Introduction

In a recent post we explored the life and career of Xiang Kairan (1890-1957), a seminal figure in the creation of the modern, media driven image, of the traditional Chinese martial arts.  Born to a wealthy family, and educated in both China and Japan, Xiang cemented his identity as a martial artist while a student living abroad.  In the West he is most frequently remembered as the author who inspired the screen play for the lost 1928 movie “The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple.”  This turned out to be a genre defining film that did much to establish the modern Wuxia story.

In China Xiang Kairan is most frequently remembered as a novelist.  Critics have called him the “father of Chinese martial arts fiction.”  He did much to reshape the world of “Rivers and Lakes” that later authors (such as Jin Yong) would fill with their own characters and stories.  Less frequently remembered is the fact that Xiang was also very politically active and became personally involved in some of the major military conflicts of the warlord era.  Indeed, it might be a mistake to ignore his more practical background when considering the nature of his writing.

In this “Research Note” I would like to take a closer look at some of Xiang’s writing that stem from yet another facet of his rich and varied career.  It is sometimes forgotten that this novelist and erstwhile adventurer was also a dedicated martial artist.  Xiang Kairan committed much of his free time to the study, teaching and promotion of China’s various hand combat systems.

As a young man he reports practicing various external styles, as well as Japanese swordsmanship and jujitsu (both facilitated by his overseas study).  Later in life it was Taijiquan that dominated his affections, and he studied with teachers from the Yang, Wu and Chen styles.  Xiang was also an institution builder.  He created and supported many societies dedicated to the promotion of the TCMA in Hunan, his home province.  He was also a staunch supporter of the new Guoshu program.

Xiang Kairan’s literary genius stemmed from the fact that he was a keen social observer.  In addition to studying the martial arts he closely observed the lives, struggles and conflicts of the individuals who promoted them.  Indeed, one might go so far as to say that he took a professional interest in the gossip, folklore and myths that surrounded these fighting systems.  His wuxia novels reflected in turn the rich supernatural folklore that was popular in Hunan’s boxing community, as well as the more grounded lineage politics, economic rivalries and personality clashes that defined mundane life.  This was the material that embroidered his most famous novels providing them with a sense of vitality that readers found intoxicating.

Yet Xiang Kairan does not appear to have been a fabulist.  This impression sometimes emerges, but it seems to be mostly the result of individuals attempting to read his explicitly fictional novels (including those that discussed actual historical figures such as Huo Yuanjia) as works of contemporary journalism.  Rather than being examples of biography, his more grounded novels have a relationship to the individuals that inspired them similar to Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926).  Indeed, the two authors were contemporaries.

A different picture of Xiang Kairan’s engagement with the martial arts emerges when we look at his personal essays on these subjects.  Paul Brennan has recently translated two of these (dating to the late 1920s and early 1950s) which are both worthy of careful study.

The immediate purpose of both of these essays is to comment on certain aspects of the training and practice of Taijiquan.  That was a subject of great personal interest for the author.  Further, the disappointing performance of some Taijiquan practitioners at the first Guoshu martial arts examination in 1928 (where the newly popularized style seemed incapable of defeating fighters from the supposedly “less sophisticated” external styles) provided Xian with a platform to explore problems with how the art was being taught and practiced.

As his literary critics were only too happy to note, Xiang Kairan’s prose are not tightly focused.  Instead he often circled his subjects and frequently finds himself exploring seemingly unconnected side streets.  A typical assessment of his flaws as an author is seen in the following review, “Buxiaosheng’s [Xiang’s pen-name] works are heavily influenced by Hunan folklore.  He writes realistically about gods and spirits, and his stories are well-plotted, making them worth reading.  But they are flawed by his lack of attention to structure, seeming to be writing with his fingers instead of his brain, the words pouring out in an often repetitive and at times incoherent torrent.”

At first glance his lengthy 1929 personal essay “My Experience of Taiji Boxing” would seem to confirm this critic’s judgement.  Yet after reading the piece through a few times I suspect that, while indirect in style, a single coherent argument does run through this piece.  In the wake of the rapid growth of interest in Taijiquan during the 1920s, and then its unexpected reversal of fortunes in 1928, Xiang Kairan seeks to offer a broadly based critique of some of the dominant trends that he has seen in the practice of the Chinese martial arts during the 1920s.

Many of his discussions are technical in nature and of the most interest to other Taijiquan players.  Some touch on social and cultural themes.  The new Guoshu system also comes in for critical analysis.  Yet in other passages Xiang Kairan turns his attention to the economic markets that have evolved to monetize the spread of the traditional martial arts.

Given my own prior research I find his observations on these two final topics to be especially interesting.  The overall impression that arises from a reading of Xiang is that we are dealing with an individual who possesses genuine antiquarian interests, yet knows his source materials well enough that he is deeply suspicious of attempts to venerate the past.  While his basic values are very different from many of the May 4^th reformers (who viciously criticized his martial arts novels), he nevertheless shares a certain faith in the tools of modernity.

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.)

Likewise, Xiang Kairan was no stranger to the economic marketplace.  He understood what readers wanted and grew wealthy through his ability to produce commercially successful novels.  One would suspect that at least some of his contemporary fame was based on the success of his publishers in advertising his work.

Xiang understood the power of markets and the necessity of advertising, yet he was suspicious of their impact on the traditional Chinese martial arts.  For someone who made a living by selling martial arts myths, he was disturbed by the easy with which martial arts instructors seemed concoct their own founding legends.  While he acknowledged the power of markets, he also foresaw their ability warp a message in transmission.

Transmission, it seems, was one of Xiang Kairan’s primary concerns.  How does one tell old stories in new ways?  How are the hand combat traditions of the imperial era to be understood and transmitted as today’s “national arts?” These are questions with no easy answers.

What follows are four excerpts selected from Paul Brennan’s translation of Xiang Kairan’s 1929 essay that deal with these issues.  The first of them speaks to the problem of transmission in an almost epistemological sense.  In the current era, how much authority can we allow to “appeals to authority” versus knowledge that has been developed by personal experience?  Decades later, Bruce Lee would transmit a certain portion of this debate to North America, yet its roots stretch back to the 1920s if not before.

The second passage examines the question of “fantastic transmission,” this time tying its growing popularity directly to the growing competition within the martial arts marketplace.  Again, one might think of this as a topic that Xiang would have some first-hand knowledge of giving the startling success of his supernaturally inflected works of fiction.

The third excerpt is the one that I find the most personally interesting.  In it Xian seeks to contrast the various ways in which the TCMA have been transmitted in northern and southern China.  His basic claim is that while transmission in the North has been deeply embedded in personal relationships, arts in the south are much more likely to be passed on through commercially mediated relationships in which students act as consumers rather than disciples.  This, he maintains, has had a critical impact on the recent development of the arts in these two regions.

While advanced as a rant, there is actually much merit to his basic observation.  As Jon Neilson and I argued in our book, The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts, the southern martial marketplace was much more developed than its northern counterpart, and it emerged at an earlier point in time.  While the relative benefit of one system versus the other is actually a highly subject question, Xian is correct in his assessment that market forces impacted the way that these arts were transmitted.

Obviously he was more familiar with Shanghai than Foshan or Hong Kong, but it is hard not to think of Ip Man’s career as we read of the real estate woes that beset the teachers of the Southern martial arts (forced to move from one rented location to another every few months), or the role of frequent challenge fights in determining one’s success in a marketplace that is both economically and physically competitive.  This account is useful precisely because it helps to situate prominent southern masters within a broader social context.

In the final quote Xiang Kairan again returns to the topic of mythmaking and market-based competition, this time within the newly established Guoshu movement.  He notes with some accuracy the inherent contradiction in claiming on the one hand to seek to unify a singular set of “national arts” while at the same time employing divisive, and entirely ahistorical, categories (in this case Shaolin vs. Wudang) to do so.

A typical economic market succeeds when competition allows for a range of goods and services to be offered to consumers at an efficient price.  Yet national culture does not necessarily benefit from fierce competition in the same way that other goods might.

Xiang implies that in this case value is maximized by sharing a certain set of identities and beliefs as widely as possible within a given community.  Such has always been the nature of the nation building project, and the Guoshu movement took this mission on as its own.  Hence its horror of the pervasive factionalization and regionalism of the traditional Chinese hand combat systems.  In this final excerpt Xiang notes that competition, and the need for advertising, might also promote this undesirable outcome through the mechanism of ongoing product-differentiation.

Xiang Kairan’s 1929 personal essay offers a remarkable window into the state of the Republic era martial arts, as well as the mindset and values of those reformers who sought to promote the new Guoshu system.  Far from being disturbed by the somewhat lateral style of his writing, students of social history should be grateful for his keen skills of social observation.  Like all great stories, his account of the Republic era martial arts contains a multitude of layers.

Xiang Kairan

Excerpts from Xiang Kairan, “My Experience of Taiji Boxing,” 1929.  Translation by Paul Brennan

Venerating the Ancient vs. Experience Based Practice in the TCMA

It is the habit of the people of our nation to delight in venerating our forefathers and sneering at our contemporaries. Because of this, although the martial arts world is replete with creative and talented people, what they have invented and developed we do not dare to accept. Instead we always put our trust in ancient people who have passed things down secretly within their families, or who have received instructions in a dream. To find this type of situation in books and records is not rare at all.

As for the boxing art that Zhang Sanfeng passed down, how could we know that he did not create it himself? Though there is insufficient evidence to support the idea, it is believed that he received his art in a dream from the “Dark Warrior” Emperor. People nowadays practice martial arts from dawn to dusk for years or even decades and still find it difficult to achieve the level they wish. Zhang Sanfeng received his art from a spirit in a dream, and then immediately used it to defeat bandits. Is there really such a difference of intelligence and ability between ancient and modern people? Zhang Sanfeng taught his art to Song Yuanqiao, Zhang Songxi, and seven others, but no detailed records of his techniques were passed down.

Within Huang Baijia’s Boxing Methods of the Internal School, there is the five-word secret: “focused, potent, expedient, sticky, precise”. There are also secrets within Secrets of the Shaolin Boxing Arts by a certain venerable monk [including another and somewhat similar five-word secret: 印、擒、側、緊、切 “sealing, grabbing, slanting, tensing, cutting”]. The most popular boxing art is now Taiji, but these five words have not been taught as part of it.

I think that boxing arts should use refined principles and tested techniques, and that the criteria should be that they do not violate the principles of physiology or mechanics. There is no need to make strained interpretations or trust the hyperbole of ancient people. Just because a tailor might bow to his statue of the Yellow Emperor or a carpenter has a shrine to his patron saint Lu Ban, there is no reason to think that actually means anything.

Fantastic Transmission, Lost Lineages and Economic Competition

There are so very many styles of our boxing arts. Throughout the whole nation, there are dozens within a single province, even within a single county. This being the case in the boxing arts world, there ought to be a great many talented people, and who are thus producing a lot of ability in others. I have carefully studied the results and have to come to know that in this spreading of all sorts of boxing arts, it is by no means a sure thing that they are being taught by competent people. Many are simply relying on the fame of their teacher.

Within the last two or three decades, they have disseminated dozens of boxing arts. Even though they proclaim their art has been passed down from some ancient figure, such as Yue Fei or Damo, there are also some who claim it to be from Sun Wukong or the Maitreya Buddha. All their techniques are in fact more similar than they are unique, and within any solo set, there are only a few techniques that conform to boxing principles and have practical function. Why would these teachers go to so much trouble to create such a variety of postures? Simply to solicit customers!

Working class patrons of a stall selling sequentially illustrated martial arts novels. This 1948 AP photo illustrates the importance of heroic martial arts tales in southern China, even for individuals with limited literacy.

Northern vs. Southern Boxing

“To learn a boxing art in the north, you do obeisance to a teacher and study with him for an indefinite period. Those who are devoted may engage a teacher to live in their home or they might leave home to live in the teacher’s house. To put in three to five years of continuous training is quite common.

In the south, it is often more limited. You can either engage a teacher to live in your home or you can learn from a teacher who has reserved a warehouse space to teach students, holding the space for thirty or forty days, fifty days at the most. Once the time has expired, the students all disperse, and if you wish to continue training, another space has to be reserved.

The students enter the space on the first day, disperse on the last day, and in the meantime they have to train hard day and night with the goal of being able to apply the art once they leave the building. After going through two or three of these warehouse sessions, if you are still not able to defeat ruffians, then your teacher will fall into disrepute.

In the case of Taiji Boxing, it is really not possible to calculate how many days it will take to get results. For other boxing arts with highly refined principles and very detailed techniques, it is just as difficult for foundation and function to be completed within the space of a hundred days.

It is always the case that among practitioners of boxing arts, many of them are crude individuals who would not understand this point. If after two or three sessions of warehouse training, they are still unable to defeat opponents, they do not find the fault in the teacher’s skill level not being high enough, and instead assume the teacher is holding back some of the transmission.

When teachers expect their students to get results according to a schedule, the genuine art gets put aside in favor of a few select techniques, then it gets distorted into the superficial movements of itinerant performers, until a solo set becomes created that is steeped in the common superstitious traditions of ancient people.

When the postures are simple and easy to practice, people with decent intelligence can learn it in just over a week. After a mere half month of instruction, they leave the warehouse with what they have gained and are surprised by their ability to beat up ruffians, the teacher’s fame consequently rises, and they continue to practice for a number of days. But people who tire of old things and always want new things will not continue to practice after about a year unless changes are made to the set.”

The Nexus of Lineage Myths and Advertising within Guoshu

“When the Nanjing Martial Arts Institute was opened, I was in Hankou [in eastern Hubei], where I noticed in a newspaper that they were dividing their curriculum into two schools – Wudang and Shaolin – and appointing specialists for each of them. For “Wudang” to be isolated like this in the promotion of our martial arts is really not a good idea, and so I sent a letter to a friend in Nanjing who was working at the Institute, discussing in detail the pros and cons.

While I have nothing against division of skills, for divisions create competition, and competition produces progress, this is not true in the case of martial arts. Whichever of our nation’s martial arts, too few records have been passed down, the arts have been passed through too many hands over time, and students are hardly ever able to understand the literature.

Certain styles were passed down from certain people, but so long ago that it cannot be verified, unlike schools of painting and literature, for which there is no confusion. The categorizing of the two branches as Wudang and Shaolin has been made on the basis of ignoring the records of other martial arts. But whether or not what is being spread these days can actually be classified as Wudang or Shaolin, how could these two branches be able to comprise all of Chinese martial arts, including those that were transmitted by itinerant performers, or martial artists who taught their skills to make a living. In order to cater to our national habit of venerating ancient people, we have arbitrarily dragged forth ancient figures known to everyone, even to women and children, and assigned them the roles of founders of our arts simply for the sake of advertizing.

In the south there is a Qi Family Boxing, said to be passed down from the “Sage Equal to Heaven” [Qi Tian Dasheng – one of the names for Sun Wukong, the mythical Monkey King]. There is also a Maitreya Boxing, said to be passed down by the Maitreya Buddha [which would presumably have involved another tutorial in a dream]. These are far more ridiculous claims than that of Shaolin being passed down from Damo.

When people have received their knowledge through actual instruction, and are not using it as a means for making a living through either performing or teaching, their great respect for their art is not unreasonable. What is reproachable is when people contentiously pledge their lives to their “tradition”, for by this means, all the schools and styles become jealous of each other and hate each other. After a thousand centuries, there is no telling how much trouble would be caused by such behavior, or how many lives would have been ruined.

Such people have a limited knowledge, as well as a mentality of taking advantage of their forefathers in order to advertise themselves, a flaunting that cannot be admonished enough. And we can only blame gentlemen such as Zhang [Zhijiang] and Li [Jinglin] for having the ambition of promoting martial arts without also thinking of doing away with the vice of schools factionalizing.

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If you enjoyed this post you might also want to read: Spreading the Gospel of Kung Fu: Print Media and the Popularization of Wing Chun (Part 2 of 3)

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Vintage photography, circa 1860-1900. Photographer unknown.

Introduction

Some of the most popular posts at Kung Fu Tea have examined vintage images of traditional martial artists.  These are also among my favorites to research.  Yet it seems that I have neglected this subject with all of the other projects that have come up this summer.  Hopefully this post will go some distance towards rectifying that oversight.

The internet is both a blessing and curse to those doing research.  It allows us to regularly discover new treasures.  Yet such finds are often presented in a decontextualized way that makes interpreting them challenging.

This post adds two new vintage images to our discussion.  Unfortunately both are “orphaned,” meaning that I have yet to locate the exact place and date of their creation.  Nor do they share a single medium.  Nevertheless, these images are thematically linked in ways that suggest an interesting moment in the evolution of Western views of Chinese boxing.

Two Images, One Theme

Our first image is a late 19^th century albumen print showing four martial artists.  I have not been able to locate any information about the photographer who produced it.  The dress and hair styles of the athletes suggest that it cannot have been taken later than 1911.  The fact that this is almost certainly an albumen photo (note the sepia tones and the ease with which the corner of the thin photographic paper bent off its backing) suggest a date prior to 1900, at the latest.  Thus this photograph dates to somewhere from 1860 to 1900.

Perhaps, if we allow ourselves to indulge in a little speculation, it might be possible to shave a few decades of this interval.  The fact that this was shot in a photography studio against a backdrop suggests the need for a longer exposure time. Consider also the subject matter and composition of this image.

The mirrored symmetry in the shot is remarkable.  Three of the individuals are shirtless, revealing highly muscled bodies.  The two boxers in white stand at ease, meanwhile the inner pair appear to be wrestling.

At first it appears that the theme of the photograph might be something like “physical strength through struggle.”  No one would doubt the athletic ability of these individuals.

This point is further emphasized by the heavy stone weights (commonly used by wrestlers, boxers and soldiers) that define the physical space on which the camera focuses. Given the faded nature of the photo it is hard to make out any details of the ball in the foreground, but I suspect that upon closer inspection we would discover that it is carved from stone as well.

But brute strength is not the only idea that this shot is meant to evoke.  While the inner pair is involved in combat, the boxers on the outside stand at ease.  The photographer also chose a painted backdrop meant to evoke the bucolic Chinese countryside of rivers, mountains and quaint cottages.  Given the importance of Willow Ware in creating the romanticized early 19^th century Western mental image of Chinese life, such an artistic choice is unlikely to have been unintentional.

The symbolic nature of the composition is further confirmed by two seemingly out of place artifacts in the foreground.  Here the viewer finds a tea pot and cup.  Of course China was famous for its tea exports.  Interestingly both tea and China serving ware were among the few export items that could be found in pretty much any middle class house in the West.  They were both ubiquitous and evocative of material comfort and success.  China provided the indispensable goods that for many people symbolized a “civilized” life.

At first glance we might assume that the intended subject of this image is the traditional martial arts.  Yet upon further meditation I suspect that this is not really the case.  Instead the photographer has taken China writ large as his subject.  It is in the juxtaposition of the heavy training weights and the delicate teapots, or the violent wrestlers and the peaceful countryside, that the true intent of the image appears.

What at first appeared to be a simple symmetry is really a sort of visual dialectic.  This is not so much “China” as any visitor would visually see it on the street.  Rather, the composition of the various elements suggests that this may have been an attempt to communicate the nature of China as the photographer had experienced it.  Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say as the viewer wished to understand it.  In its mix and juxtaposition of symbols the image resembles the still life paintings of a previous era.

Given the wonderfully evocative nature of this photograph it’s a shame that I have not been able to figure out who produced it.  Yet rest assured, the search continues.

While thinking about my frustration in researching the first image, I was reminded of another piece of hand combat related art that has also been on my mind.  A few years ago I first encountered an engraving by the French artist Felix Elie Regamey titled “La Preparation Aux Examens Militaires, A Canton.”

It’s a great image, and at the time I had very much wanted to add it to my collection.  Yet as I researched it I quickly discovered that compared to his better known Japanese subjects, Regamey’s Chinese works do not seem to have received very much attention.  In fact, it is hard to know exactly when this piece of art was first done (engravings, by their very nature, lend themselves to reproduction and subsequent republication throughout an artist’s career.)

Later in his life Regamey adopted a more relaxed style which, to my untrained eye, looks as though it may have been influenced by Japanese or Chinese brush paintings and wood block prints.  He does seem to have produced other Chinese subjects in the more structured and formal style seen above between roughly the middle of the 1860s and the middle of the 1880s.  It seems likely that this particular study also dates to the same basic time period.

Again, the dominant theme of the image is physical strength.  Here we see two martial artists preparing for the military service exam by lifting the sorts of heavy stone weights used in the testing of candidates.  Around them are the other implements used in the exam.

On the left wall we see a rack of the heavy knives, or halberds, that one was expected to wield.  On the other side of the image hangs archery equipment, perhaps the most critical aspect of the exam.  All that is missing is a horse, as candidates were also expected to know how to ride.  The two martial artists are at the same time highly muscled yet relaxed.

Once again, it is impossible to miss the unique mirrored symmetry of this scene.  The only item that is out of place is the stone block that is currently being used.  The natural result of this composition is to focus the viewer’s attention on the only singular item in the image, the religious altar placed in the center of the composition.  Here we see the expected lamps, incense and offering table.  Yet as the eye expands outward we quickly encounter something else, calligraphy.

By this the viewer learns that these exam candidates are not mere day laborers or common soldiers.  Rather they are educated individuals, masters of both the body and the mind.  Of course basic literacy skills were necessary to complete the military exam, yet one did not have to be a trained scholar to do well.

The important thing in this case is not how accurately this image captured the actual level of literacy possessed by the average examination candidate.  More critical is what it communicated to its Western viewers about the nature of Chinese life and society.

A dialectic logic again emerges from the composition.  The overriding impression is of a balance between physical strength and cultural attainment.  The “mysterious orient” is shown as existing in that liminal joining of the body and the mind.  Of course such suggestions would have resonated with the romantic turn in late 19^th century European thought.

Yet in some respects this engraving is more complicated than the photograph.  Boxing and wrestling were popular 19^th century pastimes in both the East and West.  Athletics never really needed any justification for a Western consumer.  A fast paced wrestling match was a good in and of itself.  The virtue bestowed by success in such a realm was self-evident to all.

In contrast, the individuals in the second image are not really “athletes.”  They are aspiring military officers.  And Western viewers surely would have noted that they were training with the bow well into the age of the rifle and revolver.  While a generally positive image, and one that noted the physical strength and dedication of the Chinese people (e.g., it is an image of daily physical training, and not the exam itself), this picture also would have underlined China’s militarily backwardness.

If the audience is meant to approach this piece from a more “romantic” perspective, an emphasis on physical effort rather than mass produced industrial goods is not necessarily a bad thing.  Yet while the overall aesthetic of the first photograph is rather “modern,” (wrestling was just as popular in 1900 as it had been in 1800) there can be no doubt that the second image plays into widespread notions of the “timeless and inscrutable orient.”

Chinese Boxers before the “Sick Man of Asia”

A number of Chinese and Western commentators in the early 20th century went out of their way to paint the Chinese as physically weak, often unhealthy, individuals.  Many of China’s economic, social and political struggles were laid unfairly at the feet of its citizens.  This tendency reached its zenith in the early 20^th century when long running debates about the effects of opium use and a string of military defeats coalesced in a (mostly domestic) debate as to whether, and why, China was the “Sick Man of East Asia.”

I have discussed these developments in other posts. One should not underestimate how important these debates were in shaping the TCMA in the modern era.  After the humiliating setback suffered during the Boxer Rebellion (when the martial arts were very nearly driven out of the social discourse), these discussions opened a space in which martial artists could claim to advance the national good through a return to traditional values.

The impact of these discussions can still be felt today.  The mythology of the Jingwu Association, as well as Bruce Lee’s films, ensures that these images (and insecurities) live on.

What interests me about both of these images is that they predate this entire social discourse.  I suspect (admittedly with insufficient evidence) that both the engraving and the photo date to roughly the early 1880s.  But even if that estimate is off by a decade in either direction, they are clearly a product of the period of China’s “Self-Strengthening Movement.”

The enthusiasm and self-confidence in these images is palpable.  They neither doubt the physical capabilities of the Chinese people, nor do they seek to turn away from core cultural values in the quest for athletic excellence (as recommended by the May 4^th reformers).  Nor are they shy about communicating this self-confidence to the world.

In terms of geo-political events, the 1880s came a generation after China’s defeats by the British in the South, and 15 years before its diplomatically devastating loss to the Japanese.  While China clashed with France in the middle of the 1880s, it managed to win a number of battles and avoided the same sense of military humiliation.  The production of such images even suggests some sort of market for visions of a stable and strengthening China in the West.  Meanwhile, the Self-Strengthening Movement was giving rise to diverse efforts, some of which contributed to the rise of modern Taijiquan as well as other martial arts. Yet all of this would be abandoned following the national defeats suffered in 1895 and 1900.

Eventually the fierce public debate over China’s status as the “Sick Man of East Asia” would subside, and a growing sense of cultural confidence would again characterize the traditional martial arts.  Still, images from an earlier era force us to ask how the evolution of these fighting systems would have unfolded in the absence of the Sino-Japanese War and the waves of revolution, political chaos and cultural self-doubt that followed in its wake.  Both images offer us a glimpse into this realm of alternate possibilities.

oOo

If you enjoyed this discussion you might also want to read: Two Encounters with Bruce Lee: Finding Reality in the Life of the Little Dragon

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

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!

  Nima King.  Source: South China Morning Post.

News From All Over

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martial Arts Studies by Paul Bowman (2015)

Martial Arts Studies

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

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

Striking Beauty by Barry Allen

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

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

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

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

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

SUNY Press Book Sale, Only One Week Left!

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

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

Prof. Kyle Green competing in a grappling tournament.  Source: Kyle Green.

Introduction

Welcome to the eighth entry in our series of guest posts titled “Doing Research.”  If you missed the first essay by D. S. Farrer (which provides a global overview of the subject), the second by Daniel Mroz (how to select a school or teacher for research purposes), the third by  Jared Miracle (learning new martial arts systems while immersed in a foreign culture), the fourth by Thomas Green (who is only in it for the stories), the fifth by Daniel Amos (who discusses some lies he has told about martial artists), the sixth by Charles Russo (who has great advice on the fine art of hanging out), or the seventh by Dale Spence (on ethnographic methods and dealing with radically unexpected events while in the field) be sure to check them out!

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

In today’s post Prof. Kyle Green offers some important advice for new ethnographers seeking to become better observers.  While our personal experiences on the mats are important, its also critical to pay close attention to everything that surrounds and upholds these brief moments of intense interaction.  Embodied experience is never simply self-interpreting.

Kyle Green is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Utica College. His research on pain and community in the mixed martial arts gym, the connection between storytelling and the embodied experience, representations of masculinity in Super Bowl commercials, the relationship between binge drinking and athletic participation, and how people discuss socially controversial issues has appeared in journals such as Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Social & Cultural Geography, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Qualitative Sociology, and International Review for the Sociology of Sport. Kyle co-produces and co-hosts the Give Methods a Chance podcast, and is co-authoring a text of the same name. Kyle is also currently working on a book on the allure of training in mixed martial arts. For more information on Prof. Green and his research visit www.kylegreen.org

Students talking after training. Photo courtesy of Daniel Velle.

Taking Seriously the Mundane

Training was done.

It had been a relatively unstructured and relaxed day. Pete, the instructor, had given the majority of his attention to Pat whose amateur mixed martial arts debut was now just a handful of days away. They were working through a few minor details of how Pat could more efficiently use the cage wall to get back to his feet while taking minimal damage. The rest of us were scattered haphazardly across the mats, chairs, and floor—the amount of sweat that had soaked through our respective shirts, and accumulated in puddles underneath us, provided a clear indicator of how much each participant had pushed themselves during a day with virtually no oversight. Some were removing gear—unstrapping head gear, taking off gloves, unwrapping hands, removing gis, pulling off drenched rash-guards—others gently stretched or were taking a moment to relax and recover.

Cris, a violin player for the orchestra was talking about his upcoming travel plans with Andrew, a patent lawyer, while they both did some light stretching. Andrew responded by sharing his dream trip to the jiu-jitsu schools (and “dangerous streets”) in Rio de Janeiro. Mark, a hip IT consultant and Ed, a custodial engineer, engaged in a loud exchange about whether or not people who ride fixed-gear bikes are “pussies” who were “blowing their trust funds.” Their conversation was punctuated by frequent laughter. Sam, a jazz guitarist and Marine vet, Stewart, an ex-bodybuilder and Army vet, and Steve, a young veterinary’s assistant, debated the ideal fighting body and the proper exercises and nutrition to get to that body. Ray, a cook, was telling Pat, a young mechanic, about fighting at parties and in basements back when MMA was really underground and how he would show up to work bruised-and-battered. Luke, a young, athletic bartender made his way over to the timer that indicated the beginning and end of the 5-minute rounds. His frustration with the device led to a rant about outdated technology that eventually transformed into a prediction about how phones would soon be able to hook into our nervous systems to allow better ease of use. George an accountant and professional golfer talked to me about a recent news story on bullying in grade school and whether it was a social crisis or just something boys had always experienced and would always have to deal with. And, Mark, a industrial welder, was using the small mat burn on his elbow as an excuse to admire his body in the mirror—twisting his body to look at his arm flexing his triceps, tightening his pectorals, and inspecting his increasingly defined stomach and recently tattooed chest.

The conversations continued as the men slowly prepared to head home. Groups mixed, others separated, and new ones formed. Talk ebbed and flowed as people showered, mixed protein drinks, finished stretching, packed their gear, trickled out of the gym, leaned against their vehicles, and finally drove away.

For my dissertation, and current book project, I trained alongside and engaged in conversation with the people who fill the mixed martial arts (MMA) gyms that dot the Twin Cities metropolitan region. For nearly six-years I tried to make sense of and theorize the allure of spending lunch hours and after work learning to punch, kick, choke, and joint-lock, and then trying out those techniques on fellow gym-members. Some had dreams of making money as professional cage-fighters, but the majority had no intention of ever testing the prizefighting waters. Instead this was a prime case of “deep play” – a turn of phrase coined by Jeremy Bentham and popularized by Clifford Geertz to describe the heavy investment in games and activities that have seemingly little utilitarian value.

