rightly connected this kind of approach with a certain kind of valuation of ‘insemination’ (Derrida 1981). In other words, those who would make a massive lineage claim that invokes, say, Zhang Sanfeng or Bodhidharma, are strongly associating their current practice with that of a great founding mystical character.

Ultimately, the value of lineage is dependent on what we think happens in a teacher-student relationship. The simplest understanding of a teacher-student relationship would propose an image of something like the teacher passing an idea from his or her brain into the student’s brain, as if passing a baton in a relay race through history. The student is the successor or inheritor, who ideally goes on to pass the baton to the next student, and so on and so forth, through time. The baton is the knowledge, which moves intact from teacher to disciple. This is what Derrida would call the ‘metaphysical’ conception of pedagogy, or teaching and learning.

The fact that in martial arts the baton to be handed down largely takes the form of embodied physical propensities might refer us back to Derrida’s metaphor of ‘insemination’ (as the seed has to be put ‘into’ the student, and cultivated), at the same time as it might equally account for the long history in martial arts literature of the theme of the secret text or training manual (Liu 2011). The secret text is of course ideally only to be read by those qualified to understand it and use it wisely (the top student), for others will only misunderstand and hence misuse and abuse it.

Ushiwara Maru training with the Tengu, who were reputed to be masters of swordsmanship. By Yoshikazu Utagawa. Source: Wikimedia.

This is one common conceptualisation of pedagogical relations. But it is deeply problematic. An awful lot more goes on in teaching than perfect transmission. Derrida proposes that what is considerably more likely than insemination is ‘dissemination’ – the scattering of incomplete parts and parcels, picked up and understood and applied, used and abused, in myriad unpredictable and partial ways. For Derrida, everyone is in a way an impostor who’s stumbled upon a text that they then go on to use in their own improper and incomplete way. Inevitably, the ‘purist’ response is to regard such processes as far from ideal, and to reassert the value of the strictest methods of uncontaminated transmission (whether conceived as insemination, or as baton passing). But the Derridean contention goes further. Derrida argues that pure unmodified transmission (repetition) is an impossible fantasy at best, and that what always happens is the introduction of alteration, however slight (reiteration).

In this sense, Derrida proposes a theory of inevitable historical change. Some might call it ‘corruption’. But, in a sense, that’s what time always makes happen anyway: variation, drift, alterity, otherness, difference.

The idea of lineage is often deployed to try to insist that such change doesn’t happen – hasn’t happened – in order to confer a status on the present by an appeal to an ancient and mythological past; one that says ‘what we are doing now remains essentially identical to the way it was done at the moment of its pure and magical birth’.

In light of this kind of institutional politics (or policing), it seems to me that the attitude of Judkins’ kickboxer to his own history, or lack of it, is in a way a kind of liberation. After all, it evokes no creation myth, no mysticism, no sense of divine right. Certainly, Judkins himself appears to find it at once surprising and refreshing. So he asks us to reflect on the range of differing possible attitudes that martial artists may have to history and/or lineage (although his own interests are expressed in terms of learning about different types of martial arts community).

To reiterate, in my experience of TCMAs, it always seemed to me that the vast majority of practitioners had only a very vague and shaky relationship with the notion that their styles had either a history or a lineage. Rather, most practitioners seemed most inclined invoke vague allochronistic ideas, about ‘Nature’, ‘Taoism’ or ‘the East’. Those who did believe that they knew their history, those inclined to talk about it, discuss it, dispute it, had one thing in common. They were all (in my experience), universally, and ‘to a man’, men.

I also recall that, at the time I was regularly turning up at classes, the fact that I didn’t (and don’t) have an exhaustive working knowledge of the key figures that made up my own stylistic genealogy would often worry me. Why can’t I remember these Chinese names? Why don’t I study this genealogy and learn it properly? Am I not a proper martial artist? Am I not a proper scholar? A proper man? And so on. Such questions would vex me. But now it gives me pause for thought, raising questions not only of knowledge but also of its perhaps gendered character.

Yet I am ill-inclined to argue that such knowledge, such information gathering, collection, enjoyment, and so on, is essentially ‘masculine’. However, I have often quietly regarded this sort of interest as somewhat ‘nerdy’. But nerdiness is not an exclusively male preserve. For instance, in the past I have attended many film studies conferences, and film studies conferences are absolutely brimming with fact-stuffed film nerds, and the conversations are incredibly nerdy, and overwhelmingly organised by the competitive display of knowledge; yet film studies is a field populated at least equally in number by women.

So, in the end, I wonder whether it is because Judkins is a scholar that he was so surprised to encounter someone without any kind of scholarly relationship to their practice. As we know, Judkins always strives to establish a rich historical, political, economic, sociological and cultural understanding of any martial art. So his approach to kickboxing – or anything else – is always likely to start from the premise that kickboxing has a history: he may not know all of the main details yet, but presumably Judkins would also anticipate that kickboxing will have a comparatively recent and very Western history, at least in its current form and under its current name. Moreover, as a certain type of scholar – one who knows very well that ‘lineage narratives’ all too easily ignore or deny real histories, and all too often work mythologically or ideologically – Judkins will be able and inclined to situate both the practice and its attitudes within a complex history (rather than a lineage).

To my mind, this kind of scholarly engagement with history (especially when combined with a critical attitude towards lineage) is both liberating and immanently political. It is certainly better overall than either simply ‘knowing’ a lineage or, conversely, simply dwelling in ignorance and indifference.

But better for whom? I would propose: for everyone.

The knowledge that martial arts do not exist and develop in isolation but in a complex ecology; that their development is not subject to a linear chronological unfolding, but is much more subject to cross-fertilization in encounters with others and otherness in a spatial present; the iconoclastic revaluation of founders and masters as figures who have been transformed into myths; and the insistence that histories and lineages proceed according to forces of dissemination rather than simple communication, and that these histories and lineages are always worked up and worked over in the present imagining of the past; all of this is better than blind faith in linear history or lineage transmission.

Consequently, rather than either a simple knowledge of history or even a critical knowledge of lineage, I would prefer more people to have a better theory of history and understanding of cultural processes and logics.

In such a purview, we are definitely going to lose more than a few heroes and heroines, saintly founders and Taoist Immortals; we are also going to lose the supposed feminist origins of some arts, some dragon slayers, some drunken monks, more than one temple, and many gallant fighters of oppression. Some really important invincible figures will turn out to have been defeated, and others may never even have fought at all. But all of this remains infinitely better than believing in myths and legends that prime people to fall into traps of ethnonationalistic jingoism, or into believing myths about cultural superiority or uniqueness, or that this or that practice is historically and ideologically clean and pure.

Truly valuable knowledge of martial arts history and culture is essentially a knowledge of cultural transactions, hybridizations, grafts, mimicry, emulation, differentiation, call and response, ideological agendas, cultural management, political struggles, war-torn borders, and military, educational, sporting, police and consumer institutions, as well as the power of media myths and cultural discourses of all orders.

So, should we learn ‘our’ history, the history of our practices, and of what we involve ourselves in? In what way should that learning be carried out?

I will give one quick case to consider, in concluding. An old friend of mine – we used to train in taekwondo together – is now devoted to krav maga. Krav maga, as many will know, is often regarded as one of the most efficient and brutal martial arts available. Doubtless many of its own practitioners will not know or care or think much about its history; or, if they do, for many that history will boil down to one or two factoids: the one about it being devised for fighting Nazis in the Jewish ghetto, and the one about it being used as the basis for the hand to hand combat training of the Israeli military.

When I once asked my friend how he felt about training in a style so closely connected with the Israeli military, he immediately sensed my implication and launched into a quick pre-emptive counter: Well, how did you feel, he asked me, about training in taekwondo? Did you feel that you were being ideologically aligned with Korean nationalism?

At the time I thought, touché, and let it go. But thinking about it now I would have to answer: yes. The syllabus in taekwondo involved learning ‘the correct interpretations’ and ‘meanings’ of the forms (kata). These ‘correct meanings’, which we had to memorize and regurgitate verbatim in lessons and at gradings, all related to massively mythologized and ultimately nationalistic ‘facts’ and other fabulations about ‘ancient Korea’. These were things that I was entirely happy to believe. Indeed, I thought I was learning some pretty cool stuff. Outside of the formal syllabus, these ‘meanings’ were accompanied by what I now view as hilarious apocrypha, such as the one about taekwondo having developed into a jumping style so that heroic unarmed Koreans could kick Samurai off their horses, and so on.

We were all happy to believe it. To that extent, we were happily being inserted into ideological discourses via the ventriloquizing of beliefs disseminated by more or less unknowing disseminators.

To what ends? Politics and ideology are rarely, if ever, endgames. All that matters is hegemony in the realm of ideas, beliefs and discourses. And rather than perpetuating creation myths and narratives that are at one and the same time uncannily childish and eerily ethnonationalist, it would seem better to insist less on knowing a list of famous names and more about the ideological character of the present discourse, of where it seems to come from, what it seems aligned with, and where it would want to transport us.

References

Derrida, J. (1981), Dissemination, London: Athlone.

Fabian, J. (1983), Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object, N.Y.: Columbia U.P.

Frank, A. (2006), Taijiquan and the Search for the Little Old Chinese Man: Understanding Identity through Martial Arts, New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Liu, P. (2011), Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts Literature and Postcolonial History, Ithaca, N.Y.: East Asia Program, Cornell University.

Nietzsche, F. (2006), On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic, K. Ansell-Pearson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wile, D. (1996), Lost T’ai Chi Classics of the Late Ch’ing Dynasty, New York: State University of New York.

——— (1999), T’ai Chi’s Ancestors: The Making of an Internal Martial Art, New York: Sweet Chi Press.

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If you enjoyed this post you might also want to read: On Weapons Training by Paul Bowman

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Bruce Lee sketching on the set for Game of Death. Photograph: Bruce Lee Estate. Source: The Guardian.

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!

Annotated pages from a martial arts manual once owned by Bruce Lee and recently sold at auction.  Source: bloomsburyauctions.com.

News and Events from all Over

Our leading story today will be of special interest to Bruce Lee fans and collectors.  In fact, its really remarkable how many news items he managed to show up in over the last few weeks.  We are quickly approaching his 75th birthday and the cultural relevance of the Little Dragon shows no sign of diminishing any time soon.

The Daily Mail recently reported that an important book from Lee’s private collection was auctioned earlier this month by Bloomsbury in London.  The text appears to be a 1950s-1960s era Kung Fu manual that Lee studied and made extensive notations in, outlining the evolution of some of his various theories and ideas.  He then gave the book to his close friend and student Taky Kimura.  The book recently sold at auction for an eye watering 52,000 British Pounds (roughly 80,800 USD) including fees.  The Daily Mail erroneously identifies the text as a Wing Chun book that he learned his art from.  But the few pictures provided indicate that Wing Chun was not the subject of this manual.  (Nor have I come across any Chinese language manuals on Wing Chun from the late 1950s or early 1960s.  If any readers know of one please let me know).

This points to what I find to be the most remarkable aspect of this story.  In all of the reporting there doesn’t seem to be much interest in the actual title, author or content of the manual itself, let alone how it may have substantively influenced Lee’s thinking.  The original entry in the auction catalog is slightly more helpful.  It dates the book to the early 1960s and identifies it as a “Mantis Kung Fu” manual, but it also provides no information on its actual title or author.  And somewhat inexplicably the catalog even managed to flip the cover of the book upside down?  So while the results of this auction and the subsequent reporting indicated a continued interest in Lee as a cultural phenomenon, they also point to a shallow appreciation of his role as a martial artist.  Could we even imagine a similar case in which a large auction house sold a heavily annotated volume from Einstein’s library and subsequent reports totally neglected to mention what the title of the book was, or why its owner might have found the volume to be so interesting?  Still, this might be a fantastic resource for those interested in the evolution of JKD.

Three Qilin heads, at a 2006 Monkey God festival in Hong Kong. Dr. APhoto credit: Sam Judkins.

Anyone who is going to be in Hong Kong between now and the middle of October will want to be sure to take some time to visit the first Hong Kong Culture Festival.  This is especially true for individuals who are interested in the Hakka fighting styles or Qilin dancing.  The event is being supported by Hing Chao’s International Guoshu Association (you can find periodic updates on their Facebook group) among others and a wide variety of venues will be hosting events across the city.  Some of the most interesting items on the itinerary include a public Kung Fu performance to be held at Victoria and Qingyin Park on September 26-27, a meeting of the Kung Fu and creative/fashion industries at the Full Moon Party on the 25th (at HK Polytechnic University), and a Hakka Unicorn Dance and Kung Fu Carnival at the HK Cultural Center on October 18th.

If you have a chance to attend any of these events I would love to hear how they went!

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

There were a couple of interesting stories touching on the topic of Kung Fu diplomacy making the rounds over the last few weeks.  As regular readers will already know, various Chinese media outlets tend to produce quite a few of these stories both as reflections of China’s growing cultural influence abroad and as part of its public diplomacy strategy.  Usually these stories are short and unremarkable, which is what makes today’s entries so valuable.  They are much more detailed and tend to be explicit about the cultural values that these programs are hoping to promote.  They also tend to be a little more transparent about the actual actors promoting these efforts.

The first of these stories looks at the growth of a successful Chinese martial arts program at a high-school in Kenya.  These particular classes are run by the local Confucius Institute (which is coordinating an ever greater number of martial arts classes around the globe).  Its also interesting as it speaks to some of the anxieties that both Kenyan and Chinese parents might share when deciding to allow their children to enroll in Wushu classes.  This one is definitely worth the read for anyone interested in how China is using the martial arts to promote its public image abroad.

If anything the second Kung Fu Diplomacy story is even more interesting.  This reports focuses on a one day conference held in Helsinki between various Finnish officials and individuals from the tourism industry and a team from Zhenzhou (a city about 50 miles away from the Shaolin Temple in Henan).  The actual article itself is little more than a note, but it includes a link to a five minute video discussion of the conference which is well worth watching.  In addition to a peak at the sleek promotional materials that Zhenzhou has put together (unsurprisingly they are interested in promoting themselves as a gateway to northern China’s various martial arts destinations), we are treated to the rare spectacle of actual diplomats holding forth on the success and broader importance of Kung Fu diplomacy.

One of the issues that this report does not bring up, but may nevertheless be important to contemplate, is the long term effect of individual cities or regions conducting their own public diplomacy campaigns.  Will this diversity of approaches ultimately strengthen the appeal of Kung Fu diplomacy?  Or will it further erode the central government’s  ability to promote a single, carefully crafted, image of the martial arts?  These will be critical issues to watch in the coming years.

Not everyone is equally happy with this ever tightening association between Kung Fu and Chinese culture.  This particular blogger from Montreal would like to remind you that the vast majority of Chinese people don’t study the martial arts, and that formal Kung Fu training is totally unnecessary to smack you upside the head the next time you ask them about it.  One suspects that not everyone will find these sorts of  self-Orientalizing exercises to be equally charming.

A new student being accepted as a disciple in Chengdu. Source: http://www.ecns.cn

Another tried and true genera of martial arts reporting is the photo essay.  In a sense this is very understandable given the visually spectacular (or sometimes odd) nature of the many of the traditional martial arts.  This week’s update has one entry for both of these categories.  The first of these essays focuses on elegant images of a Shaolin performance team rehearsing on a beach in Bognor Regis one week ahead of their appearance on stage in the UK.  These are the sorts of pictures that everyone has seen before….and they are spectacular.

The other photo essay was shot in Chengdu.  It focuses on a local school with an interesting tradition.  Kung Fu lore is rife with tales of students being forced to endure countless hours in the horse stance, or some other sadistic ritual, before being accepted as full students in their school of choice.  Not to be outdone this local teacher requires his students to hang from trees for an hour, to prove their dedication, before being accepted.  So I guess we can file these photos under “odd things that martial artists do.”

John Tsang. Source: SCMP

Which is not say that Kung Fu is all hanging from trees and having fun.  In a recent blog post reported in the South China Morning Post John Tsang (HK’s Finance Secretary), who apparently studied Kung Fu as a youth, warned that the martial arts were on the verge of being reduced to just another fashionable hobby.  He lamented the fact that in the past individuals studied Kung Fu as a way of making a living, where as now the arts risked becoming shallow and distorted in the hands of fair weather students.

Tsang, who studied kung fu at a young age, said historically martial arts were about making a living or even survival, but today they had become a hobby and viewed as fashionable.

“Master Li Tin-loi said, ‘in the past, people only asked you which school of kung fu you practised. But today, people ask you how many forms you can perform. It seems the more you know, the better’,” Tsang wrote.

The actual transition that he seems to be referring to was already complete by the 1920s, well before his time.  Statements like these may be an important reminder of how Kung Fu is idealized and understood in the public imagination.  This then leads to the odd phenomenon that Kung Fu has been “dying” since literally the day that these more modern approaches to the art came into being.  This fear of the disappearance of “tradition” appears to be baked into the very DNA of Kung Fu.  More immediately his remarks seem to have been in support of the upcoming Hong Kong Culture Festival discussed above.  So what better way to support a festival aimed at the preservation of “traditional culture” than to publicly question its ultimate viability?

It seems that even fans of the iconoclastic Bruce Lee are being forced to worry about historical preservation.  The Business Insider recently ran an update on the saga to determine the fate of the actor’s Hong Kong residence.  Fans want the site to be preserved and possibly turned into a museum, while real estate developers are much more interested in the land that the building sits on.  You can read more about the current state of the debate here.

Meg from Rocket News. Source: http://en.rocketnews24.com

Lastly, what sort of smart phones do Shaolin Monks really want?  One intrepid Japanese writer decided to find out.  (Hint: iPhones, but not for the reason you would suspect.)  Click to learn more!

The Assassin. Source: Toronto Film Festival

The Martial Arts on Screen

The Vancouver Sun recently ran a short note reporting that the Birth of the Dragon (the much anticipated Bruce Lee biopic) is set to start shooting in their fair city next month.  Hopefully we will be seeing from pictures from the set soon.

Are you wondering what martial arts film to see next?  If so Slate would like to make a suggestion.  They recently ran a piece calling Assassins “a new martial arts masterpiece.” That certainly got my attention.  This film, set in the 9th century Tang Dynasty, is supposed to be beautifully shot.  It is about to make its North American debut at the New York Film Festival.  Hopefully it will start making the rounds of art house theaters after that.

Into the Badlands by AMC.

If you prefer a more “classic” approach to your Kung Fu Films, AMC has some news that may inspire you to program your DVR.  To prepare the way for their new series “Into the Badlands” the networking is starting a “Kung Fu Fridays” in which some of your favorite films will be replayed on late night TV.  Click here to check out their schedule.

Kung Fu fans will also be happy to note that we have a new set of production photos for Ip Man 3.  These shots feature both Donnie Yen and Mike Tyson, but the promised CGI generated Bruce Lee is notably absent from the lineup.  This production has led to a legal dispute with the Lee estate which is contesting their rights to use the dead actors image.  However, the studio says they are going ahead with the project.  We will know how all of this turns out soon enough as the film is set to open on December 25th 2015.

Taiji Quan being practiced at Wudang. Source: Wikimedia.

Martial Arts Studies

Following the theory that the best new books are free ones, I am happy to announce that the Brennan Translation Blog has just released two new English language translations of classic Chinese martial arts training manuals.  This is exciting as these texts as they are literally the primary source documents of our field.  Even if a given manual does not speak directly to a style that you happen to be practicing (or researching) at the moment, thy often contain other information that makes them a critical resource for understanding the evolution of Chinese martial culture.

The first of these texts is DESCENDED FROM WUDANG – THE TAIJI BOXING ART by Li Shoujian (1944).  The second is titled SINGLE DEFENSE-SABER by Jin Yiming (1932).  As always, both of these books look fascinating.  Be sure to check them out.

Paul Bowman also released an important essay on his blog Martial Arts Studies.  In it he asks whether you know your lineage?  Take a look to figure out what is really at stake in this seemingly simple question.  While you are there you might also want to checkout the advance copy of his recent interview with Gene Ching of Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine on the development of Martial Arts Studies.

Luke White has also stepped up to offer us another free read.  He just posted a copy of his recent article article “A ‘narrow world, strewn with prohibitions’: Chang Cheh’s The Assassin and the 1967 Hong Kong riots” to Academia.edu making it available to the public.  Obviously film studies students will be interested in this paper.  But his discussion of the background of the 1967 riots might be helpful to a much broader readership.  We often forget that this was a critical moment in Hong Kong’s modern history and it certainly had an impact on the development of the city’s various martial arts schools.

Globalizing Boxing by Kath Woodward. 2015 edition, Bloomsbury Academic.

It looks like Kath Woodward’s book Globalizing Boxing (first released in 2014) is about to get another printing that should help to make it accessible to a wider audience.  The publisher’s blurb sounds fascinating:

Boxing is a traditional sport in many ways, characterized by continuities in the form of practices and regulations and heavy with legends and heroes reflecting its traditional/historical values. Associations with class, hegemonic masculinity and racialized inclusions/exclusions, however, sit alongside developments such as women’s boxing and involvement in Mixed Martial Arts.