Over time I learned that the seemingly meaningless moments of downtime before, in-between, and after the painful and violent exchanges were some of the most revealing. It is during these mundane moments that participants build on the shared physical experience by telling stories that shape their understanding of MMA, masculinity, and their daily pursuits. In this essay, I use my experience studying studying mixed martial arts to suggest that it is the boring and seemingly peripheral that is key to understanding the allure of MMA.

Recent scholars of martial arts, sport, and physical culture have a done an excellent job demonstrating the value of the ethnographic method for delving into the corporeal experience of training. Scholars inspired by Loïc Wacquant’s seminal work on boxing, Body & Soul, have treated the body as both a topic and a tool (see Fighting Scholars edited by Raúl Sánchez García and Dale C. Spencer for excellent collection of works demonstrating this approach). As academics took to the mats and stepped into the ring, they offered insight into the sensory experience of entering a martial arts gym and submitting to the techniques that callous the body and transform it into a more effective combat tool. Much of this work is great. I myself still return regularly to my heavily creased and thoroughly underlined copy of Body & Soul for methodological and theoretical inspiration.

It isn’t surprising that ethnographers of martial arts ends up focusing heavily on the physical act itself. All the hours spent punching and kicking the air, pads, and each other is clearly what stands out about time spent in the gym. And, if I asked someone in an MMA gym what they do during training, their answer would certainly revolve around the physical skills they gain and the act of fighting. Much like the surfer who forgets the hours of driving, carrying gear along the beach, suiting up, and paddling out before catching the big wave, the gym member’s memory is dominated by the ten-minutes of sparring that left both participants bloodied and battered. So, of course the ethnographer of martial arts ends up spending a lot of time trying to better understand engagement in the physical and potentially violent practice through looking at the physical and potentially violent moments.

We should also not forget to consider the academic’s experience as they head out into the field. In leaving behind the social science tower and joining pro, amateur, and hobbyist fighters on the mats, I was stepping from a decidedly disembodied space to an explicitly embodied one. It is easy to get caught up and take pride in participating in a world where it is the body, and ability to use one’s body, that is capital. The chance to perform a type of masculinity not celebrated in academia can be particularly seductive. So, it is not surprising that stories of violent encounters are offered with vivid detail with the author front and center. Or, for that matter, as the ethnographer interacts with participants outside of the gym, perhaps it is not surprising when a night of drinking and debauchery makes it into the text rather than a few hours helping someone move furniture into a new apartment.

A group photo. Source: Kyle Green.

Lost in the focus on the physical experience of training and moments of peak excitement is all that other stuff that goes on. These encounters beyond the moment of physical exchange make up the majority of the time that people spend in the gym. For this reason, as researchers of martial arts, we are guilty of effectively only exploring the tip of the iceberg. It is worth noting that this is true outside of studies of martial arts—the more interesting story to me is what happens before and after the base-jump, or what happens the day before and the morning after an aggressive demonstration of masculinity and a night of substance filled risks?

From a pragmatic perspective, following my insight does not require a dramatic change for the ethnographer already interested in pursuing the “carnal approach”. The same path to entering the field, taking part in the practice of interest, and monitoring how you are both shaping and being shaped by the field holds. However, taking seriously the mundane does require an expansion of interest to all those other seemingly less exciting moments and treating them with the same reflexive awareness. For instance, much like describing how repeatedly kicking a Thai bag conditions the shin, the researcher can use their immersion into a field to uncover how repetitions of a particular narrative of why men need to fight shared while recovering from sparring shape the way they perceive the world. Or instead of explicating how working on a particular grappling movement programs the body, the researcher can use their experience in the gym to detail the feeling of openness and types of conversations that follows an intense sparring session in comparison to the more perfunctory exchanges as people arrive and get ready for class. For instance, on the drives home from the gym, I often found myself using my phone to record observations about what people were talking about while they watched people spar rather than the sparring itself.

Reflecting back on my research, two guiding questions helped me in extending my research to take seriously the mundane and often-ignored.

First, what does the practice enable? In other words, what does all that stuff that people like to focus on allow to happen? In this case, through spending time on the mats and in the changing room after hard sessions of training, I experienced how the exchange of pain forged a trust that allowed the men to share a level of vulnerability and honesty they would not have otherwise. Bill, a grizzled Navy vet who made his money in banking, liked to explain this intimacy with some variation of, “No reason to be fake or act tough after some old guy just had you trapped with his balls on your face.” Or, as the aforementioned Ray explains, “when you tap, and your opponent chooses to let go…your life was literally in his hands.” Time and time again, I witnessed men sharing intimate details about failed relationships, unhappiness with the path they have taken, or just trying to figure it all out with people they shared little in common with other than the recent sharing of sweat, blood, chokes, punches, and pain. Precisely because of the physical vulnerabilities and fears that are shared on the mat, the men are more at ease in abandoning the cold facade of masculinity that dominates much of their lives.

Second, how do people make sense of the practice. In other words, how do the participants discuss what just occurred to explain what they were doing and why there we doing it. As I wrote about in my article, Tales from the Mat: Narrating Men and Meaning Making in the Mixed Martial Arts Gym (2015), participants work in tandem to craft complicated stories of what led them to the MMA gym and what they learn from the experience. The stories invoke an array of topics including but not limited to necessity (“it is a violent world”), evolutionary biology and masculine urges, celebrating the exotic, spiritual teachings, alienation from a consumption-oriented society, and the body as a project. In the MMA gym, the bulk of the situating and explaining occurs in the marginalized moments rather than through the instilling of a set narrative from the instructor. It is through the rather ordinary act of simply talking that ensures a punch is never just a punch, and a choke is never just a choke.

While these two guiding questions are related, each takes advantage of different strength of ethnographic research. The former focuses on behavior; taking advantage of the researcher’s access to observe what actually happens rather than what people say happens. Because I was immersed in the scene I was able to witnesses and participate in the behaviors that simply get left out of most accounts and interviews. The latter focuses on the process through which meaning gets constructed. By being on the mat I am able to see how fragments of discourse get woven together to explain the shared experience that just happened and motivate continued participation. Taken together, the two questions help reveal how it is only through taking seriously the mundane and often marginalized that we can understand the exciting moments central to the practice and the larger allure of spending time in the MMA gym.

Prof. Kyle Green teaches in the Sociology department of Utica College.

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If you would like to further explore Prof. Green’s research see: “Tales from the Mat: Narrating Men and Meaning Making in the Mixed Martial Arts Gym.” (Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2015)

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

Jared Miracle. 2016. Now with Kung Fu Grip! How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America. Jefferson, North Carolina:McFarland & Company. 185 pages. $29.95

Introduction

Now with Kung Fu Grip is the scholarly yet accessible one volume history of the Asian fighting arts in America that current students of martial arts studies and popular culture need.  Drawing on years of both archival and field research Jared Miracle begins by asking how the traditional martial arts first arrive in America, who practiced them, and what it actually means to assert the fundamentally Asian nature of these practices in an era when one can easily buy a star spangled red, white and blue karate gi.

To answer these questions Dr. Miracle takes us on a historical tour of the various ways in which notions of masculinity and nationalism have contributed to the almost continual reinvention of these fighting systems in modern China, Japan and the United States.  While readers may be surprised to learn that the “Asia” which they enact in their nightly taekwondo or kung fu classes is an almost entirely mythological construct (rather than a historically and geographically real place), they are also likely to take away from this book a better understanding of why they fight.  Academic readers who are not yet familiar with the growing field of Martial Arts Studies will be confronted with a parsimonious yet powerful illustration of the central role of the martial arts and combat sports in the development of Western popular culture.

Stanley Henning’s greatest contribution to the field of history was to demonstrate that an improper understanding of the traditional Chinese fighting systems was dangerous not in that it led to a faulty understanding of the martial arts, but rather because it could potentially skew our mental image of all Chinese society.  Far from being a topic of only secondary interest, he showed that the martial arts were deeply implicated in both the daily and political life of the empire and Republic.  They simply cannot be ignored.

Drawing on a rich vein of archival and ethnographic evidence, Miracle has, in his first book, advanced a very similar argument about the role of hand combat practice in modern American life.  We ignore these subjects at our peril.  This volume deserves a spot of the shelf of any serious student of martial arts studies of 20^th century popular culture.

Jean Claude Van Damme demonstrates a flying sidekick in Bloodsport. While the quality of this film won’t seem any better after reading Now With Kung Fu Grip!, why it was made (and achieved such popularity with fans) will make a lot more sense.

Digging Deeper

Yet what sort of historical and cultural analysis has Dr. Miracle given us?  Does it skew towards a popular or scholarly audience?  Is it suitable for use in university courses?  Lastly, how does this book interface with the existing Martial Arts Studies literature?

Drawing on the Thomas Kuhn’s sociological analysis of the sciences, we might be tempted to assert that the projects one encounters in Martial Arts Studies fall into one of two basic categories.  First we have “grand theories” that attempt to establish a broad theoretical framework or world view.  Some of these works may even attempt to establish a new paradigm for subsequent scholars to follow by promoting novel methodological approaches or by drawing on newly available bodies of empirical evidence.

Establishing a new and unique theoretical framework is tricky business.  And a paradigm shift within a field’s thinking may only evident in retrospect.  Unsurprisingly most researchers dedicate their time to more manageable, medium sized, research questions.  The hope here is that our understanding will advance more quickly through a series of modest, easily replicable, steps.  This is how the process of “normal science” unfolds.

It is not hard to find examples of these two approaches within the field of Martial Arts Studies.  Paul Bowman’s 2015 volume Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries (Rowman & Littlefield) is, by its own admission, an attempt to introduce a broadly interdisciplinary audience (composed of historians, anthropologists, film studies students and social scientists) to a new set of questions and theoretical tools drawn from critical studies.  The aim of his project seems to be to establish a new paradigm for the study of these fighting systems.

Meir Shahar’s groundbreaking work on the Shaolin Temple, in contrast, focuses only on a tightly focused set of historical questions.  What were the historical Shaolin fighting arts, how did they evolve, and how did Buddhist monks (bound by their monastic vows to a path of pacifism) negotiate their involvement with the violent world of armies, bandits and martial artists?  While a bracing read, Shahar did not attempt to fundamentally alter the historical and theoretical frameworks by which scholars have made sense of China’s past.  His goal was to work within these structures, using them to contextualize and support his own findings.  His is a textbook example of what can be accomplished through the process of “normal science.”

I have noticed that within the realm of Martial Arts Studies the size of an author’s epistemological goals often vary with the scope of the historical questions that they seek to tackle.  I am not aware of any logical necessity why this must be the case.  Yet it seems that projects attempting to explain more of the world are likely to push paradigmatic boundaries to a greater extent than tightly focused studies.

Readers will find Dr. Miracle’s book to be engaging precisely because attempts to do both of these things well.  Such a goal is nothing if not ambitious.  From the outset he theorizes that shifts in masculine identity can best explain the initial adoption and subsequent evolution of the Asian martial arts in America.

Interestingly, this pattern is not restricted to the United States.  When considering the development and promotion of these fighting systems in both Japan and China he again sees a “crisis of masculinity” at work in each case.  Other critical forces, such as the manipulation of nationalist imagery by the state, or periods of rapid economic change and dislocation, tend to be examined through the lens of masculinity rather than being treated as truly independent variables.

Miracle’s book is actually somewhat deceptive in this regard.  He has gone to lengths to avoid excessive theoretical jargon and obscure abstract arguments.  Indeed, for a book that is based in large part on the author’s doctoral dissertation, I am quite happy to report that this volume reads nothing like a typical dissertation.   Care has been taken to make the text accessible to both undergraduates (more on that later) and a wide cross-over audience.

Yet it would be a mistake to assume that the work is purely empirical or somehow theoretically naive.  Instead a very strong chain of causal assumptions (focused on evolving views of gender and masculinity) connects each of these chapters and guides the various case studies that Dr. Miracle presents.

This brings us to the second impulse that seems to motivate this book.  In the second half of the volume the author increasingly steps away from broad historical discussions and instead focuses on the lives of key martial arts pioneers.  These case studies, while they reinforce the book’s core theoretical arguments, are among the most engaging and best written aspects of this work.

Honest question, what could be more masculine that Donn F. Draeger and Sean Connery together on the set of You only Live Twice.

Donn Draeger, Robert Smith and John Blumming, three of the early pioneers of Martial Arts Studies are singled out for detailed treatment.  But the shorter discussions of some the “myth-makers,” including more colorful figures like Masuatsu Oyama and Count Dante, are just as interesting.  Dr. Miracle’s archival skills are best showcased in these more focused discussions and they reinforce and add credibility to the preceding social history.  Indeed, one is left wondering what more sustained case studies of these individuals (with the possible addition of other figures like Wally Jay or Bruce Lee) would have turned up.

This combined approach of fast paced social history and detailed biographical studies allows Dr. Miracle to cover a surprisingly amount of ground in a short book.  With its relaxed prose, and at only about 170 pages of text, enthusiastic readers could easily finish this volume in a single weekend.  His argument is parsimonious and focused.  While developments in China and Japan are given decent treatments, most of the text is reserved for a longitudinal study of the fighting arts in America ranging from the rise of “muscular Christianity” and boxing in the 19^th century to the most recent “crisis of masculinity” and the growth of MMA in the current era.

I suspect that the brevity of Dr. Miracle’s text was a matter of necessity rather than choice.  Longer books cost more to produce and thus return lower profit margins to publishers.  The shrinking size of the average academic book has more to do with increased market constraints than a new found love of brevity within the ivory tower.

In all honesty, the broad scope and limited page count of this book seems to pose some problems for Dr. Miracle’s argument.  At multiple points in the text one gets the impression that a well-developed argument may have been omitted in favor of quick explanation.  In these places the book’s already fast pace seems to accelerate to a gallop.

This tendency was particularly evident in the discussion of the evolution of the Chinese and Japanese martial arts.  The total absence of Jingwu Association, China’s first “national martial art brand” and perhaps the single most important player in the development of the modern Chinese martial arts, is indicative of this problem.  At one point Dr. Miracle asserts that in China the creation of the modern martial arts was a “top down” project imposed by the state on an uninterested population.  He contrasts this with the clearly “bottom up” process seen in Japan where individual martial artists were busy lobbying the state for official support of their various project.

I must admit that this characterization strikes me as flawed.  Many aspects of the Guoshu project look like a continuation and appropriation of the work that the Jingwu Association had already begun more than a decade earlier.  Of course there is every possibility that Dr. Miracle’s reading of this case is correct.  Yet this is a point of great enough importance that it needs to be spelled out in some detail, not simply asserted before moving on.

This same brevity has also affected the way that gender is discussed throughout the book.  Dr. Miracle’s focus on masculinity is understandable as the majority of martial artists today are men.  This was true in the past as well.  While 19^th century Chinese martial arts fiction is full of stories of valiant female-knights errant, in actual fact few women were involved in martial arts training.

Yet “few” is not the same as “none.”  No less a figure than Wong Fei-hung instituted special classes for training women in Hung Gar.   And later the Jingwu Association would go to surprising lengths to advance the training of female martial artists in China. Indeed, encouraging female participation within the martial arts became an important public marker of the modernization efforts within China.

In Japan Kano Jigoro envisioned a place for women in Judo.  Meanwhile the suffragettes created a space for themselves within the world of martial arts training.  Some of the first individuals to publicly teach Taijiquan in both America and the UK were women.  While boxing is always imagined as an exclusively male affair (even by Joyce Carol Oates), one does not have to delve too far into the literature produced by feminist scholars to find the often forgotten history of female fighters.

Miracle’s theoretical focus on masculinity, combined with the text’s relatively limited page count, effectively erases much of the female experience from the discussion of the modern martial arts.  In the book’s concluding discussion of MMA, the participation of an increasing number of female fighters is repeatedly acknowledged.  Yet once again their motivations are glossed over and their experiences remain unexplored.  This seems like a lost opportunity to really examine how the construction of various gender ideals effected the development of the martial arts over time.

It is probably not a coincidence that female martial artists appeared in so many of the newsreels from the 1920s and 1930s in which the martial arts were publicly demonstrated in small towns across the English speaking world. How are we to understand this aspect of the development of the modern martial arts?  Even if female martial artists only account for 20-30% percent of the student base of most current martial arts schools (an admittedly hypothetical figure, but one that reflects my own limited experience), one wonder’s how many already struggling schools would simply go under without their patronage.

Other aspects of his argument also seem somewhat constrained.  Overall there is less engagement with the growing body of literature generated by martial arts studies scholars than one might expect.  Miracle’s specific arguments are all well sourced and supported.  Indeed, students of martial arts studies are likely to build their personal libraries as they work their way through Dr. Miracle’s footnotes.

The influence of certain researchers, including Thomas Green, Stanley Henning and G. J. Krug can be felt throughout the text.  Yet the works of other important scholars, including Paul Bowman, D. S. Farrer and Andrew Morris are conspicuous by their absence. Given that Miracle’s book is just as much a theoretical as an empirical project, it would have been interesting to see him more explicitly address, critique and build on some of these other (often related) conversations.

What does karate have to do with the all American blue jean? Read Now with Kung Fu Grip! to find out. I just realized that this is the first image of Chuck Norris that I have ever posted on KFT. My apologies for the oversight.

Conclusion: A Necessary Book at the Right Time

Of course every coin has two sides.  While a slim volume on an important subject will, by its very nature, leave you wanting more, it is also important to consider what you get.  The same lack of jargon and involved nuance that may disappoint a dedicated historian will likely delight undergraduate readers.  This volume, theoretically grounded yet accessible, would be an ideal candidate for a variety of university level martial arts studies seminars.  Between its reasonable price and engaging prose I would not hesitate to use this book, either in whole or in part, in any class examining the modern martial arts.

Instructors may want to take special note of Miracle’s concluding chapter.  It is not hard to imagine a week’s worth of discussions emerging from just these pages. In addition to a comprehensive summery of the historical arguments advanced in the rest of the book, it goes on to tackle topics of relevance both now and in the future.

The first is a frank acknowledgement of the rising tide of ultra-right wing sentiments around the world and its often unfortunate relationship with the traditional fighting systems.  Miracle briefly explores how the rise of the Japanese far right might once again shape the Budo arts.  He even notes that we may already be seeing this process in action.

Also important is his discussion of the current drive by the United Nations, and the various member countries, to recognize martial arts as aspects of humanity’s “Intangible Cultural Heritage.” Miracle notes the ways in which these labels can (and have been) politicized in the past.  Nor is it obvious that such designations will always succeed in ensuring the preservation of an art.  In some cases they might actually hasten their demise. However, Miracle also outlines a number of strategies that might be employed to maximize the potential usefulness of this process while minimizing the threat of harm.  These are both critical issues facing the traditional martial arts within a global context, and it was refreshing to see them dealt with in a forthright (if brief) discussion.

Jared Miracle also makes a number of more theoretical contributions to the field of Martial Arts Studies.  His extensive use of Krug’s framework for understanding the West’s appropriation of the Asian martial arts in the post-war period is particularly noteworthy.  Given Krug’s status as a foundational thinker within Martial Arts Studies, I felt that it was very helpful to see what an extended, empirically detailed, engagement with his framework actually looked like.  In some ways Miracle can be thought of as providing further confirmation of (or at least failing to falsify) Krug’s basic theory.

Miracle’s focus on the changing nature of masculinity, while not without certain drawbacks, does provide a real sense of coherence to what might otherwise have become a sprawling historical narrative.  After finishing this book, and considering both Miracle’s historical arguments and biographical vignettes, I felt that I better understood my own somewhat complex relationship with the martial arts.

As regular readers of Kung Fu Tea may have noted, my “academic side” loves the richness that the Asian martial arts exhibit when considered as “textures of knowledge.”  Yet the part of me that is more concerned with what goes on within the practice hall manages to maintain a studied indifference to many of these questions, much preferring a “rational” approach to the subject of fighting.  Dr. Miracle’s volume has become personally meaningful as it allowed me to better understand the origins of these two competing aspects of my practice and how it is that they may have come together at this moment in history.

In conclusion, Dr. Miracle has given us a concise history of the appropriation of the Asian martial arts in America that asks, and answers, the critical questions.  How did these fighting systems get here, who practices them, and in what sense are the strip mall dojos that dot the landscape actually practicing “Asian” martial arts?  This book is mandatory and quite enjoyable reading for anyone interested in martial arts history.

Dr. Jared Miracle conducting research in Mongolia. Source: from the collection of Jared Miracle.

About the Author:

Dr. Jared Miracle is a social anthropologist who specializes in video games and education. He has a PhD (Texas A&M), he’s won tons of awards, and he wrote a book called Now With Kung Fu Grip!: How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America and has even given lectures on Pokemon. In short, he knows what he’s talking about. He has also been a regular guest contributor here at Kung Fu Tea.   Be sure to check out his essay “It’s My Way or the Wu Wei – A note of Advice for Novice Field Researchers.”

“The Sturdy Citizen” – TY Wong performing Shaolin animal forms within his Kin Mon Physical Culture Studio in San Francisco’s Chinatown. TY was a local tong enforcer who had taught kung fu in San Francisco’s Chinatown for three decades. He likely spoke for many other practitioners in Chinatown at the time when he deemed young Bruce Lee to be merely “a dissident with bad manners.” (Photo courtesy of Gilman Wong)

By Charles Russo, author of Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America (University of Nebraska Press, 2016).

So it Begins

At some point in late 1961, James Lee stormed out of the Kin Mon Physical Culture Studio in San Francisco’s Chinatown, effectively breaking off his tutelage under Sil Lum master TY Wong.  Kin Mon, – or as the translation goes: “the Sturdy Citizen’s Club” – was located in a basement studio space on Waverly Place, directly across from the Hop Sing Tong, where TY was a longstanding member.  James Lee had been studying at Kin Mon for a few years at that point, and had established himself as one of TY’s most notable students. Recently, they had collaborated on a book showcasing TY’s system, titled, Chinese Karate Kung-Fu:  Original ‘Sil Lum’ System for Health & Self Defense.  The two shared the byline, and the book has the historical significance of being one of the first (if not the very first) English language martial arts book by a Chinese master.

However, James Lee eventually ascended the steps out of Kin Mon in anger, concluding his time there on bitter terms. He encountered recently-enrolled student Leo Fong at the street level entrance, and let him know he was leaving: “I’m finished with this place. You wanna come with me to train back in Oakland?”

A perennially eclectic martial artist whose skills were anchored around an early education in American boxing, Fong also defected from Kin Mon on the spot with James. Years later, Fong laughs the whole misunderstanding off as trivial: “Jimmy fell out with TY Wong over just $10. They got real upset with each other over that. Can you imagine?”

While seemingly just another martial arts feud predicated on mundane matters of ego or just poor communication, James Lee’s split with TY Wong would have a significant impact on the emerging popularity of the martial arts in America and the kung fu craze of the coming decade, most notably with its effects on the long-term trajectory of Bruce Lee’s career.

You’re not likely, however, to find TY Wong’s name within any biographical accounts of Bruce Lee. Despite Bruce’s maxim of discarding “what is useless,” fans are probably far more familiar with a peripheral figure like Ruby Chow (his landlord and boss at a menial job) than a pioneering martial arts master like TY Wong, who dismissed young Bruce as little more than “a dissident with bad manners.” In fact, few Bruce Lee fans realize that the TY Wong/James Lee feud exists within the pages of Chinese Gung Fu: The Philosophical Art of Self-Defense; the only book that Bruce Lee published in his lifetime.

The fallout between TY and James also gives key context to understanding the persisting tensions that led to Bruce’s legendary showdown with Wong Jack Man, an incident that would greatly influence Lee’s long term martial arts worldview. There is a lot to be learned from this obscure but notable history within the trailblazing martial arts culture of the San Francisco Bay Area during the early 1960s.

A young Bruce Lee in Oakland circa 1965, just prior to his role on the Green Hornet. Although Bruce was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown, he was often at odds with members of the neighborhood’s martial arts culture. Bruce instead found a more like minded crowd across the Bay, in the city of Oakland. (Photo courtesy of Barney Scollan)

Enter the Dragon

Here’s an interesting question to consider: why did Bruce Lee relocate from Seattle to Oakland in the summer of 1964?

After all, things were going well for Bruce at that point in Seattle: he had a dedicated following of martial arts students and had finally found an actual location for his school. He was a popular student at the University of Washington, had just begun dating the woman he would eventually marry, and had defeated a rival martial artist in a challenge. During the summer of 1963, Bruce had traveled home to Hong Kong and greatly impressed his father with all that he had accomplished in Seattle. So why leave behind his business, his girlfriend and his education for a new situation in Oakland?

The immediate answer is James Lee. An Oakland native who was well-known for his younger exploits as a street fighter, James was already enacting the sort of martial arts future that Bruce was envisioning. He was publishing books, creating his own custom martial arts equipment, and conducting a modern training environment at his school. James was also putting a nuanced emphasis on body building, and perhaps most importantly, transforming his street experience into a gritty and realistic understanding of the true nature of fighting. Furthermore, James Lee had a unique network of experienced martial arts innovators within his orbit: Wally Jay, Ralph Castro, Al Novak, Leo Fong, and Ed Parker. As James Lee’s son Greglon characterized the appeal of this: “Bruce was smart. When he’s in his twenties he’s hanging out with guys in their forties, so he can gain their experience.”

James Lee’s fallout with TY Wong was a catalyst for Bruce Lee’s return to the San Francisco Bay Area. Upon meeting in 1962, Bruce Lee discovered that James was already enacting the sort of modern martial arts future that he was envisioning. Despite their difference in age, the two found themselves on a similar wavelength and quickly began collaborating. Bruce’s time with James in Oakland would have a significant impact on his career trajectory. (Photo courtesy of Greglon Lee)

Upon being introduced, Bruce and James had quickly found themselves upon a similar martial arts wavelength. And for a moment, James Lee considered moving his family up to Seattle to continue his collaborations with Bruce (they had already published Chinese Gung Fu… together in 1963). This idea was discarded for one main reason – the Bay Area had the most robust martial arts culture in America (with the possible exception of Hawaii, which James and most of his colleagues had ties to). In this sense, Oakland was a more logical place for their collaborations because it put Bruce close to the action. As kenpo master Al Tracy explained it: “The real significant early development of the martial arts in the United States was heavily based in the Bay Area. Many of the most important people came out of the Bay Area, not just for the Chinese but for so much of the martial arts.”

So by the summer of 1964, Bruce was operating out of Oakland, which was significant not just for his particular whereabouts, but for his commitment to his vision for the martial arts. Bruce was chasing something down. He could have easily stayed and thrived in his Seattle niche. Instead, the next step forward in his evolution was to be found in Oakland.

Amid their shared wavelength, Bruce and James at some point connected on their disdain for traditional approaches to the martial arts, and by extension – traditional masters.

Lau Bun (left) and TY Wong were enforcers for the Hop Sing Tong in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and oversaw the neighborhood’s martial arts culture for more than a quarter century. Having largely predated the modern era of martial arts media, their pioneering careers often go unnoticed. (Lau Bun photo courtesy of UC Berkeley, TY Wong courtesy of Gilman Wong)

Kung Fu in the Bay Area

To properly grasp the early martial arts culture of San Francisco’s Chinatown, it is necessary to understand the careers of the two practitioners that it was anchored around –  Lau Bun and TY Wong.  Both men were enforcers for the Hop Sing Tong, having been recruited for their martial abilities many years earlier upon arriving to town.  Their duties involved a wide range of hands-on enforcement around the neighborhood, which included curbing excessive drunken behavior around the local nightclub, the collection of gambling debts, training of Tong muscle, and mediating disputes within the neighborhood as a means of avoiding law enforcement.  Their schools emerged out of these roles, beginning with Lau Bun’s Hung Sing in the late 1930s (though originally known as Wah Kuen) and then TY’s Kin Mon a few years later in the early 1940s. Both practiced medicine, played music, and operated Lion Dance teams that were heavily involved in neighborhood festivals and holidays.

Lau Bun maintained a rigid order to the martial arts culture in Chinatown, never allowing it to devolve into the sort of daily fight culture that was happening among the Hong Kong youth upon the city rooftops throughout the 1950s. Even when Lau Bun’s relationship with other local martial arts teachers grew tense at times, order was still maintained.

The reality of Hong Kong’s challenge culture and the tenacious reputation of its Wing Chun practitioners had preceded Bruce Lee to San Francisco. During the summer of 1959, 18 year-old Bruce had a little-known incident in Hung Sung and was promptly thrown out by Lau Bun, sowing the seeds for future tensions within the neighborhood. (It is rumored that Bruce had a similarly confrontational incident with TY Wong in this period, which is certainly plausible considering the nature of his other interactions.) In the autumn of 1959, Bruce Lee left San Francisco for Seattle already on poor terms with the martial arts culture within the city of his birth.

Lau Bun (top center) with senior students in his Hung Sing School of Choy Li Fut in San Francisco’s Chinatown, one of the oldest martial arts schools in America. During the summer of 1959, 18-year-old Bruce Lee had a little-known run-in with Lau Bun and his senior students. (Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley)

It is important to point out that James Lee and TY Wong may have fallen out over more than just $10. Indeed, there is a compelling alternate theory to why James stormed out of Kin Mon in ‘61. In this version, James is practicing forms down in the studio when he notices TY Wong’s young son practicing a much more refined and meaningful version of the very same form. James, as the story goes, then realized he had been sold a water-down version of system, and promptly abandoned his enrollment. Although this version conflicts with the accounts of Leo Fong and the sons of both men, James himself would profess this version of events years later, writing in the intro to his 1972 Wing Chun Kung-Fu book: “I realized later that the whole repertoire was just a time-killing tactic to collect a monthly fee. In disgust, I quit practicing this particular sil lum style.” However, that was hardly the first insult to be put into print after his departure from Kin Mon, but was rather merely a postscript to an exchange of published put-downs a decade earlier.

Three of the earliest English language books on Kung Fu by Chinese authors published in North America.

In 1962, TY Wong responded to James Lee’s defection by publishing Kung-Fu: Original ‘Sil Lum’ System, which ran in similar instructional fashion to the first book. However, TY concluded this volume with an overt put-down of James Lee, ridiculing his Iron Palm abilities by running a picture of his eight-year-old son in the same breaking pose as James, under the headline: “See, I Can Break ‘Em Too!” TY distanced himself from what James had previously put forward on the topic by subsequently characterizing it all as gimmickry, and stating “Do not waste your time practicing this art.” James was well-known for his breaking skills, and his lively demonstrations were highly popular at local gatherings. TY’s vividly illustrated rejection of James’s abilities added a new layer of tension to their fallout.

In 1962, TY Wong published an image of his 8 year-old son breaking bricks beneath a patronizing headline. It was meant to parody the Iron Palm abilities of James Lee that were featured in the their first book (right).

Not long after, James Lee forges a new (and what will be a highly significant) partnership with young Bruce Lee, who begins regularly making the trip from Seattle to Oakland in support of a book project with James. The results of their collaboration –  Chinese Gung Fu: the Philosophical Art of Self-Defense – would itself become a highly significant volume of martial arts literature. Ironically though, it was fairly innocuous in tone. As Tommy Gong recently pointed out in Bruce Lee: The Evolution of a Martial Artist, the content within Chinese Gung Fu “illustrated a more basic, generalized approach and primer to the theories of gung fu, including much of the classical approach Bruce later criticized. While Bruce showed a glimmer of his eventual unconventional approach to the martial arts, he expressed himself in this book from a traditional approach.”

On the other hand, Bruce and James added to an already tense relationship with Chinatown by devoting a section of the book to “Difference in Gung Fu Styles.” Here, Bruce distinguishes between what he sees as “superior systems” (namely, his own) versus “half-cultivated systems” (that of TY Wong and other “more traditional” masters). The sequence that follows has James Lee wearing his old Kin Mon uniform and being dismantled by Bruce in a photo-by-photo dismissal of specific techniques featured in T.Y.’s previous book.

By early 1964, Chinese Gung Fu… was on sale within San Francisco’s Chinatown, and the insults weren’t lost on local practitioners. Over time however, as Bruce’s fame became a global phenomenon, this highly local subtext fell into obscurity, as did the notion of Bruce Lee being simply “a dissident with bad manners, ” an identity that would firmly take shape after his book was published.

In a later section of Chinese Gung Fu, Bruce and James give “examples of a slower system against the more effective Gung Fu technique.” This shows Bruce dismantling James as he attempts specific techniques from TY Wong’s first book.

Critiquing the Classical Mess
Moving into 1964, Bruce Lee doubled down on his unabashed criticisms of what he saw as “inferior” practitioners and systems. His demonstrations took a pointed tone, and increasingly came off as heavy-handed lectures featuring stinging rebukes towards “dry land swimming” and the “classical mess.”

Although his performance at Ed Parker’s inaugural Long Beach Tournament in August is often painted in glossy terms, Bruce had actually delivered a scathing lecture disparaging existing practices, even ridiculing common techniques such as the horse stance, before an international audience of martial arts masters and their students. “He just got up there and started trashing people,” explains Barney Scollan, an eighteen-year-old competitor that day.

A few weeks later at the Sun Sing Theater in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Bruce went as far as to disparage the likes of Lau Bun and TY Wong – in their own neighborhood – by declaring “these old tigers have no teeth.”  It was no small insult coming from a young out-of-town kid towards two heavily-involved and well-respected member of the community.

The sum total of all these events and tensions -from the published insults to the $10 argument– were likely to eventually culminate in a confrontation. That day arrived in late autumn when Wong Jack Man piled into a brown Pontiac Tempest with five other people to travel across the Bay Bridge to Oakland, and….as the saying almost goes – the rest is urban mythology.

Hong Kong starlet Diana Chang Chung-wen (“the Mandarin Marilyn Monroe”) photographed with Bruce Lee in late summer of 1964 during a promotional tour of the U.S. west coast in support of her latest film. This brought them to the Sun Sing Theater, in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown where Bruce’s martial arts demonstration (and critical lecture) nearly resulted in an on-stage brawl in front of a riotous audience. Weeks later, Bruce would face down Wong Jack Man in a legendary behind-closed-doors high noon showdown, based largely on comments he made from the stage of the Sun Sing Theater, as well as long list of incidents with other members Chinatown’s martial arts community. (Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley)

About the Author:

Charles Russo is a journalist in San Francisco. He is the author of Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America (University of Nebraska Press, 2016). For more photographs and materials related to the book, see the Striking Distance Instagram account (@striking_distance) or the Facebook page.  Russo has previously been a guest author here at Kung Fu Tea.  If you are wondering whether to read his book check out this review.

In honor of the upcoming National Bonsai Show (held in Rochester NY on September 10-11) I decided to re-post some pictures from my old Bonsai teacher’s blog. If you are anywhere in the area you won’t want to miss this collection of world class Bonsai.

Introduction: A Secret Book

We have all seen the movie.  We have all had this dream.  A mysterious Kung Fu manual, purporting to relate the secrets of past masters, falls into your possession.  What will you find within its pages?

It must contain the keys to excellence in combat.  That is the basis of any good Kung Fu drama.  It should no doubt share profound ethical lessons, occasionally drawing on Buddhist or Daoist images.  Such a book would probably contain knowledge that could be used to heal as well as harm.  That is a well-established aspect of the modern mental image of the Asian martial arts.  It might even hint mysteriously at the role of Qi energy in the combative arts.

Now take a look at your bookshelf.  The one with all of the martial arts primers, manuals and magazines that you probably haven’t look at in years.  Do you see it?  Yup, it is right there in front of you.

Its title is the Bubishi: A Classical Manual of Combat.   While it is one of the most commonly owned martial arts manuals (my local Barnes and Nobles even keeps copies on hand), it also appears to be one of the less frequently read and discussed examples of the genera.  This is especially true within Chinese martial arts circles.

I have always found the general silence surrounding this book to be somewhat mysterious.  After all, so many of our debates on the evolution of the modern Chinese martial arts revolve around events that took place in the second half of the 19^th century.  And while a number of late 19^th and early 20^th century manuals from Northern China have been translated and widely distributed (e.g., the Taiji Classics), how many translations of Southern China’s rich manuscript literature of “Cotton Boxing” and “Bronze Man” manuals do you currently have on that same book shelf?  None?  Well you are not alone.

Ever since the first modern Japanese translations of this book were released in the middle of the 1930s, the Bubishi has been overwhelmingly seen as the key to understanding Karate’s Okinawan pre-history.  Partick McCarthy’s English language efforts hit all of the same notes.  The book has even been marketed as “the Bible of Karate.”

It is thus understandable that students of Chinese martial studies might neglect this text.  Yet once you crack its open the pages, what one quickly discovers is a small library of textual fragments dealing with White Crane and Monk Fist boxing, traditional Chinese medicine, combat tactics and martial ethics.  Much, though not all, of this literature refers to places and traditions that will be familiar to students of the southern Chinese martial arts. While questions of dating and provenance bedevil attempts to easily relate these texts to modern Karate practice, even a quick look at the various illustrations that accompany the text suggests that Chinese martial artists are likely to find it very interesting.

Southern China has a long history of producing martial arts manuals.  Unfortunately they have not generated the same degree of interest among historians and practitioners as northern works such as the Taiji Classics.  Many of these manuals currently reside in the cabinets of private collectors and in the special collections departments of university libraries.

In their general format, many bear more than a passing resemblance to the Bubishi.  Ip Man owned one such collection containing both a boxing and medical manual that he inherited from his teacher.  Visitor’s to his small museum in Foshan can see these hand copied manuscripts on public display.  But like so much of Southern China’s martial literature, there has yet to be a serious scholarly effort to translate, describe and classify these works.

For students of Karate the Bubishi is interesting because it is unique within the art’s historical landscape.  Things are a little different for the Chinese martial studies community.  We should be asking ourselves how we can get more out of this text precisely because it is not totally unique.  Rather it is the most easily accessible example of a genre of manuscripts that, while not all that rare, have yet to elicit the sustained scholarly attention that they deserve.

In an attempt to rectify this situation, the current essay will proceed with a brief review of Tuttle’s 2016 edition of Patrick McCarthy’s translation of the Bubishi.  We will then attempt to answer three questions.

First, what does it suggest about the nature of the Southern Chinese martial arts at the time of its compilation?  Secondly, how has it impacted the practice of the martial arts, both at the time of its first appearance in the 1930s as well as in subsequent decades?  Lastly, what does both the Bubishi and Tuttle’s most recent edition suggest about the social work done by discussions of “tradition” within the modern martial arts landscape?

Widely owned, rarely read and encased within intricate webs of overlapping Orientalist fantasies, the Bubishi remains something of a mystery.  Basic questions about the date, authorship and composition of these texts remain unsolved.  Yet this manuscript tradition may yet yield up treasures worth the hunt for students of martial arts studies.

A Japanese Maple in Spring. Source: Valavanis Bonsai Blog.

Bubishi: The Classic Manual of Combat

First a word of clarification may be in order.  The term “Bubishi” is the Japanese transliteration of the Chinese term Wubei Zhi.  This title was given to a massive encyclopedia of Chinese military technology, strategy and practice edited by the Ming era officer Mao Yuanyi.  The Okinawan Bubishi, translated by Patrick McCarthy is also an edited collection of texts.  It shares the same title, possibly in homage to its much more comprehensive namesake.  But there is little other resemblance between these books.

Most likely brought to Okinawa sometime during the 19^th (or early 20^th) century, the Bubishi appears to have been a manuscript tradition in which a number of separate, often unrelated, articles were compiled, copied and passed on.  These remained in an unbound state until the 20^th century.  As such the order (and exact number) of articles varies between textual lineages, but there is enough overlap to suggest the existence of an identifiable tradition.  This collection was initially passed on without either a formal title or the sort of preface that often accompanied Chinese martial arts manuals.

This is both an unfortunate and critical fact to bear in mind.  It is unfortunate in that the prefaces of such manuals are rich sources of data that describe the social world that a text sought to situate itself within.  It is important in that this textual tradition makes no self-conscious claims to editorship, individual authorship, title or even date.  It seems unlikely that the term “Bubishi” came to be applied to these texts until later in the 20^th century, possibly the 1930s, according to the detailed introductory article by Andreas Quast.

While Quast traces the suggestions of a textual tradition existing in Okinawa back to the 1880s at the latest, it is worth remembering that the oldest extent hand copied Bubishi manuscripts date to 1930.  This is only a few years prior to the first translations of the text appearing for sale in Japan in the middle of the 1930s.  To paraphrase Paul Bowman, we are once again confronted with a book that is treated as ancient yet, upon closer inspection, turns out to not even be all that old.

Still, a possible origin in the last two decades of the 19^th century is suggestive as it would make these texts roughly contemporaneous to the Taiji Classics, another edited collection which was beginning to enter into circulation at the same time.  Further, these years are a critical period for those of us wishing to better understand the evolution of the modern Chinese martial arts.

While the text of the Bubishi is relatively brief and stable in size, the length of the various modern editions of it that are now in circulation seem to grow with age.  Tuttle’s current offering comes in at 319 pages, up from the comparatively svelte 255 pages of the 2008 edition.  The additional material includes new introductory prefaces and essays by McCarthy, Jesse Enkamp, Cezar Borkowshi, Evan Pantazi, Jose Swift and Andreas Quast.  Readers can rest assured that the 19^th century original’s lack of any type of descriptive front matter has been more than compensated for with a deluge of modern prefaces and glowing testimonials.

Some of the newer material included in the 2016 volume was interesting.  McCarthy’s essay “No Time like the Past” provided a series of reflections on his involvement with the Bubishi over the decades.  Anyone looking to test Krug’s thesis on the stages of the Western appropriation of Okinawan Karate could do worse than starting with this autobiographical essay.  Swift’s contribution was shorter but also valuable.

By far the single most important addition in the new volume is Andreas Quast’s concluding essay, “The Creation and the Creator.”  It alone will more than compensate readers for the price of the book.

Quast’s paper proceeds in two parts.  In the first section he carefully details what is known about the textual history of every manuscript (confirmed or hypothesized) relating to the Bubishi.  This sort of work requires a painstaking eye to for detail, but it is critical to actually establishing the dates of both the earliest existing manuscripts, as well as the probable origins of the Bubishi.  The absence of this sort of discussion was a real problem in earlier editions of the book.

As previously noted, Quast found that the oldest hand copied manuscripts still in existence date only to the 1930s.  This is of some concern as it is the same decade in which Karate began to be popularized on the Japanese mainland and the first translations of the Bubishi were published.  While Quast finds evidence of older manuscripts dating back to the 1880s, these items were physically destroyed in the Battle of Okinawa, or due to the various earthquakes and fires that periodically afflict the region.

While we can be confident that a “Bubishi-like tradition” existed in Okinawa during the late 19^th and early 20^th century, it is actually impossible to say exactly what it contained on the basis of the sources that currently exist.  This fact will become of greater importance as Quast reaches the conclusion of his essay.  It is also interesting that Quast’s textual criticism, while not resolving all of the outstanding questions, tends to cast doubt on those theories that see a very early date (such as the 18^th century) for the text’s transmission to Okinawa.

Quast sees a few basic possibilities when he turns his attention to the matter of origins.  To begin with, he notes that the Bubishi is much more likely a collection of texts rather than a single authored work.  Given that not all of the articles within this volume date to the same era, reference the same geographic regions, or even discuss the same subjects, this should be obvious to all readers.  But it is probably worth stating anyway.

A Viewing Stone. Source: Valavanis Bonsai Blog.

Quast also quickly dismisses the possibility that a single family or small group of private individuals might have assembled a collection such as this on Okinawa.  That seemed a bit premature to me as we know that martial clans and individuals in China did assemble textual collections not unlike the Bubishi.  Again, Wing Chun students can see (if not read) something similar at the Ip Man Tong in Foshan.

Instead Quast favors one of two possibilities.  The first is that a book of this degree of “sophistication” was acquired by an Okinawan official and maintained, in multiple official copies, by the government.  This would yield a relatively earlier date.  Alternatively, Quast notes that such a collection could have been assembled by the sorts of martial artists, rebels and revolutionaries that occasionally fled from China to Okinawa in the late 19^th or early 20^th century.  Once in Okinawa the various texts which are now referred to as the “Bubishi” may have been adopted as they seemed to capture the same flavor of national resistance and community mythmaking that many Okinawans were then invested in.

This would suggest both a later date of entry and a more tangential relationship with Karate’s early development.  However, to my ear it also seems to fit the time period of many of the more interesting articles included in the Bubishi.  Certain ideas such as the “Sick Man of Asia”, or the trauma of the Boxer Rebellion, that strongly mark later martial manuals are notably absent from this document.  As such I suspect that it probably predates 1900.

Yet for some of the later articles, it may not be by more than a decade or two.  Of course there could be a range of dates here.  Some of the Monk fist material (including the list of movements in the various training forms) seems a bit older.  A few 18^th century training manuals contain similar lists of names.  In contrast, the pairs of “winning/losing techniques” (complete with illustration) bear an uncanny resemblance to the printed version of very similar material that the British writer L.C.P. found and described in a local marketplace in Guangzhou during the 1870s.

Other material, such as the history of White Crane Boxing, appears to be from an even more recent period when creation myths of the “weak” and “feminine” overcoming the hard and foreign became culturally important and increasingly reified.  Douglas Wile, in his own treatment of the origins of the Taiji Classics, found that such themes were particularly popular in the 1880s as the self-strengthening movement encouraged martial artists to search their own stories and cultural histories for the key to resisting foreign imperialism.   Some of the texts within the Bubishi resonate with his findings.

Confirmation of these dates would require additional research.  That would probably take the form of detailed comparisons with previously unpublished versions of similar texts from Chinese collections.  Yet a cursory reading suggests that in addition to a variety of authors, subjects and styles, the articles within the Bubishi may also reflect that sorts trends and concerns seen within the Chinese martial arts literature during different points in the 19^th century.  That further suggests a Chinese textual tradition that was later imported to Okinawa.

Quast’s final point turns on what is missing from the Bubishi.  A number of similar texts in China include discussions of armed combat.  Hudiedao, sabers, poles, spears and shields were all commonly carried by militia members and became the focus of southern Chinese martial arts training.   Yet any discussion of armed training is conspicuous by its absence from existing Bubishi texts.  Nor is there any hint of militia organization or community defense.  These texts are all self-consciously oriented towards civilian personal-defense, health and leisure.  Such a vision of the proper social role of the martial arts is also suggestive of a very late 19^th or 20^th century date.

At this point Quast reminds readers that the oldest existing examples of this textual tradition date only to the period that Karate was coming under intense pressure to conform to Japanese social expectations about what a “proper, ancient and authentic” system of unarmed martial arts should be.  It was within this specific environment that the Bubishi first came forth.

We generally think of the Bubishi as a text representing the tradition from which Karate first emerged.  It is the origin, the creator.  It is what is “authentic and legitimate.”  Our modern forms of practice are “the creation.”  In a word, they are derivative.

These are the terms that many of the modern introductions and prefaces included in the 2016 Tuttle edition explicitly encourages readers to think within.  The Bubishi holds the key to “forgotten” combat applications.  It is a font of ethical martial wisdom as well as esoteric knowledge.  It can lead to a sense of renewal for students who practice has become stale.  Within its pages we can commune with the minds of the “founders.”

Reading these praises it is clear that the Bubishi has come to be much more than a book.  It is an artifact whose very physical existence legitimates one’s martial practice.  There is nothing particularly unique about this.  Kennedy and Guo noted that the Chinese martial manuscript tradition existed in large part to convey legitimacy rather than simply knowledge.   Yet as the essays and prefaces of this volume make clear, such functions have carried over into the age of digital reproduction with surprising efficacy.

Clearly a degree of caution may be called for.  Martial arts studies notes that all martial practices, to a large extent, are invented traditions.  Applying this general principle to the Bubishi, Quast suggests that there might be a more obvious explanation for the lack of weaponry, as well as the general tightness of fit between Karate’s early philosophy and what in seen in the Bubishi.

In his view it is entirely possible (even likely) that the original manuscript tradition contained additional material that was simply edited out of both hand copied and later printed versions of these texts because it did not meet Japanese expectations of what Karate should be.  This is an intriguing possibility.  Given the small number of actual manuscript lineages, and the dearth of truly older copies, it would be hard to falsify this hypothesis.

We must be careful not to rely too heavily on arguments from silence.  After all, while many Chinese manuscript traditions discuss weapons, not all do.  There are some solely dedicated to boxing.

Yet Quast raises critical questions.  Manuscripts do not simply propagate themselves.  They are copied (or not) by individuals for specific reasons at a given point in history.  Thus they are just as much the products of existing social discourses as they are “artifacts” from an unsullied past.

Perhaps we should accept that it may not be possible to use the Bubishi to decipher Karate’s deep origins.  Nor is it likely to reveal much about the state of the Chinese martial arts in the 1780s.  But ultimately those questions may not matter.  More pressing is what it demonstrates about Chinese boxing in the late 19^th century, or the struggles of Karate to become accepted on the Japanese mainland in the 1920s.  Or maybe this volume should inspire us to ask an even more introspective set of questions.

A shohin pine. Proof that good things sometimes come in small packages. Source: Valavanis Bonsai Blog.

Conclusion: Tradition as Innovation

Why does this text sit (often unread) on our own bookshelf?  What does its popularity indicate about the needs and desires that motivate modern western martial artists?  How does our mental image of Asian history shape our experience of physical practice?  How are historical and cultural artifacts assembled to create the markers of legitimacy?

Obviously “legitimacy” is the critical ingredient in any discussion of the social meaning of the Bubishi.  Yet what kind of legitimacy do modern practitioners actually want?

A close reading of the book’s abundant prefaces and introductory essays yields some interesting results.  By in large these authors are not really concerned with issues of “purity” or proving the “authenticity” of their transmission.  All of that seems to be taken for granted.

Rather they are looking for something else.  They turn to the Bubishi because they seek “permission.”  They are looking for permission to conduct their own research into the self-defense applications of the kata (as well as for an argument that such material should, at one point in time, have been common knowledge).  They desire a justification to delve into the esoteric aspect of the martial arts, whether understood in a medical or historical sense.  Multiple individuals seem to be looking for permission to begin to include a larger dose of grappling in their daily training.

The section of “winning and losing techniques” (Article 29) is particularly interesting in this regard.  As Harry Cook notes in his preface, 39% of the “winning techniques” involve boxing, 29% are throws or escapes, 17% include locks and submissions and only 4% are kicks.

In an era when MMA and BJJ are ascendant, the “wisdom of the masters” would seem to be on the side of modernizing one’s practice.  And, in strictly historical terms, this is a pretty accurate vision of the vast variety of techniques that can be found in the Southern Chinese martial arts.  Yet Karate is, by design, not the same as its Fujianese cousins.  That small fact seems to be lost in many of these discussions.

This suggests something critical about the nature of historical debates.  History and legitimacy are resources to be employed not just in the preservation of an art.  They are equally important resources in the quest for innovation and reform.  They are the means by which a social consensus is constructed behind new movements and schools.  Arguments about “tradition” in the martial arts have never really been about what was done in the past.  Rather, they are about what we should do in the future.

It is this conversation that we see repeatedly throughout both the modern and older sections of McCarthy’s publication.  Southern Chinese martial artists began to develop the folk histories of their own schools in the 19^th century at precisely the moment when everything began to change beyond the point of recognition.  Likewise, Karate’s reformers and popularizers rediscovered the value of these Chinese texts as their art was once again reformed to fit the rhythms of modern Japanese life.  In our own era a deeper study of the past has become a license to explore various pathways to revitalize arts facing competition from grapplers on the one side and qigong masters on the other.

Perhaps the Bubishi has a great secret to reveal to us after all.  The principle of continual change is the oldest and most important tradition to be found within the martial arts.  Both the contents and evolution of this textual tradition make that fact abundantly clear.

oOo

If you enjoyed this discussion you might also want to read: Butterfly Swords and Boxing: Exploring a Lost Southern Chinese Martial Arts Training Manual.

oOo

By George Jennings (Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK) and Anu Vaittinen (Newcastle University, UK)

Reference to conference presentation:

Jennings, G. & Vaittinen, A. (2016). Mediated transformation: Interconnections between embodied training and multimedia resources in Wing Chun. Paper presented at the 2^nd International Martial Arts Studies Conference, Cardiff University, UK, 19 July 2016.

We would like to thank Benjamin Judkins for his generous offer for us to write a summary of our conference paper for the excellent Kung Fu Tea blog, which is very timely, considering the relationships that our study has with such open-access, digital martial arts media for practitioners and scholars alike. Readers are very welcome to contact us directly if they have any questions, suggestions or other comments:

George Jennings        gbjennings@cardiffmet.ac.uk

Anu Vaittinen             anu.vaittinen@newcastle.ac.uk

Introduction

In their recent research on the history of Wing Chun Kung Fu, Ben Judkins and Jon Nielsen have  demonstrated that this martial art has been taught, learned, practised and understood in a myriad of ways, which have diversified since its humble beginnings in South East China. Today’s varied interpretations of Wing Chun are particularly evident in the Ip Man branch of the genealogical tree, where in a matter of two or three generations, there often appears to be very different fighting systems in terms of weight distribution, technique shapes, form sequences, omissions and additions of certain blocks and punching variations, and also foci in terms of the attention given to the empty hand forms, wooden dummy, weapons, theory, conditioning, fitness and, of course, how they are put together into self-defence and even sporting combat applications. Scholars in media and cultural studies have so far focused on the legendary exploits of Ip Man in the recent Hong Kong films (see, for example, here and here).  Yet to date, no research has detailed how forms of media like films/movies, documentaries, YouTube videos, images and blogs might shape (and be shaped by) the actual “hands-on”, solo and interactive physical training of the art of Wing Chun Kung Fu.

That is somewhat peculiar considering the global popularity of this Chinese martial art across cultures, generations, ethnicities and socioeconomic levels. This gap in the literature is precisely what we wish to address in this invited contribution to the Chinese Martial Arts Studies discussion. It is with this complex variety in mind that we begin to address the ways in which Wing Chun is currently learned from a sociological, phenomenological and pedagogical perspective. The small body of research on the training aspects of the art has touched upon topics such as body awareness (McFarlane, in his brief outline), how the unique methods employed in Wing Chun might hone fighting skills and whether they may even make the practitioner a better person (Scott Buckler’s taxonomy thesis).

Elsewhere, more sociologically-oriented ethnographic studies have discovered a core narrative and ethos of secular religion in a particular association, as well as ideas of the diversity of a cultivated martial habitus or scheme of dispositions. These publications provide a basis for the unification of an embodied, “carnal” sensitivity on Wing Chun with a contemporary sociological and educational vantage point. The fusion of all of these types of research may allow us to draw upon the recent studies on important topics including body lineage, digital technology and narrative from researchers in the field of martial arts studies.

Interestingly, this relative dearth of research on how participants’ corporeal practices intersect with digital, primarily visual media, as well as the active use of new media technologies, extends beyond Wing Chun and the martial arts, into studies of physical culture, media and visual culture more generally. Outside the context of formal physical education, what has received particularly limited attention is the perspective of the practitioners, and the role multi-mediated materials, new information economy and technologies play in their development of corporeal, and sensory know-how of combat sports. This lacuna is particularly intriguing, considering the ‘ocular-centrism’ of Western society, and way in which a range of sports (including martial arts) are transmitted to our living rooms, onto our PCs and smart phones at increasing intensity. Images play an increasing important role in our lives, experiences and concerns. Generally, sports media research has tended to focus on media texts, media institutions and audiences.  The research on new media technologies, on the other hand, has explored sports video games along with examinations of online platforms such as Wikipedia, as a vehicle for communication among sports fans.

For a more in depth-discussion of some of the existing field of research, see:

http://amodern.net/article/mixed-martial-arts/

In this project we seek to explore another avenue which, within the existing literature, remains relatively unexplored. The aim of our study is to offer fellow researchers, practitioners and instructors some insights into learning and teaching in Wing Chun using multimedia resources to support both teachers and students. We do this through two case studies of specific Wing Chun pedagogical approaches and social environments: 1) a series of private classes with individuals in different locations (private, public and commercial) in Mexico City, taught in English and Spanish; 2) an informal, small school run in the Northeast of England that is composed of more experienced practitioners. Our specific objective is to facilitate discussion on contemporary issues in Wing Chun under the working research question: In what ways can today’s practitioners use modern digital (and online) technology to support their learning before, during and after lessons and training sessions? Although restricted to one style of Kung Fu, this study might interest other martial arts scholars examining the links between media and embodied practice in a variety of styles and systems. It offers insight into how digital multimedia – accessed anywhere and anytime – can add to the multisensorial learning of the martial arts. This post is exploratory in nature, and raises far more questions than could be hoped to answer.

A publicity photo for a Wing Chun themed app titled “Kung Fu Grand Master.”

Methodological medley

Our collaboration is an unusual one, as we had never met until uniting at the second Martial Arts Studies Conference at Cardiff University in 2016. Both of us are associate researchers at the Health Advancement Research Team (HART) at the University of Lincoln, interested in entirely different topics: Thermoception and thermoregulation (see here). We are from England and Finland respectively, and were at the same time researching the Chinese art of Wing Chun in Mexico and England. This is another example of the increasingly international nature of martial arts studies: a new multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary field with international researchers who travel to other countries to study and discover fighting systems developed from a range of cultures and civilisations, and who engage with a plethora of languages and native technical terms, and later teach and research in various global contexts.

This study – still very early in its development – is an opportunistic offshoot from our phenomenological work with Jacquelyn Allen Collinson and Helen Owton.  It is more methodological than theoretical in nature. We began our first article together with an important reflexive note on our own positioning, which combined to provide a more rounded approach to studying Wing Chun than would have been possible alone. Reflexivity is now common practice to outline new qualitative studies of martial arts due to the fact that the researchers are often practitioners themselves. Confessional, reflexive and auto-ethnographical work has been shared by authors such as: Channon, introducing his martial arts and fighting experience prior to studying mixed-sex martial arts; Delamont and Stephen’s early reflections on their joint fieldwork in a Capoeira school as a complete observer and immersed participant respectively, and Martinez’s autoethnography of her pursuit of Karate in a male-dominated dojo. Our own work follows this important representational turn, with George’s vignettes on the embodied nature of interviewing, and how physical training can lead to spontaneous and flexible interviews, along with other forms of data collection.

In her recent work, Anu has examined the importance of reflexivity in relation to gender, and the embodied labour of the researcher in participatory fieldwork (Forthcoming, 2016). This paper illustrates the advantages and challenges of insider research, but equally interrogates the gendered positionality which the research embodies concurrently with their insider status, and its impact on the research process and data.

Despite being the same age (32) and both having academic background in the sociology of sport and physical culture, our different training experiences have shaped the way we learn, practise and teach Wing Chun. George has tended to focus on non-sporting martial arts after brief periods in Taekwondo, Judo and Kendo. He has practised Wing Chun since 1999, first as a student, later as an assistant instructor, and most recently as a nomadic “ronin” instructor and independent researcher in Scotland and Mexico. He retains a research interest in Wing Chun pedagogy and training methodology, but has since switched his academic attention to the new martial arts of Mexico, such as Xilam whilst teaching Wing Chun privately and in a small group at the Universidad YMCA, where students, staff and the general publish were welcome.  George’s small group of Wing Chun novices were not well versed in chi sau (the sensitivity game also known as sticking hands), so he opted to look at the role of theory and specific Wing Chun fitness and conditioning exercises to provide them with a firm foundation for more technical aspects of the art. The students were aged 14-72 (two female, three male), and mainly learned through private tuition or in pairs. George tried to maintain a very tactile approach, and did not rely on videos or images during training. However, some students requested recordings of him performing the first form before the Christmas holidays.  This event sparked his interest in the relationships between seemingly timeless digital media and the phenomenological issues of training in more specific space.