This book will be the first to use boxing as a vehicle for exploring social, cultural and political change in a global context. It will consider to what degree and in what ways boxing reflects social transformations, and whether and how it contributes to those transformations. In exploring the relationship it will provide new ways of thinking critically about the everyday.

Kath Woodward is Professor of Sociology at the Open University.  This new edition began shipping a couple of weeks ago.

Finally, readers should also be on the look out for Lauren Miller Griffith’s upcoming volume Legitimacy: How Outsiders Become Part of the Afro-brazilian Capoeira Tradition.  This volume is due out some time in January, but it sounds like it might be a little expensive….so start saving now.  Still, it tackles a set of questions are central to many ongoing research programs within martial arts:

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

Personally I cannot wait to see how she treats the concept of pilgrimage in relation to martial arts tourism.  Unfortunately the cover art for this book is not yet available, but you can view her table of contents here.

A rare shot of Ip Man enjoying a cup of Kung Fu Tea. Few individuals in the west know that the venerable master was a big fan of cafe culture and often spent hours with his students in local restaurants after class.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

As always there is a lot going on at the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group and this last month has been no exception.  We looked at an antique Dao from the personal collection of a reader, discussed some vintage footage of a Chinese martial arts demonstrations and and asked what Martial Arts Studies owes the Kung Fu Community?   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

Every practicing martial artist knows that the most deadly attack is the one that you did not see coming. A successful ambush is extremely difficult to counter. And this is precisely what makes the subject of “history” so dangerous. So much appears to be revealed, but if we push a little harder, what is really there?

This problem is not the property of any one historian in particular. It is the nature of the exercise itself. The book in front of us claims to relate the true nature of events that occurred many years ago. Yet the ideas therein will insinuate themselves into our understanding of the present and aspirations for the future, often with striking little critical reflection.

The very best examples of the discipline will be conscious of these pitfalls. They will begin by presenting a clear discussion of the author’s own “theory” of history. Their pages will relate information only after critically interrogating the proper sources. Most importantly, they will be clear about the nature of the gaps separating any two visions of the past and present. Some events must remain beyond our reach, and not every “lesson” of the past has an analogue in the present.

By in large this not the sort of history that martial artists get. Lorge, Wile, Henning, Shahar, Kennedy and handful of others have brought these “best practices” to the discussion of the development of the Chinese hand combat systems. Yet the conversation remains overwhelmed by the voices of practitioners steeped in a very different understanding of the nature and purpose of history.

From time to time I am contacted by individuals who have questions or want to discuss the history of various Chinese martial arts styles. Yet when these individuals begin to lay out their facts or puzzles, it quickly becomes apparent that there is little actual “history” here. That would imply independent sources embedded in, and speaking to, larger social events. Instead what they have is an ongoing dispute between lineage/creation myths.

As Paul Bowman points out so effectively in a recent essay, a lineage story is not actually the same thing as history. Sometimes we approach it as a type of proto-history, or maybe history done badly. Yet these sorts of “folk histories,” as many anthropologists have previously reminded us, are a very different animal.

To Bowman’s way of thinking they are also uniquely dangerous. After discussing some of the inevitable costs that would accompany the turning away from lineage mythology in favor of more academic history he observes that:

“…all of this remain infinitely better than believing in myths and legends that prime people to fall into traps of ethnonationalistic jingoism, or into believing myths about cultural superiority or uniqueness, or that this or that practice is historically and ideologically clean and pure…..Politics and ideology are rarely, if ever, endgames. All that matters is hegemony in the realm of ideas, beliefs and discourses. And rather than perpetuating creation myths and narratives that are at one and the same time uncannily childish and eerily ethnonationalist, it would seem better to insist less on knowing a list of famous names and more about the ideological character of the present discourse, of where it seems to come from, what it seems aligned with, and where it would want to transport us.”

Bowman is not the first author to warn that myths of lineage may (and have been) used to promote unsavory aims. Still, his warning is interesting in a number of respects. Rather than focusing only on the sudden emergence of “lost lineages” or other types of economically questionable behavior, he notes that the ideological and political costs associated with the idea of lineage may be very high.

While most martial artists would say that they are dedicated to the ideal of peace, Bowman points out that the fundamental building blocks of our corporate identity have often been tied to historical processes that are far from benign. Some of these identities even seem to have been constructed to reinforce political and social conflict. Once this has been realized it is not only prudent but necessary for us to ask where all of this is intended to lead us.

It is hard to argue with the specific examples that Bowman outlines in his essay. But where do we go from here? Would the Chinese martial arts community be better off if it sought to distance itself from its reliance on “lineage?” This is an idea that has been contemplated from time to time since at least the 1920s. Yet is it even possible to imagine the sort of move away from lineage towards history that he seems to call for within the “folk art” tradition?

Before we can answer this question it is necessary to take a moment to clarify what we mean by the term “lineage.” Martial Arts Studies as a research area remains under-conceptualized, and this is true of the current conversation as well. The following essay will look very briefly at the origins of lineage as an organizing concept within the Chinese martial art. (Discussion of “lineage” more specific to other arts, such as Japanese Jujitsu or the Filipino fighting styles, will require their own detailed investigation and I am hesitant as to whether we can easily generalize across all of these unique understandings to speak of “lineage” as a universalizing concept). It will then introduce three related, though distinct, versions of this concept as it has been used within the current debate. Lastly I conclude with a few thoughts about the likely fate of lineage in the Chinese martial arts.

Lineage in the Chinese Martial Arts

One could produce a fair sized study on the origin and variety of lineage networks seen in the Chinese martial arts. Still, for the purposes of our current discussion a few basic facts will suffice. First off, the current hegemony of lineage as an “organizing concept” within the folk martial arts of China is more recent than one might think. I suspect that this way of thinking probably goes back only to the beginning (or middle) of the Qing dynasty.

Why? Clan/lineage associations have been a major organizing force throughout Chinese society, and particularly in the South. Yet as historians such as David Faure have shown, these social structures were the result of specific ritual innovations in the Ming Dynasty (which opened the way for new forms of corporate land ownership, and hence social organization) and did not really succeed in penetrating all levels of society until well into the Qing. Once these sorts of structures were popularized they could spread to other areas of society where they were adopted as a model for institution building, such as the martial arts.

Literary evidence also helps us to date the spread and popularity of the idea lineage within the martial arts. Kung Fu novels written at the end of 19th century in Guangdong clearly make use of the concept. Yet earlier classic martial arts works such as “Water Margin” (a work that has been called the “Old Testament” of the Chinese martial arts) shows no knowledge of lineage as a way of organizing (or training) its heroes. In fact, most of them learned the fighting arts either in the military or through a life of banditry.

This suggests the late imperial (and mostly Qing) origins of lineage as a widespread organizing concept within the Chinese martial arts. This concept was certainly available during the 1910s-1930s for appropriation by the nationalist cause. Yet its origins ultimately lay in the creation of new forms of social organization in the pre-nationalist era. (Again, see Faure for a painfully detailed discussion of the evolution and spread of larger and more formal clan lineage associations during the Ming and Qing).

Three Visions of the Lineage

Establishing these facts is important as it will give us some basis for evaluating the various claims advanced by students of martial arts studies as they discuss the origins and nature of lineage. As Bowman (quoting Nietzsche) reminds us, a single word can obscure a great deal of difference between underlying objects. Classification is not the same as thick description.

Let us begin by reconsidering David Brown’s chapter “Body-experience Lineage in Martial Arts Culture” which appears in Keith Gilbert’s edited volume Fighting: Intellectualizing Combat Sport (Common Ground, 2015). In some way’s Brown’s theory of lineage most closely adheres to the concept’s genealogical origins. Further, his essay inspired a response by myself, which in turn touched off the current discussion.

Readers should note that Brown does not seek to speak to lineage in the abstract. As the title of his chapter makes clear, he is interested in “Body-Experience Lineages” in the martial arts. This provides some helpful clarification as to the nature of his project, yet it does not do much to modify the concept under discussion.

Brown draws on the current academic literature and even attempts to examine some of the social and economic aspects of lineage within the martial arts. Nevertheless, his entire discussion is best understood as an attempt to update the more traditional view of the subject in such a way as to make it theoretically acceptable and useful. As a side effect of this process, he also makes what was originally a culturally defined phenomenon oddly (and very improbably) universal.

For Brown lineages exist to resolve the inherent contractions that arise within the traditional martial arts due to their nature as “embodied” forms of knowledge. To begin with, individual bodies grow old and die, yet the “style” is (theoretically) immortal and unchanging. How then can it perpetuate itself through time?

The bodily interaction of a teacher and student allows for nuanced postures, pressures and timings to be conveyed that are critical to the actual practice of these arts. Such details are too subtle to be conveyed through written text or video. In this way physical capital, trapped in the life-history a single individual, can be conveyed to a successor.

Browns process by which lineage capital is conveyed bears more than a passing resemblance to what Bowman (via Derrida) describes as the “insemination” model of pedagogy. In this model the essential DNA of a practice can be transferred between student and teacher ensuring that the resulting style will be true to the original founder’s genius regardless of the number of generations that pass. Of course this is also exactly what most Chinese lineage stories want to assure their audiences. So while Brown couches his discussion within the social scientific literature, his actual understanding of lineage reads almost like an apology (or perhaps an explanation) for some of the more traditional ideas on its nature.

Still, by invoking the problem of death, Brown makes the process seen within the Chinese martial arts both necessary and universal in nature. All sorts of embodied fighting arts are facing the same problem. And they also have teacher student contact. So Brown informs us that almost identical lineages can be detected throughout the world of the martial arts. From the traditional Japanese fencing schools to modern MMA training camps, he sees the emergence of universal patterns of “Body-technique Lineages.”

To my way of thinking this is where his model breaks down. As I point out in my own response to this essay, Brown is not just interested in saying something (trivially) true about the interaction of students and teachers. He wants to go on to expand this to a more general discussion of how the transfer of knowledge becomes the basis of social organization within almost all of the martial arts.

And yet in actual practice this is something that is not shared or universal. There are a wide range of different methods of social organization seen within the martial arts. As I argued previously, these seem to have more to do with the accidents of culture, history and social pressures than they do with universal processes of death and pedagogy.

The forms of lineage seen in the Chinese martial arts emerged at a specific point in time in response to much more basic transformations that were happening within Chinese society. It is interesting to note that certain body technologies (such as opera performance and the martial arts) adopted modifications of the lineage system as forms of social organization. Yet lots of other crafts and physical practices continued to be conveyed without the creation of lineage structures. For instance, we tend not to see strong lineages in cooking, yet it is also a socially valued craft that depends on embodied capital. Individuals certainly know who taught them how to cook, or what kitchen they learned in, but they tend not to organize themselves into elaborate lineages. Instead we see the emergence of specialized guilds and later restaurant workers unions.

While there may be “lineages” of sorts within Italian, Japanese and Chinese fencing schools, we should not let the obvious parallels within these practices blind us to the many important differences between them. Nor should we automatically assume that all practices, or even all martial arts, within China will automatically form the same sorts of lineage practices. Lastly, elements of specific lineages may be “remembered” or “forgotten” for personal, social or economic reasons that appear to have nothing to do with the fighting system at hand. After all, these are structures that were explicitly created to make new forms of economic organization possible in a rapidly evolving social landscape. It would be odd if they were not highly adaptable in their actual behavior.

This brings us to the third approach to lineage, advanced by Paul Bowman. In many ways it is just as “political” as the understanding of lineage that I advanced above. Yet as the quotes at the start of this essay indicate, Bowman is deeply suspicious of the ethnolinguistic identities and rivalries embedded within the lineage stories that accompany many martial arts today.

While critiquing Brown I related a personal story meant to illustrate the variety of approaches to questions of lineage seen between various fighting systems in contrast to his assertion that such concerns were really “universal.” Specifically, I noted my surprise upon interviewing a kickboxing instructor about his school, only to discover that he had no clear understanding of his own arts origins or history. I contrasted this with the widespread nature of historical discussions within the Chinese martial arts, driven by lineage concerns, as a basic way of establishing one’s identity within the world of the more traditional fighting systems.

Or to put it another way, one is a kickboxer because you train and compete as one. Yet you are only a Wing Chun student because of your Sifu, your teacher’s teacher and so forth. And if you publicly doubt this basic rule of the Kung Fu community, there are entire internet discussion boards full of thousands of practitioners who will happily remind you that your identity in the art is entirely determined by the “authenticity” of your teacher’s practice and training. You may privately think about your practice however you wish, but your public identity is something that is thrust upon you by a well understood set of lineage-based discourses.

At this point something very interesting happens in Bowman’s discussion. While acknowledging the essential difference in the approach to history often seen between TCMA and other western combat sports, he calls for a little more reflection on exactly who within the average Kung Fu school actually invests scarce resources in this sort of knowledge.

While Bowman remembers being lectured on lineage history in his Taiji classes, he confesses to not actually retaining much of what he learned at the time. Names, dates and pithy stories just didn’t seem as important as concepts and practices. Nor was he alone in this assessment. Bowman did seek out Wile’s works on Taiji, but his classmates showed even less interest in the origins of their style than he did. In fact, only the head teacher and a handful of senior instructors actually invested the resources necessary to learn the lineage history in all its detailed glory.

This is an important observation. I have to confess that his experience largely matches my own in the Wing Chun community. While it may seem that every person encountered in an on-line discussion board is a grand master of esoteric historical theories, it is well worth remembering that these individuals are outliers. 90% of the students who you meet in a brick and mortar school will not be able to keep the relative positions of Leung Jan and Chan Wah Shun straight in their own lineage chart. They are there for the workout and the chi sao. And as I argued in a recent post, many really important ethnographic informants are valuable to researchers precisely because they are marginal outliers within their own community, and not actually representative of its daily values. Bowman has pointed to an almost textbook example of this principle.

He then goes on to note that his classmates tended to fall back on vaguely “Orientalist” notions of “Daoism” and “The East” on the odd occasion when they found themselves forced to discuss, or explore the implications of, the origins of their art. In their grasping efforts he detected a strong strain of “allochronism,” a term that theorists have used to describe the historical flattening of some process or institution so that it comes to be seen as “timeless,” unchanging” and “essential.” By asserting that something has “always been,” allochronism denies it the opportunity to have a history of its own, or to interact with other historical or social processes in any meaningful way. Such objects are reduced to mere images, used in the building of other identities (most notably nationalism) but otherwise removed from the realm of critical examination.

This then leads to the main conclusion of Bowman’s essay. Lineage structures, as they exist now, are not simply a complication in how we view an art’s history. They are a force for allochronism that denies the very possibility that these arts have ever evolved or changed in important ways.

Yet what one loses in historical validity may be more than compensated for in the realm of “fictive power.” The architects of Asian nationalism (in Japan, Korea and China among other states) all realized the immense benefits to be gained from the cooptation of the state’s “traditional” fighting arts.

The historical irony is that the fighting systems of these states are deeply connected to one another. Through processes of both peaceful and violent exchange innovations spread across the region. Both teachers and insights cross boundaries in ways that later reformers steadfastly refused to acknowledge. A rich history of exchange has been forgotten to make way for “pure” fighting traditions, each a reflection of a newly imagined “national spirit.” It is not hard to detect in the stories that emerged from this period the seeds of the jingoism and ethnolinguistic conflict that Bowman warns against.

The Future of Lineage

Before going on I would like to return to one of Bowman’s earlier points. As he noted, not everyone in the average TCMA school is equally interested in the detailed history of their style, regardless of whether it is understood in mythological or more academic terms. Even in the traditional martial arts communities, which defined themselves through lineage, most students invested very little time and resources into these claims. How should we understand this, and what might it suggest about the actual function and place of lineage in these schools?

For Bowman the essential problem with lineage as it actually exists in a variety of arts is its emptiness. Far from pointing students towards a deeper appreciation of the radically contingent ways in which these arts have developed, it too easily slips into the corrosive realm of ideology. Indeed, it is this lack of engagement with the actual puzzles of history that makes “lineage myths” so easily hijacked by those attempting to politicize the martial arts and establish their own hegemonic discourse.

Still, I am not yet convinced that lineage must always point towards allochronism, or that it is even particularly friendly to it. Indeed, making martial arts communities available for this sort of appropriation required a tremendous amount of work on the part of specific reformers and modernizers in China, Japan and Korea during the early 20th century. I am not sure that there was anything inevitable about this process. The actual tragedy of the situation appears to be that specific martial artists fought hard to make it happen, and in so doing contributed to some of the region’s more problematic developments in the modern era.

Nor were they equally successful in all instances. Some elements of the traditional martial arts community’s (often those more closely associated with debates about regional rather than national identity) resisted these trends. While we absolutely do see this “flattening” of history in the service of nationalism in some arts (again, Bowman’s examples drawn from Taekwondo are instructive), there remains other directions in which lineage identities could have evolved.

More specifically, when looking at the myths of the southern Chinese fighting arts that I am most familiar with, there is very little indication that these stories tend towards allochronism as it is usually understood. Rather, these stories exhibit a profound interest in the “historical” questions of how a given style was created and evolved over time. Was it created by a man or a woman? Who was the first ancestor to incorporate pole fighting into the system? Was it important that a given individual was a salt smuggler? How did everything change with the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion? When did the different sub-lineages within the larger clan come into being? What does the normal salute mean if we use the other hand instead?  Why?

Far from exhibiting a disinterest in the evolution or development of an art, many of the lineage histories are utterly obsessed with these questions. They certainly seem to be aware that the martial arts change and evolve over time (though Bowman is correct in asserting that they usually attempt to protect some “core” vision of the system). The issue then is not that they ignore history, rather that they fictionalize surprising amounts of it.

Nor is it just the history of an individual style that are produced through creative of means. Very often the larger framework of supposed political, economic or social events that frames the functioning of these styles are also created whole cloth. I have always suspected that this is one of the reasons that so few martial artists questioned their lineage myths. They fit seamlessly into a larger mosaic of folk histories that inform much of the popular world view. The result is a self-reinforcing of tautology of remarkable durability.

For these reasons I do not detect the sort of absence of history or historical curiosity that allochronism might suggest. Instead we see the emergence of a realm in which historical events have been transformed into competing brands of esoteric knowledge, each of which promises you a privileged window onto the hidden reality of past. It is almost as though history has been “privatized” in the commercial sense of the term.

It might be worthwhile to consider the various ways in lineage histories and folklore (and even the ever present body of “secret techniques”) might function when understood as a repository of esoteric knowledge. The social benefits of having a store of hidden insights are immense. Most obviously, such individuals can defend the legitimacy of their own lines of transmission while attacking the legitimacy of others. The economic aspects of this are too obvious to merit much discussion. But beyond that, lineage offers a common language in which complex relationships between schools can be explained, bridged or breached.

One strongly suspects that the stories of the past that are commonly told reflect to some degree of configuration of social power in the present. To master this body of knowledge is to become a specialist in identity and group interaction.

And yet as Bowman reminds us, most students will never do this. Why? As with any body of knowledge, there are very real costs in terms of times, resources and relationships required both to access and master this information. For students who come to a martial arts class to get in shape, or learn how to fight, the game is literally not worth the candle. Yet the calculus changes for senior students thinking of branching out to start their own school. Suddenly these esoteric concerns become personal and primal.

On a slightly deeper level I would avoid the assumption that just because most students do not invest the resources to master their lineage history that it is unimportant to them or has no impact on their identity. After all, the martial arts do not just exist as an embodied practice. They also swim in a rich social discourse comprised of movies, novels, stories, comic and video games.

In my own experience I saw many instances in which my Wing Chun brothers, less interested in history than myself or my Sifu, would come to class with rather detailed questions both about our style, or life back in “the good old days,” after watching either new or classic Kung Fu movies. These classmates seemed to sense that as the master of esoteric knowledge relating to both Wing Chun and the Chinese martial arts in general, my Sifu was the correct person to approach with these questions. (In this case they were very lucky to have an instructor who had a deep interest in both the mythological and academic history of the Chinese martial arts.)

Why invest personal resources in gaining this information for yourself when you have easy access to specialist in it? And better yet, through your access to that specialist, you have an opportunity to become the next generation in the ongoing story. While many of my classmates had only the foggiest grasp on the specific details of Wing Chun’s history they all seemed to appreciate, on a more emotional level, that they were part of a historically grounded process. The specific details could be left to a specialist in that matter.  Yet they still reaped the benefits from this association.

As students came to my teacher with questions, his status within the community was reinforced by his access to esoteric historical (and at times technical) knowledge. Likewise, the very fact that this body of knowledge was so detailed and complicated to make individual mastery difficult (not to mention in a foreign language) seemed to make it of even more value to the students. So far from being an ideology that erases history, a lineage based view can help to establish an economy of esoteric facts within a style which further strengthens and reinforces the institution on a social level by providing a medium of cultural exchange.