Although she has been involved in a range of competitive and recreational sports since an early age, Anu was a relative latecomer to martial arts and combat sports. After arriving in the United Kingdom from Finland in 2005, she had the opportunity to try kickboxing in her early 20s, and subsequently got involved in Mixed Martial Arts and Wing Chun. She trains with a small, informal group of practitioners led by her Sifu in the Northeast of England. This involvement shaped her research interests.  Her doctoral dissertation examined ways of embodied knowing in mixed martial arts through an ethnographic study which utilised a phenomenologically-guided, interdisciplinary analytical frame.

In her previous work on mixed martial arts, Anu found that practitioners actively utilised multimedia (in particular visual) materials to accompany physical training and as part of the learning process.  They also documented their own practice through new media technologies including smart phones. This sparked questions as to whether practitioners of more traditional martial arts (such as Wing Chun) utilized technology in similar ways.

Anu suffered a severe knee injury in 2014 during the course of her MMA training when she tore her anterior cruciate ligament.  Following her recovery from surgery her involvement in Wing Chun training intensified, although she is still a relative novice. The small, but committed group of practitioners she trains with focus on the Wing Chun forms, accompanying technical and conditioning drills as well as Chi Sau. However, their training is not completely restricted to traditional Wing Chun.  Her Sifu’s very eclectic background in a range of combat sports and martial arts ensures that the group’s training also incorporates elements from Western boxing, Bruce Lee’s Jun Fan, kickboxing and grappling. There are usually three to five participants (aged 33-65; one female, the rest male) attending training sessions.  Some only attend once a week whereas the three core members of the group, including Anu, gather to train more frequently.  She also participates in private tuition in addition to the group classes.

In summary, we are working together to examine novel approaches to Wing Chun pedagogy. Our different personal, professional and martial arts biographies, dispositions and intuition have led us to delve into material on different topics. This is of course due to our position in our respective groups, and their stages of development (beginning and established). The novelty in this article is in the use of digital technology between instructors, students and other Wing Chun devotees, who all form the global Wing Chun community. We both used the same methods and forms of analysis, and shared our data via email, and later via Facebook and the Messenger mobile phone application to verify our analysis and core argument. Our open-ended research design moved from what began as a phenomenological consideration of time, space, the senses and the body through autophenomenology (Allen Collinson) to a methodological bricolage including field notes and observations, one-on-one focused interviews, email interviews and dialogue, online media analysis and autobiographical reflections which came together at different stages of the six-month study.

We followed Newcastle University’s official guidelines for conducting qualitative research through informed consent. All names have been changed to protect the practitioners’ identities, although the original media that we and the practitioners have used remain overt for the readers’ visual reference and for better clarity in the description of movements and concepts that can easily be mistaken with the written word. Furthermore, we remain in contact with our participants as future collaborators, who are informed of the study from the beginning to the dissemination process.

Discussion: Using multimedia before, during and after classes and training sessions

The discussion of the qualitative data that we have gathered has been divided into three parts by adopting a temporal or ideal typical approach to understanding both official Wing Chun classes and seminars alongside informal training between Kung Fu brethren and solitary home training. The first section deals with the use of media before training sessions, and even before some of the participants became involved in the formal study of Wing Chun. The second part briefly explores how Wing Chun media might be used as a training and teaching aid at the same time that the practitioner is working on specific skills and exercises. The last part provides an insight into how online information can solidify into embodied knowledge directly (or shortly) after the training session or class in question as a means of analysis and circumspection.

A diagram from the Black Flag Wing Chun system discovered online that George found helpful.

Before training

The Ip Man films noted in the literature review are well known in both English and Mexican society. George was pleasantly surprised when a university student, Raul, knocked on the door of the studio he used as a kwoon:

Thanks to the Ip Man trilogy and related films, many people recognize the characteristic movements in Wing Chun. I was finishing the second and third section of Siu Lim Tao when a young student appeared in the doorway.

“Is that Wing Chun?” He asked in a confident manner, as if he knew the answer already.

“Yes, that’s right – it’s Wing Chun.” I replied.

“I thought so. I recognize that movement from Ip Man!” He remarked, as he demonstrated the quintessential chain punch.

Mario, my devoted student in his 70s, turned round and smiled with great joy at the mention of Ip Man. He was normally austere and distant with visitors, but not on this occasion.

This recognition of the triple punch combination led Raul to join the class, and combine it with his Japanese martial arts training. George found it imperative to install a solid understanding of Wing Chun theory in a “scientific” way, especially for the sport science students at the university, who were studying topics such as biomechanics and anatomy. Having explored numerous websites and old books, he found Google Images to be an invaluable resource to help him explain the founding principles of Wing Chun, as seen in one diagram:

I was instantly attracted to a coloured diagram depicting five different lines within three zones (heaven, man and earth). It drew me to an article by the leader of the mysterious Black Flag Wing Chun lineage. Some people claim this is the original style, while others refute this branch as a recent invention and marketing gimmick. Regardless of these often politically motivated debates, the diagram could serve Wing Chun practitioners from all schools and styles. It would help them understand the correct position of techniques and the six gates according to the three Dantiens. Pak Sau, for example, is not a centerline technique; instead, it works within the inner shoulderline, just outside the head.

Personally, George has used videos of hard training sessions with accompanying music to motivate him to train alone, and has sought out rare Wing Chun conditioning drills for the hands, forearms and problematic areas in order to offset potential postural difficulties. Regardless of style, association or “body lineage”, there were useful multimedia resources from veteran Sifus, relatively unknown instructors and even intermediate students sharing fitness tips.

Different multi-mediated materials also provided an initial entry point to members of the English training group, helping to spark their interest in Wing Chun.  This led to exploration of further resources and the search for a place to practice. Senior students like Jack (who is in is mid-forties) initially sought out information through a range of sources which inspired him before he took up training in Wing Chun:

 

“So before I started training in Wing Chun, I had an awareness I suppose from popular films and television. So it would have been Bruce Lee films and generally representation of Kung Fu on television, Jackie Chan, but also magazines like Martial Arts Illustrated and so on, which I would read — Because before I had only seen what he had done in his films, so pretty superficial until I learnt a bit more by reading magazine articles, so people who know knew more about him and about his past and I thought well if you went down that path then maybe it’s worth at least having a look at ” (Jack, May 2016).

Older students also described seeking out a range of material in their interviews. Yet such information was not as widely available or as easily accessible prior to the Internet. Our Sifu recalled the challenges of seeking out resources on Wing Chun (and Kung Fu more generally) in the ‘old days’ and when written sources such books and magazines were harder to get a hold of. For the younger members of the group, including myself and fellow student Alex (35), the online sources provided the primary material utilized in our search for information about the art.  Yet in neither case was this the sole source of information.  Rather, our interest in Wing Chun was preceded by participation in other arts [for Alex, Tae Kwon Do and Aikido; for myself, kickboxing, Thai boxing and MMA].

In terms of the use of these materials, prior to actual physical training sessions, practitioners tended to seek out online materials – primarily YouTube videos – on different technical drills and chi sau.  They were employed as aide-memoires which helped them to review elements of Wing Chun that they would be practicing during the upcoming session. New media technologies such as smartphones facilitated access to these materials.  Alex (35), for example, often watched videos on his mobile phone prior to sessions and when he had free time during his job as a taxi driver:

“I generally watch videos on You Tube on a daily basics usually while waiting for jobs, or when waiting to start a class, etc.” (Alex, March 2016).

Anu also utilised these online visual materials in a similar fashion.  She sought out drills and techniques which she had found challenging during the previous session. The videos offered useful visual reference points that intersected with the corporeal reference points acquired through experience during the group and one-to-one sessions.

During movement

Pre-designed diagrams and figures are an obvious resource when teaching Wing Chun theory, and some podcasts, videos and images can also be used to teach students. Meanwhile, videos and photographs can be an effective way to help students realize their mistakes, as George found when he learned the art in England, in the days before smart phones.

The deployment of such technology can be helpful in avoiding confusion, often overwhelming to beginners, over the various ways to execute techniques and forms. During an interview, one of George’s students, Saul, actually suggested using his cell phone to record the technique:

“I was going to suggest that in the last five minutes of class that perhaps I could record with my cell phone some of the things that I could do at home. They’re not always easy to remember. I’m at home, and I go like, “Was it like this that I was supposed to practise? Do I go like this, or like this?” So, if I could record some of the techniques to bring home, I could record them on my cell phone and it would be easier to remember.”

Although smart phones were employed by Anu, Alex and Jack to study videos prior to sessions, none of them had utilised this technology to record their own training during practice. However, an observational field-note and the subsequent reflection illustrate how connections to multi-mediated materials were regularly made with the bodily and sensuous training sessions:

The online videos available on YouTube are sometimes referred to during practice in relation to different aspects and discussions of efficiency and form, and during last evenings’ training session our Sifu mentioned particular videos that illustrated the form, and the drills that are utilised to practice the different elements of attack and defence particularly well. Within our small group, these references made during practice provide guidance in searching information and videos online, within the wealth of information that is now available and accessible, simply with a click of a button. (Field notes, May 2016)

Senior student Jack reflected on the idea of recording videos of his own practice and the possibility of it being useful for learning, along with limitations for the use of such materials for himself and also from the instructors’ perspective:

“But it would feel quite strange to see it from the outside, when you have experienced it internally from your own perspective, but to see it externally would be quite interesting and say for instance from the instructors’ perspective.  Obviously without the experience you don’t have the tactility that is central there, so you wouldn’t have all the information that you could actually access practicing it for real.  But it’s, VR and things like video playback, that could be…”

A screengrab from the arm conditioning video found on YouTube discussed below.

After practice

Video material is by far the most used form of media by most practitioners we have encountered, especially the younger participants. Whereas some older practitioners complained about the decline in the quality and quantity of martial arts print media, youngsters took to the use of video quite naturally. Mariana (14) videoed George demonstrating the first form, but eventually ran out of memory on her phone due to other videos she had recorded in the week.  George recalled:

 I felt strange being filmed – I imaged other Wing Chun practitioners scrutinizing my positions and even a piece of rare archive footage from my students to come in future decades. Setting aside these thoughts, I tried to perform the form without thinking, until I realised that I was slanting slightly in order to face Valentina’s camera phone.

“We could also film the form from the side”, I suggested, moving my body to the profile view in order to emphasize this. “It would be good in order to see the elbow line.” I said, demonstrating the movement from the profile view. This was another thought that popped into my head during the form: That the vast majority of Siu Lim Tao videos show the form from the front, but never from the side, which can lead to confusions concerning the fixed elbow position, the elbow line and posture in general.

It was exciting to realize that some newcomers to Wing Chun were actively creating new forms of media that could go online, or could be reserved for personal reflection and “old-fashioned” note taking. Regarding the so-called “old school” approach, George came across a challenging exercise for the neck, shoulders and arms that utilised Wing Chun hand positions:

Searching various YouTube videos, I came across an arm exercise demonstration by a seasoned Sifu in my own lineage who claimed it was an “old school exercise” from “thirty years ago.” He told the viewers to hold each position for thirty seconds, and individual movements one hundred times, “or as many times as you can. Basically, do this exercise until you can’t do it anymore.”

This Sifu was a practitioner somewhere between his mid-fifties and mid-sixties, but seemed to be in excellent physical condition. I felt honoured to be able to receive this one-man drill from a veteran practitioner and was surprised that I had never performed it in seven years within the exact same body lineage to which he belongs.

George first trained this exercise at home, and later prescribed it to students after several weeks of supervised repetition, before adding his own “twist” to the exercise through the use of two further – and rather awkward – hand positions (fak sau and ding sau).

Likewise in the second group of practitioners, both participants and the instructor would also review online materials following training sessions, primarily during leisure time and address questions raised during the subsequent gatherings:

“It’s probably normally during leisure time, rather than immediately afterwards, because I probably use the opportunity at that time to ask the questions or I’ll try and recall one for the next session and ask my questions then. Also, I’ll discuss the things I’ve seen so if there’s been a variance or differences between what I perceive on the video or lack of understanding of what’s actually going on, then I will ask my instructor.” (Jack)

Due to the explosion in the volume of videos and other online materials, filtering the information was important:

 

“I mean, I suppose one of the key things is to filter the information that is out there, that is very much about narrowing it down a bit. But not exclusively, but narrowing down perhaps an initial search to for example, to the lineage holders, so Ip Chun and Ip Ching, so you know you’re kind of getting the same sort of forms that I currently practice anyway. But also having maybe a look at some people who have different takes on it, you know to get at something that is not too narrow to get some wider exposure.”

The way in which the students and the Sifu used these materials was pragmatic and directly related to their own practices and experiences. In addition to online materials Anu often enjoyed studying books, particularly the scientific approach to the structure of Wing Chun by Sifu Shaun Radcliffe which also includes diagrammatic representations of the art, similar to those that George had explored online.

Multimedia resources can be accessed from mobile phones, tablets, computers and can even be saved through cloud technology in ways that do not occupy physical space.  Nevertheless, from the perspective of embodied training this complex consumption of media can best be broken down into three times: before, during and after physical practice. There remains a lot of work to be done in terms of how other forms of digital and online multimedia are being used, and can be used, in a pragmatic and safe manner.  We touch on these issues in our tentative conclusion.

A single moment from Ip Man’s teaching career immortalized on YouTube.

Concluding comments: A call for further research and reflection

This small-scale study remains in its infancy.  Yet we hope that it makes a small contribution to the pedagogical and social scientific work on Wing Chun, traditionalist Chinese martial arts and martial arts and combat sports in general. Other researchers and exponents of the art may wish to explore how the constantly expanding and flexible body of digital media offered on YouTube, Vimeo, private and open Facebook groups, specialist (and often commercial) websites, and blogs such as this one, can combine to influence learners and teachers of Wing Chun. Likewise, researchers could (and perhaps should) examine how practitioners themselves are shaping the knowledge of the art – and how this knowledge is transmitted – to new generations of Wing Chun learners and potential students in years to come.

Due to the almost infinite and “immortal” nature of digital information, it will be interesting to chart the development of this knowledge.  What can be inspiring for some is frustrating and confusing for others unable to discern skill levels, quality of technique and nuances of lineage. Issues of credibility, authenticity and authority may intrigue scholars as training exercises, history, technical explanations and “secret” applications move from tightly-knit groups and federations to Wing Chun practitioners anywhere in the world at any time, at the click of the button. This is just as Spencer mentions in the aptly titled “From Many Masters to Many Students,” which ties together ideas of transnational identities, real and imagined movements in the martial arts, such as in the case of Capoeira in Canada.

We join calls from martial arts scholars such as Paul Bowman to disrupt seemingly established disciplinary boundaries in order to join forces to explore this challenging and stimulating topic from a range of disciplinary perspectives, and with their correlating methodologies and theoretical frameworks. Our own approach was limited to a more sociological standpoint that overrode our previous inclination towards phenomenology.  It may yet provide room for other investigations looking at the historical development of martial arts instructional media, the ethical issues accompanying them, the cultural sensitivities when dealing with the politics and traditions of knowledge and its possession, and issues of regulation and legal control of potentially damaging material that could lead to bad or unhealthy practice. Phenomenology may afford purchase on investigations which explore the role of the senses within pedagogic and enskillment practices involved in embodied transmission of Wing Chun knowledge. An example of such avenue in another combat sports context is a chapter examining the role of the sense in pedagogies of MMA coaches by Anu, in a forthcoming book on the senses in physical culture.

Pedagogy in its broadest sense, like our backgrounds in sport and exercise sciences, is interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary. Martial arts studies can work closely with these similarly disrupted disciplines to explore complex themes such as the one we have selected here. And so we finish this short article with a question that remains to be fully explored: How can we understand the connections between multimedia and embodied knowledge in Wing Chun and other TCMA from a multisensorial, timeless and global approach?

About the Authors

George Jennings is a lecturer in sport sociology/physical culture at the Cardiff School of Sport, Cardiff Metropolitan University. His current work examines the relationships between martial arts, health and society. Previously, George has conducted ethnographic and case studies of Wing Chun and Taijiquan, as well as an examination of the newly crated martial arts in Mexico, such as Xilam.

Anu Vaittinen is a qualitative sociologist and a health researcher based at the Institute of Health & Society at Newcastle University, interested in sociological phenomenology and development of socially situated, sensuous embodied ways of knowing within physical cultures and health. Anu is a recreational MMA and Wing Chun practitioner and novice triathlete.

A late Qing military official and his personal guards. Norther China. Source: Vintage Russian Postcard, Personal Collection.

Wushu Comes to America

Today’s post has two goals.  The more important of these is an announcement.  But first I hope to draw you into a discussion on my next book project.

With the daily news of territorial tensions in the South China Sea, or squabbles over trade policy, it is easy to lose sight of how much Chinese-American relations have improved over the last three decades.  In 1970 our countries were physically, economically and socially isolated in ways that readers born after the end of the Cold War will have a difficult time imagining.

These preceding decades of isolation are what made the slowly building wave of bilateral cultural exchanges between 1971 and 1974 so exciting.  Often referred to by historians as the era of “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” (so named because of the initial exchange of Ping-Pong teams in 1971 and 1972), these instances of cultural exchange helped to lay the groundwork for the future thaw in the US-Chinese relationship.  They did so by building institutions that could support future cooperation, as well as creating a level of domestic political demand for a new policy direction.

After decades of isolation the Chinese state was particularly interested in promoting a new public image in the West.  They wanted to demonstrate the accomplishments of their “New Society.”  To do this they would prove to American audiences that China was a thoroughly modern society with vastly improved standards of living, healthcare and education.

The New (post-1949) China would also be shown to be a remarkably stable society, free of crime and disorder.  As a country they were capable of drawing the best from their culture’s past, yet had no time for counter-revolutionary “traditions.”  And despite rumors to the contrary, theirs was not a militaristic society.  They meant their neighbors no harm and looked forward to a period of increasing cooperation on both economic and political issues.  These were the core messages that Chinese diplomats wished the Western public to absorb.

And so the Chinese government (building on the prior success of the Ping Pong teams) staged a series of martial arts demonstrations.  On a fine day towards the end of June in 1974 such luminaries as Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon gathered on the White House Lawn for a display of fighting prowess, embodied most memorably in the form of a diminutive, 11 year old, Jet Li.

Yet these events were not for the exclusive entertainment of the elite.  The American public was invited to a series of much larger, and more dynamic, wushu performances staged in theaters on the East and West coasts.  The lucky cities hosting performances included Honolulu, San Francisco, Washington DC (where the main exhibition was actually held at the John F. Kennedy Center), and a Fourth of July bash staged in New York City.  A number of less formal demonstrations were also held during the troupe’s month long tour of the US.  All of these performances included ballet-like displays of individual Wushu forms, energetic demonstrations of self-defense skills, and dazzling exhibitions of China’s many exotic weapons.

Each of these performances was also intended to educate the American public about the “New China.”  The Chinese government was acutely aware of the Kung Fu fever that Bruce Lee had unleashed only 10 months earlier with the release of “Enter the Dragon.”  In their various interviews they went to great lengths to differentiate modern, socialist, Wushu (which was “good”) from feudal, superstitious and violent Kung Fu practices that were “bad,” no matter how popular they might be.

In a remarkable example of official double-speak, recorded by an intrepid reporter from Black Belt Magazine, an official from the Wushu team insisted that their practice was a vital element of China’s cultural heritage that was at least 3,000 years old.  Hence it was important to share this art with the world.

Yet he also reassured the reporter that all signs of China’s traditional feudal culture had been thoroughly expunged from modern Wushu by a benevolent and wise government.  When asked directly what could possibly be left of a “cultural tradition” once the past has been systematically removed, the answer came in a jumble of Maoist slogans.  Rarely has the invented nature of the Chinese martial arts ever been discussed in more direct or triumphant terms.

Still, the question must be asked.  Why Wushu?  How exactly does a display of lightning fast sword work demonstrate a country’s “modern nature” and “peaceful intentions” upon the global stage?

The Chinese delegation was well aware that the nature of their martial presentation might be misconstrued, especially in America’s much more rough-and-tumble hand combat landscape.  Their officials argued at length why sparring, or any type of fighting within the martial arts, was counterproductive and unnecessary.  It should be noted that the powers that govern Wushu would later change their minds on this point, but in 1974 their insistence on the non-combative nature of the true Chinese martial arts was emphatic.  There are even suggestions (made within the pages of Black Belt) that the Chinese delegation succeeded in limiting the photography of events and restricted press access in an attempt to control the sorts of images that the tour might generate in the American media, lest the public get the “wrong idea” about the Chinese martial arts.

These efforts may have paid off in unexpected, and not entirely satisfactory, ways.  While the tour did an admirable job of furthering the divide between “traditional” kung fu and “modern” wushu within the Western martial arts world, it seems to have created little interest among the American people as a whole.  Indeed, compared to the earlier chapters of “Ping Pong diplomacy” it received only light coverage in the press.

Local papers reported that the event venues of all of the shows were packed, but often it was the urban Chinese-American community (rather than newly suburbanized population) that was coming to see the exclusively East and West coast shows.  A few papers carried images of Kissinger or Nixon meeting members of the delegation in Washington (usually the children).  But the sort of visually dramatic images of flashing spears and slashing swords that we have subsequently come to associate with Wushu were notably absent.  The editorial pages of Black Belt felt that the entire affair ended up being a wasted opportunity.  Indeed, the magazine did not even bother to report on the Beijing Wushu Team’s later performance in New York City or its historic meeting with a sitting president in Washington DC.

Heavy handed messaging may not have been the only challenge that the tour faced.  Simply put, the forces of history seem to have been arrayed against this event.   In the spring and early summer of 1974 Americans were spending a lot of time discussing the Nixon White House, but it was not the President’s diplomatic schedule that was making headlines.

Instead the public was following the rapidly escalating Watergate scandal.  On May 9^th the Senate had opened historic, highly publicized, hearings.  On July 27^th it brought three articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon.  While the June-July1974 Wushu tour is occasionally mentioned by those interested in the history of the Chinese martial arts, and Jet Li (now a celebrity on both sides of the Pacific) has discussed his experiences in subsequent interviews, perhaps we can forgive a distracted public for letting this event slip down the memory hole.   What should have been a historic moment is now merely a footnote.

The political messaging surrounding the tour was in direct opposition to the growing popular discourse on the Chinese martial arts which arose in the wake of Bruce Lee.  And while some reporters (including those who wrote for the New York Times) were notably relieved to discover a more refined, less violent, vision of the TCMA, questions remained as to how Wushu related to China’s ancient (and by all accounts disavowed) traditions.  In any case, this instance of public diplomacy seems fated to have been swallowed by the shadows of the final weeks of the Nixon presidency.

Still, the 1974 visit of the Beijing Wushu Team raises important questions.  Under what circumstances can “soft power,” and other forms of cultural influence, make a positive contribution to a country’s image?  Can government institutions play an effective role in promoting their popular culture abroad, or is this the sort of thing that is better left to “civil society” with its better knowledge about local market conditions?  Lastly, why has so much of the history of the Chinese martial arts in America been forgotten, both by the general public but also within the martial arts community?  What role do strategic decisions about memory and forgetting play in the construction of the Western image of the Asian fighting arts?

Jet Li greets President Richard Nixon on the front lawn of the White House. Source: Nixon Presidential Library.

The Announcement

I am happy to announce that on September 1^st I accepted an appointment as a Visiting Scholar in the East Asia Program at Cornell University.  This is a dynamic community that I look forward to getting to know over the coming semesters.  With their support I am beginning a new book project provisionally titled, “Kung Fu Diplomacy: Soft Power, Martial Arts and the Development of China’s Global Brand.”

In this work I aim to delve more deeply into some of the issues introduced above.  China’s traditional culture has become an important “soft power” resource in recent decades as that state seeks to expand its economic and political influence throughout the international system, while at the same time reassuring global citizens that its intentions are purely peaceful.   To this end the Chinese government has developed a sophisticated infrastructure of offices and organizations dedicated to promoting its cultural and public diplomacy efforts.  In addition to fine arts and language study, the spread of traditional hand combat systems has become an increasingly important element of efforts to maintain a carefully curated image on the global stage.

Yet what sort of image is the Chinese government hoping to project?  As this research project will show, at various points in the 20^th and 21^st century the TCMA have been called upon to support very different visions of the “New China.”   Nor has China’s various governments had a totally free hand in this realm.  Independent educators, reformers, fighters and entertainers have played critical roles in the promotion of the Chinese martial arts at home and abroad.

Sometimes these efforts have been a boon to the state’s efforts.  At other times their visions have clashed.  This work seeks to understand what role the martial arts have played in the construction of China’s “national brand”, as well as the possibilities and limits of both public diplomacy and soft power in the current global environment.

By its very nature this volume will be interdisciplinary.  Diplomatic studies draw heavily on the fields of political science and history, as well as the lived experience of practitioners in the field.  Students of international relations will find within this volume a detailed longitudinal case study that will advance the state of the rapidly expanding literature on public diplomacy and soft power.  It will also shed light on the evolution of China’s diplomatic strategies throughout the 20^th century.  While most existing studies of public diplomacy and soft power focus on the United State, this effort examines the challenges and opportunities facing non-Western powers.

Students of martial arts studies will also find much of interest within the pages of this proposed volume.  Many discussions of the popularization of the TCMA in the West seem to begin with Bruce Lee and end with the failure of Wushu to appear in an official capacity at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.  In contrast this volume will seek to paint a more complete picture of the engagement between these fighting systems and Western culture dating back to the first years of the 1900s.

Rather than examining only the moments when the Chinese martial arts gained traction with the Western public, this study will delve into a number of less remembered, or totally forgotten, episodes.  Only by rediscovering instances of failed engagement can we gain both a better understanding of the history of these fighting systems, as well as insight into the specific social work that they have accomplished at various moments in history.   This process will also underscore the radically historically contingent nature of the modern Chinese martial arts, and suggest some of the other ways that they could have (or may yet) develop.

Former American Secretary of State (and the man who engineered Nixon’s “Opening to China” as National Security Advisor) Henry Kissinger visits the Shaolin Temple.  It seems that Kung Fu Diplomacy lives on.

Conclusion

Regular readers of Kung Fu Tea will already be well aware of my interest in the political aspects of martial arts studies.  Indeed, the changing political situation in Southern China ended up being a critical variable in my social history of Wing Chun (co-authored with Jon Nielson).

As a scholar of international relations I find the frequent appearance of the Asian Martial Arts in the realm of diplomacy particularly fascinating.  I am greatly pleased that Cornell’s East Asia Program also saw some potential within this research project.  I have even been surprised to discover that a number of its members are fellow martial artists!

As I delve more deeply into this new project, readers can expect to see these and related topics reflected in my blogging.  The sorts of materials that I am reading on a daily basis will have an impact on what I write.  For me blogging has always been a byproduct of reading.

And there is so much to read!  In a single afternoon of going through English language newspapers published in Shanghai in the 1920s I found more news stories than I could research and write about in a month.  To the best of my knowledge none of this material had ever been explored in either the academic (or popular) English language literature on the TCMA.  Much of it will be useful in building a more detailed understanding of how Western engagement with the TCMA evolved over the course of the last century.

Once again, I would like to thank the East Asia Program, as well as Prof. T.J. Hinrichs (my faculty sponsor at Cornell) for providing me with access to such rich collections and a dynamic scholarly community.  While book proposals, like military strategies, rarely emerge unscathed from their first contact with “the enemy,” this new project should be of value to anyone wishing for a fuller account of the history of the Chinese martial arts, or the ways in which their spread has influenced China’s image (and soft power) on the global stage.

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If you enjoyed this post you might also want to read:  What is a lineage? Rethinking our (Dangerous) Relationship with History

 
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Taijiquan practitioners by M. Louis. Source: Wikimedia.

***Over the last couple of years a discussion has emerged within the literature on how scholars should define and classify the martial arts, and whether such efforts are even a good idea.  Alex Channon, a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education and Sports Studies at the University of Brighton, has generously agreed to contribute to this ongoing conversation in the following guest post.  I was thrilled to receive this as I have been trying to get Alex to visit Kung Fu Tea for a couple of years.  When we got together at the Martial Arts Studies conference in Cardiff he mentioned that he had an idea for an essay on this topic, and I was only too happy to take him up on the offer.  Enjoy!***

“How (not) to categorise martial arts: A discussion and example from gender studies.”

By Alex Channon

Introduction

A topic that has quickly become a central point of discussion within martial arts studies is that concerned with defining or clarifying what ‘martial arts’ actually are, and thereby what it is (and perhaps, is not) that we are studying when we claim to be doing ‘martial arts studies’.  As the central focus of blog posts, journal articles, and conference presentations associated with our emerging field, and appearing within most introductory (or other) chapters of books and edited volumes on the topic, it is clear that this question animates scholars and will likely continue to do so for some time.

My purposes in this post are to make a small contribution to this discussion by pointing to a manner in which we might approach constructing typological models of ways of engaging in martial arts.  I want to suggest that typologies of martial arts are an important element of our pursuit of the study of these phenomena, but the manner in which we undertake this work must be reflexively and openly configured around the specific intentions that we have for doing so.  Ultimately, we must be mindful of, and work in close relation to, the tension that exists between the need to clarify definitional criteria used in our research, with the tendency for universalising categories to break down under scrutiny across the widest possible field of their application.

To elaborate on this, there are two initial points to make.  Firstly, differentiations between martial arts should not be tied to discreet, self-identified ‘styles’ or ‘disciplines’ (e.g., boxing, capoeira, karate), such that any typological system we build should avoid falsely reifying the assumed homogeneity of styles.  And secondly, the specific purposes for which any given typology is imagined must be held in plain view when reflecting on the way in which it is constructed, and thereby its particular value and limitations for understanding martial arts made clear.

The heterogeneity of ‘styles’

Following Wetzler’s critique of the scholarly tendency to adopt the object-language of martial arts/martial artists themselves, typologies of martial arts are doomed to fail if they are based principally on grouping together extant ‘styles’ (i.e., boxing, judo, karate).  This is because any given martial discipline is constituted by dynamic social processes which vary across time and place, with the assumed objective characteristics belonging to each art being little more than “lexical illusions” (Wetzler 2015, p.25) circulating among a given group of practitioners or observers at any one point in time.  In short, the different styles of martial arts do not exist in the static and homogenous way in which they are often assumed to, throwing efforts at categorising them on such bases into disarray.

While some martial artists may argue that theirs is a strictly ‘non-competitive’ discipline, others training within them may still hold or enter tournaments. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Timothy Moore). Source: Wikimedia.

If we take for example the apparent divergence between, for argument’s sake, fighting arts with an emphasis on some form of ‘spiritual’ component, and those constituted primarily around competitive sporting purposes, then we might be tempted to suggest that the various styles of tai chi categorically fall into the former and boxing, the latter.  Yet, one person’s tai chi practice might in fact be largely sports-oriented – they may aspire to win national championships and train expressly for this purpose, disregarding or de-emphasising other training goals.  Meanwhile, the other’s boxing might involve no competition at all, and could very well be practiced in a manner tied to transcendental, ‘spiritual’ goals; for instance, it is not uncommon for powerful narratives of self-transformation to be attached to boxing classes employed within violence survivor programmes.  In this way there is little to be gained from categorically associating an entire martial discipline with one or another archetype (e.g., spiritual art vs. competitive sport), since in practice any system could conceivably be configured in ways which meet the criteria of multiple categories.

Previously, in a paper co-authored with George Jennings, I made use of a simplified approach to understanding variation among martial arts that rests on a commonly-assumed division between ‘traditionalist’, ‘sporting’ and ‘self-defence’ orientations, employed as a means of indicating the breadth of the scope of activities we were interested in discussing within that specific piece.  Judkins and Wetzler have both critiqued this approach, each quoting the same passage of this particular paper to do so, for the risk it poses in glossing over the internal diversity of styles of martial arts.  However, in the same paragraph as our twice-quoted passage, Jennings and I did also note that “complicating efforts at neatly defining or categorising these disparate arts is the recognition that, in individual practice, any given style may blur the conceptual boundaries upon which such typologies are based” (p.774).  While we might’ve been clearer on this point in the original piece, it wasn’t our intention to fall into such a trap while recognising that modes of practice of martial arts differ in notable ways.

Indeed, there are certainly differences in how and why people practice martial arts – it would be difficult to argue that there is no important distinction between competition-based and self-defence training practices for instance – and as scholars we need to be cognisant of such divergences and ask what impact they have on phenomena including the lived experience of training, the technical methods and knowledge involved, modes of popular media representation, etc.  Various forms of martial arts practice are likely to bear differing significance in many such dimensions, as will be returned to below.  Yet these differences should not be assumed to map neatly onto discrete styles of martial arts; individual disciplines are too open to variation in actual practice for such an effort to be of any use.

The specific analytical purposes of categories

Categories of martial arts might therefore be better established on bases other than descriptive conformity with the self-expressed differences existing between supposedly unique styles (or groupings of styles).  In this sense, typological differentiation might be more worthwhile if it is expressly built around analytical criteria; that is, rather than starting with the reference points established by and within particular martial arts themselves, such an exercise begins with the conceptual work that the martial arts studies scholar is hoping to undertake by doing the differentiation.

Such a choice makes clear the underlying theoretical frameworks otherwise being implicitly adopted, helping avoid the temptation to take up the assumptions circulating within particular martial arts subcultures.  It also requires scholars to make explicit the specific contexts within which their attempts at defining ‘martial arts’ might be used, thus avoiding the trap of universalism that often scuppers such attempts.  After all, what is analytically useful in one context may hold little value for understanding martial arts in another.

Moreover, this approach carries added importance if we accept that definitional efforts are very often accompanied by some form of hierarchal ordering.  To return to the flimsy dichotomy noted above – ‘spiritual’ vs. ‘sporting’ approaches – it is often the case that a hierarchal framework is subtly imposed on martial disciplines and their adherents, which may be inflected with specific forms of prejudice, when applying this sort of distinction in practice.

Read it here!

In one of my earlier papers on gender and martial arts training, I noted that British men who practiced so-called ‘Asian’ martial arts explicitly constructed themselves as morally superior to men involved in ‘sports’, including sportised fighting disciplines such as boxing and MMA, specifically because they eschewed a particular vision of masculinity associated with sport along with the over-competitiveness and violence this was assumed to entail.  I have consistently run up against similar discourses in subsequent research and teaching on martial arts.  A particularly fitting, recent example came when a young karateka in one of my undergraduate physical education theory classes refused to call MMA ‘martial arts’ because ‘it lacks a spiritual element’ and ‘is practiced by violent people’ – a position admittedly derived from her sensei’s teachings.

The purposes behind any given martial arts teacher’s discursive construction of their discipline as somehow ‘more spiritual’ or ‘less violent’ than another might be directed towards a particular pedagogical aim according to specific interpretations of their art.  It is conceivable that the aesthetics or other objective features of these activities might be leveraged towards a lesson in non-violence, or to highlight the perceived importance of self-cultivation over competitiveness, for instance.  But when such characteristics of practice are then taken to stand in for categorical differences between martial arts/artists in a wider sense, yet remain tied to an implicit moral framework of ‘the right and wrong ways to train’, the moralising conceptual prime-mover of this particular distinction slips unnoticed into a worldview that encourages unsubstantiated and prejudicial readings of others’ practices.

Furthermore, it is not difficult to see how far the construction of ‘morally superior, cosmopolitan, enlightened Asian martial arts practitioner’ vs. ‘violent, thuggish, ignorant boxer/cage fighter’ may feed both class-based prejudices and orientalist romanticism (at least, in Western contexts).  Although it would be unfair to assume that any application of this sort of distinction is always built around prejudicial stereotyping, it represents a problem inherent in universalising definitional meanings of martial arts which were built for a specific purpose.  When left un-interrogated in their wider applications, the analytical aims of such attempts at differentiation stand to cloud judgement in ways which are both conceptually misleading, and possibly constitutive of unhelpful and unwarranted status hierarchies (other examples of this problem might include categorisations of martial arts in terms of their perceived ‘authenticity’, or ‘effectiveness’, and so on, whereby the respective ‘lesser’ arts are implicitly subordinated/denigrated).

To this end, I argue that making the purposes of our differentiations clear from the outset is an important step in ensuring an openness that avoids this potentially harmful outcome.  We should ask ourselves why we are seeking to define or differentiate between martial arts in this or that way, making clear that any such method is likely going to be of only limited usefulness in contexts that lie beyond those connected to our immediate analytical goals.

An example from gender studies

As an example of an explicitly analysis-led effort at producing a typology of martial arts, I turn now to the model constructed in mine and Christopher R Matthews’ recent book, Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors around the World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).  Within the introductory chapter of this book, we posited a five-point typology specifically constructed around the implications of women’s participation in various combat sport activities for the theoretical study of gender.  We built the typology in two ways – firstly by way of interrogating how such practices might relate to a handful of key conceptual issues, and secondly by drawing on extant empirical research to help substantiate and refine the emergent categorical types.  The five categories we created were:

1. ‘Combat’ workouts
2. Purposive self-defence
3. Competitive fighting
4. Performative combat
5. ‘Recreational’ martial arts

Although it is tempting to digress into a full discussion of these categories, I will refrain from doing so here in the interests of space.  Instead, I will focus on the rationale underpinning this model and point the reader to the original source, free to access here (pp.8-15), for further reading.

Our purpose for building this typology was to understand how women’s engagement in combat sports and related activities might hold out the possibility to challenge long-standing hierarchal constructions of gender within Western societies.  We were not trying to exhaustively define martial arts, or create a rigid, universally-applicable structure for categorising fighting activities, but instead map out a series of practical distinctions within this field that bore special relevance for our analytical objective.

‘Padded attacker’ self-defence training clearly differs from kata drills or competitive fighting, but which differences we focus on will be a reflection of our analytical aims as researchers. Source: Wikimedia.

Specifically, it was our hope that the differences we highlighted would be useful in furthering feminist analyses of the value of combat sports participation for challenging gender inequity, and on that basis we shaped the typology around a set of questions which we deemed to be of central importance in this effort.  These involved:

1. To what ends are fighting techniques being studied by women?
2. How do practitioners (physically) interact with one-another?
3. What meanings are ascribed to the capabilities of their bodies, and to the physical and/or cultural space(s) their bodies occupy?
4. In what manner are men present in the activity, if at all?
5. And ultimately, how do these considerations map onto the gender norms and sexual hierarchies operating within the wider cultural spaces the activity occupies? (p.14, as above)

These questions were developed on the basis of our theoretical background in the sociology of gender, and also our engagement with the literature on women, sport and gender derived from the sociology of sport and sport psychology fields.  In this sense, the focus of our analysis was narrowed further, addressing concerns that hold particular (although not necessarily exclusive) relevance for the debates occurring among feminist sports scholars.  Indeed, these foundational questions were intended to address various issues identified by scholars as most pertinent to women’s engagement in sport and physical activity, and its media representation.

In turn, these concerns included: the long-standing association between fighting, sports, masculinity, and symbolic constructions of male power; the passivity and deferential interactional strategies embedded in traditional modes of feminine gender performance, learned through lifelong socialisation processes and mirrored historically by (mediated) idealisations of femininity; the restrictive and objectifying, often sexualised, male-centred relationship that many women are encouraged to have with their own bodies; the oppressive spatial regulation of women’s bodies and their continual surveillance by others; the assumed inevitable leadership, authority and superiority of men within cultural spheres historically defined as ‘masculine’; the pervasive, ubiquitous nature of gender as an organising principle in contemporary social life; and the potential for women’s engagement in (particularly) vigorous, combative physical training, along with the mediated representation of doing so, to disrupt, subvert or otherwise challenge many of these phenomena.

Each of these problems have been identified in previous theoretical and empirical literature as important for understanding how, why, and to what ends women engage in physical activity, and have been central concerns throughout much of the extant sociological research on women’s sport in general and martial arts in particular.  Thus, we took them as fitting problems around which to articulate a system of differentiation for grasping the social significance of these activities, relative to the politicised theoretical ambitions of figuring out how they might best be utilised to challenge the inequity of modern gender structures.

Uses and limitations of the model

Evidently, given their analytical specificity to our particular area of interest, these are not the same questions that other scholars have asked of martial arts in similar definitional efforts.  However, it is notable that they do bear some similarity to the ‘classes of phenomena’ underpinning Wetzler’s recently articulated ‘five dimensions of meaning’.  In this respect, our model falls in line with the approach Wetzler advocates, and which Judkins describes as “strongly (encouraging) focused comparative analysis”, as it builds a contextually-relevant means of defining and understanding martial arts relevant to a specific analytic objective.  The comparisons that Wetzler’s approach encourage carry resonance across fields of practice within which martial arts might be understood as bearing differing significance towards a particular theoretical focus, and are thus potentially generative of more directly theorised case-studies than generalised attempts at differentiation offer.

The approach taken in building our typology thereby foregrounds salient elements of martial arts and related activities which are explicitly determined by our analytical goals surrounding gender and sport.  It did not depend at all on the (claimed) characteristics of specific martial disciplines, so avoids the homogenisation of styles outlined above.  Here, we were careful with the terminology used in describing the practices associated with each category, using words like ‘usually’, ‘often’, ‘might’, etc., in place of more fixed, definitive language, because we did not want the model to be tied to specific objective practices but rather to the meanings any such practices might be seen to carry.  Meanwhile, being clearly articulated around specific theoretical conceptualisations helped tie the model to a finite area of analysis, avoiding any implied universalism and the obfuscation wrought by unclear theoretical frameworks.  In other words, we were forthright about the limits of the model’s usefulness, making no claims to wider applicability.

Fitness classes using fighting techniques may not be very ‘martial’, but can still be worth considering as part of the wider field of interest for martial arts studies scholars. Source: Wikimedia.

In addition, the analysis-driven focus also provided the ability to take note of activities which fall outside of more conventional definitions of ‘martial arts’, such as those subsumed within the first category, ‘combat’ workouts.  There is little involved in boxercise classes, for instance, that could be considered either ‘martial’ or ‘combative’, but this does not mean that these activities don’t or shouldn’t figure as important phenomena when analysing women’s engagement within the wider field.  Indeed, such practices are a common feature in many female martial artists’ narratives of participation, and are closely linked with the manner in which other aspects of women’s sport are structured by discourses of gender, yet would be rendered invisible here if insisting on a more generic definition of martial arts/combat sports.  Thus, while the model is inherently restrictive with respect to its theoretical utility, it is intended to be all the more inclusive within this area because of it.

The typology is, of course, far from perfect.  We took care to ‘book-end’ the section of the chapter that introduced it with disclaimers as to its incompleteness and cultural partiality, built as it is around the perspectives of two white, Western, male scholars deriving their knowledge from (mostly) Anglophone academic literature and engagement within Western(ised) cultural practices.  Additionally, many practicing martial artists may point out that their own engagement in the field straddles multiple categories.  Of course this is both possible and highly likely, and while it does not invalidate the observation that each type of practice bears differing relevance for gender analysis, it does reduce the model’s utility for understanding individuals’ specific, complex patterns of engagement in martial arts.

In terms of its actual content, the fifth category in particular (‘recreational’ martial arts) is likely to be frustrating to some scholars given its diffuseness, which was driven by what we considered to be a lack of definitive differences regarding our central thematic problem rather than any similarities between the modes of practice described within it.  This left the final category as more of a collection of miscellany than a meaningful, single ‘type’, even if its inclusion did give us reason to encourage reflection, criticality, and the extension of our analysis by others.  Indeed, it is likely that others’ perspectives on such practices, filtered through theorisations of gender, might’ve expanded this category in a more meaningful way than we managed.

Elsewhere, we omitted discussion of martial arts trained in by women within the security or military forces – an unfortunate oversight on our part of a very timely phenomenon.  This perhaps ought to figure as a separate category of its own in any future re-working of this model, given that such formations of practice clearly bear relevance for gender analyses even if they have precious little to do with ‘combat sport’, as such.  Empirical research into these practices among women serving in various armed forces would likely yield intriguing insight and make for fruitful comparisons against the wide body of work existing on women’s civilian self-defence training, for instance.

Conclusion

To conclude this post, I would like to invite readers to critically respond both to the overall proposition made here – that typological classifications of martial arts might be particularly useful when tied to specific, finite analytical objectives – as well as the model proposed as an example of this exercise.  As is clearly represented within more extensive, recent discussions over how and why we should define our object of analysis, there is yet little consensus among martial arts studies scholars on this vital issue.  If the proposition forwarded here is accepted, it is likely that a multitude of models for categorising martial arts will proliferate, each with its own specific sphere of application and unique theoretical utility.  Whether or not this is something that the martial arts studies community would find helpful remains to be seen.

Alex Channon

About the Author

Alex Channon is a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education and Sports Studies at the University of Brighton.  Along with Christopher R. Matthews, he is the editor of Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors around the World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).  Alex’s research interests include sex integration in martial arts, the mediated representation of combat sport athletes, and the value of martial arts as forms of physical education.

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: ABC Nightline.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Chinese Martial Arts on the Big and Small Screen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martial Arts Studies

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

There is exciting news from the Martial Arts Studies book series, edited by Paul Bowman and published by Rowman & Littlefield.  The first work in the series, by Chris Goto-Jones, is now shipping.  It is The Virtual Ninja Manifesto: Fighting Games, Martial Arts and Gamic Orientalism (2016).  Here is the publisher’s statement on the project:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kung Fu Tea on Facebook

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

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

Becoming Ip Man, in all the Wrong Ways

On a Saturday morning in 2011 I found myself running an “open session” for my Sifu’s Wing Chun school.  The weekday classes were always structured affairs in which learners worked their way through an extensive curriculum centered on one of the various forms in the Wing Chun system.  Monday through Thursday students were separated into individual classes for Siu Lim Tao, Chum Kiu, Biu Jee, the dummy, pole and swords.  There was also a separate introductory class in which beginners were taught basic skills before being advanced to Siu Lim Tao.

Friday nights and Saturday mornings, however, were different.  Sifu would take the day off and one of his senior students opened the school for anyone who wanted to train.  Most students were interested in working on their Chi Sao or “sticky hands.”  But in other cases people would work on skills that had been introduced during the week, perfect their forms or train on the schools dummies.

That was where I found Danny*.  In his mid-twenties he was a relatively new and enthusiastic student.  Danny had only recently been advanced from the beginner to the Siu Lim Tao class.  But he was a quick learner and spent a lot of time on social media.

Given the order in which Sifu introduced class material, Danny had never been formally introduced to the dummy form.  That would come a couple of years down the road.  But he had been shown some basic drills that could be done on the dummy to help him improve his basic skills and conditioning.

Enthusiastic as ever Danny was eager to move beyond this material.  So he went on Youtube and, in the course of a single week, taught himself the entire dummy form.  When he arrived at the school on Saturday he was eager to show me what he had been working on.

Danny admitted that the entire exercise turned out to be more complicated than he had expected.  A talented dancer, he was no stranger to the reconstructing other people’s movement techniques from video.  I must admit that this is something that does not come easily to me.  It is much easier for me to understand a sequence of movements from the way that they feel, rather than how they might look to a theoretical third party observer.  To each his own.

The first issue that Danny discovered was that there are a million versions of the dummy form on Youtube, and most of them seemed to have little in common.  He had no way of knowing which was the most appropriate model for our school (Sifu had yet to start posting his own videos).  Nor, in his estimation, were all of the performers equally skilled.  But if you do not already know the form, how can you tell who is actually doing it “correctly?”

Danny decided to cut the Gordian knot with an argument by authority.  He had not heard of a lot of the lineages and teachers that he saw on Youtube, but he did know that he was studying “Ip Man” Wing Chun.  A couple of quick searches revealed the 1972 recording of Ip Man performing the dummy form in his own home in Hong Kong.  Realizing that he just found a fount of “authenticity” Danny drank deeply.

What he proceeded to demonstrate for me was, in a word, terrifying.  It was an absolutely uncanny reproduction of the now iconic Ip Man film.  Every movement, gesture and pause was flawlessly reproduced.  And yet what was performed was most definitely not our dummy form.  It was at best a shadow of it, a type of Kung Fu mime.  Movements that can contain power did not, his angles of approach were all just a bit off (which is a problem when you are punching a block of solid wood), and his form lacked the cadence one typically sees (I suspect because the video he worked from had no sound).  Yet before my eyes a young and healthy student was transformed into a frail Cantonese gentleman.

The entire thing was an exercise in self-transformation, just not any of the ones that the dummy form is usually concerned with.  I asked Danny if he knew how Ip Man had died, and he did not.  What followed was an explanation of the fact that the recordings he had seen were of an old sick man in the final stages of throat cancer.  Some of what Danny had been practicing was indeed dummy material.  Yet a surprising amount of it was simply the imitation of a single specific moment in time.

One suspects that if we had a recording of Ip Man’s dummy form during the 1930s he would have approached it somewhat differently.  And it still would have been “authentic” Wing Chun.  Yet which recording would a modern student find more useful?

Simply jumping into the world of Youtube instruction thus presents two problems.  First, we must locate the appropriate model.  Next we need to determine what is actually significant, and what is secondary, in that performance.

Danny’s solution to the fist problem was actually clever.  Indeed, our schools version of the dummy form is virtually identical to what he saw in the video.  But without a firm grasp of the basic techniques and philosophy of Wing Chun, he was not able to separate out the core purpose of the dummy form from all of the secondary considerations that emerged at one specific moment in 1972.

An image of the Ancient Jedi Master Bodo Baas appears to Kam Solusar as the keeper of a Holocron. Source: wookieepedia

The Jedi’s Holocron

I had not thought about Danny or that incident back in my Sifu’s school for years.  Yet for the last couple of days it has been on my mind.  Recently George Jennings and Anu Vaittinen visited Kung Fu Tea and shared some of their research on the growing presence of the multi-media resources within the Wing Chun community.  While other scholars have tackled the issue from the film and media studies perspective, they were more interested in pedagogical questions.  How does the omnipresent smartphone, with instant access to a huge database of video, change the way in which Wing Chun is taught or learned?

Of course this situation is in no way restricted to Wing Chun.  All of the more popular styles seem to be inundated with on-line instructors and students offering a wealth of free advice.  The combat sports (Boxing, Wrestling, Kickboxing, MMA) have been using film as part of training and fight preparation since literally the invention of the moving picture.  From that perspective, the TCMA are relative latecomers to a crowded media landscape.

It was my ongoing ethnographic fieldwork with the Central Lightsaber Academy that first forced me to confront these issues in my personal training.  While I have mostly managed to avoid the social-media scene surrounding Wing Chun, Darth Nihilius (also a Wing Chun Sifu), is very engaged with these technologies of communication.  He has brought this same enthusiasm to his lightsaber combat class.  In order to help students practice various techniques at home he posts frequent video updates to his Facebook groups and Youtube channel.

Lots of material is inevitably pulled into these discussions from other places as well.  Much of that comes from the Terra Prime Lightsaber Academy, run by another individual with an extensive background in the Chinese martial arts. This group functions, at least in part, as a sort of “virtual lightsaber school.”

It has assembled a training and advancement program and put out a huge number of videos on a mind-boggling number of topics.  Students who do not have the benefit of direct classroom instruction can go through this material on their own, post videos of their progress, and get detailed criticism and feedback from a select group of more experienced practitioners within the TPLA.

Within the TPLA community you will find some lightsaber students associated with traditional schools (much like Darth Nihilius’ CLA), and others who gather only in the digital realm as “learners in exile.”  Needless to say, this type of hybrid teaching structure is only possible because of relatively recent advances in communications technology.  Yet even the students within more traditional schools are encouraged to keep video diaries of their own training, as well as to consult the extensive library of teaching resources that can be found on-line.

One finds these sorts of hybrid and networked teaching structures in other places as well.  Aspects of the Taijiquan community, which combines both traditional schools as well as large numbers of semi-detached and solo-practitioners, comes immediately to mind.  Yet when we begin to look at these practices through the lens of the lightsaber community, it all begins to look like a case of life imitating art.

One of the many iconic images to be found in the Star Wars extended universe is the “holocron.” Shaped as either a cube or pyramidal box, and made up of a complex arrangement of crystals and circuitry, this supposedly ancient technology allowed Jedi and Sith masters to store vast amounts of information for future generations.  Explicitly designed as a pedagogical tools, a holocron possessed an artificial intelligence that could access and display recordings from many fields of knowledge, including lightsaber combat.  And while they were not “alive,” these devices were said to have been able to detect both the motivations and skills of their users.  This allowed them to withhold information until such a time as it might provide real insight.

More than once I have found myself holding a lightsaber in one hand, and my phone in the other, as I attempted to work my way through a new training exercise. (Unfortunately we have yet to perfect the holographic display, which would greatly simplify things).  At those moments I sometimes think how close we have come to being able to realize the essential promise of a holocron.  Twenty minutes later, when I find myself still working on the same basic sequence, I am more likely to reflect on the pedagogical distance between a Youtube video and the assembled wisdom of the Jedi sages.

Such has been the case over the last few days.  I was recently assigned to begin learning a new form (or “dulon”) in my lightsaber class.  Due to upcoming travel over the next few weeks Darth Nihilius mentioned that I should look at the various videos that have been produced on this particular form and keep working on my own.

This has worked fine for learning the basic sequence of techniques in the dulon.  Yet as any martial artist can tell you, there is more to learning a form than just mastering the gross motor movements.  Those only put you in a place where the real work of perfecting intent, energy, and the fine details of technique can begin.

Nor is this material of secondary importance.  Very often conceptual arguments are encoded in the rhythm and energy of a form.  This is where one might also find a dulon’s more elusive “internal aspect.”  Unfortunately “energy” and “intent,” qualities that can be easily felt and experienced, do not always come through on video.

This is not to say that they never come through.  The more depth of knowledge you have in these areas, the more you will be able to decode in another martial artists performance.  Yet there are always secondary considerations that cloud the picture.  And the very fact that you are attempting to learn a dulon from a video clip in the first place suggests that you may not be totally qualified to critique and deconstruct its performance.

On the small black holocron that currently sits on my desk, I have four different recordings of the dulon that I am currently working.  They were recorded by two different instructors (both trusted sources) over the last couple of years.  While the basic sequence of techniques in each of these recordings is the same, when examined carefully the fine details between them are sometimes strikingly different.

In one form the movements are clear and distinct, punctuated by brief pauses in which a stance is held.  When one watches the blade tip it looks as though most of the movements and cuts are basically linear in their travel.

In the next recording the instructor appears to be working on presenting a smooth flow of movement.  The sword tip never rests, so much so that certain techniques that were distinct in the first recording seem to be totally swallowed in the second.  Further, some movements that had previously been linear now take on a looping quality in which economy of motion is traded for momentum.

The third recording goes even further down this same pathway.  Now the swordsman’s body seems to be allowed to arch and sway in compensation for specific techniques.  This form also covers the least ground and the footwork is, in places, restricted.

The final recording is different still.  Its movements are sharp and linear.  This quality of movement has been tied to a feeling of aggression not seen in the first three.  Upon closer inspection it seems to be the result of more power being issued through each of the strikes and a slightly faster tempo of footwork covering more ground.

Danny worked from only a single recording of Ip Man.  As such he had no subtle variations to fixate upon.  Without an exterior frame of reference (or a strong grounding in the basics of the style) each small detail in the form looked as valid and central to the performance of the set as the next.

My current situation is slightly different as I can directly observe the same individuals performing the same form in slightly different ways.  My background as a martial artist leads me to suspect that both environmental and personal factors are at play.  In one case the room was too short and the footwork at the end of the dulon had to be altered to accommodate the environment.  But did a feeling of being “cramped” alter other aspects of the performance as well?

Nor do martial artists always approach a form with the same goals.  At certain times their objective might be to give a clear performance for the audience.  In another practice session they may be trying to flow smoothly between actions.  Later they might practice the form for power development.

How then do we locate the essence of a form in this plethora of representation?  A holocron that presents information selectively, and possesses a sense of its own authority, might be able to help.  A smartphone, on the other hand, leaves us to our own devices.

Instruction at a TPLA Workshop held on April 30th, 2016. Source: The TPLA Facebook Group.

Martial Arts, Lakatos and the Scientific Research Program

Perhaps we can begin to think more critically about this problem by abstracting away from the realm of the martial arts.  One of my favorite books in graduate school was Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave’s co-edited volume Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge.  This was derived from the proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science held in London in 1965.  At these meetings a number of philosophers responded to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Lakatos attempted to bridge the gap between Popper and Kuhn by advancing his own notion that science was based not so much on discrete, easily falsified theories (Popper’s position), but on more holistic “research programs.”

In retrospect it seems like an odd book to find in a survey course on the Theories of International Relations.  And the debates over the epistemology of knowledge have moved on from where they were in the middle of the 1960s.  Still, I often find myself thinking back to ideas I first encountered in this collection, even when I am working with a lightsaber or wooden dummy.

There are many ways to conceptualize the martial arts.  Some students seem to regard them as a collection of discrete techniques to be mastered.  Other individuals look to them as vehicles of philosophical understanding, a “way of life.”  In my academic work I tend to view them as social organizations.  Indeed, the martial arts really only exist when there is (at least potentially) a master and an apprentice.

Another possibility is to think of them as something similar to scientific theories, each of which is upheld and expanded by a dedicated community of researchers.  More specifically, many martial arts seem to be based around particular theories of violence. They contain certain core assumptions about how the human body works, and responds in different situations.

These are then hedged about with smaller secondary theories regarding what sorts of attacks one is most likely to encounter (Wing Chun often defaults to multiple attacker scenarios), and what sorts of structures will most likely to be effective (ones that control the “center line”).  Beyond that, there are a number of commonly shared minor hypothesis (punching wall bags and hanging heavy bags helps to build “good structure”), that get tested in schools around the globe on a nightly basis.

But what if our theory is wrong?  The seemingly utilitarian logic of science (championed by Popper) would call on us to discard our theories when we first encounter evidence that contradicts them.  Thus when Bruce Lee’s fight with Wong Jack Man was not as successful as he hoped, he moved farther away from his traditional Wing Chun training.

There is a great deal of wisdom in knowing when to move.  Still, one must be cautious when employing such an approach.  The basic problem with falsification based models of learning is that there is always a mismatch between our theories of reality, and the way that reality actually functions.

Simply put, the world is an exceedingly complex place.  Even a single topic, like community violence, is maddeningly complicated.  The human mind is simply incapable for fully perceiving, let alone computing, all of the facts necessary to deal with “reality.” As a result we create theories.  They are essentially simplified visions of reality that focuses on only the key points that are necessary for us to solve our problem.

J. Z. Smith has argued that theories, like maps, guide us through unknown territory. Yet no map is perfectly accurate. That would require a document drawn in one-to-one scale.  Such a thing would literally blanket and hide the territory that it was meant to reveal.  What makes a map truly useful is not what is included, but that which is left behind.  The more you omit, the easier it is to carry the map in your pocket or read it on a crowded subway car.  A map that is too large or cumbersome to read is, by definition, not useful.