This is not a foreordained outcome. In cases where an art has been strongly tied to a nationalist cause all knowledge seems to become public memory. It is the collective act of “remembering” and “forgetting” that forges these broadly shared identities. Here the allochronsistic pressures that Bowman describes are much more clearly visible. Of course this is also a historically bounded process. In Japan the identification of the martial arts with nationalism begins as early as the 1890s. In China the process doesn’t reach the same fevered pitch until the 1920s-1930s. In Korea it had to wait until after the close of the Second World War.

What future will the idea of lineage continue to play in the Chinese martial arts? It is interesting to note that a number of reform movements, including the Jingwu Association, Guoshu and the later Wushu programs in the PRC, have all attempted to supplant a traditional understanding of lineage and the teacher-student transmission method with something more universal – and easily put at the disposal of the state.

It is difficult to argue with Bowman’s conclusions on the nature of lineage in actual discussions of the martial arts. Very often it does function as an agent of exclusive ethnolinguistic identities that erases history in its wake. Such lineages seem to function as little more than vehicles for ideology.

And yet the ideologies that they are most concerned with are also the products of specific moments in time. If we were to accept Brown’s view, which located the genesis of lineage in the challenges of embodiment there is simply no escaping the problem lineage. It should be everywhere and always, a universal throughout the history of the martial arts. Yet clearly this is not the case. Their appearance is bounded by both historical and cultural variables.

Bowman’s more ideological reading of lineage might indicate that this is an idea whose time has come and past. To put it bluntly, it is not clear that this sort of mythmaking has been good for either the martial arts or the world at large. What is needed are new understandings of the martial arts that will allow us to build common identities grounded in a realistic understanding of our actual differences. While our traditional readings of lineage are not up to this task, Bowman suggests that a more sophisticated theory of history or cultural discourse will be able to make a positive contribution.

While I share many of Bowman’s concerns, my own reading of lineage sees its origin not in the details of pedagogy or ideology, but as a reaction to a specific moment in Chinese history. The sorts of lineages that emerged in China are not always directly interchangeable with similar structures seen elsewhere and we might want to resist the urge to use terms like “folk history” and “lineage history” interchangeably. Of course how much of their unique nature they retain as they transition through the global environment is another question all together. One suspects that it varies rather dramatically from school to school.

Yet there may be some reasons for optimism when thinking about the future of lineage within the Chinese martial arts. No matter how they may have been appropriated and used in the recent past, it is worth remembering that these structures started off as an institutional innovation designed to allow the creation of larger organizations than would otherwise be possible. And the meta-discourse around lineages has, at various times, allowed for the construction of vibrant “communities” of martial artists where there might otherwise have been only a bleak competitive marketplace.

I do not think that in the current era lineages are likely to survive as the ultimate guarantors of either “martial excellence” or the “purity” of one’s transmission. Martial arts studies is problematizing many of these concepts. Yet that is probably just a drop in the bucket compared to the vast sea of information that now exists on places like Youtube. That alone will make many of the standard claims of past generations obsolete.

The socially constructed nature of the “lineages” suggests that this institution could be reimagined in ways that avoid the pitfalls of ideology on the one hand and short-sighted competition on the other. Nor will this be the first time in recent history that these institutions will have been forced to evolve to survive.

One of the great strengths of the Chinese martial arts has been their ability to create remarkably flexible and resilient communities. The need for such groups is just as great now as it ever was in the past. In all honesty I am not sure whether the next generation of lineage-based institutions will do much for our understanding of history, but I really hope that they continue to provide the basic social tools to bring together diverse students and schools into larger and more vibrant communities.

oOo

If you enjoyed this piece you might also want to read: Lives of Chinese Martial Artists (13): Zhao San-duo—19th Century Plum Flower Master and Reluctant Rebel

oOo

Chinese Fencing. Shanghai, pre-1911 image. Source: Author’s Personal Collection.

Introduction

While many of the vintage images introduced in this series have focused on martial themes, characters or weapons, few of them have attempted to reveal scenes of martial artists simply practicing their craft.  And the vast majority of early postcards and photos of Chinese boxers which do exist focus on marketplace demonstrations rather than the actual training or use of the martial arts.  That is what makes today’s image so important.  Its one of the few postcards that I have come across that purports to show Chinese hand combat practitioners engaged in training (or possibly a match).  It is also interesting as it is one of very few such images that I have encountered more than once, suggesting that this may have been among the more popular and widely spread representations of Chinese boxers available to either tourists or interested parties in the west.  But what exactly is this a picture of?

The first version of this postcard that I came across was actually labeled the “Chinese Challenge.”  It bore an image of two gentlemen, holding swords, engaged in some sort of activity while staring intently at one another.  A third individual, possible a referee or some sort of by-standard, was sees standing between the two of them, intervening in the action.   The postcard itself offers few contextual clues as to how we are supposed to interpret the scene.  Its clear that this was a posed image taken in a photographer’s studio, rather than a candid shot taken on “the street.”  Notice for instance the carpet and uniform backdrop behind the combatants.

We have a few clues that might shed some additional light on the origins of this photo.  On the back of the photo we see a note that it was edited by “Kingshill.”  The Kingshill Publishing Company was located in Shanghai and produced a large number of postcards from approximately 1900-1940.  Some of these cards are marked “Kingshill Publishing Company,” others “Edited by Kingshill” and still others are simply unlabeled.  In a few cases these cards also bore one or two dragon stamps on the front of the image that were specific to this company and may have acted as an informal trademark.

The vast majority of cards distributed by Kingshill focused on scenes showing city life and the landscape around Shanghai.  Martial themes were not particularly common.  In fact, this is the only such image that I have run across by this publisher.  Kingshill seems to have produced a series of images showing various urban trades (barbers, tinkers, shoe repair men. etc.) in the early 1900s.  While these cards went to some lengths to present a “natural” scene, most were actually photographed in a studio.  I personally suspect that this image was produced as part of this larger series.  If so it suggests something about how the tourists and expats who originally purchased these cards viewed the city’s various martial artists.

Chinese Challenge. Shanghai, edited by Kingshill Trading Company. Source: Author’s Personal Collection.

The fact that all of these images were produced within a studio immediately calls into question their value as historical documents relating to the actual practice of the Chinese martial arts.  Photographers owned larger numbers of props and costumes (including exotic looking weapons) and it was not uncommon for them to simply hire local individuals to act as models for shots that they composed themselves.  In these cases market demand, rather than a detailed appreciation for history, likely determined the nature of the final photograph.  This makes it impossible to guess whether the individuals in the present image are actually martial artists at all.

Their weapons were real enough.  The individual on the left is armed with jian.  When looking at an expanded section of that image we can even get a sense of the richly ornamented hilt of this weapon.  The fencer on the left, however, is armed with a dao.  Its more difficult to discern the details of his weapon due to the angle that he is holding it.  Yet its flat pommel, distinctive guard and rather narrow blade are all visible.

Perhaps the single oddest aspect of this photograph is the posture of the two fighters.  Both have placed their “weak” (or unarmed) hand on their hip.  This posture is much more commonly seen in western swordplay than anything I am familiar with in the Chinese martial arts.  Western students might put a hand behind the back or on the hip for a variety of reasons.  Most obviously it reduced the chances of the weak armed being cut in the engagement, while also forcing the corresponding shoulder back and thus narrowing the profile of the target presented to the opponent.  In contrast many Chinese schools seem to favor holding the weak hand high, using it for balance, and sometimes even having both hands forwards.

I am not enough of an expert to declare that no Chinese school of jian or dao work ever adopted the posture seen above.  Yet given the overall composition of the image one strongly suspect that the photographer who supplied the weapons to the models also posed them in a manner that he suspected would appeal to western consumers.  Thus this image may actually present a hybrid of authentic Chinese weapons combined with western expectations of what “proper fencers” should look like.

A detail of the swords in this image. Note that one model holds a jian (left) while the other appears to be armed with a dao (right).

Dating the Image

Given the hair styles of the individuals in the image, it is clear that this photo was taken sometime prior to 1911.  But is it possible to say more than that?  While mailing and trade cards were produced and collected from about the 1880s onward, true postcards bearing a photographic image on one side did not really become popular until about 1900.  We also know that many of Kingshill’s subjects were found in the Shanghai area.  So at minimum we strongly suspect that this card was produced and marketed in Shanghai sometime between 1900 and 1911.  But can we be more specific than that?

To date a postcard more accurately it necessary to turn it over and look at the back.  This effort already revealed the card’s publisher and likely place of origin.  Of course stamps and postal cancellation marks can offer up a wealth of detailed information, including the exact date that a card was sent (almost always within in a year of its sale), where it was sent from, and the identity of its intended audience.  Sometimes one even gets lucky and finds some first-handed commentary on the card’s subject.

Martial arts related postcards are not my only interest.  Occasionally I collect vintage Christmas images and I have often been struck by how much social data rests on the backs of these cards.  Yet this same pattern does not seem to hold with the images of Chinese martial artists that I have been sharing on this blog.  Almost none of the postcards that we have been discussing here have ever been mailed.  And those that have been sent have often “lost” their stamps, and hence dates.  Why is this?

When looking at the backs of these unused postcards its not uncommon to discover that they were at one point glued or fitted into scrap books or photo albums.  So while almost all Christmas postcards were bought to be used, it seems that many examples featuring Chinese themes were purchased by tourists as souvenirs, and hence were never actually intended to be mailed.  Instead they illustrated journals and filled out scrapbooks.  As a result they have survived in relatively great numbers, but without any postal data that might help in dating them.  And it seems that stamp collectors, interested in exotic Chinese specimens, also relieved a number of these cards of their stamps at some point in time.

So how else might we attempt to date a vintage Chinese postcard?  Recently I had the good fortune of discovering a second, slightly different, edition of the same image that helped to provide another piece of the puzzle.  At first glance this  card appears to be a later modification of the initial image.  It shows the three figures in a smaller offset circle to the left side of the card’s front.  One suspects that the scene is supposed to be reminiscent of a moon gate.    The title of the scene is also slightly different.  What was once a “challenge” is now labeled as an example of “Chinese Fencing.”  In this new context one wonders if the individual in the center is supposed to be seen as a fencing master working with two of his students.  In this case we might now be looking at one of the only vintage images that I have come across purporting to record a moment of martial instruction.  While most of the background has been cropped out, we can still tell by the carpeting that this is the same studio shot discussed above.

Yet this card’s most valuable assets can only be seen once we turn it over.  Readers should notice a number of differences between the versos of these two postcards.  To begin with, “Chinese Fencing” has an undivided back, with instructions that only the recipient’s address is to be recorded on the backside of the card.  Suddenly the offset image on the front makes sense.  That is where the sender was expected to record his or her message.  In contrast the card labeled “Chinese Challenge” looks much more familiar.  It has a divided back with the right side being reserved for an address and the left for a short message.

Verso of “Chinese Fencing.” Note the undivided back. Source: Author’s Personal Collection.

Verso “Chinese Challenge.” Note the divided box, and the place for writing a brief message. Source: Author’s Personal Collection.

Many of the first postcards produced featured an undivided back and restricted the inclusion of a message on that side of the card.  This format was adopted by the US and other Western countries in 1901 and was used continuously up through March of 1907.  After that the major Western postal carriers changed their regulations regarding postcards.  They then adopted the split back, which has continued in use up until the present.  These early split back postcards were often manufactured by German printers to very high standards.  But after the outbreak of WWI much of this production shifted to American printers.  They tended to leave a white border around the card’s image in an effort to save ink.

With these facts in mind we can now say something more definitive about the production dates of these two postcards.  The “Chinese Fencing” card is (somewhat ironically) the older of the two.  It was produced in Shanghai sometime between the spring of 1901 and 1907.  Given the popularity of themes dealing with the Boxer Uprising in these years one might guess that it was likely printed closer to the start of this period than the end.  Yet this image appears to have been fairly popular.  Sometime between 1907 and 1914 it went through another print run (probably in Germany).  At this point the format of the card was modified given the expectation that a message would now be included on the back rather than the front.  It was now possible for the publisher to use the complete image rather than just part of it.

This suggests that the picture used was taken sometime in the years following the Boxer Rebellion and was in the possession of “Kingshill” who subsequently reused it in a number of cards.  It was not unusual for stock images to be recycled in this way.  In fact, cards showing martial artists from the 1910s-1920s seem to have been reprinted with some frequency up through the 1940s.  While these were never the most common themes seen in collections of Chinese ephemera, they have exhibited a surprising degree of “staying power.”  No doubt this is because they reflected western preconceptions about the nature of Chinese boxing more than they accurately represented the rapidly changing opinions on such topics found within Chinese society during the late Qing and Republic eras.

oOo

If you enjoyed these images you might also want to read: Collecting Chinese Swords and other Weapons in late 19th Century Xiamen (Amoy)

oOo

Plum Flower Maiden Dancing from Pole to Pole. Circa 1880. Source: Wikimedia (though I believe that Stanley Henning was the first person to publish this image in his essay for Green and Svinth.)

“The way in which we read the document depends on what we have read before.”

Evelyn S. Rawski, October 1, 2015, “Crossing from Nation to Region: China in Northeast Asian History.”

Introduction

Recently I had the opportunity to hear the noted Chinese historian Prof. Evelyn Rawski deliver a guest lecture at Cornell.  Among her many accomplishments Rawski is best remembered for her early social histories as well as for her groundbreaking work to establish the “New Qing History.”  To the best of my knowledge she has never actually written about the Chinese martial arts, but its the work of scholars like her that provide the basic framework of understanding that makes our field of study both decipherable and interesting.

Yet the most powerful idea in her talk occurred when she began to discuss the training of graduate students for the sorts of multilingual, multi-sited archival research necessary to truly think about problems in regional terms.  Nationally focused areas of study limit the number of perspectives that any one scholar tends to bring to complex topics.  After all, if we have spent our entire career studying political history from the Chinese national perspective, and we run across a new document detailing regional competition, will it ever be possible for us to read it as anything other than yet another national narrative?  Rawski contends that what we get from of our primary sources is very much dependent on all of the things that we have read before they ever enter our hands.

Her line of argument struck me as it seemed to speak so directly to a problem that I had been thinking about.  Globalization is a theme that emerges repeatedly in discussions of Chinese martial studies.  Indeed, vast systemic pressures helped to shape the specific forms that Chinese hand combat systems took in the late 19th and early 20th century.  They created new economic and political openings that martial arts reformers could exploit at exactly the same time that rapid social change was cutting off the institutions that had once supported these practices.  Then in the second half of the 20th century these same global forces allowed for these fighting systems to thrive in the West where they took on new meanings as they were appropriated into the local cultural and commercial landscape.

It is not surprising then that a number of scholars have decided that this expansion of the Asian fighting systems could potentially reveal much about the underlying processes of globalization and the ways that identity moves, hybridizes and is appropriated in its wake.  While the journey of practically any “traditional” art might illustrate these points, the popularity of Wing Chun, due in no small part to its fortuitousness relationship with Bruce Lee, makes it a particularly interesting case.  One of the main points that becomes evident as we look at Wing Chun’s “journey to the West” is that the discourse that has surrounded this art has never spoken with a unified voice.  It has never been just one thing.  Rather, multiple groups have contested the questions of what this art is, and what it should become, for reasons of their own.  Nor has this debate been stable over time.

In some cases this evolution has to do the progressive steps in the interpretation and cultural appropriation as outlined by Krug.  Yet if we look at this process on a more detailed level what quickly becomes apparent is that rather than a single dominant narrative what we often see is a dynamic process driven by the logic of strategic competition rather than simply cultural appropriation.  Yet it seems that we often miss the complexity of what is going on in these movements.  Why?  It could be that just as Rawski warned, we tend to read them from a single perspective.

To illustrate this possibility I would like to take a closer look at the early three volume instructional set produced by K. T. Chao and J. E. Weakland titled Secret Techniques of Wing Chun Kung Fu (Vol. 1-3) written between 1976 and 1983.  Each one of these three volumes explores the techniques, applications and concepts found in one of the style’s three unarmed fighting forms (Siu Lim Tao, Chum Kiu and Bil Jee).  I briefly addressed the first of these books as part of a short series of posts looking at the evolution of the earliest print discussions of Wing Chun in the West.  In the current essay I would like to discuss the content of the series as a whole, explore some issues in the way that its treatment of the art’s history evolved between the first and third volumes, and place it within its proper context.

On one level its easy to look at the work of Chao and Weakland and to see it as an example of the “Orientaliztion” of the discourse surrounding Wing Chun in an attempt to make the art more attractive to western consumers as interest in the system was spiking in the early 1980s.  Indeed, the difference in tone between these works and prior discussions of Wing Chun, both in Hong Kong and the West, is fascinating.  Yet I argue that rather than thinking of these moves as part of a process of cultural appropriation or coercive mimeticism, it is necessary to see them as responses to other specific actors in the environment.  The various strains of the Chinese martial arts which made their way to the West did not all share the same values or goals.  Nor can we place them all on a neat and tidy two dimensional continuum.  What arose from this process of strategic competition and innovation was different from what had gone before.  At least some of the new approaches that emerged were the product of the same sorts of forces that have always shaped the development of the martial arts.

Secret Techniques of Wing Chun Kung Fu. Hardbound 1st edition. Source: Author’s Personal Collection.

From Ip Man’s Modern Fighting System to the “Secret Techniques” of Wing Chun Kung Fu

I have always been a little surprised that Wing Chun’s many amateur historians have not taken more interest in the early publications that documented the spread of this art from Southern China to both North America and Europe.  While there has been a lot of emphasis on the critical role of Bruce Lee in all of this, there has been much less interest in the extensive paper-trail of books, magazines and ephemera that both helped to commercialize and (for our purposes) document practically every step of this journey.  This is all the more interesting as the modern history of Wing Chun is notoriously fractious with many divisions existing not just between lineages but also more basic historical theories and philosophical disagreements about the very purpose of the art (and possibly the TCMA in general).  How then did a relatively simple art from a small group of closely linked schools back in Hong Kong yield such a diversity of outcomes?

Take for instance a very basic question.  What is the purpose of Wing Chun?  Is it primarily a self-defense art?  An efficient and modern system of hand combat?  Or is it really best understood as a cultural project?  Something rooted not in the modern realities of street fighting but in the timeless philosophy of Chinese culture?  Is Wing Chun meant to be a “way of life” on a deeper spiritual level? 

One would think that such questions would be easy to answer in strictly empirical terms.  After all, most Western Wing Chun practitioners today trace their lineage back to Ip Man, and he only died in 1972.  He had many students and apparently he even gave a couple of interviews.  Ip Man’s children are still alive today and his followers have produced a raft of instructional manuals and historical remembrances.  A museum was even built to preserve his personal affects.  Its hard to find that many other masters of the same generation whose teaching careers have been quite as well documented as Ip Man’s.   And yet when we look to this vast body of popular writing for guidance on our basic question we see a vast range of opinions.  Chao and Weakland’s three volume set on the Secret Techniques of Wing Chun Kung Fu is interesting precisely because these books document a moment when a powerful new strand of discussion came to dominate the public imagination of the art.

Before delving into the specifics of those observations we should provide a more general introduction to their work.  The initial volume in this series (covering Siu Lim Tao) was released in 1976, three years after the explosion of the “Bruce Lee Phenomenon” making it one of a handful of early works on the Wing Chun system available to the English language readers.  The first of these books was Clausnitzer and Wong’s 1969 volume (unique because of its extensive discussion of the social setting of Ip Man’s schools).  The most widely read was James Yimm Lee’s Wing Chun Kung Fu (basically transcriptions of Bruce Lee’s early Wing Chun curriculum).  I have discussed the contents and contributions of these books at length elsewhere and I will not repeat those discussions here. Its sufficient to say that both were meant to be basic introductions to the system which sought to demonstrate the style’s opening form, provide a short discussion of some core concepts, and outline a few basic two-man exercises that if done faithfully would allow the reader to begin to feel some of the basic energies used in Wing Chun.  Yet both books functioned more as an advertisement for the system than anything else.

The task that Chao and Weakland set for themselves was much more ambitious.  While the authors start out by stating that is impossible to actually learn Kung Fu from a book, they then outline a detailed curriculum that would allow a small group of people working together to basically do just that.  Each of the three volumes began with a short introductory discussion.  This is often historical and distinctly philosophical in nature but other topics, such as the traditional Wing Chun Maxims (Vol. 1) or basic Qigong practices (Vol. 3), were also included.

In point of fact no actual “secrets” about the Wing Chun system were revealed in the three books.  What was offered was a fairly complete curriculum of self study roughly modeled on the progression  of movements, concepts, two-man exercises and forms used in the Ip Man schools back in Hong Kong.  Perhaps the greatest pedagogical innovation seen in these books is that individual techniques and applications were introduced and drilled extensively before the student was finally introduced to the completed form.  The authors state that forms practice will be more meaningful if the nature of each movement is thoroughly understood before repetitive practice is undertaken.