Like maps, theories are simplifications of reality.  What this means is that in a strict sense every theory is born falsified.  That is the original sin of disciplined academic thought, particularly in the social sciences.  How one moves forward from that point has been the subject of debate.1  Yet on some level we hold on to our theories because they are useful to us.  100% descriptive accuracy has never been a possibility, nor is it really the point of the exercise.

Whether the Wing Chun structure will perfectly defend against specialists in every known type of violence (it will not), is not a relevant question.  Instead we need to ask, “Will this be useful to me in a number of situations against the sorts of attackers that I personally am likely to encounter?” Again, there are many reasons why someone might train in the martial arts that have nothing to do with self-defense.  But my hope is that this line of thought will help us to think more carefully about framing relevant questions.

Lakatos had quite a bit to say on what happens next.  Because all theories of violence (or anything else) will depart from reality on some level, the only thing that can actually falsify one approach is the creation of a “better” theory.  Failure to explain all observed facts is never enough.

What constitutes a “better” theory?  According to Lakatos we should only accept the second theory if it could accomplish three tasks:

1) It must do all the intellectual work that the first theory did.

2) It must account for the specific failure of that theory.

3) It must go on to explain a range of new and novel facts that are both important and unrelated to specific events of 1 and 2.

Admittedly that is a pretty high bar.  But when it is achieved we tend to see sweeping “paradigm shifts” in our understanding of a topic, much as Kuhn predicted. Unfortunately this insight alone did not solve Lakatos’ epistemological problems.  Nor will it resolve the dilemma posed in the first half of this essay.

To put the matter simply, we must still be able to define and identify our theories before we can collectively test them.  Nor is that process always easy in either the sciences (“Sure Dr. Jone’s work talks about the density of star formation, but is it really central to our theory of dark matter?”) or in the martial arts (“Yes, everyone says the Red Boat martial artists flipped their butterfly swords into reverse grips when training in confined spaces, but is that relevant to Wing Chun’s core understanding of bladed combat?”).

Lakatos observed that the work of actual scientists rarely conformed to the simplistic models of a single theory and set of hypotheses envisioned by most philosophers.   In real life we see lots of research teams working on many different projects, not all of which share the same basic assumptions.  So how do we locate the “real” theory of quantum gravity?  Or for that matter the real “Shii-cho” in lightsaber combat?

To solve the dilemma Lakatos observed that theoretical discussions are never unitary.  Instead we see at least two elements within a theory.  He called them a “positive” and “negative” heuristic.  But it might be simpler to think of them as a hard inner core of axiomatic insights, and a flexible outer belt of protective hypothesis and minor theories that can be derived from them.

When an important assumption was challenged a new set of hypotheses might be added to the protective belt to protect it.  If astronomers notice that the stars in a galaxy rotate faster than they expect given the observable mass of its cosmic structures, rather than throwing out our theory of gravity and starting from scratch, we might instead save Newton by postulating the existence of some sort of “dark matter” that does not interact with light or electromagnetic forces.  In fact, that is exactly what scientists have done, and the results have been fairly fruitful if not entirely satisfying.

Likewise, when I watch four unique performances of the same lightsaber Dulon, or I see two of my Wing Chun brothers play the same dummy set in slightly different ways, I do not assume that every small detail is equally valid and that somehow one performance has invalidated the others.  Instead there may be secondary considerations for what I have seen.  One student may be trying to develop energy in his dummy set, while the other is working on relaxation and flow.

This is the advantage of having multiple views of related events.  Through a process of elimination one might be able to work back towards the central core of the form.  Yet our view of the world is always incomplete.  We will never have a complete play list of all of the valid ways in which the form could be played, and so any inductively derived understanding of the theory behind the form must always remain incomplete.

Robert Downey Jr. and Eric Orem working on the wooden dummy.

Conclusion: When the student is ready….

Having access to a skilled teacher is helpful on any number of levels.  Yet in this particular case they are able to speak to what Lakatos’ might call a martial art’s “central conceptual core” and the “protective belt” of training strategies and individual innovations.  They can relate to a student their specific theory of violence.  It may or may not be an accurate representation of reality, but it is certainly easier to encounter these ideas through conversation than by attempting to inductively derive everything from videos on a smartphone.

Most importantly of all, a teacher is able to withhold information in a way that Google and Youtube are not.  They should know when to step in to instruct, but also when to step back and tell the student to continue to drill the basics.  There is something almost seductive about the sheer amount of video that is now available on many fighting systems.  Yet the pure weight of this unsorted, ungraded and often very opinionated information that can also be stifling.

Once a common core of knowledge and insight has been built up through dedicated practice, much that was a mystery (“Should my blade tip cut in a direct line, or loop back and swing forward?”) naturally falls into place.  Having a vast sea of martial knowledge at our finger tips must be counted as an asset.  Yet perhaps the more valuable one is having a teacher that can inspire us to put the phone down, return to the basics, and solve some of these problems for ourselves.

It is important not to overstate this case.  The advent of virtually free video has been a major boon for the martial arts.  My fieldwork in the lightsaber community has introduced me to its undeniable pedagogical value, from the quick distribution of class notes and “homework assignments,” to the creation of movement archives with real depth.  Nor do I think that teachers within the traditional arts should be too quick to dismiss these tools as mere distractions.

Nevertheless, they do have limitations.  Most recordings capture only a single performance, crystallizing a specific moment in time.  Yet from these we seek generalizable understandings.

The results of imitating such sources too closely are often unfortunate.  Lakatos’ understanding of scientific inquiry helps us to understand why this method so frequently fails.  The inductive study of discrete events simply does not give us a reliable way to separate out the central defining aspects of a martial theory from the epiphenomenal aspects of a given recording. Creating ever more technically advanced recordings of a discrete sequence of performances, such as we see with some efforts to document the Asian martial arts for their cultural heritage value, does not resolve these more basic philosophical problems.

Ultimately multimedia resources work better when accessed in conjunction with other types of instruction.  Note, for instance, that the TPLA does not simply post their videos on-line and tell the Learners in Exile to have at it.  These students are instead encouraged to post their own progress reports, receive specific points of feedback, and be proactively engaged in a rich conceptual discussion.

Perhaps asking whether it is possible to learn Kung Fu from a video is actually the wrong question.  The much more relevant one would seem to be why in an age of abundant expertise, declining training costs and virtually free electronic communication, do so many individuals want to try?  That is fundamentally a sociological rather than a technical or philosophical issue.  Yet those who wish to preserve and pass on these fighting systems must grapple with its answers.

*As always when discussing fieldwork, names and identifying features have been changed to protect the innocent.

1. “Kuhn as does Popper rejects the idea that science grows by accumulation of eternal truths. But while according to Popper science is ‘revolution in permanence’, and criticism the heart of the scientific enterprise, according to Kuhn revolution is exceptional and, indeed, extra-scientific, and criticism is, in ‘normal’ times, anathema… The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology. It concerns our central intellectual values, and has implications not only for theoretical physics but also for the underdeveloped social sciences and even for moral and political philosophy. If even in science there is no other way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power. Thus Kuhn’s position would vindicate, no doubt, unintentionally, the basic political credo of contemporary religious maniacs (“student revolutionaries”).”   *Imre Lakatos (1974), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge.

oOo

If you enjoyed this post be sure to also check out:  Costly Signals, Credible Threats and the Problem of Reality in the Chinese Martial Arts

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Weapons seized by the NYPD and photographed for a 1922 report on violence in Chinatown. Source: NYPD Public Records/Vice.com.

The Yin and the Yang of the Hudiedao

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to participate in a day-long seminar on the Wing Chun swords taught by Sifu John Crescione. This was a great experience that provided many students with an introduction to this iconic weapon. Such events, by necessity, tend to be packed with information, activity and new faces. It is always a challenge to select a single high-point. Yet I think that for some of the students such a moment might have come just before we broke for lunch.

One of the themes that Sifu Crescione emphasized was the importance of knowing your weapon. At this point in time there doesn’t seem to be any single standard pattern for the construction of the double swords used within Wing Chun, let alone across all of the southern Chinese martial arts. While these weapons all have enough points of resemblance to be identifiable, elements such as blade length, shape and handling characteristics vary immensely. Some swords are optimized for chopping and slashing while others seem to be better suited to stabbing. The form used within Wing Chun contains a wide range of techniques, but it is up to the practitioner to select the most appropriate ones for any given situation and set of blades.

Nor does this concern apply only to recently produced weapons. As I noted in my previous history of the butterfly swords, a huge amount of variation can be seen in the size and shapes of swords that were produced in 19th and early 20th century in Southern China. To demonstrate this Sifu Crescione had brought a set of late Qing era blades to the seminar. I also brought a pair of knives from my collection which date to approximately the same era. Both sets of knives were longer (and heavier) than most modern examples and possessed distinct tips.

It was fascinating to watch the other students crowd around, eager to get a glimpse, and then handle, these antique blades. Such relics are not frequently encountered by students today. There was a feeling of reverence in the room. The Butterfly Swords have taken on a near legendary status within the practice of our art. Instruction in this weapon is often reserved for only the most advanced students.

The knives have become a symbol of martial attainment. Mastery of these blades is seen as the culmination of years of dedicated practice. This may help to explain why so many organizations have included these swords in their school’s logo.

Nor am I immune to the romance of the blade. After some discussion with the publisher it was decided that the butterfly swords should grace the cover of our book on the history of Wing Chun and Southern Chinese Martial Arts. I must admit that I was elated when I received the news.

Still, it is not clear that any of the meanings that modern martial artists attribute to these weapons have much intrinsic value. Many of these students might be surprised, if not a bit scandalized, to see how these same weapons were perceived at various points in the past.

Far from being the epitome of martial excellence, in the 1840s the hudiedao were a standard issue weapon stocked for use by the quickly trained (and poorly equipped) militia companies of the Pearl River Delta. These weapons were produced by the tens of thousands and issued to troops who tended to carry them as side-arms (their main weapons being the musket, spear or pole). While never issued to the “official” Green Standard Army troops, local gentry seem to have appreciated the fact that these blades could be made cheaply and new recruits (more used to village boxing than formal military drill) could be trained in their use.

Ships crews and private security guards were also issued these weapons for the same basic reasons. That probably helps to explain their association with pirates, traveling opera companies and other elements of southern China’s rich nautical lore. During the 1840s and 1850s these short, guarded, double swords seem to have carried a different, more plebeian, set of symbolic associations.

Nor was southern China the only place where the public encountered such swords. For better or worse butterfly swords also appeared in publications, museum displays and public demonstration in the West throughout the 19th century. Once again, they carried with them a set of connotations quite distinct from those admired by modern Kung Fu students.

Rather than being a marker of self-discipline and martial excellence, these swords were most often associated with the periodic breakouts of violence that rocked both the East and West Coast Chinatowns. Whereas British military observers in the 1840s had found the Chinese use of these swords to be paradoxical and quaint, American audiences viewed them as symbols of everything that was untrustworthy and dangerous about the nation’s steadily growing Chinese population. In many ways the spread of the image of the butterfly sword went hand in hand with the spread of the Yellow Panic and the news coverage that supported it.

Butterfly Swords in the Roaring 1920s

This point was driven home for me as I read some of the publicity releases for a new book titled Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money and Murder in New York’s Chinatown by Scott D. Seligman (Penguin 2016). Given this volume’s discussion of community violence in the Chinese diaspora community during the 19th and early 20th centuries it has earned a spot on my “to read” pile. Even more interesting were some of the publicity photos that were distributed to the press and other media outlets.

Perhaps the most exciting of these can be seen at the top of this post. Taken from the archives of the New York City Police Department this image was apparently included in a 1922 report detailing the ongoing problem of violence in Chinatown. It shows a large group of weapons (and other contraband material) that had been captured by police.

Some of this material is what one would expect to see being carried by any well-outfitted gangster during the 1920s. I counted 16 revolvers in this picture and at least one automatic handgun in addition to holsters and ammunition. Yet more traditional weapons were also well represented. Within the haul there were two (quite nice) sets of butterfly swords as well as other daggers. These particular Tong members also seem to have had an affinity for brass knuckles, having accumulated at least five sets.

I have yet to read Seligman’s book, so I can’t say if his narrative contains a more detailed backstory for this particular photograph. But I did notice the following quote in a publicity interview that he did for Vice.

“Vice: How did the violence evolve from meat cleavers to pistols to bombs?

Segliman: It was a slow process, but it escalated as weapons got more sophisticated and capable of taking out more people at a time. In the late 1800s, they were mostly using cleavers and knives; by 1900, Chinatown saw a large influx of revolvers. Explosives were only used once or twice later in the game—about 1912—and they fortunately did more damage to property than to people.” (Read More Here)

What struck me about this quote was the sense of nostalgia for a previous period of violence. Needless to say, we hear a lot of this in traditional martial arts circles.

On a purely philosophical level I am not sure that being beaten to death or stabbed is preferable to being shot. Nor, historically speaking does there seem to have been a golden, pre-gun, era in modern Chinese violence. As I pointed out in a previous post looking at violence in the San Francisco Chinese community of the 1870s, the police seem to have been confiscating firearms from that neighborhood’s criminals at about the same rate as they were being taken off the streets in the rest of the city. While it is undoubtedly true that violence in NY escalated after 1900, I doubt that the primary factors behind that were exclusively technological in nature.

The other thing that struck me about the 1922 photograph was how similar it was to other images that police and government officials had been producing across the country for at least 50 years. Indeed, given the qualitative change in the level of violence, what is surprising is that the weapons look so similar.

Chinese Highbinders and Weapons in San Francisco. Harper’s Weekly, Feb. 13th, 1886.

Readers might recall that in 1886 Harper’s Weekly ran a lengthy piece profiling the “Highbinders” of the Bay Area. This included engravings showing the various types of arms that had been confiscated from these groups including knives, handguns and butterfly swords. The author of the piece went on to include a chilling description of their use:

“The weapons of the Highbinder are all brought from China, with the exception of the hatchet and the pistol. The illustration shows a collection of Chinese knives and swords taken from criminals, and now in the possession of the San Francisco police. The murderous weapon is what is called the double sword. Two swords, each about two feet long, are worn in a single scabbard. A Chinese draws these, one in each hand, and chops his way through a crowd of enemies. Only one side is sharpened, but the blade, like that of all the Chinese knives, is ground to a razor edge. An effective weapon at close quarters is the two-edged knife, usually worn in a leather sheath. The handle is of brass, generally richly ornamented, while the blade is of the finest steel. Most of the assassinations in Chinatown have been committed with this weapon, one blow being sufficient to ensure a mortal wound. The cleaver used by the Highbinders is smaller and lighter than the ordinary butcher’s cleaver. The iron club, about a foot and a half long, is enclosed in a sheath, and worn at the side like a sword. Another weapon is a curious sword with a large guard for the hand. The hatchet is usually of American make, but ground as sharp as a razor.”

(Feb 13, 1886. Harper’s Weekly. P. 103).

While never the deadliest weapon in the Tong arsenal, the American press certainly seems to have considered the Butterfly Sword to be the most distinctive. Some accounts seem to have gone beyond the purely tactical value of this weapon and to have associated it with obscure, esoteric and threatening aspects of the Chinese American Experience. Of course the Tongs themselves often stood in for all of these qualities in late 19th century “Yellow Peril” literature.

The San Francisco Call, 1898.

Consider the cover of an 1898 edition of the The San Francisco Call. The paper ran an expose on the initiations conducted by the area’s Chinese secret societies. The main illustration showed a number of tong members, butterfly swords in hand, swearing to destroy the Qing and restore the Ming.

Another evidence photo, produced around 1900 and included in a government report, also shows a typical assortment of weapons carried by Chinese criminals and Tong members. Among the various knives (one of which is clearly Japanese) we also find a pair of bar maces, a revolver and set of hudiedao. It appears to be almost identical in size and shape to the examples that the New York police department would confiscate one generation latter.

Chinese Highbinder weapons collected by H. H. North, U. S. Commission of Immigration, forwarded to Bureau of Immigration, Washington D. C., about 1900.
Courtesy the digital collection of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkley.

An Evolving Symbol of Chinese Identity in the West

The 1922 NYPD photograph is interesting precisely because it suggests that while levels of violence may have escalated and fallen off in rhythmic patterns, firearms and more traditional weapons continued to co-existing for a surprising length of time. The number of handguns in the community escalated but butterfly swords did not disappear. And if this photo is a representative sample, knuckledusters seem to have grown in popularity. That would be a good sign that someone was still expecting hand-to-hand encounters.

The one thing that is absent from any of these photos or discussions, however, is the martial arts. While elements of the American public were certainly aware of these swords, they were not imagined as the training tools of skilled practitioners of martial arts, or even as an element of Chinese cultural heritage. Of course this was exactly how Samurai swords came to be seen in the first few decades of the 20th century. Instead these weapons were imagined as the cutting edge of a violent and subversive force in American life.

I suspect that the popular discourse linking obscure Chinese fighting methods to criminal groups was a powerful force in impeding the transnational transmission of these arts in the first half of the 20th century. It was not until Chinese-Americans came to be reimagined as a “model minority” in the post WWII era that immigration policies would be relaxed and the stage set for Bruce Lee to unleash a Kung Fu Fever in the 1970s.

The hudiedao are a fascinating topic of study precisely because they have seen it all. First associated in the western mind with humble militia troops and later with criminal groups, for many people butterfly swords represented the backwards and dangerous elements of Chinese society. In the current era this same object has been reinterpreted as a relic of a “more civilized” time in which persistent effort led to martial mastery and self-transformation. It is hard to say that one of these visions is more intrinsically “true” than the others, but this unfolding discourse may hold important keys to the meaning and spread of the Chinese martial arts in the West.  As a result we must be careful not to inappropriately project our reading of these symbols onto the past.

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If you enjoyed this you might also want to read:  Tools of the Trade: The Use of Firearms and Traditional Weapons among the Tongs of San Francisco, 1877-1878.

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Jiang’an Temple in Shanghai, late 19th century. Note that by 1934 the area around this structure was substantially more developed. Source: http://www.virtualshanghai.net

Introduction

On February 21, 1934, the North China Herald (the most popular English language newspaper published in China at the time) ran a remarkable article and interview titled the “Chinese Art of Boxing.”  The piece is based on a school visit with the now famous Yiquan instructor Han Xing Qiao (1909-2004), who was then teaching in Shanghai.  While Han’s equally well known brother was present for the demonstration, it seems that only Han Xing Qiao spoke with reporter.

The resulting article, transcribed below, is significant in a number of respects.  I am surprised that I have not seen it discussed previously in the literature on the history of the Chinese martial arts.  Of course I am not a student of Yiquan, and I may have missed discussions of this piece within that community of practitioners.

Given the importance of Han Xing Qiao in the early history of Yiquan, there can be no doubt that some readers will find this discussion of his teaching and philosophy during the early 1930s quite interesting.  Yet this interview is also important for students of martial arts history as a whole.  While short notices about “Chinese boxing” were not that uncommon in the English language press, features of this length and level of detail were rare.  When read within the context of other developments during the early 1930s (the reforms of the Guoshu movement, the promotion of the martial arts by various generals and warlords, the development of popular Wuxia fiction, etc…) it helps to paint a more complete picture of Republic era attitudes within the martial arts community.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this particular newspaper article is that it exists at all.  Modern students tend to regard traditional Chinese martial artists from the 1930s as highly secretive individuals who left few (if any) written accounts.  Nor are they imagined as having had much to do with foreign reporters.

Recent finds are calling each of these assumptions into question. While holding “family secrets” in some areas, many traditional teachers were well aware of the necessity of promoting their schools, styles and even philosophical understanding of the traditional martial arts.  Indeed, this was a decade in which the nature of the Chinese martial arts were being contested on a number of fronts.

Some May 4^th intellectuals saw traditional practices such as wrestling, archery and boxing as having no place in “modern China.”  Other reformers wanted to rework the traditional martial arts so that they could better act as vehicles for promoting nationalism and loyalty to the ruling KMT.  Yet, as the following article reminds us, approaches that emphasized the linkages (whether real or invented) of these arts with “traditional culture” also proved popular in the marketplace of ideas.

By the 1930s outreach to English speaking audiences was becoming an increasingly common aspect of the public discussion of the Chinese martial arts.  We have already seen that the Jingwu Association published some English language summaries of their work during the 1920s.  This organization’s efforts often received positive coverage in the foreign language press. Later reporters seemed to have been equally enamored with the reforms of the Guoshu movement and attempts to bring out the more “practical” side of these Chinese fighting systems, much as the Japanese had done.

Indeed, the growing international stature of Judo cast a long shadow over all of these efforts.  It is clear that martial artists in China were well aware that Kano’s style was receiving favorable press abroad.  A surprising number of Westerns were even starting to adopt these practices.  They also noted that this led to a certain admiration for Japanese culture in the West at exactly the same time that this state was beginning to make aggressive moves in China.

When seen in this context early efforts to reach out to the foreign press begin to make more sense.  By pointing to the supposedly continental origins of the Japanese fighting arts, Chinese reformers hoped to appropriate some of the growing respect (both tactical and cultural) that arts like Judo and Kendo were quickly amassing.  If they could also argue that the Japanese approach was comparatively unsophisticated, and less effective than their own, so much the better.  All of this would aid ongoing efforts in the realm of cultural diplomacy.

Many teachers also seem to have calculated that the respect of foreign audiences for their systems would yield increased legitimacy at home.  There were, after all, very good reasons why Chu Minyi worked so hard to get his unique approach to Taijiquan demonstrated at the 1936 Olympics.  Readers may recall that he even had foreign language booklets printed to explain it all to a multi-lingual international audience.

History seems to bear this theory out.  In 1930 Wing Chun was a distinctly regional art confined to a few areas of the Pearl River Delta region.  Now, decades after Bruce Lee (and more recently Ip Man) spread its fame to the West, it can be found all over China. The trans-national and trans-local nature of martial arts communities suggests that this sort of outreach can be extremely effective in shaping local perceptions of one’s practice.  The present article, which attempts to win cultural and intellectual respectability for the TCMA among a global audience, might be understood as an early step along this path.

In addition to these broader concerns, readers may want to meditate upon three issues as they work their way through this article.  First, consider the various comparisons that are drawn between Han’s “esoteric” practices and both the Japanese approach to martial arts (e.g., their overly masculine approach wrongly limits the instruction of female students), and the way that these teachings have subsequently been passed on to Western students.  While this material may be the least interesting to those focused specifically on the career of Han Xing Qiao, it is probably the most important aspect of the article from the standpoint of cultural diplomacy.

Second, readers should take note of the argument that the martial arts are fundamentally a form of moving meditation.  As students learn to gain an uncanny degree of control over the body (in essence “transcending” the physical self) they will likewise shatter the normal bounds of consciousness.  Spectacular physical performances are taken as an outward sign of an inner emotional and mental transformation.  Again, this type of discussion makes an interesting contrast with much of the material being produced by other reformers during the 1930s.  They often argued for a focus on community and national (rather than personal) transformation.

Lastly, consider the rhetorical tension that emerges when both western science and traditional Daoism are advanced as markers of the legitimacy of Han’s practice.  On the one hand, Western readers are greeted by all of the traditional trappings of Orientalism.  We are told of the otherworldly monks and the “thousand year old Buddha” before any discussion of the actual martial arts can begin.  Readers are then informed of the Daoist nature of this project.  Yet in practically the same breath, they are assured that not only are these (self-described) esoteric practices “not religious,” but that they are congruent with a modern and “scientific” world view.

In this article we see both “science” and “Daoism” being employed as ideological symbols rather than purely descriptive terms.  Such passages are more interested in shaping the reader’s views of Mr. Han’s wushu (and Chinese identity as a whole) rather than offering an objective exploration of its origins and nature.  Still, the odd combination of the timeless and culturally specific, mixed with the modern and universally accessible, speaks strongly to the growing association of the traditional martial arts with notions of national identity and cultural heritage during the Republic period.

Undoubtedly there are other themes and topics of interest that can be pulled out of this article.  What I find most significant are the ways that it seeks to shape and present its argument about the true nature of the Chinese martial arts to the readers.  Nor can we ignore the fact that by the 1930s foreign language publications were increasingly being drawn into these debates.
 

The bronze Buddha of the Jing’an temple, Shanghai.

CHINESE ART OF BOXING

Bubbling Well Temple the Scene of a Teacher’s Activities

Special to the “N. C. Herald.”

Shanghai.

Noise and bustle on Bubbling Well Road have little meaning in Tsing An Tse, the red-walled temple that broods at the corner of Bubbling Well and Hart Roads, for its monks are about their own affairs, forgetful even of the “bubbling well” now in the centre of the road, which once had real significance, and sent its slow fermentations up into the quiet sunlight of the temple court.  All is changed outwardly.  Inside the ruddy walls, the Buddha who has received kowtows for nearly a thousand years, gazes imperturbably out over a small court where Wu Hsu [wushu] is taught daily.

At first thought, there is no reason for surprise in the fact that the ancient science of physical training developed in China to give its disciples an uncanny control over every muscle and nerve in their bodies, should go on under the very eyes of Buddha.  Only when it is revealed that the “shadow boxing” in this case is founded upon Taoist principles, does it seem remarkable that it should be taught within the confines of a Buddhist retreat.

In Japan, a similar science of physical control flourishes under the name of jiu-jitsu and is, in its most metaphysical form, expounded on the Buddhist doctrine.  However, with no little encouragement, Han Hsing-chao [Han Xing Qiao], Chinese exponent of Wu Hsu, observes that some hundreds of years ago, the Japanese imported Chinese masters of the art, and having learned it, applied it in most departments of the army, carrying it eventually to various nations of the West where as “jiu-jitsu” it has been utilized by police departments to subdue desperadoes.  Cleaver grips, twisted arms, a sudden blow behind the knee, and the victim of jiu-jitsu is quite helpless in the hands of his adversary.  The science aims to teach its disciples how to take advantage of the blind, untutored force of their opponents, and with little energy, to triumph in physical combat.  In fact, it is said that the stronger the adversary and the more furious his attack, the easier his conquest by the swift and light-footed jiu-jitsu artist.  Certainly the police of New York City have, on more than one occasion, collared racketeers with a little use of the science as taught by Japan

Mastery Over the Body

The Chinese root of this gentle form of boxing, however, has far more significance in battle.  Mr. Han, a devote of Wu Hsu for the past six years, has followed in the steps of his father, an apt pupil of the famous master, Chang Yao-tung, advocate of the esoteric, or innermost phase of complete mastery over the body.  His followers look upon Wu Hsu, with its magic holds, and its brilliant coups in combat as rightly applied in defence only, and even more correctly directed towards the sole goal of achieving perfect health and spiritual enlightenment in a normal, healthy programme of exercise and physical training scientifically planned.

Valuable Attainment

Mr. Han regards the form of Wu Hsu taught to the world at large and hailed abroad as most valuable as simply a first step towards a far more valuable attainment than the subjugation of law-breakers.

“My brother and I teach only the esoteric form of Wu Hsu,” he remarks amiably, a smile twitching the corners of his mouth, “It is founded upon the principle of proper breathing.  The Japanese deny it to their women, except in very rare instances.  We do not, for women have a right to enjoy health and the mastery of themselves.  The Japanese use their training in competition.  We teach the individual to master himself and his own body.  There is no need for actual physical combat, for that encourages a spirit of aggression which is very unnecessary.  You can very easily tell from your student’s lightness, from his motions, and his form in action whether or not he would triumph if he were pitted against the man besides him.

Aggression is not wise.  It is the form of the science that is all-important.  And, of course, it is based upon Taoist principles as we teach it.  We do not give lessons in the insignificant exoteric steps.  We teach only the inward science of self-control.”

A question regarding the tolerance of the monks whose chants to Buddha rise regularly, elicited a naïve explanation by the advocate of Wu Hsu on a Taoist foundation.  “Religion is too deep a subject for us to teach,” said Mr. Han, “and so we merely explain the application of Taoist law.  It has nothing to do with religion.  That is what the monks teach.”

Unquestionably, a plunge into something very like metaphysics was next if one was to differentiate between the “outer” and the “inner” aspects of Wu Hsu, perhaps best described as a fascinating form of boxing. Here Mr. Han became fluent.  He was eager to describe the benefits of embarking upon a scientific conquest of one’s own actions, and as he spoke, it became increasingly apparent that esoteric Wu Hsu might possibly result in an entirely new outlook on life.  In so many words, the youthful speaker stated that the candidate for training must rebuild himself physically, and in the process, his character!

The “Bubbling Well” located near the Jing’an Temple. Circa 1930s. Source:http://www.virtualshanghai.net

Active Meditation

“You see,” he observed, “the esoteric science we teach differs not in all its purpose from the meditations of the Buddhist or the Taoist who fixes his gaze inward, remaining near perfectly motionless.  We simply teach an active meditation.”  That paradox stated in full seriousness, clinched the matter.  An excursion into philosophical explanations was imperative!

“It is very simple,” promised Mr. Han. “There are three steps of the esoteric training.”  The first, cruder in motion and more strenuous than more advanced forms, is primarily concerned with hardening the bones of your body to their true strength.  The next step is entirely concerned with training the muscles of the body, until they are soft and flexible, and instantly responsive to your will.  The third and last step, is a lightening of the physical boy through breathing, by this time scientifically established to coordinate with your actions.  Moreover, [“]your nerves become assets, and not handicaps.” he pronounced, casting an appraising look at his interviewer.

During the extended period of training, the concentration upon proper breathing results in a noticeable development of the solar plexus.  It is declared that a glance at the candidate’s solar plexus will unfailing reveal the stage of his advancement in body-control.  “This is because Wu Hsu is founded upon the belief that the fires of life are centered in the solar plexus, and only when they are wisely and consciously developed, does the solar plexus register development,” revealed Mr. Han.