I have always been interested in the speed with which Wing Chun spread across North America in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Given the rather limited number of individuals from Hong Kong with actual teaching experience one might be forgiven for thinking that this would have been a slow and arduous process.  Yet I suspect that the detailed curriculum of study outlined in this series of books, along with some seminars and a relatively brief period of formal instruction, probably jump-started the teaching careers of a good many individuals early in the decade.

The other innovation had to do with how all of this information was discussed (rather than simply its quantity and organization).  The authors state in their preface to the first volume that their purpose is to correct the errors of the popular articles and books that have already appeared on Wing Chun to that point.  In their view these are ignorant of the true principals of the art as taught by Ip Man.  Beyond that they hope to convince their readers “that there is more to the art than one might assume after viewing modern popular “Kung Fu” films.  It is more than a fighting technique.  More properly, it could be called a “way of life.”

One suspects that it is this extended body of arguments that form the actual “secrets” of Wing Chun, rather than the details of how various two man drills are to be organized.  In truth much of that same information (if in lesser quantities) was already made available in both Lee’s and Clausnitzer’s  volumes.  And the basic discussion of concepts offered by Chao and Weakland is actually pretty similar to what one might find in these previously published books.

The most glaring differences between these volumes and their predecessors seems to have been their answer to the basic question of what Wing Chun really was.  Clausnitzer drew on his interviews and experiences in Hong Kong to note that Ip Man explicitly argued that Wing Chun was best understood as a modern fighting system, and that his students were among the most progressive and open group of individuals that one was likely to encounter within the traditional martial arts scene.  He even went so far as to argue that its relatively streamlined and modernized nature made Wing Chun well suited for success in the global marketplace.

Lee’s volume, much like its author, is famously down to earth and taciturn.  After a one paragraph review of the art’s origins the book moves right into a detailed discussion of its conceptual foundation and training drills.  While James Lee was as well versed in the Shaolin mythos as any other western practitioner of the Chinese martial arts of the period, he seems to have consciously excluded any discussion that might be extraneous or distracting from his more practical concerns.  The result was a slim volume that is virtually timeless.  Having said so little (but including many clear photographs) there is pretty much nothing in the book that can go out of date.

Chao and Weakland frame their discussion of Wing Chun in an entirely different way.  Rather than advertising the art’s modern credentials or devastating combat efficiency they instead present it within a rich cultural framework.  They go to lengths to argue that Wing Chun can only be understood through, and as an extension of, Chinese philosophy.  While the art itself claims Shaolin roots, the authors seem oddly partial to philosophical Daoism.  The front matter of their first volume manages to quote both Lao Tzu and Zhuang Zhou and attentive readers will also be able to detect instances where these works have been paraphrased and inserted into the text without direct attribution.

Occasionally Daoist discussions occur in rather odd places.  For instance, the authors saw fit to add two new school rules to the traditional set laid down by Ip Man, each of which took the form a quote from one of these classic Daoist works.  And when discussing the details of kicking and counter-kicking in Vol. 2 readers are sagely reminded:

“Deal with it before it happens.” (Lao Tsu) Remember the Wing Chun maxim: Prevent a kick with a kick. “There is no greater catastrophe than underestimating the enemy” (Lao Tsu).  Watch your opponent carefully to detect any shift which would indicate an intended kick.  The best rule of course is to kick first, but if you cannot then block his kick with one of your own before he can generate power.  Crowd your opponent and never allow him to get set….” (Vol.2 p. 82)

This is all good advice.  It represents a line of instruction that many generations of Wing Chun students have received.  Yet I would venture to guess that most of us got the discussion without the explosion of maxims and aphorisms seen here.  Its not clear what these proof-texted quotes really bring to the problem at hand.  Yet it is typical of the authors to attempt to integrate them into their discussion of the actual details of the system.

I personally doubt that many of these references had their actual origin with Ip Man.  The few actual quotes from the grandmaster included in the volumes all tend towards a sharp sense of humor rather than protracted flights of philosophical fancy.  This is not a surprise as most period accounts of Ip Man’s personality specifically mention his caustic sense of humor.  A few note his traditional education and Confucian bearing.  Indeed, Ip Chun has explicitly argued that anyone seeking the “philosophical roots” of Ip Man’s thought should start with the Doctrine of the Mean.  But I have yet to see an extended discussion of his thoughts on Daoist philosophy outside of the basic metaphors (the Five Phases, etc) that are common to all of Chinese popular culture.

The discussion of Wing Chun provided in these books also differs from other popular manuals in its self-conscious feeling of erudition.  In addition to the Daoist works mentioned above the authors quote Carlos Castaneda, T. S. Elliot, Spinoza, and even the Taiji Classics.  This may be less surprising when we remember who the they were.  K. T. Chao earned a law degree from a University in Taiwan and later studied at Cambridge in the UK.  Weakland is a professional Historian who worked at Ball State University, making him one of the very first American academics to write about the Chinese martial arts.

History plays a critical role in the way in which the practice of Wing Chun is framed, contextualized and presented to the readers of these volumes.  Again, this is something of a depart from previous works.  The story of Yim Wing Chun had certainly been published before, but individuals like Bruce and James Lee were not primarily interested in these sorts of discussions.  And Clausnitzer and Wong’s treatment of Wing Chun focused on the art’s future rather than its past.  Volume one in the present series begins with a multiple page discussion of Wing Chun’s history.  This  starts with references to the actual building of the historic Shaolin Temple in Henan.  It then introduces the origins of the “animal styles” of Kung Fu and moves on to the myth of the destruction of the temple and the creation of the Wing Chun system.

The next section introduces a discussion of the Wing Chun maxims.  The overall impact of these sayings is to lend the art a slightly archaic feeling (students are first informed that “Because of the deceptive appearances monks and nuns, women and scholars are the most dangerous practitioners of Kung Fu.”)  The section is even introduced with a quote taken from the Tai Chi Classics (as well as another nod to Zhang Zhou) which help to underline the essentially “balanced” and “internal” nature of Wing Chun.

The second volume (published in 1981) omits any introductory historical material in favor of more philosophical quotes.  Yet in the third volume (1983) the historical discussion returns in an expanded form.  It seems that two new sources of information have become available to the authors.  First, a more detailed version of the Wing Chun origin story, written by Ip Man and  found among his papers after his death, had been published by the VTAA.  A few of the details of this version of the story clashed with elements of the account previously published by the authors and we can see their efforts to rectify those aspects of the myth.

It also appears that one of the authors had an opportunity to work with some of the documents that are held by the Wade Collection at Cambridge University.  The end result was a much more detailed historical discussion in which additional information about the historical creation and rebuilding of the Shaolin Temple were appended to the sorts of myths that had long been popular with martial artists.  To this was added references to much older material, such as the myth of the temple’s salvation by a pole wielding giant at the start of the Ming dynasty, and even detailed references to Cheng Zhongyou’s pole fighting manual written by the important 16th century martial scholar.    In an attempt to explore and rectify the various accounts of Shaolin’s destruction the authors introduce a longer variant of the story taken directly from accounts of Triad initiation dramas.

The progression of the historical discussion from the first to the third volumes is significant.  The authors are clearly uncomfortable endorsing the historical validity of the style’s creation myth, yet they do not attempt to offer any alternative to it. Nor do they simply throw it out when they encounter more reliable information about the history or the development of the Chinese martial arts elsewhere.  Instead they try to integrate this new information into a larger, and more detailed, narrative.  The end result is story that sounds more accurate and reasonable, yet is still built on mythic foundations.

Its also interesting to note what never comes up in any of these discussions.  The work of Tang Hao, or any of the other early historians of the Chinese martial arts, is never referenced even though it was available in Taiwan. So while the authors were attempting to do historical research they were essentially forced to start from scratch.  Still, by the standards of popular publications of the early 1980s a lot of fascinating information had been presented.  Elements of what they uncovered anticipated the later discussions found in Meir Shahar’s work on the Shaolin Temple and Ter Haar’s discussion of the shared Shaolin mythos of both martial artists and gangsters.

Figure 1: Early Wing Chun Publications by Year and in Social Context

Wing Chun Articles and Books by year. Source: chinesemartialstudies.com, 2015.

The Evolution of a Secret: Debates Within and Without

While many readers have valued Chao and Weakland for the training tips, these were not the most unique aspects of their book.  Instead their emphasis on Wing Chun as a culturally bounded mode of self-actualization, detailed historical discussion and emphasis on arcane knowledge (whether maxims, Daoist thought or discussions of Qigong exercises) all set their work apart from other early treatments of the art.  Those tended to focus instead on its simplicity or combat prowess.  How were these differences likely read at the time?

Given the disapproving comments in the text about Kung Fu movies and “previous books and articles,” one suspects that on a certain level this project was taken as a rejoinder to Bruce Lee and the vision of the Chinese martial arts that he had sought to promote.  While clearly dependent on the groundswell of interest in the Asian fighting systems that Lee had helped to create for its economic success, its interesting to note that he receives no direct mention in these books.  This is another point of departure from the works of both James Lee (heavily advertised using Bruce’s image within the pages of Black Belt) or the earlier volume of Clausnitzer and Wong (1969).  We can even see in this training program a direct embrace of the traditionalism that Lee worked so hard to reject and very little of the scientific method of experimentation that he sought to promote.  It might then follow that these works are best read as an attempt to “Orientalize” Wing Chun to better promote it to a new generation of Western students in the wake of the Bruce Lee Phenomenon.

Yet if we read these works only in the shadow of Lee and the small Wing Chun literature that came before, do we fall into the sort of trap that Prof. Evelyn Rawski warned us about?  Lee’s approach to the Chinese martial arts was never the only one to circulate in the West during the 1970s.  Nor did the debates that he is best remembered for capture the totality of the discussion that swirled around the Chinese fighting systems.  Other individuals with their own concerns had also arrived in the West and were actively promoting their theories by the time that Chao and Weakland began to write their book.  In fact, it might be the case that the innovations in this work are better understood as a response to these other discussions than as a direct attack on Lee or the more modernist camp within the Chinese martial arts community.

Consider for instance the renown painter and Taijiquan teacher Zheng Manqing (Cheng Man-ch’ing) who arrived in New York City and established his own martial arts schools in 1964.  Of course Sophia Delza had already been teaching Wu style Taijiquan in New York since 1959, and the artistic, philosophical, political and medical concerns of these practitioners were fundamentally different from the issues of efficacy and pedagogy that Lee was best known for.  Nor would many people have been introduced to these perspectives without the pioneering work of Draeger and Smith.  Smith was also a student of Zheng and helped to facilitate his relocation to New York.  He co-authored an early manual with his teacher (1967) and promoted him in his articles, letters and the 1974 book Chinese Boxing: Masters and Methods.

Its hard to overstate the impact of this last volume on a generation of Chinese hand combat students in the West.  Smith’s account of his martial arts exploration in Taiwan was widely held up as the best thing available on the Chinese martial arts and the gold standard by which all other martial artists and writers could be judged.  This position of prominence was further cemented by the encyclopedia titled Asian Fighting Arts (later the Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts) coauthored with Draeger.  These are probably the sorts of books that individuals like Chao and Weakland were concerned with as they most closely matched their own concerns and temperament.

Anyone with a passing familiarity with Smith’s work will already know of his dislike for the commercial appropriation of the martial arts in America.  He appears to have detested Bruce Lee and pretty much everything ever published in magazines like Black Belt.  Smith very much promoted himself as the arbiter of good taste and “real” talent in the Chinese martial arts.  He had little good to say about the indigenous fighting styles of Guangdong or Hong Kong.  Nor was a he ultimately much of a fan of the “external” Shaolin styles.  Instead Smith promoted the martial excellence that he perceived in his own teacher and the internal martial arts more generally.

Recall that Chao and Weakland’s first volume was released in 1976.  Smith’s Chinese Boxing made a big splash of its own in 1974 and 1975.  All of this happened in years when precious few books about the Chinese martial arts of any kind were available to the reading public.

Thus when we see Chao and Weakland going out of their way to map Daoist discussions onto Wing Chun, to argue that it is an “internal art” (a category of discussion that was not particularly relevant at the time and place of its creation) and even quoting the Taiji Classics at the start of their book, one senses that they may have been much more interested in establishing their legitimacy with sorts of readers that followed Smith rather than those who are more interested in Lee.  Their contention that Wing Chun is best understood as a deep cultural project and “way of life” is then not so much a rebuke to Lee or any other Wing Chun authors as it is an attempt to gain legitimacy in the eyes of an entirely different discourse being promoted by a different group of martial artists.

Ultimately this is important as the conversation that Chao and Weakland helped to promote has never ceased.  In this way the discussion within the American Wing Chun community began to move beyond simple questions of how best to achieve results, to deeper disagreements on the nature of the system itself.  Ironically the critical figuring in making this happen may have been an author and expert on the TCMA who never really discussed Wing Chun at all.

Nor do these questions show any sign of nearing a resolution.  Their ongoing presence serves as a warning against the assumption that a single discourse will always dominate the discussion of the martial arts in the global system.  Instead a variety of reformers and teachers have exercised their agency to apply the martial arts to a wide variety of problems dealing with topics as diverse as practical self-defense, self-actualization, national identity formation and even public health.  Each one of these strains has an ability to find its own way along the pathways of global exchange.  Together they remind us of the necessity of looking at the broad picture when approaching any given text.  The sorts of lessons that we can draw from a source are closely tied to what else we might have read (or seen, or practiced) before.

oOo

If you enjoyed this 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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Prof. Maofu Gong of Chengdu Sport University. This photo is used by permission of the owner.

Introduction

Prof. Maofu Gong is an Associate Professor of Sports Culture at Chengdu Sport University.   He is also a visiting scholar with the Cornell University East Asia Program where he is working on a project titled “The Transmission and Development of the Chinese Martial Arts in America.”  I recently had the great privilege of meeting Prof. Gong and discussing his views on martial arts studies and the state of the folk martial arts systems in Southwest China today.  Luckily he agreed to stop by and talk about his background and some of his research with the readers at at Kung Fu Tea.  I suspect that we will be hearing a lot more about his work in the future.

Kung Fu Tea (FKT): Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where are you currently teaching?

Prof. Maofu Gong (MFG): I was born in Pizhou of Jiangsu province. As you know, my hometown is located at the hub of a militarily important area since ancient times. It was a warlike region. And most of the people have some interest in the martial arts.

I became interested in the martial arts when I was a child. Before 2004, I lived in my hometown. In 2004, I graduated from Xuzhou Normal University (Jiangsu Normal University) from which I received a degree in Chinese martial arts higher education. Then I was accepted by the Wushu department of Shanghai Sport University. After another 2 years of study, I got my Masters degree.

In 2006, I became a professor in the Wushu department of Chengdu Sport University. I then became attracted to the folk Chinese martial arts. So I decided to begin to research them. During my PhD research from 2008 to 2011, (completed at Beijing Sport University) I investigated the Qingcheng style. After that, I published my book “Inheritance, Development and Communication: Chinese Folk martial arts”.

KFT: How did you first become involved in the martial arts? And how did you later become involved in their academic study?

MFG: As you know, there was a Wushu Fever (from 1982 to the early of 1990s) in China when I was a child. At that time I saw some martial arts films, such as “Shaolin Temple”. I was deeply impressed by these martial arts performances. When I learned that there was a master teaching the martial arts (specifically Hongquan-one of the Changquan styles- Mantis Boxing, broadsword, spear, stick and nine section whip) in a village near my home, I went to ask him whether he could teach me. To my surprise, he agreed to do just that. I was so lucky!

However, I was only able to practice certain basic skills of Changquan and stick on some days because of my parents’ wish that I continue to pay my attention on my academic study. Although I followed my parents’ suggestion, I was still able to see my master on weekends when I had free time. I also tried to find some martial arts book for self-study. From that time on I have been involved with the martial arts.
As for my academic study of martial arts, that dates back to my university years. As an undergraduate I was able to major in martial arts. Later, I decided to pursue additional studies after obtaining the bachelor’s degree. Again I had to decide what I should study. I found that the martial arts were still my favorite subject. As a result, I was accepted by the Wushu department of Shanghai Sport University, and I started my academic martial arts career.

KFT: What Wushu disciplines or folk styles is your background in? What do you currently practice?

MFG: Many years ago I practiced some mantis boxing, nine section whip, changquan, stick, spear, sword, broadsword, taiji, and so on. More recently I am interested in taiji and baji quan.

Prof. Maofu Gong. Source: used by permission of the owner.

KFT: Can you tell us a little bit about the martial arts environment in Chengdu? What sorts of styles are most popular? What are the strengths or weaknesses of the martial arts in that area of China?

MFG: The martial arts environment in Chengdu is very strong. There have been many famous martial artists in Chengdu as it is the cultural, political, economic and educational center of Sichuan province. For example, Ma Zhenjiang, Liu Chongjun, Mabao, Houtan, Peng Yuanzhi, Zheng Huaixian, Zhu Guozhen, Zhang Yingzhen, Wang Shutian, Li Yaxuan, Lan Suzhen, Xiao Yingpeng, Lin Mogen, Zhong Fanghan and Fu Siqi all practiced here. There are also a number of popular styles (Menpai/Liupai) in the region, such as Huanglin pai, Sengmen, Zhaomen, Yang style Taiji, Xingyi, Bagua, Emei quan, etc.
Many of the Chinese martial arts have been practiced in Chengdu, but, undoubtedly, the Emei martial arts are the most prevalent and define the area’s strength.

KFT: Let’s talk a little bit about your academic research. What sort of field work have you been doing in Chengdu?

MFG: For the last six years I have mainly focused on the Qingcheng martial arts. I did my field work in Chengdu, Du Jiangyan and Luzhou. I then published my book titled “Inheritance, Development and Communication: Chinese Folk martial arts” (中国民间武术生存现状与传播方式研究) in 2012.

KFT: So what brought you to the USA?

MFG: As you know, the Chinese martial arts have been transmitted to all of the world, especially the USA, as part of the process of globalization. So, I wanted to see the state of the development of Chinese martial arts in America.

KFT: What sorts of research projects are you working on here?

MFG: My current project is: “The Transition and Development of Chinese Martial Arts in the US.”

KFT: Can you tell us a bit more about your current book project?

MFG: I am interested in the transmission and development of Sichuan folk martial arts culture. I am trying to conduct an interdisciplinary project looking at the history, culture anthropology, sociology and culture communication of these styles. Maybe, I will publish the book next year.

In that book I will show the cultural change of Sichuan folk martial arts, discuss the expression of the subjectivity of folk martial arts, the intervention of the state political power and the role of the folk martial arts culture. And I will try to pay more attention on the masters’ daily life.

Prof. Maofu Gong. Source: Used by permission of the owner.

KFT: What is your impression of the current state of martial arts studies as an academic project in China?

MFG: Martial arts study has a long history in China. And it involves many disciplines including history, philosophy, communication, aesthetics, cultural studies, sports training, biochemistry and so on. The current question for martial arts studies in China is how to break the stereotypes. I think that martial arts studies in China should increase its emphasis on the folk styles and interdisciplinary approaches.

KFT: What sorts of trends are we currently seeing in the Chinese language literature on the martial arts? Any trends that stands out as particularly important?

MFG: In recent years more and more Chinese scholars focus on the style (menpai/liupai), individual, group and village of the Chinese martial arts. They try to get a breakthrough by introducing some methods of cultural anthropology and oral history. I think the “逝去的武林：1934年的求武纪事”（Shi Qu De Wu Lin：1934 Nian De Qiu Wu Ji Shi）is one of the good achievements in this respect. From the dictation of Zhongxuan Li who was a master of Xingyiquan, the book described many little-known Xingyiquan’s facts having historical value for reader. Besides that, I think my book “中国民间武术生存现状与传播方式研究” (Inheritance, Development and Communication: Chinese Folk martial arts) should be one of the examples of the trend. On the basis of a considerable amount of fieldworks, in-depth interview and participant observations, I described the historical development and the contemporary living status of the Qingcheng Wushu. You can see the interaction of the master, media and the local government in the folk martial arts, the contradiction among the inheritors, the opinion coming from social elites and the cultural constructions of the Qingcheng inheritors in the book.

KFT: Who are some Chinese scholars of martial arts that, in your opinion, western researchers should be paying attention to? What sorts of work have they done recently?

MFG: In my opinion, many Chinese scholars have accomplished much in martial arts studies, including Ma Mingda, Qiu Pixiang, Dai Guobin, Cheng Dali etc. Their research mainly focuses on the history and cultural studies of the Chinese martial arts. Ma Mingda, a historian and a famous master of the Tongbeiquan, has published many papers and books on Wushu history. The book, “说剑丛稿” （Shuo Jian Cong Gao, of Professor Ma has an important value for the Wushu history.

KFT: Tell us a little bit about the current state of Wushu in China. I know there has been a big debate about the inclusion of Wushu in the Olympic Games. In your view, would that ultimately be good for Wushu? What does it need to do to continue to progress?