No Restrictions

Strangely enough, no dietary laws are enforced, nor is smoking considered a handicap.  Those are matters of individual taste.  Regularity in one’s daily habits, alone, is enough to accomplish results in Wu Hsu.  It would seem, if Mr. Han’s philosophy is to be credited, that Wu Hsu training is a first rate insurance against disease, infectious or organic.  He relates, without any apparent sense of voicing a miraculous fact, that heart trouble, rheumatism, chest infections, and all varieties of ills yield readily to the science which he claims, “purifies the blood and the whole body.”  The initiate of Wu Hsu should never be ill.

When one has gone through the motions of Wu Hsu, practicing them until they become all but subconscious as regards their form, one suddenly pierces the veil of material restriction that limits one’s sense of power.  Surely, the science imparts an agility and lightness hitherto associated only with such dancers of Pavlowa, Nijinsky, and Mordkin, if the testimony of one’s eyes can be believed.  So swift and lightning-like are the dartings, parryings and leapings of the brothers Han that the eye is baffled more than once in its attempt to follow their cavortings.  Speed and the ability to thwart an adversary are mere steps on the way to the ultimate goal.

Mr. Han was concise on this point.  “Your mind is then no longer murky, dull, confused, or slow,” he declared.  “It suddenly becomes clear and keen.  Like the ones who achieve true vision through meditation, your mind is released from bondage that is, after all, self-imposed.  You do not have to think,-you know!” (Blessed state!) “After you have taken the first step towards inward being, your movements are sure and certain as never before, and so like the flight of a bullet is your speed that you seem invisible to your adversary.  Dependent upon his own limited senses to follow you, he is stupefied!”

The temple courtyard today.

Masters of Themselves

Deprecating the material application of a noble principle as unfair to the uninitiated, even in sport, Mr. Han admits that it is being used by soldiery in China, Japan, and other parts of the world.  But, because it [is] unworthy in man to harm his fellows, it is wisest and best to achieve without combat, striving for the illumination of mind that spells freedom to the individual.  He is an insignificant disciple of the art of perfect physical mastery, only, stated Mr. Han, continuing with the information that real masters of Wu Hsu are teaching at the Temple of Fire in Peking.  They are not monks, he hastens to assure his visitor.  They are masters of themselves, physically, and one would gather, emotionally and mentally.

They are past sixty, many of them, it is said, and yet they may be seen bounding away from imaginary competitors like pieces of down tossed by a breeze, dazzling the eye with their brilliant and effortless agility.  They have followed through the mystical maze of active meditation, and have attained illumination through essaying its intricacies.

Meanwhile, longing to study further, and delve deeper into the mystery of “principle” and “power,” the brothers Han pursued their business of teaching Wu Hsu within the walls of Tsing An Tse.  Bright and early every morning, they marshal their classes of youngsters before them, watching alertly for the feather-lightness, the sure confidence and lightening-speed, and that far-away, penetrating expression that betrays one who has pierced the veil of constricted thought.  That one will have the power to see with crystal clarity-but to see what?  The mystery remains serenely locked in those minds which have, through perfect physical control, discovered hyper-consciousness, and with it, the “key” unlocking the fires of life slumbering placidly in the solar plexus of the average mortal if the Brothers Han can be believed.

oOo

 
If you enjoyed this you might also want to read: Cheung Lai Chuen, Creator of Pak Mei

oOo

Photo by Marcello Sidoti. Source: Wikimedia.

Can a westerner truly master Akido (or Taijiquan, Wing Chun, etc…..)?

I once again find myself noting that I should not be writing this post. The topic is fascinating, but I will be flying to Cologne, Germany, for the 5^th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Sport Science’s Martial Arts Commission later this week.  This year’s Conference is titled “Martial Arts and Society – On the Societal Relevance of Martial Arts, Combat Sports and Self-Defense.”  I was asked to give one of the keynotes and while my paper is finished, there are a number of last minute details that I should be attending to.

Upon returning I will post my paper and a full report.  Paul Bowman, who will also be presenting a keynote, has already posted a copy of his paper here.  That should give interested readers a head-start on the conversation.

Nevertheless, I had the good fortune to run across a very interesting post at Budo-Inochi earlier this week.  Kai Morgan asked “Do Japanese people and Westerners experience Aikido the same way?”  Within it she summarized an article by Prof.  Jeff Dykhuizen titled “Training in culture: The case of aikido education and meaning-making outcomes in Japan and the United States,” published in the November 2000 issue of International Journal of Intercultural Relations.  Be sure to see Kai’s post for an excellent quick review of the paper’s major findings.   Unfortunately you will probably have to head to your local University library to find a copy of Dykhuizen’s essay.

I should begin my own discussion of this piece by saying that I liked this article.  It is a nice example of a well-designed, small scale, empirical research project tackling an interesting martial art’s related subject.  The author paid attention to both methodological concerns as well as a few larger research design issues.

In fact, I was a little surprised that I had never come across this article before.  One suspects that it might be better known in the literature on the Japanese martial arts.  In general there does not seem to be as much engagement between the various nationally focused literatures in martial arts studies as one might like.  One of the goals of this blog is it uncover pieces such as this and encourage a bit more conversation.  I suspect that many students of Chinese martial studies will actually be quite interested in the topics that Dykhuizen raises.

After all, most of us have run up against the notion that only a native teacher of an art can pass on an “authentic” version its transmission at one point or another.  Foreign students may study a system, but given their cultural background they will be unlikely to truly master it.  No less an ethnographer (and martial artist) than Adam Frank reported a conversation with a fellow Taijiquan student in Shanghai in which it was lamented that he did not enjoy the good fortune to be born Chinese.  While enthusiastic, as a foreign student, he would have no chance to actually penetrate the art’s “inner mysteries.” Nor are these insecurities confined to the Chinese arts.  One of the more interesting discussions in Bennett’s recent study, Kendo: Culture of the Sword, was the ongoing debate as to whether foreigners could ever grasp the supernal nuances of Japanese Budo.  And if not, why bother to promote Kendo abroad?

No sentiment is more irksome to many Western students of the martial arts.  On a technical level there does not seem to be any barrier preventing our physical mastery of a given art.  Yet there are always nagging doubts as to the “authenticity” of our experience and understanding of the art.  Rarely are we simply Kendo, Taiji or Wing Chun instructors.  We are always qualified as American (or Western) practitioners of the art.

Aikido demonstration. Photo by Magyar Balázs. Source: Wikimedia.

How do we encounter the Asian martial arts?

This notion is troubling precisely because, on some level, one must wonder whether there is not some level of truth to it.  Scholars have noted for some time that the very act of cultural exchange (the passing of a practice or identity from one group to another) always entails transformation.  At the most basic level, different cultural systems are not mutually intelligible to one another.  They do not a share the same symbolic, linguistic and pedagogical resources. The act of translation implies an approximation, and hence a change, of meaning.

On a more fundamental level, two cultural groups often have very different interests and goals at any given moment in time.  A hippie in San Francisco in the year 1970, and a Chinese individual in Taipei, may both agree that Taijiquan is fascinating.  Yet their motivations and goals for taking up the study of their shared practice might be quite different.  Thus the transfer of any practice involves more than just finding a new set of terms and pedagogical practices to translate the art.  Often a new source of demand for the project must be articulated as well.

This is precisely the situation of the Asian martial arts in the West for much of the 20^th century.  Authors such as Krug and Miracle have warned us that Western practitioners did not simply adopt the institutions and practices by their Asian teachers.  Rather they reimagined and appropriated these arts in such a way that they were made relevant to the cultural concerns of Western students.  Nor was this a simple, one time, affair.  Both Krug and Miracle point to a progressive process in which changing cultural conditions in the West (Miracle), and an advancing level of engagement with Asian culture (Krug), led to different sorts of engagement with the martial arts.

As an instructor within the Wing Chun system I must believe that I (and my students) can possess an “authentic” and legitimate understanding of the art.  Yet as a student of Martial Arts Studies I know that it is exceedingly unlikely that my own understanding of the art will be the same as one of my Kung Fu brothers back in Hong Kong.

Yet exactly how different are our experiences of the art likely to be?  Where did these divergences enter our shared community?  And what do they imply about our ability to build a global community around a set of experiences that may be more different than it first appears?

These are some of the questions that Dykhuizen attempts to address.  Rather than employing the same broad historical and theoretical approach favored by Krug and Miracle, he instead designed a much more detailed empirical study focusing on the divergence views of Aikido communities in Japan and the United States.  While we must always exercise caution in generalizing from the results of a single survey, I expect that the general patterns that Dykhuizen found might also be seen in a great many other hand combat communities.  Further, his specific mixed-methods approach, combining carefully targeted small scale survey research (N=120), with longer term (multi-sited) ethnographic studies, might provide a model for investigating similar questions across a much broader range of practices.

Prior to discussing this project I should note one additional fact.  While the attitudes and pedagogical approaches observed within these different schools (a few dozen in total) were allowed to vary, the actual approach Aikido being practiced by all of them was very similar on a purely technical level.  Indeed, the Pacific Ocean seems to have been no barrier to the technical mastery of the art.  Yet how did students understand and experience these techniques?

I will refer readers back to Kai’s blog post for a more detailed summary of Dykhuizen’s findings.  For the purposes of this article it is sufficient to note that the article advanced three research questions.  First, were there differences in pedagogy between the main research sites in Japan and the United States?  Second, how did Japanese and American students understand their own experience of Aikido?  Lastly, how did they perceive the understanding of the counterparts in the other country?  Did they see “foreign” students as having a fundamentally different, or similar, experience within the art?  Due to the constraints of time I will only be tackling the first two questions in this post.

The first of these was taken up via ethnographic investigation.  The author’s field work focused on two different Dojos in Japan, and a single shared Dojo (but with two distinct instructors, each running their own classes) in the United States. In addition to participant observation, a number of formal interviews were also collected during this process.

The final set of questions was investigated through a set of short surveys.  These were sent to about a dozen schools in Japan, and a similar sized sample the US.  In total 120 and 128 usable responses generated were generated across both countries.  This was the minimum sample size needed to determine statistical significance.

The surveys asked respondents to fill in the missing word for the sentences, “Aikido is ____?”, and “Qi is _____?”  Respondents were given a wide range of adjectives with which they complete these sentences.  The author then used statistical “Factor Extraction” techniques to determine which ideas (if any) were dominant within in a given community.  Further, by looking at the richness and the nuance of the outcomes Dykhuizen hypothesized that he could make some estimates about the level of sophistication with which a community approached a given question.

Nor was the author disappointed by the results of the study.  It turned out that Japanese and American students responded to these questions quite differently.  When asked to complete the sentence “Qi  is _____?” Japanese students were most likely to say: kind, graceful, peaceful, soft and rounded.  In comparison American students leaned towards: hard, tenacious, ferocious and cruel.

While the primary answers for the question “Aikido is _____?” were much more similar for both groups (beautiful, graceful, strong), there were some interesting divergences in the secondary associations that each group specified (heavy, strong and active for Japanese students versus cruel, tenacious, ferocious and active for the American students).

The author also noted important pedagogical differences between all of the schools that he visited.  In general Japanese instructors were much more likely to discuss questions of Qi and the spiritual implications of the art.  Both of his American instructors, on the other hand, went to great lengths to emphasize Aikido’s status as a “true martial art.”  While they did not deny the “deeper” aspects of the art, Dykhuizen notes that they were much less likely to ever discuss ideas of Qi or philosophy with their classes.

Upon looking at his results the author concluded that there was a great deal of agreement between his ethnographic and survey data.  Students in America tended to understand, and hence experience, Aikido differently than their Japanese counterparts.

Specifically, Americans exhibited a notable emphasis on violence, where as their Japanese counterparts focused on harmony.  This was not because they were being taught to be violent in class.  Nor were their classes particularly violent.

Rather, American students were more likely to emphasize Aikido’s status as a “martial art.”  For them that very much placed the practice in the midst of a number of other images and ideas that were all associated with violence.  Japanese students, on the other hand, either played down the combative nature of their practice, or possibly they understood the “martial arts” quite differently.  Unfortunately the author did not really explore this second possibility.

Dykhuizen then concluded that many of the differences between the experience of Japanese and American students could be attributed to the variance in how they were taught (but not necessarily what they were taught).  He concluded that instructors were critical figures as they had the ability to shape and recast the material being presented to students in such a way that it advanced their own cultural paradigms.  Thus when an American student studies Aikido with an American teacher, he is not really being introduced to an authentic vision of Japanese martial culture so much as a different way of experiencing his own culture.

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

Asking the so what question?

In a number of ways the results of  Dykhuizen’s study are so predictable as to be uninteresting.  If there is a major fault with this study it is that it simply attempted to measure the size of an effect predicted by our basic theories of cultural exchange.  Of course those sorts of results are always helpful. Yet there is little new and novel in the finding that American culture colors the way that Americans approach the martial arts.  The only shocking conclusion would be to discover that this somehow was not true.

Still, as we dig a bit deeper into these results a few interesting discrepancies appear.  For instance, when reviewing his basic socioeconomic data the author discovered that there were some fundamental differences between the Aikido community in the US and Japan.  To begin with, the American community tended to be very highly educated, with nearly 17% of respondents having a Masters degree or some equivalent.  The number in Japan was much lower.

It seems that within the US this art systematically attracts a certain sort of student.  These relatively sophisticated individuals confessed, in their interviews, to deeply studying questions within the martial arts, and having personal libraries of books dedicated to Aikido.  Indeed, Dykhuizen noted that American students appeared to approach the question of “Akido is ____?” with a relatively greater degree of sophistication than their Japanese counterparts.

For the sake of argument I am going to simply assume that all of this true.  Ideally it would be important to see this demographic data independently verified by another study.  Yet as we think about this fact, a few deeper puzzles begin to emerge.  For instance, if these students have delved deeply into the study of Aikido, why haven’t they done the same thing with questions of Qi?

While reporting his results on the Qi question Dykhuizen speculates that the seeming “lack of sophistication” with which Americans approach that topic was a matter of their cultural distance from how the term is encountered in daily Japanese speech.  Yet one would suspect that the sorts of Americans who would dedicate themselves to Aikido and have masters degrees would also be more likely than their peers to take an interest in Japanese culture, or to have studied the language while in college.

If their personal study was enough to open an even more nuanced approach to Aikido than some of their Japanese peers, why could it not do the same for their grasp of qi?  One rather strongly suspects that these individuals did not develop this same level of understanding as they did not choose to delve quite as deeply into that subject.

Why not?  This is where we return to the (possibly) culturally bounded nature of these practices.  Perhaps these questions were viewed as uninteresting, or not relevant to a “real martial art.”

Admittedly all of this is speculation.  Yet I think it is an important conversation to have as it points to a larger weakness in Dykhuizen’s research design.  With such a small sample size it is difficult to control for too many competing hypotheses.  And that becomes critical when we think about the role of the instructor in the process of cross-cultural transmission transformation.

To put the matter simply, western students do not need an American teacher to introduce Western elements into their understanding of these practices.  Being immersed in American popular culture they will be perfectly capable of doing that on their own.  Indeed, it was probably fanciful and Orientalist representations of the Asian martial arts that brought them to the Dojo’s doors in the first place.  I would venture to guess that much of their subconscious understanding of what a “proper” martial art is was already set in place years before they ever started to train.  Students of martial arts studies should never underestimate the power of “youthful fantasies” and first impressions.

The real question is whether a teacher might be able to short circuit this cycle.  Would a Japanese instructor in America be able to convey his or her experience of the art to their students?  Or might an American instructor in Japan (someone like Alexander Bennett) be able to shake students out of simply accepting the unstated link between the traditional martial arts and “national identity?”

I suspect not.  Adam Frank had many Chinese teachers, but still doubted whether his experience and understanding of Taijiquan was the same as theirs.  Nor do western students seem to have any difficulty projecting their own orientalist fantasies onto flesh and blood instructors.  Indeed, escaping all of this to create a real bond of mutual understanding and engagement between a teacher and a student is one of the great challenges (and rewards) of life in the martial arts.

Yet again, we find ourselves slipping into the realm of speculation.  In this case that is necessary as Dykhuizen never included any cases in his study where the teacher and students came from a different cultural background.  Not only did he fail to include such an instance in his ethnographic work, but he went so far as to throw out survey data on American students studying in Japan or Japanese students practicing in America.  Including these observations, and expanding the scope of the ethnographic fieldwork, would have been necessary to actually understand a teacher’s impact on the student’s experience of the art separate from their immersion in popular and media culture.

Leaving these questions of research design aside, perhaps the most important question to consider is what might motivate research like this?  If the author’s concern is simply to measure the amplitude of a predicted effect, or to make a point about the dangers of trying to transport pedagogical practices across borders (as is the case here), then all of this remains a harmless exercise.  Yet one strongly suspects that many readers will be approaching a paper like this from a different perspective.  Informed by their own anxieties and backgrounds in the martial arts, they will look to this article to discover whether an American can ever learn “authentic” Aikido.

The introduction of this paper begins by noting that the cultural differences exhibited between sub-population in a single location are almost always more interesting than the nominal variance observed between states, yet it immediately goes on to ignore its own warning.  The author was careful to select similar “representative” schools in Japan and the US for his study.  But what sorts of results would he have found if he had included the notoriously brutal Tokyo Riot Police Aikido dojo in his study?

Alternatively, what if this study was reimagined with a longitudinal aspect?  What results would we have found if we surveyed high school Kendo students in Japan in 1920 vs. 1940 vs. 1960?  I suspect that the magnitude of the variance in those answers would have blown away anything that Dykhuizen found in his research on contemporary Aikido students in Japan and the US today.

The essential problem is that so many of our discussions of cultural translation begin within the assumption that there was ever a single unitary unchanging view of a martial practice in its home country.  Modern students want so very badly to point at a single performance at a given moment in time and proclaim “that is authentic Aikido,” or “that is authentic Taijiquian.”

Yet the martial arts are a process, not an event.  They are rarely unitary, and they never stand still.  To paraphrase Adam Frank, martial identities move.    They move within their home regions and between various socio-economic groups.  They move through time and from genre of popular culture to the next.  They even move linguistically, culturally and globally.  Every one of these movements transforms and diversifies these arts. Every resulting scion is an “authentic” practice.

Simply to confirming that this process happens within the martial arts is not terribly interesting.  Upon thinking about this article a little more deeply one is left to wonder “So what?”  Yet more studies completed along similar lines might begin to give to us a better idea of where these arts move, how specifically they travel through the global community, and why some variants of a system survive while others die off.  Perhaps this article matters because it points to the potential of future empirical investigations within martial arts studies.

 
oOo

If you enjoyed this article you might also want to read:  The Tao of Tom and Jerry: Krug on the Appropriation of the Asian Martial Arts in Western Culture

oOo

Wrestlers in Tainjin, 1930. Source: http://fightland.vice.com/blog/shuai-jiao-chinas-indigenous-wrestling-style

Greetings from Germany!

I am current attending the 5th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Sport Science’s Martial Arts Commission at the Sports University of Cologne.  I will soon be delivering my keynote address (titled “Creating Wing Chun: Towards a Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts.”)  This paper discusses my approach to writing social history, explores why scholars should pay attention to this area of martial arts studies, and finally make an argument as to how this sort of research might be relevant to non-academic instructors and practitioners.    I plan to post all of that, as well as a full report on the conference, after my return to the United States next week.

In the mean time I thought that I would share with you the text of Paul Bowman’s keynote which he has been kind enough to post on his blog.   I don’t have a schedule in front of me, but I believe that Paul’s address comes a bit before mine in the batting order.  As astute readers may have already gathered from his title, this paper constitutes an intervention into the ongoing discussion of how to define and conceptualize the martial arts.  Rather than wading into the details of those conversations, it instead argues that such efforts may be premature at best, and misguided at worst.  One concern is that such exercises are too frequently put at the service of a sort of “naive empiricism.”  Paul goes on to argue that what is necessary at this point in the development of the field is a more sustained engagement with the basic insights of Critical Theory.

The paper that I will be presenting tends towards the historical and empirical, where as Paul’s is deeply engaged with post-structural and post-Marxist problems.  Yet when sitting down to look at each others essays, we were surprised to see that they touched on a number of shared themes and concerns.  One can even find some of these (albeit in a more empirical mode) in my recent post engaging with (and critiquing) Jeff Dykhuizen’s work on the culturally mediated nature of experience in the global Aikido community.  Hopefully I will have more to say on this after returning from the conference.  But until then, click the link to get a head start on the conversation!

What Can a Martial Body Do For Society? – Or, Theory Before Definition in Martial Arts Studies

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

Greetings from an Airport Somewhere in Europe!

I am currently in transit, returning from my recent visit with the 5th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Sport Science’s Martial Arts Commission at the Sports University of Cologne.  I hope to post a full report on the conference, as well as the text of my paper, sometime next week.  In the mean time I thought that I would share one of the Keynotes that was delivers at the Martial Arts Studies Conference held this July at Cardiff University.  Best of all, you can now watch this (and most of the other keynotes) on the Martial Arts Studies youtube channel.  Just click the link below.

In this paper Daniel Mroz attempts to tackle some of the fundamental questions that underlie the ubiquitous, but still mysterious, practice of Taolu (or set forms) within the Chinese martial arts.  One suspects that the framework that he advances here might also be helpful in thinking about a range of other Asian martial practices.  Enjoy!

Taolu: Credibility and Decipherablility in the Practice of Chinese Martial Movement

Illustration from Meyer’s Longsword.

Greetings!

If all has gone according to plan, I am now back in the United States and recovering after my recent trip to Germany.  As such, I would like to share with you another keynote addresses from this summer’s Martial Arts Studies conference in Cardiff as I work on on my report for next week.

This was an interesting talk for a number of reasons.  To begin with, Daniel gave it while wearing armor, which is something that one does not see every day.  Secondly, I have been hoping to get some discussion of the Historical European Martial Arts movement (HEMA) onto Kung Fu Tea for some time now.

In this paper Daniel asks whether it is possible to reconstruct a lost fighting system from existing books.  The answer seems to be that this sort of exercise is much more difficult than we often assume.  And while this talk is specifically discussing the reconstruction of Western fight books, I suspect that many of these issues might also be applicable to those thinking about Chinese or Japanese manuals.  As such, this paper may be of interest to a wide range of readers interested in the historical martial arts.

As Daniel is a younger scholar who we have not discussed before, a few words of introduction are in order.  He is a medievalist with a background in literary studies as well as the history of science and the material culture of the early modern period.  He received a PhD from the University of Geneva in 2013, is the co-editor of the Acta-Periodica Duellatorum (which you should definitely check out) and he just co-edited a new volume on Western fight books.  Lastly, if you are curious as to what he can actually do in that armor, be sure to check out this clip!

Lost Embodied Knowledge: Experimenting with Historical European Martial Arts out of Books

Introduction

I recently had the good fortune to attend the 2016 Martial Arts Studies conference held at the German Sports University of Cologne, sponsored by the German Society of Sport Science’s Martial Arts Commission.  The theme of this year’s gathering was “Martial Arts and Society.”  Over the course of three days (October 6th-8th) I saw dozens of papers and posters on a number of fascinating topics.  I am happy to report that the future of Martial Arts Studies in Germany looks very bright.  In my next post I hope to be able to offer a complete report on the conference.

In the mean time, I would like to post the text of my keynote, delivered on the morning of October the 8th.  When I was initially contacted about this conference the organizers asked me to reflect on the process of writing my recent book on Wing Chun, to discuss why this style makes a potentially interesting case study, and to explore the process of writing good, engaging, martial arts history.  The following paper is a result of my reflections on those questions.  But, just to keep things interesting, I have also tossed in a couple of new discoveries uncovered during the course of my recent research at Cornell.

On a more personal note I would like to extend a special note of thanks to three individuals.  Prof. Dr. Swen Korner (and family) for the great hospitality and stimulating conversations that they offered over the course of these meetings.  Next, Leo Istas for all of his hard work in helping to bring this conference together and making it possible for me to attend.  And lastly Sixt Wetzler, who generously introduced me to some priceless treasures at the German Blade Museum (more on that later).  It was a great conference, and I highly recommend that anyone who has the chance to attend in future years do so.

Creating Wing Chun: Towards a Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts

Why should scholars be concerned with the history of the Asia martial arts?  And why is social history, in which we seek to understand the practices of ordinary people by situating their involvement with these fighting systems against a broad range of factors, particularly useful?  This paper addresses these questions as they related to my recent book, co-authored with Jon Nielson, The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts (SUNY Press, 2015).  It begins with two stories.

The first is a well-known legend within the TCMA community.  I am sure that there are people in this room who know it well.  It is the creation myth that is taught to every student within the Ip Man branch of the Wing Chun system.

Ip Man (1893-1972) was a master of a Chinese martial arts style called Wing Chun.  He became a prominent figure in the hand combat community after he fled to Hong Kong from his native town of Foshan in 1949, just ahead of the Communist advance.  Once in Hong Kong, economic necessity forced the aging Ip Man to open a martial arts school from which he promoted what had previously been a local art.  One of his best known students, the American actor and martial artist Bruce Lee, transformed his art into a global phenomenon.[1]

Our second story comes from the pages of the July 13^th, 1872, edition of a now forgotten newspaper called the North China Herald.  Published in English, this newspaper was popular with Western expatriates living in Shanghai and other parts of China.  I have never seen this account discussed in any publication on the Chinese martial arts.

In some respects these stories will be quite different, yet shared concerns and themes echo between them.  Taken as a set they help to illustrate the questions that emerge when we attempt to write social history.  Let us begin by attempting to imagine two competing visions of the Southern Chinese martial arts as they may (or may not) have existed at some point in the past.  The first of them comes directly from the brush of Ip Man.
The Burning of the Shaolin Temple and the Birth of Wing Chun

“The founder of the Ving Tsun Kung fu system, Miss Yim Ving Tsun was a native of Canton China. As a young girl, she was intelligent and athletic, upstanding and manly. She was betrothed to Leung Bok Chau, a salt merchant of Fukien. Soon after that, her mother died. Her father, Yim Yee, was wrongfully accused of a crime, and nearly went to jail. So the family moved far away, and finally settled down at the foot of Tai Leung Mountain at the Yunnan-Szechuan border. There, they earned a living by selling bean curd. All this happened during the reign of Emperor K’anghsi (1662-1722).

At the time, kungfu was becoming very strong in Siu Lam Monastery (Shaolin Monastery) of Mt. Sung, Honan. This aroused the fear of the Manchu government, which sent troops to attack the Monastery. They were unsuccessful. A man called Chan Man Wai was the First Placed Graduate of the Civil Service Examination that year. He was seeking favour with the government, and suggested a plan. He plotted with Siu Lam monk Ma Ning Yee and others. They set fire to the Monastery while soldiers attacked it from the outside. Siu Lam was burnt down, and the monks scattered. Buddhist Abbess Ng Mui, Abbot Chi Shin, Abbot Pak Mei, Master Fung To Tak and Master Miu Hin escaped and fled their separate ways.

Ng Mui took refuge in White Crane Temple on Mt. Tai Leung (also known as Mt. Chai Har). There she came to know Yim Yee and his daughter Yim Ving Tsun. She bought bean curds at their store. They became friends.

Ving Tsun was a young woman then, and her beauty attracted the attention of a local bully. He tried to force Ving Tsun to marry him. She and her father were very worried. Ng Mui learned of this and took pity on Ving Tsun. She agreed to teach Ving Tsun fighting techniques so that she could protect herself. Then she would be able to solve the problem with the bully, and marry Leung Bok Chau, her betrothed husband.

So Ving Tsun followed Ng Mui into the mountains, and started to learn kung fu. She trained night and day, and mastered the techniques. Then she challenged the local bully to a fight and beat him. Ng Mui set off to travel around the country, but before she left, she told Ving Tsun to strictly honour the kung fu traditions, to develop her kungf u after her marriage, and to help the people working to overthrow the Manchu government and restore the Ming Dynasty. This is how Ving Tsun kung fu was handed down by Abbess Ng Mui.”[2]

After this point the Wing Chun creation myth becomes a more standard lineage genealogy.  It relates how the art was passed first to a group of traveling Cantonese Opera performers, then to a prominent Foshan pharmacist named Leung Jan and his student, Chan Wah Shun, and finally to Ip Man himself.

It is difficult to establish the date of this story with precision.  The version that I just read to you was written down by Ip Man in the Hong Kong period of his career in anticipation of the creation of an organization called the “Ving Tsun Tong Fellowship.”[3] For whatever reason, that group never materialized and this hand written account was found in his papers following his death in 1972.

The popularity of this story in other Wing Chun lineages strongly suggests that it was something that was in general circulation by the 1930s.  As we argued in our book, this myth, in its current form, probably dates to the Republic period as it relies rather heavily on the figure Ng Moy who in older versions of the Shaolin myth was actually a villain.  She was not reimagined as a hero until a group of novels were published in the 1930s.[4]

Leaving aside specific arguments about the origin of the Wing Chun system, this story is of interest because it paints a vivid picture of the world of the southern Chinese martial arts during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  Consider some of the major themes that we find in this legend.  First, the martial arts occupy a lawless environment in which the state is powerless to enforce order.

Still, the situation is anarchic (as that term is defined by political scientists) rather than purely chaotic.[5]  There is a certain code of conduct that contains and shapes the expression of violence within the community.  This is exemplified by the challenge fight with the marketplace bully, rather than a resort to private war.  Lastly, there is just a hint of romance wrapped in a large dose of social propriety.[6]  We see this expressed when Yim Wing Chun fights off an unwanted suitor to preserve the honor of her childhood fiancée, whom she has probably never seen before.

All of this happens in an undeniably romanticized Chinese landscape.  The actions starts when the Yim family flees the known world of the Pearl River Delta and heads for a far off mountain in Western China complete with mist covered temples and a mysterious Buddhist recluse.  It all sounds oddly like the plot of a kung fu movie.[7]  By the conclusion of the story the reader has no reason to doubt the inherent virtue of the southern Chinese martial arts.

Our second story, published under the title “Chinese Boxing,” also revolves around a life-defining challenge fight.  This event took place in a much more mundane environment, totally lacking in mist covered temples. Yet it also echoes many of the same themes found in the first story.