MFG: It’s a big question. As far as I can tell, in China the administrative institutions are still paying more attention on the competitive aspects of Wushu. Yet increasingly some people have realized that the Chinese martial arts are also a kind of cultural resource. And many ordinary people still love the Chinese martial arts.

I don’t think that the emphasis on Olympic competition is good for Wushu. Going down that road the Chinese martial arts will lose many things. I think that trying to make more people love and practice Wushu is really the most important thing.

KFT: Occasionally we see articles or blog posts claiming that the traditional martial arts are dying in China. Do you think this is the case? What sorts of challenges are the folk styles facing at this moment in time? What sort of hope do you see for the future?

MFG: I don’t think so. If you visit the Chinese folk societies, you will find that many martial artists practice the traditional styles. They love it. The most challenging question for the folk martial arts is how to adapt. As you know, people are very busy; they have to earn a living, and have to do a job. They need the time and the funding to develop the martial arts inherited from their master. Nevertheless, I think that the folk martial artists will keep the skills and cultural core of the Chinese martial arts alive.

KFT: The last time we talked you mentioned your interest in Bruce Lee. In your view, what is his continued significance for students of Chinese martial studies?

MFG: In my opinion, the Bruce Lee phenomenon suggests important puzzles for the Chinese martial arts and martial arts studies. It illustrates how the Chinese martial arts have melded with the western culture, the role of ordinary people in transmitting the martial arts to abroad and why did the western people accept Chinese martial culture.

KFT: So what sorts of project should we expect to see you working on in the future?

MFG: In the next year, I will publish my second book about the Chinese folk martial arts. After that I will mainly focus on the Chinese martial arts as culture capital and a type of the intercultural communication.

KFT: Thanks so much for stopping by Kung Fu Tea! We look forward to hearing much more about your work in the future.  You will have to keep us updated on your progress.

Prof. Maofu Gong. Source: Used by permission of the owner.

oOo

If you enjoyed this interview 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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Shaolin Masterclass. Photo by Jack Latham. Source: FT.com

Introduction

For readers in the United States, happy Columbus Day!  And what better way to enjoy your three day weekend than getting caught up on the latest martial arts news.  “Chinese Martial Arts in the News” is a regular series of posts here at Kung Fu Tea in which we take a look at both what is being said about the TCMA by the media and how they discuss it.  Of course there is always a lot going on, so if I have missed a major story feel free drop a link to it in the comments below.

Before delving into our main discussion there are a couple of quick items to consider.  On a personal note I would like to thank Mark Stoddard and Kathy Joe Connors of the North East Wing Chun Student Association for inviting me to visit their weekend training workshop with Kenneth Chung held recently in Rochester, NY.  Anyone interested in the spread of Wing Chun in North America will already be familiar with the important role that Chung played in promoting the art.  It was certainly an honor to have the opportunity to meet and briefly talk with him.

On a less happy note, Stanford Chiou recently brought it to my attention that Alexander Lim Co, an important teacher of the Chinese martial arts in the Philippines, is in need of heart bypass surgery.  Readers may recall that we discussed one of his books here.  A “go fund me” campaign has been set up to help with his expenses, but it is very much in need to your support.  Please consider donating to this cause.

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!

Chao and Lam Chun-fai at the launch of their book about kung fu, Hung Kuen Fundamentals: Fok Fu Kuen , in 2013. Source: SCMP.com

Chinese Martial Arts in the News

Our first set of stories hail from the always interesting pages of the South China Morning Post.  The paper recently ran a profile of the shipping scion and martial arts preservationist Hing Chao.  Anyone who follows the Hong Kong Kung Fu scene will probably be familiar with at least one of his various projects.  In 2013, Chao co-authored Hung Kuen Fundamentals: Fok Fu Kuen with Lam Chun-fai.  He also promoted the short lived (but very high quality) Journal of Chinese Martial Studies.  Most recently he has been in the news for his work with this the Hong Kong Culture Festival.

The piece in the SCMP is basically biographical in nature.  Chao discusses the origins of his interests in Chinese culture, his background in the martial arts, and a few of the projects that he has worked on.  Its a short piece but a nice introduction to one of the high profile personalities in the fight to promote and preserve southern Kung Fu.

For those of you interested in heading a little further south, the SCMP also ran an article on the growth of interest in Lethwei by Myanmese women.  Again, its a short piece but I found it to be an accessible introduction to a style that I did not know much about.  And the article also manages to touch on some of the issues of identity, gender and nationalism that will be of interest to students of martial arts studies.  Click here to read more.

Sarah Chang, five time US National Wushu team member and actress. Source: nbcnews.com

NBC News recently ran a profile of Sarah Chang, a five time US National Wushu Team member and actress who currently trains and works in Beijing.  The article discusses Sarah’s introduction to Wushu as a child growing up in McLean Virginia, some questions regarding gender in Wushu training and her plans for the future.  Overall it is a nice discussion of one woman’s journey into the realm of the martial arts.

Eric Lee on the cover of Inside Kung Fu in 1980.

On October 10th the Martial Arts History Museum (in Burbank California) had a night of events dedicated to Eric Lee.  Lee was one of the first practitioners of the Chinese martial arts to compete in the Karate tournament circuit and later moved into film.  The museum offered the first screening of its new biographical film dedicated to Lee’s career, held a reception in his honor and finished up with a Q&A session with Eric Lee himself.  Its news releases like this that sometimes make me wish that I lived close to Burbank.

As one might expect, Eric was not the “Lee” to make the news in the last month.  As is typical there were a number of Bruce Lee stories.  Perhaps the most substantive was the reminder that the Wing Luke Museum has just mounted the new items for the second season of their three year “Bruce Lee Experience” exhibition.  In keeping with the mission of this museum the exhibit seeks to contextualize Lee’s career and examine some of his contributions to the evolution of the Chinese American identity and community in the US.  If you are in the area this sounds like something that you may want to visit.

Shaolin Masterclass, stick training. Photo by Jack Latham. Source: FT.com

As we reported last month, one of the Shaolin Temple’s performance teams is currently in the UK gearing up for a series of theatrical performances.  A reporter from the Financial Times decided to drop by their training space and join a class, with predictable results.  Still, the article is more detailed than most of these sorts of pieces and I particularly enjoyed the candid discussion of the young monks as to how much of their public performance reflected “real” martial arts training versus a more theatrical approach to movement and acting.  As always these kids make for a great photo essay.

There were also a number of Shaolin stories of a more contentious nature.  On October 4th the South China Morning Post reported that the embattled Abbot Shi Yongxin (dogged by accusations of both sexual and financial improprieties as well as rumors of an official investigation) reappeared at the Shaolin Monastery in Henan.  He is reported to have addressed a group of 30 pilgrims who were visiting the temple and instructed them “to focus more on spiritual development and less on physical indulgence because ‘human bodies are temporary but the spirit is immortal.'”  Not to be outdone the Want China Times reported on the 10th that a group of the Abbot’s main accusers, who had taken their case to Beijing but had since been forced into hiding, had also resurfaced to give interviews.  It was reported that they were still cooperating with authorities and that the graft probe against the Abbot was still ongoing.

Sascha Matuszak recently updated the Fightland Blog on a couple of highly anticipated matches pitting Chinese Mixed Martial Artists versus their Japanese counterparts.  Apparently things did not go well.  His title stated simply that “Chinese MMA Faceplants.” I assumed that this was a metaphorical exaggeration…until I watched the clips that were included with his report.  It turns that his choice of words was actually a straight forward description of how one of the fights ended.

The Assassin, directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Source: nytimes.com

Chinese Martial Arts in the Entertainment Industry

Without a doubt the martial arts film that is currently getting the most good press is Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Tang dynasty drama The Assassin.  The New York Times dedicated a fair amount of space to a discussion of the visual style and impact of this film.  It sounds stunning.  It even looks like the director did some interesting things with his fight choreography to reach his particular vision of “realism.”  This film is definitely going onto my “list,” though there is no word yet on when it will be reaching an art house theater near you.

If Kung Fu films are more your thing, or you are fan of the recent Ip Man franchise (and who isn’t), you will be happy to learn that the teaser trailer for Ip Man 3 has just been released.  It features both Donnie Yen, reprising his role as Ip Man and Mike Tyson.  But before you sit down for this film, Ip Man has a few helpful suggestions for a more enjoyable viewing experience.

Kim Bum, recently cast to play Bruce Lee in an upcoming Chinese drama. Source: http://www.kpopstarz.com

A new dramatic series is about to begin filming in China titled “Yip Man and Bruce Lee.”  I haven’t heard a lot about this project yet.  But there was just an announcement that Kim Bum has been cast to play Bruce Lee.  Click here to read a little more about the project.

Exotic medical ingredients at a market stall for herbalists in Xian.

News From All Over

A lot of people were surprised when the 2015 Nobel Prize in medicine went to Tu Youyou, a researcher at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing who has spent her entire career researching traditional Chinese medicine.  She was honored for her research into non-traditional (and very successful) treatments for malaria.  But given that traditional medicine has never before been on the radar of the Nobel Prize Committee, does this recogonition signal a serious shift in the way that TCM is perceived around the globe?  Marta Hanson, an Associate Professor of the history of medicine at John Hopkins University tries to answer that question is an extended piece which ran in Fortune.

In preparation for the 2020 Olympic Games Japan (the host nation) is recommending a number of sports for inclusion.  Two of these are Japanese national pastimes, baseball and karate.  But what sort of Karate sparring system is best suited to international competition?  The Wall Street Journal tackled that question in a recent article.  It will be fascinating to see whether the IOC allows a third Asian martial art (along with Judo and Taekwondo) to enter the competition.  For a little background on the selection process (as well as the likely fate of Wushu’s bid) see this article in the New York Times.

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

Martial Arts Studies

Advanced registration for the Second Annual Martial Arts Studies Conference to be held at the University of Cardiff (July of 2016) are now open.  Better yet, the organizer has just released the initial list of confirmed speakers including Phillip Zarrilli,  Ben Spatz, Adam Frank, Paul Bowman and myself among others.  Given the success of last year’s conference this is definitely one event that you will want to get on your calendar.  Don’t forget that this year you can also win free registration by entering the short film competition.  And if you are interested in the interdisciplinary study of the martial arts, be sure to join our new and improved email list!  Just click here to register.

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

Some of you may remember Dr. Jared Miracle from his guest posts here at Kung Fu Tea.  I was very pleased to discover that his new book Now With Kung Fu Grip! How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America (published McFarland & Company) is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com with a release date of March 2016.  This promises to be a vital work for anyone interested in the social history of the Asian martial arts in the West.  Here is the blurb from the publisher:

Why do so many Americans practice martial arts? How did kung fu get its own movie genre? What makes mixed martial arts so popular? This book answers these questions for the first time with historical research. At the turn of the 20th century, the United States enjoyed a time of prosperity but feared that men were becoming soft. At the same time, the Japanese government sponsored research to develop the best fighting techniques for its new empire. Before World War II, American men boxed and Japanese men practiced judo and karate. Postwar Americans began adopting Chinese, Brazilian, Filipino and other fighting styles, in the process establishing a masculine subculture based on physical and social power. The rise of Asian martial arts in America is a fascinating untold story of modern history, from the origin of karate uniforms to the first martial arts themed birthday party. The cast of characters includes circus strongmen, professional cage fighters, an award winning comic book artist, the inventors of judo, aikido and Cornflakes, and Count Juan Raphael Dante, a Chicago hairdresser and used car salesman with the “Deadliest Hands in the World.” Readers will never look at taekwondo class the same way again.

For me this is a long awaited book and I am really looking forward to seeing Jared’s discussion of a critically important subject for students of martial arts studies and the history of popular culture.

Bruce Lee Graffiti. Source: Wikimedia.

Catherine S. Chan recently posted a paper to academia.edu that will also be relevant to anyone interested in Bruce Lee or the globalization of the Chinese martial arts.  It is titled “Smudging Economy and Culture: The Commodification of Bruce Lee.” The abstract is as follows:

Four decades after Bruce Lee’s untimely death, the image of the martial artist continues to strive in the realms of popular culture and international society. As an acknowledged martial artist, film star and sometime philosopher and writer, Bruce Lee is commonly credited for transforming the conventional Fu Manchu portrait of Chinese people in the eyes of Westerners to that of a respectable Kung Fu master.

Stripping Lee clean of the yellow tracksuit and nunchucks, one point remains unbeatable: the image of Bruce Lee sells. This paper seeks to explain and comprehend the influence and success of Bruce Lee through the concept of celebrity commodification, breaking down the barrier that separates economy and culture by identifying the components that serve to intertwine. From the existence of a myth to the norms of pseudo-individualization, Lee’s status as a celebrity-icon shall be analyzed to reveal how capitalist marketing rides on the coat-tail of socio-cultural developments in order to effectively produce a cultural ‘kudzu’ that in turn, aims to persist and cash in for as long as possible.

Alex Channon and Christopher R. Matthews have been kind enough to post the introductory chapter of their recent edited volume Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors Around the World (Palgrave 2015), on-line for your perusal.  It is titled “Approaching the gendered phenomenon of Women Warriors” and you can read it here.

Did you know that there is a “Budo-lab” at Chapman University (in California) hoping to advance the study of both Hoplology and Martial Arts Studies by becoming “the very first center in the United States to specifically focus on examining the role of both combative behavior and martial arts in modern societies”?  The center currently counts Andrea Molle (Political Science and IRES), Michael S. Wood (World Culture and Languages, Japanese) and Alexander Bay (History and Asian Studies) as permanent members.  Head on over to their homepage to read more of their mission statement and to check out their current research projects.

Lastly, I am sure that many readers of Kung Fu Tea are already familiar with Daniele Bolelli’s always thought provoking writings on a variety of topics related to the martial arts.  He has a new book coming out (just in time for Christmas) titled Not Afraid: On Fear, Heartbreak, Raising a Baby Girl and Cage Fighting  (Disinformation Books, December 1, 2015).  Here is the blurb:

An assortment of Chinese teas. Source: Wikimedia.

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

As always there is a lot going on at the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group and this last month has been no exception.  We remembered the life of GM Chen Qingzhou, saw a great discussions of Ming era weapons and read a new translation of Jin Yiming’s 1932 manual on the single dao.   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 press photo issued by the Japan Press Illustrated Service. The caption on the back reads “Instruction of Halbert and Sword.—The halbert has been instructed from old as a peculiar Japanese military art of women that trains them spiritually at the same time according to then spirit of chivalry. Photo shows girls of the Fifth girls high school of Tokyo practicing the art. (Copyrighted 231). JPI Photos.” Source: Author’s personal collection.

Introduction: Robert Jervis on Confusion and Theory

When I was a graduate student I had the very great pleasure of working as a teaching assistant (TA) for a distinguished professor of international relations named Robert Jervis. Since I had the opportunity to work with him on a number of occasions I learned a fair bit about his teaching style and even his stock stories (a good illustration goes a long way when you are trying to relate the intricacies of IR theory to real world political problems). But one of his anecdotes about the nature of theory has always struck me as particularly illuminating.

When taking Introduction to International Relations undergraduate students were required to read one or more news services daily and look for stories related to the theoretical topics that we were dealing with in the other class readings. Lectures would often begin with a short discussion of what current events revealed about the state of IR theory and vice versa. Exercises like this are nice because they allow a large number of students to enter into an academic conversation in a low stress way.

Still, Prof. Jervis is nothing if not a bit mercurial. His stories and teaching methods invariably come with a twist. During the last week of his introductory classes, just before the final exam, he always had the same conversation with his students. After discussing some item in the news and its relevance to the week’s readings, he would ask the students to sit back and reflect for a moment on what exactly they felt as they read their news blogs or watched CNN.

After all, these students had just had the privilege of spending an entire semester immersed in detailed discussions of international politics. At the end of the day all of the theories of IR are basically designed to make the chaos of international politics understandable. To separate out the signal form the noise, to reveal the essential logic of political life. And all of this material had been painstakingly introduced and discussed by someone who was both a surprisingly generous teacher and one of the great minds of the field.

Prof. Jervis would ask the class, when you sit back and read the news, how do you feel? Do you feel calm and confident? Do you understand everything that happens? Can you predict what will happen next?

This was not the sort of question that students generally wanted to answer. But eventually, after some prodding, a few people would admit that they did not feel that way at all. In fact, following the news had generally become a much less enjoyable activity. It was now a form of work. Yet beyond that it had also become irritating in ways that students often found difficult to articulate. Political leaders could be seen to do things that made no sense. Unexpected events were always rising to the fore, and the utility of IR theory in predicting anything was seen by all as pretty low.

To which Prof. Jervis would literally clap his hand in delight. He always said that when he heard this he knew that his job was done. Before the students enrolled in his class international politics tended not to be much of a puzzle. It certainly didn’t occupy much of their consciousness. Most people simply accept what happened as inevitable. Others, who are more politically inclined, might view major policy choices through the lens of domestic partisanship (that is generally the way that such events are discussed in the popular press). But everyone felt like they had a handle on what was going on.

Yet as you begin to take a much more detailed look at events in the field and the explanations for them generated by the academy, what quickly becomes apparent is that no one really has a handle on this stuff. The more you learn about the various schools of IR thought, the more puzzles begin to emerge on the nightly news. Small items that you would not have ever paid attention to before become the stuff of a graduate student’s nightmare.

Ignorance, it seems, really is bliss. Once we start to seriously examine what we know about the world, we very quickly run up against the limits of our own understanding. And that is never a pleasant process.

I never asked him about it explicitly, but in retrospect it seems that Jervis believed that it was a teacher’s job to give the students the tools that they needed to get to this uncomfortable place, to feel the puzzlement and the irritation for themselves. After that it was the student’s problem to figure out what they were going to do about it.

The discipline of political science, he would tell the students, it not meant to predict the future. Its real purpose is to make sure that new and better questions come raining down in torrents when you watch the news. To learn theory is to invest yourself in a perpetual state of struggle. To study international politics was to discover new levels of confusion. He would then remind the students exactly how much they had paid in tuition for the semester, and ask them whether they thought they had gotten their money’s worth? As I said, he was nothing if not mercurial.

Naganita Class. Okayama City, 1935. Source: Old Japan Photos.

An Afternoon with T. J. Hinrichs

Recently I found myself pondering the lessons of that final discussion with Prof. Jervis. What can one really accomplish in a single undergraduate class? On the one hand these students had learned just enough IR theory to be truly dangerous. Yet looking back I think that we can all remember that there is no more exciting time to be a student.

This same sense of excitement caught up with me earlier this week. Prof. T. J. Hinrichs teaches in the history department of Cornell University. Her research focuses on the development of ancient Chinese medical practices. She is also a dedicated martial artist (Aikido) and she had more than a passing interest in martial arts studies.

In fact, she periodically teaches a class titled the History of the East Asian Martial Arts (HIST 2960/ASIAN 2290). The class is geared towards undergraduates and meets twice a week for a full semester. Anyone interested in checking out her fascinating reading list (and you should be) can see what she is assigning here.

Earlier in the semester Prof. Hinrichs let me know that she had assigned her students a chapter from my book and she invited me to drop by and discuss some Wing Chun history with respect to Chinese approaches to the question of “lineage transmission” within the martial arts. But this introduction to the subject was only meant to take up part of the class time. The rest of it was dedicated to a discussion of the readings and the idea of lineage in a comparative (Chinese vs. Japanese, ancient vs. modern) context. Also in attendance was Maofu Gong, a visiting Prof. of Wushu from Chengdu Sport University who is currently working with the Cornell East Asia Program.

I cannot really speak to the quality of my own remarks, but what I saw happening in that classroom was very exciting. Listening to the students review their readings (which in addition to my own chapter included Hurst’s pioneering Armed Martial Arts of Japan as well as Jeff Takacs’ article “A Case of Contagious Legitimacy: Kinship, Ritual and Manipulation in Chinese Martial Arts Societies“) was enough to give me a serious case of academic jealousy.

Do these students actually appreciate the value of what is going on in their class? One suspects that the answer is probably no. At least not yet. How could they?

It took me years to find the authors and resources to assemble a reading list comparable to the one that these students had just been handed on the first day of class. Yet if you have never been forced to go through the exercise yourself it might be difficult to realize the intrinsic value that lies in something as seemingly simple as a syllabus.

Theoretical knowledge, in practically any subject, is interesting in that it seems to have escaped the rules of economic gravity that govern most of the other goods that people produce. Generally the law of diminishing marginal returns guarantees that the more you have of something, the less benefit each additional unit brings. Yet in a field like martial arts studies the value and interest of the next level of understanding is based rather directly on how much you already know. The more material that you have already been exposed too, the greater the insights that you can gain from the next book or article. The undergraduate students were still working hard at building their basic foundations of historical understanding, but for the more experienced scholars in the room, each discussion topic was ripe with possibilities.

Still, as I look back on the class I realize that the most interesting thing was not the quality of the reading list or even the discussion itself. Rather it was the environment that it was all happening in. When I began to think about these issues my academic career and my martial arts interest were two distinct things. They happened in different physical, and even mental, spaces. Finding a way to bring them together was a challenge.

The experiences of the students in this class, and the expectations that they are forming about the place of the martial arts in the academy, are radically different. It is not only that they now have a chance to discuss the evolution of Budo or Wushu in academically rigorous ways. But this is happening in an environment in which it is simply expected that anything you discuss will also be connected to the broader questions of history, sociology, critical theory and even economics (interestingly a lot of the students in the class were actually economics majors).

The speed and facility with which the class moved between a discussion of the evolution of Choy Li Fut in Guangdong and the alienation of labor during periods of rapid economic development was interesting. Debating the implications of the development of martial arts folklore traditions for how we should understand the evolution of proto-nationalist sentiments in China was fascinating.

These were approaches, concepts and ideas that, working in isolation, I spent years trying to wrap my mind around. And yet for the next generation of students they have become the starting point for any sensible discussion of martial arts studies. Nor is this class an isolated occurrence. There are an increasing number of universities around North America that offer similar classes, and even more professors who are bringing this material into other sorts of courses as new lecture material or special modules.

My afternoon with Prof. Gong and Prof. Hinrichs left me with one very solid conviction. Martial arts studies as a discipline is about to explode. We have seen gratifying growth in the realm of publication as more journals and university presses accept our projects. The uptick in conferences and networking opportunities has been gratifying. And it is increasingly possible for scholars to discuss their research without the sorts of extended apologies that tended to accompany work that was being published even a decade ago.

Yet most of these gains were made in an era when only a few stalwart pioneers were actually teaching this material to undergrads. The current generation of students of students is poised to do fascinating things. They will be just as skilled in the arts and sciences as their predecessors. But unlike most martial arts studies scholars from my generation, they will have been integrating a broad range of works on this subject into their thinking throughout their time as undergraduates.

They will have been in the very unique position to consider, critique and study this material at the same time that they are being introduced to classic concepts and cutting edge research techniques in their other courses. They will be entering graduate programs with puzzles and research questions already in mind. Best of all, they will be emerging as young scholars into an environment in which conferences, monographs and journals dedicated to martial arts studies are increasingly common and accessible.

In the past few years martial arts studies has made immense progress. Yet I predict that it will pale in comparison to both the volume and sophistication of the work that we will be seeing in the next few years. This is going to be a very exciting time. And yet much of the critical work being done to lay the foundations for this eruption is happening quietly, almost entirely out of sight, in classrooms around the country. Of course this is how academic revolutions typically begin. Consider yourself warned.

Does this mean that we are on the verge of solving the critical puzzles of martial arts studies? Prof. Jervis would smirk at the thought. Rapid progress has a way of bringing fresh confusion in its wake. Ultimately that is a good thing. Perhaps the great contribution of this new generation of better trained students will be to see the key issues in need of discussion more clearly than their predecessors.

oOo

Are you interested in reading more about Martial Arts Studies in the classroom?  If so take a look at:

Will Universities Save the Traditional Asian Martial Arts?

Martial Arts: So What? By Adam D. Frank

Martial Arts Studies: Answering the “So what?” question

Austrian National Library in Vienna. Source: Wikimedia. photo by Matl, 2006.

Introduction

As some of you may have noticed, posts here at Kung Fu Tea and on the Facebook group have been coming a little more slowly than normal over the last month. That is because Paul Bowman and I are currently in the middle of the final push to get the inaugural issue of the new journal Martial Arts Studies out the door. This interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed publication will be appearing under the imprint of Cardiff University Press and will be freely available to all readers with an internet connection anywhere in the world. Our goal is to bring you the very best work in the rapidly evolving field of martial arts studies while saving you a trip to your local university library.

I am happy to say that we have been making great progress and all of the various articles and reviews are now in place. While I do not want to give away any spoilers I can say that there will be a lot of good stuff in this issue covering a wide range of substantive topics. Unfortunately the editorial and organizational demands of pulling all of this together have left me with a little less time for blogging over the last month than I would have liked.

Still, the real advantage of being involved with a project like this is that it gives one a “global overview” of what is going on in the different disciplines and even areas of the world. This is a real privilege as the interdisciplinary and transnational nature of the conversation that is starting to take place can be hard to get your hands around. Of course helping readers to do just that is one of our goals for Martial Arts Studies.

As we started to lay the groundwork for the second and third issues of the journal I also had an opportunity to think about the state of the literature in a more holistic way. Typically this is the moment when someone sits down to write a review article or blog post outlining what has happened in recent years, the critical debates that have emerged in the literature, and what it all means for our progress as a field.

All of that is good, but I think that I will leave the exercise for our authors at the journal. Instead I decided that it might be more interesting (and easier) to write a short series of blog posts outlining some of the holes that I have noticed in literature. Specifically, what sorts of research would I like to see emerging in the near future? What kinds of conversations might help to move the field forward?

Obviously there are an almost infinite number of projects that could be written in an area like martial arts studies, and to be perfectly honest I would probably end up reading all of them. But to be fun, a blog post like this one must begin by setting out some ground rules. So I have decided that each of these lists will contain only five items. Further, we must specify at the outset whether we are looking for books or articles, as the sorts of projects that you can tackle in these two formats are very different. Lastly, I am going to organize my lists thematically.

In today’s post we will be looking for five book projects all of which fall within the domain of “Chinese martial studies.” In future posts we will branch out to other areas (maybe “Gender in Martial Arts Studies” or “Comparative Ethnographies”) and formats (journal articles or grant proposals).

Now that the ground rules have been clarified, it is time to get on to our list. Here are the five Chinese martial studies that I would most like to see in the next few years, as well as a brief discussion of what the significance of a project like this might be.

Bring on the Books

1. The Sage and the Warrior: Merging the Medical and the Martial in Late Ming Dynasty. By (an established name in the field). Hawaii University Press, 2018.

This is a book that would have great appeal to both academic and popular audiences. We know that during the late Ming dynasty a remarkable synthesis of Chinese martial arts techniques, medical theories and immortality practices began to emerge. Why? Given the interest in very practical pursuits (such as training militia troops) that are also seen in period texts, why did certain groups begin to turn to unarmed boxing and more “cultural pursuits” prior to the destruction of the Ming dynasty? Meir Shahar briefly describes this process and discusses its significance in his study of the Shaolin Monastery. Yet given the ongoing popularity of medical and spiritual practices within the TCMA, these are questions that demand a dedicated study of their own.

Specifically, why did the synthesis of the martial and medical first emerge in this period? How did its popularity spread among certain elites? To what extent did these beliefs have a direct or indirect impact of martial arts reformers in the late Qing and Republic? And lastly, what does this suggest about our understanding of the nature of Chinese popular culture during these periods?

Who would read this book? My guess is that pretty much every martial artist interested in the traditional martial arts or Qigong would want to get their hands on this. It would be seen as a natural continuation of the conversation started in Shahar’s book about Shaolin. I suspect that such a text might also have a good chance of appealing to an academic audience as well. Researchers in the field of Chinese medical history as well as Martial Arts Studies would both need to be familiar with a work like this. And it might develop a following among students of late imperial history. Properly executed this is the sort of project that could make waves.

Morning Taiji group in Bryant Park, New York City.

2. Taijiquan’s Journey to the West: A Social History. By (a young scholar with a background in the social sciences or theory). California UP, 2017.

I have always been a big fan of the comparative case study method. But this does not mean that we need to fill every book with a dozen cases on six different styles. It is also helpful to have longer works that really examine a single case in greater depth. Another book can look at a different set of observations. When we set two or three such volumes side by side, some really interesting questions generally start to emerge. That is a great way for a research program to evolve.

Without a doubt Taijiquan is the most recognizable and widely practiced of all the Chinese martial arts. And its popularity extends far beyond the borders of the Chinese state. Anyone interested in globalization cannot help but be struck by the fact that what is often taken as a marker of “Chinese identity” has, in the current period, become an extremely successful (and flexible) transnational practice.

How did this come about? How was Taijiquan introduced to the West? How did it develop over the decades? What continues to draw individuals to these practices? How have the transnational communities that they form change over time? What role has the media and cultural discourse played in the meaning and acceptance of this art?

Obviously such questions would be of great interest to Western students of Taijiquan. They also touch on a number of critical academic issues. Indeed, this would seem to be an ideal case study to test and challenge various established theories on the working of “Orientalism,” “commodification” and “cultural appropriation” in the capitalist west. These concepts are touchstones of Critical Theory. But what would a finely grained study of the growth of Taijiquan between 1950 and 2000 reveal about their strengths and limits?

A scene from the Monkey God Festival. Source: Photo by Samuel Judkins.

3. The Martial Arts of a Diaspora: Chinese Heritage, Local Identity and Nationalism in Malaysia and Indonesia. By (an Ethnographer.) SUNY Press, 2019.

I envision this one more as an ethnographic exercise. An anthropologist and martial artist doing research among the Kung Fu societies of the South East Asian diaspora would have access to a very rich research area. Obvious questions that might be asked would include how the practice of the traditional fighting arts have contributed to the maintenance, and construction, of unique types of identity under challenging circumstances (including the outlawing of the use of Chinese names and writing). Even more interesting might be an investigation of the sorts of networks and practitioner communities that have developed linking these diaspora schools to their counterparts in the PRC or Taiwan. What role do shared practice, ritual and pilgrimage play in the creation of a community? Does new communication technology strengthen or undermine these networks? How do transnational networks react in the face of local threats and sometimes violent competition?

One suspects that the audience for a book like this would be more academic in nature. Yet it might continue to draw in a broad range of readers. Obviously the question of identity and nationalism among the Chinese diaspora is a topic that has already received sustained interest. However there is also interest in works that deal with community conflict and violence in the Malay World. The growing influence of China in the region will only make these questions more acute for both social and security theorists.

An iconic image of a Japanese “Warrior Monk.” Notice the nagamaki he holds in his left hand, the trademark weapon of the Sohei in much the same way that the long pole became the signature weapon of the Shaolin order.

4. Warrior Monks in a Comparative Context: Shaolin vs. the Sohei, by (A comparative religion scholar). Cambridge UP, 2020.

Simply put, it is hard to imagine who would not want to read this book. Almost no topic has proved to have more enduring appeal in the world of the Chinese martial arts than Shaolin’s warrior monk tradition. And a great many Japanese martial artists are just as interested in the often mythologized memory of the naginata wielding Sohei monks.

Such a comparative study would also raise some important academic issues. Buddhist monasteries in both Japan and China were major landowners, and at certain times important political players. Why and how did they sometimes resort to violence? What can we learn about the comparative Buddhist theology of violence within these two states? How did the relationship between religious power player and the state vary between Japan and China? And by what means have the memories of monastic warriors continued to play a critical role in the popular cultures of both states, long after the disappearance of the sorts of individuals that these images were ostensibly based on?

Depending on how the research was approached such a work could be of interest to either comparative religion or political history researchers with an East Asian focus. Such a work would also take the first step towards providing a series of focused historical comparative studies that are badly needed if Martial Arts Studies is to progress.

The Collected Works of Sun Lutang.

5. Martial Arts Studies in China Today: A Reader. By Various. Rowman and Littlefield. 2017.

This one might seem like I am cheating. As I mentioned in the introduction, I wanted to save the articles for another post. A good article and a good book are often two very different animals. Still, Martial Arts Studies has a tradition of quality edited volumes and there is a real need for this one.

As I mentioned earlier, the emerging field of martial arts studies is not the exclusive property of any one state or language. It is a transnational field with good work being produced in Universities around the globe. There is currently a very active German language literature on these topics, and University programs in Japan, Korea and China have been producing work on the Asian martial arts for years.

The Chinese literature will be of special interest to readers of Kung Fu Tea. Starting in the late 1980s or early 1990s there was a noticeable uptick in the volume and quality of work being produced on the Chinese martial arts. A number of Universities and Wushu Departments even created their own journals dedicated to these subjects. The quality of some of this work can be uneven, but there are also a number of talented researchers doing very interesting things who are rarely discussed in the West.

Only a few reviews of this literature have been produced in recent years. Stanley Henning has written more on this topic than anyone else, and I briefly reviewed parts of this literature in the introduction to my recent work on the history of Wing Chun. Lorge and Morris have also drawn on it in their respective works. Yet if martial arts studies truly wishes to advance as a transnational research area, it is critical to encourage a much deeper engagement with the work of scholars in the Chinese language literature.

Given that not all Martial Arts Studies scholars are China specialists, this points to the necessity of translating some of the best scholarship from the Chinese language literature in English language collected volumes or special journal editions. Likewise selected examples of current Western scholarship should be translated and disseminated in Chinese.

It is important to note that these two literatures have developed along basically separate lines with only occasional engagement outside of the work of a few specialized scholars (again Shahar and Henning come to mind). Yet some of the insights of Chinese scholars should be made available to a much wider range of martial arts studies readers.

Obviously such projects pose a number of challenges. One must get the cooperation of a large number of authors and publishers before going forward. And the potential readership of this project is probably limited compared to the other books that we have discussed. A project like this would most likely find a home in a specialized martial arts studies book series from a commercial press. Yet the potential long-term academic payoff on this investment is huge.

Conclusion

There you have it. These are some of the book length projects that we would most like to see in the field of Chinese Martial Studies over the next few years. I tried to choose topics that focused on a variety of time periods, geographic areas, styles and research methods. My hope is that everyone will find an idea that is somewhat interesting in this list. Yet it by no means exhausts the sort of research projects that we might see, or the variety of directions that this particular branch of martial arts studies might evolve in.

So what about you? If you could choose a book to read (or write) in the next few years, what would it be? Why? How would such a project further the development of martial arts studies as an interdisciplinary project?

oOo

If you enjoyed this post you might also want to read: Five Moments that Transformed Kung Fu

oOo

The Creation of Wing Chun by Judkins and Nielson.

Introduction

I try to stick to a Monday/Friday posting schedule, but every once in a while something comes up and I have to break from routine.  This week the surprise is a very pleasant one.  Earlier in the summer my co-author, Jon Nielson, and I had the pleasure of discussing our recent book and the current state of martial arts studies with Gene Ching.  As many of you already know, Gene is the Editor of Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine, one of our favorite publications.  He has also been very proactive in bringing some of the more important authors in Chinese martial studies (scholars like Meir Shahar and Peter Lorge) to the attention of his readership.  Yesterday I got a follow-up email letting me know that the first part of our interview had gone live on the Kung Fu Tai Chi webpage.  You can see the original here.

We have had the chance to do a couple of interviews following the release of our book, but this one was by far the most detailed and thoughtful.  We really appreciated the fact that Gene engaged directly with the substance of what we were trying to accomplish.  The entire interview ended up being long enough that they decided to split it into two parts.  I have re-blogged the first section of the discussion here, and readers can watch Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine for the second half, which is due to be released soon.  Also be sure to watch for an upcoming interview with Paul Bowman in the same space.  Enjoy!

Ip Man practices Chi Sao With Moy Yat.

Interview

Benjamin N. Judkins holds a doctoral degree in political science from Columbia University. Jon Nielson is chief instructor at Wing Chun Hall in Salt Lake City, Utah. They have joined forces to write THE CREATION OF WING CHUN: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS, published by the esteemed scholarly press SUNY. The work covers much more than just Wing Chun. Part I: Hand Combat, Identity, and Civil Society in Guangdong, 1800–1949, is a fascinating read for any serious student of Kung Fu. It provides an inclusive timeline for Jingwu, Hung Mun, Hung Sing, Hakka, and the Central Guoshu Academy from a socioeconomic perspective that is insightful and thought-provoking. This is one of the most exciting new contributions to the field. I had the opportunity to discuss this book with the authors.

GC: You are both Wing Chun practitioners obviously. Tell us a little about your background with this style and why you came to practice it.

BJ: While I had some interest in the martial arts, I had never really considered studying a Chinese style before moving to Salt Lake City about ten years ago. While working at the University of Utah my wife decided that she wanted to take a self-defense class. I did a little bit of research on what was available in the area and it looked like Wing Chun might be a good fit, and I agreed to sign up for a class with her. That is how I first met Sifu Jon Nielson.

While we both enjoyed the class, I was struck with how differently Wing Chun approached basic questions of movement from the Japanese and Korean arts I was more familiar with. I felt compelled to dig deeper to try to understand what was going on at both a physical and historical level.

JN: I had practiced several styles of martial arts before I stumbled on Wing Chun. All of the others left me with questions as to how and when to apply the different techniques and how they all fit together. Wing Chun immediately started answering those questions for me, and it has continued to be a source of investigation and discovery from that time until now.

Ben Judkins

GC: Ben, your blog, Kung Fu Tea, has been going since 2012. For those of our readers who aren’t familiar with Kung Fu Tea, explain what your intentions for this are. What inspired you to launch this? Has it met with your expectations so far?

BJ: There were a few different reasons why I started that blog. By the summer of 2012 most of the basic writing and research on our book was already done and I was getting ready to start shopping the manuscript to university presses. That can be a long process even under the best of circumstances (academic publisherS tend to move slowly compared to commercial ones), and since our volume was attempting to further a relatively new research area, I expected that there might be some delays.

Starting a blog seemed like a great way to use some of the down-time during the review process. It has allowed me to systematically explore other areas of the Chinese martial arts that I might not have otherwise engaged with. Finally, Kung Fu Tea has been really helpful in pulling together a community of individuals who shared our passion for a more academic approach to the martial arts. Anyone who is interested in checking out the blog can find it at chinesemartialstudies.com.

Kung Fu Tea has far exceeded my initial expectations. The last few years have seen an increase of interest in the martial arts by both scholars and graduate students in a variety of fields. And it turns out that a surprising number of martial arts practitioners are also interested in seeing the growth of a more rigorous discussion of the history, sociology and cultural meaning of these fighting systems. In fact, while attending the recent Martial Arts Studies conference at the University of Cardiff, I had an opportunity to meet readers from all over the world who were coming together to present and discuss their own research. It was an incredibly exciting moment. I think that opening a door to these sorts of conversations is about the best thing that an academic blog can do.

GC: What inspired you to write THE CREATION OF WING CHUN?

JN: When I met Ben in 2005, I had been studying and practicing Wing Chun for 25 years, but I had yet to see anyone do a serious treatment of Wing Chun’s origins. Back then, very few people took martial studies seriously as an academic pursuit. Any attempt at ferreting out Wing Chun’s origins was done through oral stories that isolated themselves from any real history.

I was interested in what else was going on socially, politically, economically and religiously. I thought that if we could get a better idea of how those movements corresponded with the developing martial arts, we might have a better idea of the events that shaped what eventually became known as Wing Chun.

When Ben told me that he was a political scientist with an interest in anthropology, I asked him if he was interested in researching this topic. Ten years later, they’re finally publishing our book.

Sifu Jon Nielson

BJ: Sifu Nielson was really the driving force behind the genesis on this project. After studying with him for a while he told me about his desire to create a book that would explain the origin and nature of Wing Chun in a historical way, rather than one that simply replicated the oral folklore that surrounds the Chinese martial arts. At the same time that he approached me with this idea, I had been working on a conference paper looking at a few different aspects of the Boxer Uprising which erupted at the turn of the 20th century in northern China.

I realized that beyond simply telling the story of Wing Chun, the evolution and development of the Chinese martial arts provided a really important window onto the sorts of social conflict and disruptions that accompanied the advance of imperialism, trade and globalization in China during the 19th century. In many ways these forces shaped the development of what we now think of as the traditional martial arts. Nowhere was that more apparent than in southern China. So this book really grew out of the realization that the answer to the specific question of how Wing Chun evolved had broader implications for all sorts of questions about globalization, identity formation and social conflict in late 19th and early 20th century China.

GC: Tell me a little bit about the title of your book? What does it convey and what sort of audience are you trying to reach?

BJ: Our title went through a couple of iterations. My original idea was “Rebels on Red Boats: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts.” I loved that it captured the romanticism of the Cantonese Opera Rebellion (otherwise known as the Red Turban Revolt) and the ways in which its memory has echoed through the history of the martial arts in that area. It also emphasized the fact that this book really addresses the milieu that all of the southern Chinese martial arts emerged from. So if you are a Choy Li Fut or Hung Gar practitioner, you may find something in here that is interesting. All of these arts emerged from the same general area and historical processes. That was one of the things that we were ultimately trying to get at.

However, our publisher thought a more specific and tightly focused title that emphasized Wing Chun might be better. And that is certainly true. In the second half of the book we outline Wing Chun’s rise both as a regional and later as a global art. Still, you cannot really divorce that narrative from everything else that was going on around it, both socially, politically, and in the world of the martial arts. And I still think that “Rebels on Red Boats” has a nice ring to it. Maybe we will save it for a future project.

GC: I was really impressed by Part 1 of your book. It’s one of most cohesive histories of the development of southern Kung Fu since the fall of the Qing I’ve read so far. What were some of the unique approaches and challenges you encountered when tackling this?

BJ: I think that the main thing was just that this is a relatively new exercise in what is still a theoretically developing research area. Douglas Wile really demonstrated the possibility for this sort of project with his 1996 volume, The Lost T’ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch’ing Dynasty (also published by the State University of New York Press). Meir Shahar’s volume on Shaolin and Peter Lorge’s wider historical work helped us to build a case that there is both an academic and popular audience for this sort of work beyond what you might expect.

Still, there had not yet been a really focused (English language) academic study of the southern Chinese martial arts. We were left to search through the existing literature in order to pull together a compelling vision of what was going on in the region that could account both for the broad outlines of the development of southern Kung Fu, but also suggest some new and interesting areas for investigation that might not have been as obvious at the outset. And since we were also free to define the theoretical scope of this project, we wanted to do something that would demonstrate the inherent strength of an interdisciplinary approach in tackling questions like these.

One of the things which surprised us both was that once we got into it, we found that there was already a fair amount of information in the historical and social scientific literature on the region. More than one might expect at any rate. Yet previous scholars had not been looking specifically at the martial arts and there was very little sense of what was relevant or how these discrete things fit together.

JN: Mainly what got in the way was what had been done on the Wing Chun creation myth previous to our efforts. You find that people have a strong tendency to cling to old notions, even when evidence to the contrary is right in front of them. We had to sort through and discard a lot of poor scholarship to get to the bottom of what was really going on. What we found, though, was that much of what we had been looking for was already published in scholarly books and articles. It’s just that no one had put it all together before.

GC: What aspects of Chinese history do you find are the most misunderstood amongst Chinese martial arts aficionados?

BJ: The traditional martial arts are a topic that many people feel very passionately about, and yet there is a lot of room for misunderstanding. Mostly we get the setting all wrong. One of the main difficulties in explaining the deeper history of these arts is that most people have very little idea what traditional Chinese society itself looked like. This is not necessarily an easy thing to reconstruct and there are many historians who have dedicated their entire careers to those questions.

What we found when looking at events in the Pearl River Delta region was that the martial arts did not really exist as a set of separate or independent institutions apart from the rest of society. These organizations tended to be supported by, and deeply implicated in the competition between, powerful lineage clans, economic guilds (and later trade unions), secret societies, the government, social movements and political factions. Changes in this broader social environment were often the precondition for big shifts in how the martial arts were organized.

A really exciting thing about Chinese martial studies as an academic research area is that it opens a very detailed window onto the interactions of these diverse actors. Yet most often the histories of the martial arts are discussed without this sort of social context. In that case, even if all of the facts that you have learned are true, they are not likely to be all that meaningful.

I think that many readers initially approach the Chinese martial arts as something impossibly ancient that emerged only in sacred temples on some misty mountain. In that sense they have become a typical Orientalist fantasy for Western consumers. Most of the hand combat teachers critical to our current styles lived in the 19th and 20th centuries. That means that when we think about the “traditional” martial arts, we are dealing with a pretty modern body of practices and meanings. As Douglas Wile has reminded us:

“Anything earlier than the Republican period (1911–1949) tends to slip into the mists of “ancient China,” and we often overlook the fact that Yang Lu-ch’an and the Wu brothers were of the same generation as Darwin and Marx, and that the Li brothers were contemporaries of Einstein, Freud and Gandhi. Railroads, telegraphs, and missionary schools were already part of the Chinese landscape, and Chinese armies (and rebels) sometimes carried modern Western rifles…It is our proposition, then, that this watershed period in the evolution and theory of t’ai-chi chüan did not take place in spite of larger social and historical events but somehow in response to them.” (Wile, 3)

Wile’s remarks on this point are important and bear repeating. In some ways the popular discussion of Chinese martial arts have progressed a lot since he wrote those words in 1996, and yet there is still this disturbing sense that somehow these fighting systems are primeval, existing outside of the push and pull of ordinary historical or social forces. One of the goals of our work has been to provide a framework that will strongly ground discussions of Wing Chun, and the other Southern martial arts, within the flow of actual social, economic and political history.

For Part 2, stay tuned to KungFuMagazine.com.

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

Introduction

The martial arts can speak to a number of important questions, but perhaps to none as directly as popular attitudes towards violence. Much of my recent research has looked at what the organization of martial arts groups in China reveals about the nature of social conflict. Yet for those who share my interest in the modern martial arts and conflict, it is hard to imagine a case study quite as rich as the Pacific theater of the Second World War (WWII).

During the years prior to the outbreak of this conflict martial arts played many roles within the domestic political discourses of both Japan and China. Hand combat reformers argued that they were an inexpensive means by which the state could reform physical education in schools, promote physical fitness among the general population and improve public health. Yet they were also turned to as vehicles for promoting nationalism, strengthening state control of civil society and structuring the ways that civilian populations would perceive other peoples in the coming conflict.

The idea that these fighting systems somehow revealed essential truths about the Japanese (and later Chinese) people even aided the explosion in popularity which these same systems enjoyed in the West after the close of hostilities. Still, as many scholars have previously argued, the seemingly immutable links between the Asian martial arts and specific ethnolinguistic identities were ultimately a byproduct of specific political discourses, the efforts of individual reformers and the power of “invented traditions.”

In today’s post I would like to take a look at a couple of period artifacts that help to illustrate the process by which these discourses were created and spread throughout society. Both of the postcards that we will be discussing were printed in Japan during WWII and were intended to illustrate and humanize scenes of daily military life. Presumably these sorts of images were created for the benefit of both the soldiers who might have bought them as well as their families back home.

These seem to have been fairly popular and it is not hard to find them in auctions and specialized collections. They exist in multiple series, some of which focus on the army, while others tackle the challenges of naval life. I have always suspected that some of them were actually reprinted after the end of the war, but because postcards are usually not dated I have yet to definitively confirm this.

As one might expect the vast majority of images presented on these cards have nothing to do with the martial arts. Topics such as “swabbing the decks”, eating lunch in the field and feeding the horses dominate these series. Yet a few cards in each series seem to be dedicated explicitly to the practice of hand combat.

This is not surprising as martial arts training had become a mandatory part of most primary and secondary educational programs in Japan during the late Meiji period. The military itself also made use of various martial disciplines in its training. Sumo wrestling, judo and kendo are all well represented in these series and soldiers are seen both participating in these events as well as watching them as spectators. Yet this does not exhaust the limits of the artist’s martial imagination. From time to time we even catch glimpses of the Chinese martial arts as well, always seen from the perspective of victorious Japanese soldiers.

Before going on I should make a couple of final notes. First, I would like to thank Dr. Jared Miracle for providing me with a rough translation of the contents of these postcards on very short notice. He was also kind enough to share some of his thoughts on these images. Any errors of omission or commission in the discussion below are mine alone.

Another vintage Japanese postcard showing kendo practice on a battleship. Source: Author’s personal collection.

 
Kendo in the Navy Life

Our first postcard focuses on traditional fencing and judo. Of all of the martial themes that appear on these postcards, swords and the practice of kendo are by far the most common. While we in the West tend only to imagine karate or judo when discussing the Japanese martial arts, this emphasis on sword-play accurately represents the importance of kendo in the development of Japan’s martial arts culture during the pre-war period. While it is nice to see a portrayal of ship-board kendo training on this postcard, the brief mention of judo is what makes it really standout in my opinion.

When reading a Japanese cartoon, proceed from right to left, and top to bottom. A rough translation of dialog runs as follows:

Banner: “Gekiken”

Fencing Sailor 1: “He enjoys taking that posture/stance he learned.”

Officer: “Like some kind of ‘Sword Barbarian,’ eh?”

Fencing Sailor 2: “Here I come!”

Judo Guy: “We really prefer judo over gekiken.”

At first glance this postcard would seem to accurately capture a fairly mundane moment in the life of many sailors. Ample photographic evidence exists to demonstrate that shipboard kendo practice and competition was common in the Japanese navy. In fact, I have other photographic postcards that show scenes that are almost identical to the one portrayed in the postcard above. In one sense this image is interesting precisely because it replicates such a mundane moment in time.

Nevertheless, the cartoon is more interesting than its photographic brethren in that they do not attempt to tell us anything about what the various participants in these activities are thinking. Or at least what those who were employing these images to create a certain discourse linking martial arts practice and military service wanted us to believe that they were thinking.

For instance, given that practically all Japanese high school students practiced kendo at one time or another, it may be significant that the side banner on this postcard identifies the scene as one of “gekiken” (or old style fencing) rather than kendo. While I am not an expert in Japanese martial arts history (most of my own research being focused on China), one suspects that this reflects the debate that emerged in the 1930s where certain military officers and martial artists began to worry that “modernized” kendo (which had developed more as a means of self-cultivation and competition) was no longer preparing officers with practical battlefield skills. In fact, Japanese swordsmen faced a number of setbacks when they first entered the Chinese field.

Hence the “older” approach to fencing went into revival during the WWII period in an attempt to update the skills of Japanese soldiers for the modern battlefield. In that sense it may be interesting to observe that the second swordsman appears to be using unorthodox “barbarian” techniques that the first is being forced to adjust to.

This card also appears to intentionally juxtapose such “rough and tumble” combat training techniques with the more structured, fraternal and even “gentle” nature of judo training. While many soldiers practiced judo, the art itself never seems to have undergone the same transformation that gripped the kendo world. This juxtaposition of two different approaches to the martial arts seems to provide the narrative thread that runs through this card.

Glorious Deeds of Arms

Banner: “Glorious Deeds of Arms: Prisoners of War and Spoils of War”

Japanese Officer: “This is banned dum-dum ammunition.”

Japanese Soldier: “Yeah, we also captured the enemy’s tank(s)!”

Captured Chinese Soldier: “POWs certainly enjoy the Japanese Army’s kindness.”

Japanese Soldier: “I’d really like (or it would be nice) to take this Green Dragon Blade home as a souvenir, eh?”

Our second image turns its attention to the infantry in occupied China. There is no indication within the picture to indicate where or when this scene is supposed to have taken place. But photographs of such “victory scenes,” where Japanese soldiers are shown posing with confiscated weapons (or occasionally at important landmarks) are commonly found in soldiers’ photo albums from the period. Again, one of the most interesting aspects of this image is its intentionally generic nature. Images of such scenes were frequently recorded and then reproduced on a massive scale for consumption by viewers on the home front.

The great advantage of the illustrated format of this particular image is that it provides the artist with a way to tell us what is (or should be) going on in the heads of individual soldiers. The first individuals who speaks is probably meant to be an officer (note the mustache, katana, and high leather boots). His interest is focused on the more modern and deadly aspects of the Chinese military. In this case it has just been discovered that the Chinese soldiers in question were armed with “dum-dum” rounds.

This is a slang term for any bullet that is designed to mushroom or expand on impact to inflict more damage on its victim. The name itself is a historical reference to the Dum Dum arsenal in India where the British experimented with such ammunition in the late 19th century before it was banned by the Geneva Convention. While it is not uncommon to come across references to “dum-dum rounds” in English language discussions, I was previously unaware that the term had entered conversational Japanese in the 1930s.

Notice also that the next speaker emphasizes the mechanized nature of the Chinese army by pointing to the captured tank on the far right of the image. The viewer is not meant to feel pity for a “poorly equipped” Chinese army. Obviously this is a fine line to walk given what is going on at the left-hand side of the card. But the “testimony” of the captured Chinese soldiers themselves notes that we need not be concerned for their welfare. Of course this is one place where the images presented by the official propaganda and actual historical events are different in profound ways.

On the left side of the card a very different conversation appears to be happening at exactly the same moment. Here two soldiers pick through a pile of traditional weapons that have been confiscated. One holds a classic dadao aloft, while the other hefts a guandao. He refers to this weapon as a “Green Dragon Blade.”

In so doing he explicitly identifies the weapon as that wielded by the hero Guan Yu in the classic novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The same story was very popular in Japan (where it often went by the title Sangokushi). In fact, this one work has spawned literally countless derivative novels, stories, plays, woodblock prints, poems, manga and movies between the late Tokugawa period and today. It has occupied an important place within Japanese popular culture for literally centuries.

A captured Chinese dadao being held by a Japanese soldier. Note the unique saw back blade. Source: Author’s Personal Collection.

Conclusion: The Martial Arts and Modernity

Both of our postcards have built stories around the physical trappings of the martial arts. In the first image we see sailors, faces obscured by kendo masks, training on a ship with bamboo swords. In the second image we instead find real swords, won in an actual fight, while their former owners look on passively. And in both cases the martial arts are shown to be an aspect of the modern battlefield rather than a purely cultural exercise.

Still, it is interesting to consider this relationship with modernity in a slightly more detailed way. The subtle comparison between Japanese gekiken and judo suggests an acute awareness that martial practices in Japan were evolving and changing in response to things happening in their environment. Interestingly, the various martial artists within the image seem to have mixed opinions on the value of these trends. While the two swordsmen throw themselves into the newly revived “old style” fencing practice, the judo players behind them look on with some degree of incredulity. All of this indicates a high level of social literacy regarding the sorts of political debates that were happening within the world of the Japanese martial arts.

In contrast the Japanese vision of the Chinese martial arts seems to be frozen in time. More specifically, it is frozen in a vision of an “Orientalized” past defined by the immensely popular Sangokushi which dominated much of Japanese popular culture throughout the 20th century. This is fascinating as the widespread adoption of the dadao by Chinese troops was in some ways just as recent a trend as the innovations in Japanese military fencing that the first postcard seemed to be commenting on.

Nor did these cards show the Chinese as having only obsolete equipment. Theirs was a mechanized force complete with artillery. How “glorious” could “deeds of arms” be when unleashed against a vastly inferior enemy? Still, while the Japanese fighting arts were viewed as an evolving part of a modern military structure, their Chinese counterparts are reduced to essentialist markers of ethnolinguistic identity. Further, this identity is made accessible to Japanese consumers and readers through the popular novels and media of their day.

There are a number of interesting points to take away from this brief discussion. While forces within Japanese society sought to use their traditional martial arts to promote certain ideological and nationalist positions, readers appear to have been aware of recent changes in how these arts were practiced and political debates within the martial community. This is the opposite of the sort of allochronism that one might expect to see. Secondly, Japanese readers are expected to have some interest in (and familiarity with) the practice of Chinese boxing. If nothing else traditional Chinese weapons are shown as desirable war souvenirs.

Yet these practices are understood only through political discourses and media representations that have the effect of stripping them of their actual history. This misperception of the true nature of the Chinese martial arts becomes one step in the process of reducing them markers of an inferior ethnolinguistic identity that must be overcome or controlled. This would seem to suggest that the misunderstanding of someone else’s martial arts history is at least as dangerous as accepting a false narrative of one’s own practices.

Guan Yu as shown by Utagawa Kuniyoshi in his collection of prints from the Sangokushi.

If you enjoyed these images you might also want to see:  Through a Lens Darkly (31): Red Spears, Big Swords and Civil Resistance in Northern China

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self needs strength.
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Perseverance is a sign of willpower.
He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.

Robert James Coons. 2015. Internal Elixir Cultivation: The Nature of Daoist Meditation.  Tambuli Media. 140 pp. $22.95

Introduction

Recently Dr. Mark Wiley, who runs Tambuli Media, sent me a copy of a book that he thought I would find interesting. Just for the record I am currently trying to convince Dr. Wiley to visit Kung Fu Tea and present a guest post looking at some of his own academic research on the social history and sociology of the Filipino martial arts. But given my interest in the traditional Chinese martial arts and “new religious movements” he suggested that I take a look at Robert James Coons’ recent volume, Internal Elixir Cultivation: The Nature of Daoist Meditation (Tambuli, 2015).

I was more than happy to agree as this volume touches on a number of subjects that have been on my mind. At first glance this might not seem like the sort of work that I would review here at Kung Fu Tea. Generally I focus on books about the history or sociology of the martial arts rather than manuals of their actual performance. And this text is only tangentially related to the martial arts.

As the title suggests, it is an introduction to Daoist meditation practices written from a practitioners (rather than a religious studies scholars’) perspective. While that sort of subject might be of interest to certain Taijiquan players or students of other internal styles, many martial artists (including those in my own lineage) would be quick to point out that their practice has little to do with Daoism.

The relationship between the Chinese martial arts and religion (usually in the guise of Chan Buddhism or some form of Daoist practice) has been one of the more contentious subjects to emerge in scholarly discussions of the origins and meaning of the traditional Chinese martial arts. Popular wisdom seems to uncritically accept the assumption that all of these fighting systems emerged from the well-spring of religious traditions. This generally dovetails with the often repeated assumption that the martial arts “are not really about fighting” but are instead an embodied technology designed to promote greater discipline, self-actualization and possibly even some sort of “transcendence.”

Various voices in the scholarly community have pushed back against these assertions. Peter Lorge and Stanley Henning have both noted that most of the actual motivations driving people into the martial arts during the late imperial period were of a distinctly pragmatic and non-spiritual nature. The threat (and promise) of economically motivated banditry probably did more to advance the martial arts in China’s 19th century countryside than any other single factor.

Yet as Meir Shahar might remind us, the tendency to see a grand alliance of esoteric medicine, self-defense skills and powerful tools for spiritual transcendence within the TCMA, cannot simply be dismissed as some sort of “New Age” concoction. While a distinct undercurrent for much of the late imperial period, this powerful synthesis, itself a symptom of other forms of philosophical and cultural syncretism which gripped Ming society, is clearly visible in the extent descriptions of the 16th and 17th century Shaolin arts.

This same combination of interest would reemerge in a powerful way during the Republic period (see the development of Sun Lutang’s Taijiquan style as an important example of this trend). And even in the current era of MMA’s ascendancy, the vision of a truly comprehensive fighting, health and spiritual system still exerts a powerful pull on the public’s imagination.

Yet what exactly are individuals imagining? Given the pace of social change and the realities of global translation, it seems unlikely that the martial dreams of a Taiji student in Bryant Park today would be fully compatible with those of his counterpart in Shanghai in the 1920s (to say nothing of a village in Henan in 1710).

This is a question that I have always found to be a bit challenging. My practical interests lay in the field of Southern Kung Fu rather than the classic northern “internal arts.” Further, my academic research has focused on questions of social organization, structural conflict and violence rather than religious history or individual belief.

Yet it is hard to deny the centrality of these associations to the modern perceptions of what the Chinese martial arts are and should be. Coons’ book is interesting to me as a primary text speaking to these questions. How have western students of the TCMA approached Daoism? What sorts of individual practices are currently popular? Which religious texts or media discourses inform these practices? What does this reveal about religious change in western society today? And what hints, if any, does this provide as to the motivations of those who continue to seek out the Chinese martial arts?

A careful reader armed with the appropriate body of critical or social scientific theory may find some interesting answers to each of these questions within the pages of this slim volume. Serious scholarship on these issues will require a much larger body of observation than a single book. Still, the clarity, brevity and careful construction of this work make it a good place to start.

One room schoolhouse. October 2012, Conewango Valley. Photo Credit: Benjamin Judkins

Reviewing the Book

Before delving into a couple of these more theoretical questions, I should begin by saying a couple of words about Coons’ book itself. The author is a long time student of Daoism who has also been involved with a number of other Chinese cultural traditions including the martial arts, poetry, calligraphy and tea appreciation. His biography states that he currently runs a tea import business in Canada and an English school in Henan, China.

His approach to his subject matter is straight forward and refreshingly modest. In a field that is typically dominated by “Masters” he claims only to be a lay student of Daoism (rather than a priest of any sort) whose teacher was also a lay disciple. His grand-teacher, however, was Cao Zhenyang, formerly a leader of the Dragon Gate sect of Quanzhen Daoism and abbot of the Beijing White Cloud Temple.

The book itself is best approached as an introduction to, and manual of, basic Daoist meditation techniques as they emerged during the Republic period. Like other reformers (and one suspects his teachers), Coons goes to some lengths to distance Daoist meditation from either contemporary occult practices or popular religion (which at times he seems to openly disparage). His work also attempts to more closely link meditative practices to the philosophical traditions of the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzhi.

At 140 pages the volume is a quick read. I got through the book in an afternoon. Of course reading this book from cover to cover may not be the best approach. Anyone who wants to try the various recommended meditation exercises and integrate them into their daily routines would have a few weeks worth of material to work with.

The exercises themselves are clear and straight forward. No previous knowledge or cultural familiarity is presupposed by this project, and it seems to be intentionally written for true beginners. That said, if you have spent any time around the Chinese martial arts you will probably run into a fair amount that already sounds familiar. A number of black and white illustrations are provided including original photography, technical diagrams and classic works of art.

While this small volume is focused solely on practice and makes no claims to being in any way scholarly, Coons does manage to integrate a fair bit of history into his discussion. Anyone interested in a 10 minute overview of the current “consensus view” on the development of Daoism will want to check out the historical appendix. Readers will also notice asides to historical research throughout his text, though these never distract from the book’s more practical aims. One suspects that Coons’ sectarian loyalties color certain aspects of how he presents this discussion to the reader, but in a book explicitly devoted to promoting a certain approach to Daoist practice, that is probably to be expected.

Indeed, by the end of this volume readers will be left with very few doubts as to Coons’ motivations. His own preface is highly confessional and situates Daoist meditation as a valuable tool it treating practically all of the ills of the modern world, from work related stress and obesity to preventing cancer and other serious diseases. In fact, students of martial arts studies may want to take note of the “medicalization” of this preface, which in some ways is a bit at odds with the more philosophical tone of the rest of the book.

His final historical discussion places a teleological spin on the rise of his own (highly secularized and meditation focused) approach to Daoism while underplaying, or even disparaging, its other manifestations within Chinese society. Note the following remarks on pages 136 and 137:

“After the time of Huang Yuanji, Daoism again went into a lull, and by the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911 Daoism had descended into a confused amalgam of folk religions and superstitions mostly popular among the Chinese peasant classes in in rural areas such as Fujian, Shandong, Henan and so on.”….

“Daoism today exists both within the realm of religion and as something that normal people can study.”

Pumpkins. Wyoming County, October 2012. Photo Credit. Benjamin Judkins.

Daoist Practice in a Globalized and Secular West

Coons does a good job of presenting his own approach to Daoism in a succinct and clear way. Nor could one claim that such a philosophy is in any way illegitimate. This approach emerged out of reforms that were made during the Republic period and following the Cultural Revolution. Still, it is unlikely that this text would score many points with anthropologists or students of comparative religion.

Western martial artists may also need to approach this discussion with some caution. What Coons outlines may work as a devotional practice. Yet if one is primarily interested in understanding the meaning and the historical evolution of the traditional martial arts, reading this Republic-era philosophy back in time may lead to anachronism and misunderstanding. Religion and ritual have been a critically important organizing forces throughout Chinese history. One suspects that in most instances where we have seen convergence, ritual has been important to the martial arts precisely because it has provided a pathway to larger and more dynamic forms of social organization.

Anyone interested in the often complex nexus between martial culture, Daoist ritual, Ming era novels and patterns of militia organization should check out Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel (University of Hawaii Press, 2015) by Prof. Mark R. E. Meulenbeld. The sort of emphasis on modern philosophical Daoism presented by Coons would do little to prepare a reader for the rich and complicated world of martial values and religion laid out by Meulenbled.

I bring this up to emphasize the following point. Western students of the Chinese martial arts are often very interested in Daoism. Further, we tend to favor the more philosophical approaches to the discipline as outlined by Coons. Yet from a historian’s standpoint, it is dangerous to read these ideas onto the past. This is precisely what led to the sorts of anachronistic myth-making that authors such as Peter Lorge, Brian Kennedy and Stanley Henning have warned against.

Perhaps the more interesting question might be to ask why such approaches, formulated to appeal to both audiences and authorities in the Republic and then Maoist China, have such appeal for Western readers, spiritual seekers and martial artists today? This brings us back to those fundamental questions that emerged in the introduction to this essay. When we see similar ideas separated by geographic, cultural or chronological space, can we be sure that everyone is part of the same conversation?

One suspects that the answer is probably no. On the one hand it is clear that epistemic communities can form uniting groups of practitioners in China and the West. Yet this does not necessarily mean that every value is shared or that all cultural discourses are congruent.

What is often more interesting to me is the way that symbols mutate, cultural concepts are appropriated, and discourses hybridize. The practice of Daoist meditation in Taiwan during the 1960s likely represented a set of conservative values quite different from the meanings that it was assigned by hippies in the American counter culture. Much the same could be said of the Taijiquan of figures like Zheng Manqing or T. T. Liang.

I have often wondered what Zheng, a conservative figure, thought about suddenly finding himself at the center of a counter-culture movement in New York City during the 1970s? At times one wonders if such communities are actually built on a sort of reciprocal exploitation. Teachers receive the resources and prestige that they need to continue their projects (built on one set of values), while students are allowed to appropriate practices and concepts for their own, at times very different, projects. Perhaps this is what is meant by the traditional saying of “One Bed, Two Dreams.”

Coons’ book brings up many of these same questions. Both Daoism and Tajiquan have been associated with counter-culture values in North America since the 1960s. Still, the rise of Qigong in late 1990s, as well as its recent growth in popularity, tracks nicely with other more recent social trends.

Perhaps the most important of these has been the rise of the “nones” in the American religious landscape. Social scientists have noted that the number of people identifying with no specific religious tradition has dropped precipitously within society since the 1990s. Currently more than 23% of Americans do not identify with any religious denomination, an increase from about 8% at the start of the 1990s.

Most of these individuals are not atheists and many of them claim to still observe some sort of spiritual practices or values. What we are seeing here is more of a turn away from traditional organized religions rather than a rapidly spreading disbelief in spirituality. Nor are the reasons behind this trend agreed upon by all researchers. Some (like the Pew Forum) have pointed to increasing religious polarization within the political system, while others have looked at the rise of the internet, increased secularization, privatization, the decline of social networks and cultural fragmentation.

Obviously we will not resolve this important puzzle within this post, though I think that Coons’ book does point towards the importance of fragmentation. It is probably not a coincidence that the popularity of practices like Qingong and Daoist meditation are gaining adherents at this moment in history.  Nor is fragmentation (understood as the emergence of a rich pallet of cultural options where previously there was only one) always a bad thing.  At times it can allow for the emergence of powerful new discourses that would have been unthinkable in the past.

Consider again the contents of this book. Its techniques and practices are all designed to promote a “spiritualized” approach to self-actualization and embodied transcendence while at the same time avoiding any taint of sectarian religion or deistic belief. Further, a move away from religion and ritual towards the realm of meditation has the effect of stripping much of the specific cultural content out of Daoism (at least at the level that the author is offering it to his readers). No knowledge of the Chinese language, cultural practice or complicated religious rites is necessary. In fact, those things can even be seen as a hindrance to a “purer” (and more commercially viable) approach to Daoist meditation.

The religious reforms instigated in China after 1911 were not created to advance the export of certain forms of Daoist practice on the world markets today. Yet they seem to be doing exactly that. Globalization, it seems, works in mysterious ways.

This does not mean that individually held values across transnational communities will always be congruent. Again, one suspects that there is an element of mutual exploitation here.

Or maybe it would be better to call it “cooperation.” Rather than simply ensuring that the student becomes a carbon copy the teacher, the more exciting and mature approach is to supply them with the needed tools in the hopes that they will create new solutions for their own problems. Perhaps we might be the generation to craft new syncretic cultural discourses as powerful as those that emerged during the Ming dynasty. The fact that so many martial artists will be interested applying what they have learned in Coons’ manual bears powerful testimony to the fact that we are still living in the shadow of that great explosion of creative energy. Just imagine what another burst of such innovation might accomplish for the martial arts?

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If you enjoyed this book review you might also want to read: The Chinese Gentle Art Complete: Reviewing the Bible of Ngo Cho Kun (Five Ancestors Boxing)

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An abandoned building (formerly a 19th century shoe factory) in Wyoming County, NY. Source: Photo by Benjamin Judkins. Author’s personal collection.

***In honor of Halloween I thought that I would dip into the archives and revisit a fun post from earlier in the year.  What follows is an actual Kung Fu ghost story.  I think that readers will find it both seasonally appropriate and of interest to anyone thinking about the place of the martial arts in southern China’s larger popular culture complex.  This post is also a great excuse for me to use some of my own photography of the local landscape.  The fall is certainly the most scenic time of the year in Western NY.  Have a Happy Halloween!  Also, if you have your own martial arts related ghost or monster story, drop a link in the comments.***

Introduction

Once again I find myself staying up late to write my Monday morning post.  I had originally planned on doing a news update, but given the hour I thought a ghost story might actually be more appropriate.  The following post is something of a departure from what I normally offer, but I think that a variety of readers will still find it interesting.  I don’t normally present translations, nor do I spend a lot of time discussing obituaries, but in the current case I am willing to make an exception.

Choy Li Fut students (particularly those from Canada) may be interested in reading a little more about Master Leung Kai’s life and contribution to their art in both New York City and Montreal.  Others reader may be more interested in what his life’s story suggests about the globalization of the Chinese martial arts in general.  Lastly, as I was doing the research for this post I became interested in the differences in how his life story was presented in local Chinese language community newspapers versus English language sources.  Not only were these accounts richer and more colorful, but they painted a more more complete picture of the place of the Chinese martial arts in the local community.

Reading between the lines of these articles it seems that Leung Kai’s school occupied a slightly marginal place in the broader social structure of Montreal’s Chinese community.  While the obituaries themselves are unrelenting laudatory, the life story that they tell is actually more complex than it might first appear.  When Leung Kai first appeared in Montreal it was as an employee in an unremarkable local shop.  While he had studied the martial arts as a child (and apparently taught them in New York City and Hong Kong) he did not at first have an outlet for those talents in Canada.  It was only after the eruption of the “Kung Fu Craze” of the 1970s that Leung Kai was able to devote himself full-time to the traditional combat systems.

The “craze” attracted both overseas Chinese and other Canadian students.  The Chinese language obituaries even list his senior disciple as being a French Canadian woman.  They also strongly suggest that the social status that he achieved in the local community was as a result of the martial arts and cultural associations that he founded.

In that sense one may be tempted to read this as a story about “pulling oneself up by their bootstraps.”  Yet even in the heady years of the 1970s, Kung Fu remained a somewhat marginal activity.  Other aspects of his career also reinforce this impression of liminality.  For instance, Leung Kai was not just associated with traditional modes of popular culture, but also spirituality.  In some of the stories that are related in the Chinese language sources he almost takes on the aspect of a modern urban shaman.

For instance, his reputation as a martial artist was bolstered by an apparent encounter with the ghost of a murdered woman who was looking for vengeance against her killer.  We are even told by one author that this was one of the main reasons for his fame and ultimate success in the martial arts.

Leung Kai also adopted the then current discourse surrounding Qigong masters and their possession of “extraordinary powers.”  In one memorable incident he demonstrates that not only could he teach others to manipulate their own healing energy through qigong practice, but that his touch could directly transfer healing energy to a distressed patient.  The success of the operation was “interpreted” by another of his disciples who wrote auspicious calligraphy characters in a mixture of alcohol and ink, performing what amounted to a cross between an act of divination and a Chinese language Rorschach Test.

How should we interpret such accounts of modern Chinese martial artists living in hi-tech western cities?  Avron Boretz has provided us with probably our best interpretive framework for understanding the nuances of Leung Kai’s ghost story.  In his volume Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters: Ritual Violence, Martial Arts, and Masculinity on the Margins of Chinese Society, he notes that many southern Chinese martial artists are expected to deal with the supernatural realm as part of their normal public performance duties.

Of course these are not the modernized, sanitized and globally popular martial artists that we normally encounter in the west.  Instead they are more marginal individuals associated with local temples, criminal brotherhoods and the world of “Rivers and Lakes.”  What values are the Chinese folk martial arts seeking to express in these less savory settings? Overwhelming they are concerned with “Yang” or masculine virtue.  In Chinese popular religion these are seen as the central ordering and productive forces of the universe.  “Yin,” or “female” values, are not only not seen as being equally valuable, but they are often seen as a subversive representation of chaos, destruction and decay.  These “Yin forces” need to be contained through strict social legislation and ritualized exorcism.

This is very different from the sublimely balance of Yin and Yang imagined in Taiji theory or discussed by so many philosophically minded American martial artists. This shouldn’t really be a surprise as the idea of “philosophical Taoism” that is often encountered in western bookstores has never been all that popular in China or Taiwan.  In fact, it is basically a construction of of 19th century protestant scholarship (specifically James Legge), which was later adopted by a number of Chinese intellectuals.  The world of local temples and their festivals tends to be dominated by ritual rather than learned discourse, and one of the most common rituals practiced are public exorcisms to banish the dark and misty threads of Yin from the public sphere.  Beyond this ritual bias, the association of Yang with “virtue” is deeply embedded in many, maybe most, Chinese folk martial traditions.

Leung Kai’s encounter with his ghost seems to fall squarely into this tradition.  Here the misty and chaotic forces of “Yin” have taken the form of a female ghost who, while ostensibly seeking justice, is bound to be a corrosive and destabilizing force on the community.  Recall for instance what happened after Hamlet’s dad showed up.  It was up to a priest or martial artists to project a surplus of cleansing Yang to deal with the situation.  Interestingly the local Chinese community remembered Leung Kai as an individual who existed within, and could mediate the effects of, this world.

This sort of relationship between southern martial artists and the local community has been discussed by a number of anthropologists working in southern China (see Avron Bortez and Daniel Amos).  Still, its not something that most western students of the martial arts ever encounter or spend much time thinking about.  Its interesting to note for instance that the English language treatments of Leung Kai on his association’s webpage relates none of these more colorful stories.  Evidently they did not consider this material to be a critical aspect of his memory as a martial artist.  Yet the local Chinese language commentators did?

The remainder of the post presents two short obituaries of Leung Kai written after his deal on the 31st of May, 1992.  The first of them is shorter and more formal.  It’s focus is on biographical information.  The second obituary is longer and more colorful.  It attempts to remember and editorialize on Leung Kai’s place in the local community.  In so doing it touches on a lot of themes (including ethnic and gender identity, social status, and the supernatural) that may be of interest to readers.

Before going on I should also note that both of these account were produced by authors in Canada and focus on the period of Leung Kai’s life when he lived in Montreal.  Nevertheless, when he immigrated to the west from Hong Kong in 1967 he originally settled in New York City.  He was active in the martial arts there and was the president of the “East US Chinese Martial Arts Federation.”  After that he moved to Canada.  The timeline of his life is a little unclear for a few years but he founded his new martial arts association in 1977.  Lastly I would like to thank my bother and sister-in-law, who are currently visiting from Hong Kong, for providing a quick translation of these accounts.

A small graveyard used by the Amish community in the Conewago Valley of Western NY. Source: Photo by Benjamin Judkins.

Leung Kai: A Canadian Choy Li Fut Master

Obituary 1:

• The Chinese Press (Overseas Chinese Times)
• “Choy Li Fut Tung Ping Taiji Founder Leung Kai Wan”
• June 6th, 1992

Leung Kai Wan was born in China, Guangdong Province, Taishan County in San Cheung Kei Yeung Leui. He was a very clever youth who liked to learn; he studied under and was taught personally by the Taijiquan Master Wu Kam Chuen and he studied Choi Li Fut in Guangzhou under Master Fong Yuk Su and Master Tam Lap. He then added his own ideas/creativity to found Choy Li Fut Tung Ping.  He traveled and took this to other countries teaching Chinese Kung Fu and Taiji, becoming well known internationally; the Chinese living abroad felt it was their honor to study under him.

In 1977 he went to Montreal and founded the Leung Kai Chinese Martial Arts Association where he taught Choi Li Fut Kung Fu and Tung Ping Taiji.  He had lots of overseas Chinese students and many westerners came to learn from him as well.  He was upstanding and well-respected by others, had many disciples and was known for his excellence in teaching.

Besides opening his Chinese Martial Arts Association, in 1981 Master Leung founded the Association for the Promotion of Chinese Culture (a legal charity in Canada) to help people to remember to pass along Chinese culture. By promoting Chinese Culture broadly it achieved its objective of East-West cultural exchange.  Educational activities included painting, Chinese language, calligraphy, Confucian talks, various performances, exhibitions and discussions for the decade he was in Montreal.  He brought great energy into the promotion of Chinese culture and pursued it its greatest extent, giving the overseas Chinese in Montreal the opportunity to learn [authentic] Chinese culture.  This demonstrated that master Leung was not only good at Kung Fu, but he did not forget Chinese culture and took it upon himself to spread it.

On Sunday May 31 1992 Master Leung passed away in his home at the age of 76.  The funeral was held at the Leung Kai Kwok Martial Arts Association and it illustrated his great commitment.

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A corn field after the harvest. Conewago Valley, Western NY. Photograph by Benjamin Judkins.

Obituary 2

• Overseas New Chinese Paper                                                                            
• “Chivalrous Hero: Remembering Chinese martial arts Master Leung Kai Wan”
• By Ng Wan Fung (Cantonese)
• June 13th, 1992

[Inset: A couplet for Master Leung Kai written by his student]

Appreciating Master Leung Kai

“Born of my father, taught by my teacher – I love them equally deeply.

Those who learn the martial way do it on the foundation of Confucian teachings, thus they can become a martial philosopher.”

By Ka Bei Hiu – respectfully

oOo

In martial arts novels we always hear the story of a martial arts enthusiast who loses his way and seeks out a teacher; when he returns he has become a chivalrous person.  In real life there was a story sort of like this, and the protagonist was Mr. Leung Kai Wan.  At the beginning of the 1970s Mr. Leung was an employ of a miscellaneous store in Chinatown.  Then he vanished.  When he reappeared he was a Chinese martial arts master; he opened a training hall and took on apprentices.  He didn’t go to the top of a mountain, but was instead invited by the American government to be a teacher of the martial arts [missing character] to the military, and in other American cities he developed the Chinese martial arts.  In Seattle the mayor gave him the key to the city.  Mr. Leung once gave me an ink painting about the martial arts [missing character].  At the very least we know that he loved the fighting arts.

Mr. Leung liked the martial arts from a young age.  He first learned from Master Wu Kam Chun and Fong Yuk Syu.  Afterwards [he studied] with many more masters.  Leung Kai Wan’s lineage is third generation Wu Ka Taijiquan and fourth generation Choy Li Fut.  In this way he became a high master.  He then took the important parts of various schools of Chinese martial arts and founded Tong Ping Taiji.  In 1982 master Leung founded the Association for the Promotion of Chinese Culture and organized celebrations for Confucius’s birthday and received acclaim from both the overseas Chinese community and the Canadian government.  For many years he was invited by the Canadian government to attend big celebrations and cultural activities.  He was a well-known and respected member of the community.  Through his good character and martial arts Brother Tong Ping went from being a store employ to an esteemed master in the Chinese community and respected by the local community.

Behind every successful man there is a woman.  Mr. Leung had three behind him.  The first was his loving and caring wife who took good care of the husband and children so that the entire household was in order and he could focus on developing his career.  The second was his female French student, Ms. Ka Bei Hiu, who was more Chinese than even the Chinese people.  She respected her master and earnestly studied both martial arts and Chinese philosophy.  One time at Mr. Leung’s birthday celebration she won accolades for her Taiji sword performance.  She not only helped with the administration of the Association for the Promotion of Chinese Culture, but also organized and assisted public relations efforts including those with the government and other cultural groups.

What of the third woman who put the Association for the Promotion of Chinese Culture and the Leung Kai Martial Arts Association on the road to success?  Who was this woman?  When he was in Hong Kong, on several evenings when he did not have class he went to Wan Chai’s Sau Teun Sports Field where a young woman sought him out to talk.  One evening when he was teaching in the martial arts hall the three sticks of incense in front of Guan Yu’s statue all of the sudden rose up and flew at the door.  At the same time a girl with the color drained from her face fled from the [entrance to the] school.  Afterward Master Leung followed the person to the Sau Tuen sports field and found “Her.”  She said she sought him out for help, but the deity Guang Yu refused to let her enter [the school].  She told Mr. Leung she had already found her enemy and hoped that he would avenge her…..As it turns out she was a woman who had been murdered several months before.  Mr. Leung told a Hong Kong newspaper reporter about these things and the newspaper carried a detailed story about the occurrence.  Because of this incident Mr. Leung deeply believed in the heavenly law of cause and effect, Guan Yu and the existence of spirits.  For his whole life he was righteous and took it upon himself to help other people, he used martial arts to strengthen his body and he used truth to convince people; this was the main reasons for Mr. Leung’s success.

Besides his prowess in the martial arts he was also accomplished in medicine.  For no cost he would see people, diagnose their illnesses, and distribute medicines which helped them to recover quickly.  In 1982 the author of this article had pain in both of his legs and Master Tong Ping and the French student, Ms. Ka Bei Hu, went to his home and gave him a Qi Gong massage.  Five minutes later his left leg was strong enough to support weight and ten minutes later he could walk with both legs.  After the visit on that day the author successfully recovered from his illness.  If at any point afterwards there was a problem he massaged his legs with an ointment left by Master Tong Ping and everything was ok.  The author also introduced Brother Tsang Yu Tak and he was cured as well.  The author was there and commemorated Tsang being healed by writing the “Yuen” character [occasionally associated with Daoism, meaning something out of the ordinary] with alcohol and ink.  Afterwards when looking at the “Yuen” character many friends mistook it as “Dragon.”

Mr. Leung is gone but his martial art is in the world forever.  Under the guidance and leadership of Ms. Ka Bei Hu the Leung Kai Martial Arts Association and the Association for the Promotion of Chinese Culture can prosper and his energy will always be there.

oOo

Forlorn birdhouse on a misty fall morning. Genesee Valley, Western NY. Source: Photo by Benjamin Judkins.

If you liked this you might also want to read: Reevaluating the “Theater of Combat”: A Critical Look at Charles Holcombe, Popular Religion and the Traditional Chinese Martial Arts.

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