Image taken from a vintage french postcard showing soldiers gambling in Yunnan province. Note that the standing soldier on the left is holding a hudiedao in a reverse grip. Source: Author’s personal collection.

A Death in the Marketplace

“If there is one particular rather than another in which we might least expect to find John Chinaman resemble John Bull, it is in the practice of boxing.  The meek celestial does get roused occasionally, but he usually declines a hand to hand encounter, unless impelled by the courage of despair.  He is generally credited with a keen appreciation of the advantages of running away, as compared with the treat of standing up to be knocked down, and is slow to claim the high privilege the ancients thought worthy to be allowed only to freemen, of being beaten to the consistency of a jelly. 

How the race must rise in the estimation of foreigners, therefore, when we mention that the noble art of self-defence and legitimate aggressiveness flourished in China centuries probably before the “Fancy” ever formed a ring in that Britain which has come to be regarded as the home of boxing.  Of course, like everything else in China, the science has rather deteriorated than improved; its practice is rough; its laws unsystematized; its Professors of the art, called “fist-teachers,” offer their services to initiate their countrymen in the use of their “maulies,” and, in addition in throwing out their feet in a dexterous manner…

…Boxing clubs are kept up in country villages, where pugilists meet and contest the honours of the ring…

We are not unused to hearing of fatal encounters in the Western ring, where the brutal sport is hedged about with restrictions intended to guard against its most serious eventuality, but in China homicide in such affairs is made more frequent by the admission of kicking.  A case of the sort has just occurred at Tachang, a village about eight miles due north from the Stone Bridge over the Soochow creek. 

In a teashop where gambler and boxers were wont to meet, a dispute arose between two men about 18 cash, and it was arranged to settle it by fight.  After a few rounds, one man succeeded in knocking over the other, with a violent kick to the side.  The man sprang to his feet, exclaiming “Ah! That was well done,” and as he advanced to meet his antagonist again, suddenly fell back, dead. 

Consternation fell on those concerned in the matter, and every effort was made to evade a judicial enquiry.  The relatives of the deceased, however, come forward to make the usual capital out of their misfortune.  They seized the homicide, put him in chains, and bound him for two days and nights to the body of the dead man, which had been removed to the upper part of the teahouse. 

An arrangement for a pecuniary salve to their lacerated feeling was made, by which the people in the neighborhood paid $150, the teahouse keeper $100, and the dealer of the fatal blow $50.  But gambling and fighting had drained the resources of the latter, he was an impoverished rowdy without a respectable connection in the world, except the betrothal tie, by which the fate of a young lady was linked with his, before either had a will to consult or the wayward tendency of his character had appeared.  Glad of an opportunity to break off the engagement, the young lady’s friends came forward and offered to pay the sum if he would surrender all claim to his fiancée. 

The offer being accepted, the whole affair was settled; the sum of a Chinese boxing match being thus one combatant killed, a teahouse keeper ruined, a neighborhood heavily fined, and a marriage engagement broken off.  Probably such incidents occur very often, but if the parties can settle it among themselves, the magistrates, for their own sakes, are only too glad to have the matter hushed up.”[8]

One could write an entire paper analyzing, deconstructing and investigating this short news item.  Period accounts of actual challenge matches, and their social aftermath, are extremely rare in any language.  Yet consider the major themes shared between the two stories.  Unlike the previous legend, this one can be dated with a fair amount of precision.  It is an account of events that probably happened sometime in the summer of 1872, reported to the English reading public on July 13^th of that year.

That is significant as it makes this fight roughly contemporaneous with a critical stage in the development of Wing Chun.  Leung Jan, the pharmacist from Foshan who we just mentioned, may have been instructing his friend from the marketplace, Chan Wah Shun, as all of this was happening.[9]  Nevertheless, this description of the 19^th century martial arts lacks the exotic orientalism and romance of its predecessor.

Still, the martial arts are once again associated with economic marketplaces and the types of ruffians one might find there.  That is an important clue for historians of the Chinese hand combat systems to contemplate.

In the first, more romanticized, story the martial arts are seen as the means by which social norms are upheld.  The second case demonstrates the opposite possibility as the fight leads only to death, financial ruin the dissolution of an engagement.  Yet in both instances individuals seem to believe that keeping the state out of the matter is a good idea.

The thematic differences between these accounts are also interesting.  In the first story Yim Wing Chun and her family are very much alone in a hostile world.  Yet the second account reminds us that in reality the Chinese martial arts, and social violence more generally, occurred in villages that were dominated by strong clan structures.

In fact, most villages of this size would contain between one and three surnames, being dominated by a few large clans.  While the author of the article chose not to go into detail on this point, taking a male who has wronged your clan hostage and holding him until a hefty ransom was paid was not an uncommon way of settling inter-village disputes in the late Qing.

Tone is perhaps the most important difference between these stories.  The account of Yim Wing Chun emerges from within the world of Chinese boxing.  It is an emic explanation of these fighting systems which views them as a fundamentally positive means by which individuals address pressing personal and community matters.

The second story is etic in nature, presenting us with an outsider’s perspective.  Moreover, the anonymous author of the account of the fight in Tachang Village held the world of the Chinese martial arts in low regard.  In other portions of this account that I omitted due to the limitations of time it seems possible that he does not think all that highly of the English sport of boxing either.  One wonders whether his criticisms of people who practice the Chinese martial arts should be read as a subtle jab at his Western readers who may well be fans of their own forms of boxing.

Still, this air of disdain is quite accurate in some respects as it reminds us that, even in the volatile second half of the 19^th century, most respectable individuals in China were not interested in the martial arts.  They found these practices, and the individuals who took them up, to be socially marginal.  Nevertheless, once we control for questions of tone, the author’s outsider perspective yields a number of interesting historical and ethnographic observations.

An interior picture of the renown library at Shaolin prior to the 1928 destruction. Prominently displayed in the center are copper plated Buddhist scriptures. Researchers on the expedition also noted that this library contained illustrated manuscripts and a collection of staffs from historically important monks.

My Method of Social History

We now have two competing accounts of the Southern Chinese martial arts.  One is a period account of an alleged event that was likely recorded a few weeks after the fight in question transpired.  The other is a legend, an example of folk history, which purports to reveal the origins of an increasingly popular regional fighting tradition that was already a century old.

There is also the matter of social memory.  One of these accounts is still known, believed, taught and enacted in communities around the globe.[10]  Individuals look to it for inspiration and technical guidance as they seek to transform themselves through the practice of the martial arts.  The other story, while probably much more factually accurate, has been totally forgotten.  Its service as a cautionary tale ceased to be relevant when the community that it sought to inform dissolved in the 20^th century.

When faced with two differing accounts, the first question that we often ask is in many respects the least helpful.  Students will look at these two contrasting descriptions of the Southern Chinese martial arts and want to know, “which one is true?”  Which vision most accurately captures “reality?”[11] On some level the answer must be neither.

The problems with the Wing Chun creation legend are more obvious.  The Southern Shaolin Temple, as it is described by the region’s martial artists, likely never existed.  And the Shaolin Temple of Henan province (specifically referenced in the Ip Man version of the story) was never burned by Qing.  Nor did they slaughter its monks.

These are established facts, not up for historical debate.  It is quite suggestive that some of the figures in this account show up as characters in late-Qing kung fu novels long before they appear anywhere else.  Likewise, the resemblance of the heroines of the Wing Chun legend to central female figures in the creation accounts of White Crane Boxing (from Fujian) is probably not a coincidence.

Our second account also has some serious problems.  It is in no way a shining example of investigative journalism, even by 19^th century standards.  The author makes no effort to hide the fact that he is far from neutral observer.  Nor does he include some very basic facts in his account, such as the names of the two fighters, or even the date on which these events took place.

The level of descriptive detail in this account leads me to suspect that it is basically credible.  Yet the way in which it is written strongly suggests that the point of this article was never to teach readers technical or sociological facts about Chinese boxing.  Rather, it was a transparent attempt to convince them to imagine China in a certain way.  It is basically an exercise in the construction of ethnic and national “mythologies” by other means.

The correlation between the socio-economic status of our authors and the ways in which they discussed the martial arts is probably not a coincidence.  As one reads the various accounts of the martial arts that appeared in the popular press in China between the 1870s and the 1940s we see competition between groups who viewed the personal empowerment promised by the martial arts in positive terms, those who wish to reform these practices and put them at the disposal of the state, and lastly a large group of relatively elite voices that viewed the martial arts as a backwards waste of resources that had no place in a modern China.  The crafting of accounts supporting these different positions is highly reminiscent of the process that James C. Scott described in his classic study, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance.[12]

In many respects the preceding accounts are fairly representative of the sorts of data that scholars discover throughout the course of their research.  Faced with such narratives, all of which have been shaped by other hands, what is a social historian to do?

First we must step back and think carefully about research design.  What is the actual object of our analysis?  What puzzles are we attempting to solve?  Is our goal really to understand the technical development of a hand combat system?  Or are we instead interested in the community that developed and transmitted these practices at different points in time?

Good social history is concerned with the production of sound descriptive and causal inferences.  My approach to these questions is probably a result our background in the social sciences and training in the case study (rather than the area studies) approach.  As such, both Jon Nielson and I were interested in moving beyond purely interpretive exercises.  We wished to develop a framework that could speak directly to a range of sociological theories.[13]

Without denying the fruitfulness of the “embodied turn” that we have seen in fields like sociology and anthropology over the last few decades,[14] we would suggest that students of martial arts studies think very carefully about their linked methodological and theoretical assumptions.  The hand combat systems are said to be “arts” precisely because they exist only as social institutions.   They differ from pure violence in that these techniques exist within a framework of ideas and identities which are meant to be conveyed from teacher to student.[15]  Questions of community involvement are not superfluous to the development of the martial arts.  Rather, they are central to the entire enterprise.

The author of the 1872 article was absolutely correct to identify the individuals most likely to invest themselves in these systems of practice and knowledge as being socially marginal.  Nor is this pattern isolated to China in the Qing or Republic periods.  Modern sociologists and anthropologists have noted a link between many hand combat traditions and social marginality in a wide range of cultures and settings.[16]

This is precisely why historians interested in questions of social history and popular culture must take note of the Chinese martial arts.  As in most places, the history of China was written by educated elites.  This makes the day to day realities of most people’s lives very difficult to reconstruct.

The Chinese martial arts are interesting in that they offer a unique window into the hopes and concerns of a large segment of the population that might otherwise be overlooked.  Further, the lineage based nature of these fighting systems means that modern organizations and practices continue to look to the past for legitimacy.  These fighting systems have sometimes preserved information, usually stories but in other cases actual documents, that historians will find useful.

More importantly, members of the local community tend to regard martial art traditions as being ancient and the guardians of certain types of values.  While most of the Asian fighting systems that people actually practice are very much products of the modern era, they are nevertheless closely tied to critical discourses about identity, community violence and history.

There are other social organizations that share many of these same traits.  I actually began my research on community organization and violence in China before I ever became personally involved in the practice of kung fu.  Initially I was conducting research on new religious movements and their association with violent uprisings in the late Qing dynasty in an attempt to test a general theory of the relationship between religious communities and the generation of social capital.[17]

After giving a paper on social capital and the Boxer Uprising at the 2009 Midwest Political Science Association meetings, one of the commentators suggested that I take a look at some of the events in southern China.  He was attempting to direct my attention to the Taiping Rebellion.  As I began to investigate the issue I was surprised to find a number of martial arts schools still in existence that claimed a heritage going back to those events.  This memory of revolutionary action, whether real or imagined, would arise again within these groups at later moments of historical crisis.[18]

At that point I became quite interested in the development of the martial arts associations of southern China.  Other sorts of social organizations, like trade guilds, clan associations or new religious movements might occasionally become involved in community violence.  Yet martial arts societies often viewed themselves as specialists in this realm.[19]  While the trade guilds of Beijing and Yihi Boxers of Shandong have ceased to exist, many of southern China’s martial arts movements are still with us today.  As a student of globalization, I was also fascinated by the degree of success that these groups had enjoyed in spreading themselves throughout the world.[20]

Shortly after coming to these realizations I began a personal study of Wing Chun with Jon Nielson, who at the time also taught at the same university where I was employed.  He was interested in many of the same historical and theoretical questions and had been planning a more limited historical research project of his own.  At that point we began to discuss the possibility of putting together a broadly based, theoretically informed, study of Wing Chun.

This seemed like an obvious topic as my co-author is a direct student of Ip Ching, one of Ip Man’s surviving children.  We were assured of getting access to certain resources that would be helpful in understanding the evolution of this particular system.  Yet basic research design questions still required serious thought.  Making a contribution to the social scientific literature requires more than just access to good data or an interesting story.  Specifically, one needs a theory.

We began our investigation with a simple premise.  We proposed that increased instances of community instability would lead, in time, to the development new martial arts organizations.  Rather than simply providing self-defense training on an individual level, these organizations should be seen as expressions of the community’s self-interest and would be tolerated by local elites (who might otherwise fear their rebellious potential) to the extent that they provided a degree of stability.  In short, while martial artists often posture as outsiders who flaunt societal conventions, in fact they played an important role within traditional Chinese communities.

Further, the impulse to create and fund such groups is basically rational in nature and it varies with the level of demand.  A purely cultural explanation of the martial arts might, on the other hand, see them as relatively constant over time as cultural factors change more slowly than political or economic ones. If the martial arts are simply an expression of timeless patterns in Chinese culture, then there would be no reason to expect that their popularity would decline in times of peace.  In fact, with extra resources to dedicate to non-essential activities, their practice might even increase in popularity. As the idiom goes, constants cannot explain variables.

In order to test this theory we developed a few implicit hypotheses.  The first of these was that factors that decreased community stability would lead to an increase in martial arts activity.  Given my academic background in international relations, one of the variables that we were immediately drawn to was globalization, meaning rapid increases in the flow of goods, capital, individuals and ideas across previously closed borders.

During the 19^th century China’s once isolated and protected markets were forcibly opened to global trade on a massive scale.  As the country’s economy adjusted to new patterns of imports and exports some people discovered windfall profits.  Many more found themselves trapped in dying modes of handicraft production and agriculture.  In short, shifts in trade always create waves of winners and loser.  Unless carefully managed this contributes to social instability.[21]

When viewed in this context, the development of Wing Chun suddenly begins to look very interesting.  The practice originated in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong province, home to Guangzhou (Canton), Foshan and Hong Kong, three major economic centers of trade and production.  This was also the first region of China to be opened to foreign trade and missionary work on a massive scale.

As Jon Nielson and I discussed possible research and writing strategies we realized that in addition to providing a window onto the popular culture of ordinary Chinese citizens, our project suggested ways in which a large number of additional theories could be tested or explored using the Chinese martial arts as a data source.  Unfortunately, there were very few known historical facts about these systems.  And most of the work that had been done focused on systems coming out of Shanghai or Northern China.[22]  In some cases their findings had been extrapolated, we felt incorrectly, to make generalizations about all of the Chinese martial arts.

The nature of the existing literature thus helped to shape our research design.  Rather than focusing exclusively on Wing Chun (which would remain our major case study) we would attempt to provide a detailed social history of the martial arts in a single region in Southern China.  It would involve the exploration of economic, political, social and cultural factors within the Pearl River Delta.

Since our subject of analysis was now geographic in nature, we would be free to examine a number of the leading styles rather than focusing only on a single art. Given our personal backgrounds in Wing Chun, the inclusion of other systems (such as Choy Li Fut, White Eyebrow or the Jingwu movement) was also important from a research design standpoint.  It ensured that we would not test our ideas about the relationship between the martial arts and their social environment on the exact same body of insights that we used to derive our basic theoretical model.

Further, these other arts tended to have different relationships with the main economic, social and political variables that we discussed.  So while we presented our readers a single case study, a rich reading of the area’s martial history allowed us to multiply our observations in ways that we hoped would allow us to avoid issues like tautology and selection bias.[23]

Inevitably many of our findings had to be left out of the final manuscript.  Even with the amount of space that we dedicated to Wing Chun, it was impossible to go much beyond Ip Man’s lineage in a single volume.  Other southern arts, such as Hung Gar, certainly deserved more discussion than they received.  Yet our hope was that by providing a comprehensive social history of the region’s martial arts community, students of these other lineages and styles would be able to discover the sorts of forces that had an impact on the development of their own practice.  Likewise, social scientists interested in a wide variety of theoretical questions would be able to turn to our book as a reliable source of description and data.

This brings us back to the questions posed by the two stories introduced at the start of this paper.  If we focus only on a technical history of the Chinese martial arts, seeking to verify the claims of various lineage myths, we are bound to be disappointed.  The historical record is simply too thin in most places.  And as Foucault reminds us, a high degree of caution and introspection is necessary whenever scholars find themselves striking out to discover, rather than to question, the “origins” of a revered practice.[24]  Martial arts studies must not become an apologetic exercise.

Nor, on a more practical level, is the question of “ultimate origins” of much interest to scholars who approach these fighting systems from an outside perspective.  Indeed, the most interesting question is not whether Ng Moy really created Wing Chun, but rather why that specific story became so important to groups of teenagers living in Hong Kong in the 1960s.  Why does that image still resonate with so many Western martial artists today?

When approached through the lens of social history, the stories that introduced this discussion reveal a wealth of information about the communities that composed and passed them on.  That, in turn, suggests something important about the nature and purpose of the southern Chinese martial arts themselves.  The social history of these fighting systems gives us a way to better understand the intersection of these folk narratives with a vast variety of economic, political and cultural variables.

Why Should Readers Care About the Social History of the Martial Arts?

Finally, why should the general reader care about the social history of the Asian martial arts? It may be cliché to say, but explorations of history are rarely concerned only with the past.  Ideally such works speak also to the concerns of readers in the present.  I second D. S. Farrer’s call, first made in his keynote address to the 2015 Martial Arts Studies meetings at the University of Cardiff: our field must tackle socially relevant questions and present actual solutions.[25]

Wing Chun, and the other Chinese martial arts, are fascinating precisely because they offer us an opportunity to investigate many pressing issues.  At this moment there is more interest than ever in the development of Chinese regional and national identity.  The evolving situation in Hong Kong is particularly relevant given Wing Chun’s current status as a powerful symbol of that city’s local, and increasingly independent, identity.[26]

Yet beyond such geographically focused concerns, do these systems, many of which were tied to specific moments in the 20^th century, still have something to teach us today?  I would like to argue that they do.  This message comes in the form of both a warning and an opportunity.

Nothing demonstrates the continued social relevance of the Chinese martial arts more quickly than an examination of our current multi-media environment.  Simply turn on the television.  The Asian martial arts have come to be an expected element of film, tv programing and even major sporting events.

They are dramatized in novels and comic books.  An entire subsection of the internet seems to be dedicated to both instructional and comedic videos featuring martial artists.[27]  Indeed, most of us got our first exposure to the martial arts via some sort of mediated image, and not through direct exposure to actual physical practice.

This state of affairs is actually less of a historical departure than one might think.  Residents of southern China in the Qing and Republic periods also lived in an environment saturated with entertainment based visions of the martial arts.  They came in the form of Cantonese operas, marketplace performers, professional storytellers, serialized newspaper stories, collectible cigarette cards, kung fu novels and later radio dramas and films.[28]

It was through these routes that many residents of Guangdong and Hong Kong first developed an interest in these fighting systems.  To fully understand the social work that the martial arts have done in various times and places, one must give careful thought to social discourses, mediatized images and the economic markets that surround them.[29]  First impressions are a powerful force.

Consider the portrayal of the Chinese martial arts in current film.  Audiences seem to be attracted to the unapologetic violence in many of these stories.  The fight choreography of the Xu Haofeng’s recent film The Master (2015) is likely to appeal to modern Western Wing Chun practitioners given the abundant use of Butterfly Swords (the style’s signature weapon). Or consider Donnie Yen’s dojo fight scene in Wilson Ip’s 2008 biopic Ip Man, in which he wipes out an entire room of karate students.  While watching these sequences one cannot help but take note of the sheer body count that the various protagonists manage to rack up.  At times I am reminded of the Bride’s blade work (minus the copious blood) in Quentin Tarantino 2003 homage to the kung fu genre, Kill Bill.

Nor are these the only places in the current media landscape where viewers might find such images.  Scenes of unskilled, nameless, and thoughtless attacker being cut down by the dozens bring to mind the exaggerated action and martial arts stylings of the Resident Evil franchise, or the grittier violence of The Walking Dead.  I suspect that on some level there is a shared language of violence in these two genres (the kung fu film and zombie thriller).  In both cases spectacular portrayals of violence are placed in the service of a “world creation” exercise.

These images of violence underscore the break with the conventional social rules that govern the audience’s mundane lives.  Thus they are a primary aspect of the story, and not simply a stylistic flourish. The martial arts epic and the post-apocalyptic zombie adventure offer us a world that does away with the “decadent” comforts and conventions of the current environment.  They present a stage on which only the “awesome” will survive.

Who are these heroes?  Among their ranks we find the awesomely strong, the skilled, the cagey and sometimes the evil.  Every new world, it seems, needs an iconic villain.

In short, the subtext of many of these stories seems to be that those who will survive and thrive in these new realms are individuals who are “like us,” because they embody precisely the traits that we like to imagine in ourselves.  There is an unmistakable air of wish fulfillment in these secondary creations.  As we watch our heroes fight their way across the exotic landscapes of a fantasy Oriental past, or the post-apocalyptic future, they embody and project back to us our own love of masculinity, rugged independence and stoic resilience.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that the sense of looming social and economic crisis that has helped to popularize such stories over the last few decades is also thought to have contributed to the rise of various types of extremist movements around the globe.  Rather than the inevitable triumph of globalization and liberal democracy envisioned at the end of the Cold War, we are seeing the rise of violent (and media savvy) non-state actors, illiberal democracies, and both populist and rightist movements.  Nor, as Jared Miracle reminded us in the conclusion of his recent study of the global spread of the Asian martial arts, should we forget that in the past these political movements were sometimes associated with these fighting systems.[30]

The ethno-nationalist turn in certain martial arts, pioneered in Japan and China during the first half of the 20^th century, provided a mechanism by which their symbolic association with physical strength, national heritage and masculinity could be marshalled and placed at the disposal of both extremist political movements and the state.[31]  We would be unwise to ignore the fact that there is much in the popular culture of the martial arts, in both the East and West, which continues to make them a tempting target for appropriation by such groups today.

Are these traits part of the essential nature of the Asian fighting arts?  Or were they instead epiphenomenal and historically contingent, a relic of the particular circumstances under which these systems achieved momentum as mass social movements?

This is another area where a better understanding of the social history of the southern Chinese martial arts might provide us with models for thinking about the current situation.  Consider again the stories that introduced this paper, the myth of Yim Wing Chun and the fight in Tachang Village.  From the final decades of the 19^th century to the current era many of the region’s Wuxia novels, and other types of martial arts storytelling, have focused on the lives of impossibly talented wandering heroes in the Jianghu, or the realm of “Rivers and Lakes,” not unlike Ng Moy and her student.

This somewhat unsettling territory (imagined as an alternate social dimension, ever present yet just beyond the edge of our own life experience) seems to suffer from a lack of effective central governance.  What government exists is often seen as corrupt and in the process of oppressing the people.  The protagonists of these stories, frequently the inheritors of ancient martial arts lineages, are thus forced to seek their own solutions to pressing problems.  As one would expect in novels feature a colorful array of wandering monks, corrupt soldiers and hidden kung fu masters, this often involves an enthralling resort to arms.  These stories actively sought to create a sense of nostalgia among their readers for a type of past that never existed.

At first glance the rough and tumble realm of “Rivers and Lakes” would seem to bear more than a passing resemblance to the ultraviolent fantasy worlds of Kill Bill or Resident Evil.  It too seems to have an established hierarchy of awesomeness based on one’s strength, fighting style and the “martial virtue.” What use do wandering swordsmen have for village life and its many restraints?

Yet first impressions can also be deceptive.  While it may not always be apparent, the wandering swordsmen of the Rivers and Lakes are often quite concerned with questions of both social organization and justice.  Far from being only violent escapist fantasies, many of the most popular stories were rooted in easily identifiable debates about political ideals and social modernization.

Two scholars of the Wuxia literary genre, John Hamm and Petrous Liu have examined these stories from slightly different perspectives.  As Liu argued in his study of Chinese martial arts literature, Stateless Subjects (Cornell EAP, 2011), when understood in their original context such novels were often obsessed with political questions.[32]  Nor did they view traditional society as a mediocre mass that the martial hero fought to escape.

Rather than attempting to establish a hierarchy of social organization based exclusively on martial strength, the real controversy in many of these narratives seems to have been the preexisting forms of social order inherited from the late Qing, the Warlord period and even the Communist eras.  In short, internal imperialism and the teleology of western models of modernization were the problems that demanded a solution.

By demonstrating possible ways that society could address serious, even existential, concerns without recourse to a coercive state apparatus, these stories sought to argue for a social model that was essentially horizontal in organization, drawing on the strength of what current Western scholarship calls civil society.[33]  These authors advanced a model that placed authority in the hands of society and not in an externally imposed hierarchy emanating from a far off center.

While we tend to imagine these stories, and even the creation myths of the various southern martial arts, as reflecting the values of ancient China, it is probably no coincidence that the giants of the genre, individuals like Xiang Kairan (1890-1957) and later Jin Yong (born 1924), wrote in moments of social and political upheaval.  All of these stories, like the martial arts of Southern China themselves, emerged from a period of when the character of “modern China” was being actively debated.

During this period the traditional martial arts argued for a specific vision of the future by creating an idealized past.  Within it the holistic nature of Chinese culture need not give way to teleological dreams imported from the West.  As Liu observed, and Jon Neilson and I attempted to document in the area of physical practice and social organization, they crafted a vision of Chinese modernity in which action would be organized according to the principals of Minjian “between people” as opposed to the universal, centralized and always state dominated frameworks inherent in the idea of Tianxia, or “all under heaven.”[34]

Liu suggested that this was the real reason for the May 4^th Intellectuals opposition to the supposedly “feudal” Wuxia genre.[35]  Similar concerns also seem to have motivated much of the Central Guoshu Institute’s anxieties about the China’s thriving local martial arts marketplaces in regions like Guangdong and Fujian.[36]

It was not that these stories and practices, as they came to exist in the 1920s and 1930s, accurately represented China’s ancient past.  Rather they represented an alternate view of the future.  It was one in which the state would serve the interests of a diverse and robust society, rather than an artificially homogenized society being placed at the disposal of a technocratic and highly centralized state.  Other intellectuals, deeply invested in models of modernization that privileged a strong state, found these (extremely popular) notions threatening.

The social history of the Southern Chinese martial arts matter because they reveal moments when these institutions, practices and reformers stood at a crossroads.  A close examination of any of the Asian martial arts will show that these things never existed in a vacuum.  Nor have they been motivated by a timeless and inscrutable morality uniquely their own.

Our account of Wing Chun demonstrated that the region’s martial arts have always functioned in conjunction with other social, economic, political and even aesthetic impulses.  For instance, it is just not possible to tell the story of this style without also exploring its relationship with Guangdong’s yellow unions, or its close alignment with bourgeois social interest within a landscape marked by class struggle.[37]  In China, but also in other places in Asia, individuals have become involved in the martial arts precisely because they have sought a voice in ongoing debates as to how we should react to the ongoing challenges of globalization, modernization and rapid social change.[38]

As we review these debates, or examine the life histories of masters like Ip Man, we are reminded that many aspects of these practices, and the values that seem to underpin them, are radically historically contingent.  The traditional Chinese martial arts could have evolved in many ways over the course of the 20^th century.  And the changes have been striking.

Rediscovering this history is important as it reminds modern martial artists that they also have choices to make.  They must choose, just as their predecessors did, where to innovate and when to adhere to tradition. In social and political discussions, they must choose how these fighting systems will be presented to the public.

What sorts of values will the modern martial arts advance?  Will they be governed by the principal of Minjian, attempting to reach out horizontally, creating broad based coalitions of cooperation within civil society?  Or will the martial arts put their resources at the disposal of those seeking to rebuild the hierarchies of awesomeness by supporting violent, illiberal or simply exclusionary ethno-nationalist ideals?

I do not pretend that a study of the past can offer definitive guidance in the present.  As we read about the actions of those who came before we are reminded that the choices made now will have consequences.  Likewise the ways in which scholars chose to write about the martial arts may have important implications for our understanding of not just these practices, but of ourselves as well.

Works Cited

Almond, Gabriel and Sidney Verba. 1989. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy In Five Nations. Sage.

Amos, Daniel. 1983. “Marginality and the Heroes Art: Martial Arts in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Canton).” PhD Diss.,University of California.

Bennett, Alexander C. 2015. Kendo: Culture of the Sword. Los Angles: University of California Press. 123-162.

Berg, Esther and Inken Prohl. 2014. ‘“Become your Best”: On the Construction of Martial Arts as Means of Self-Actualization and Self-Improvement.” JOMEC Journal 5.

Boretz, Avron. 2011. Gods, Ghosts and Gangsters: Ritual Violence, Martial Arts, and Masculinity on the Margins of Chinese Society. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Bowman, Paul. 2016. Mythologies of Martial Arts. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Bowman, Paul. 2015.  Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Cass, Vitoria. 1999. Dangerous Women: Warriors, Grannies and Geishas of the Ming. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Channon, Alex and George Jennings. 2014. “Exploring Embodiment through Martial Arts and Combat Sports: A Review of Empirical Research.” Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics. 17:6. 773-789.

“Chinese Boxing.” North China Herald. July 13^th, 1872.

Farrer, D. S. “Efficiency and Entertainment in Martial Arts Studies: Anthropological Perspectives.” A Keynote Address Presented at the June 2015 Martial Arts Studies conference held at Cardiff University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4t6WXYukHQ.

Farrer, D. S. 2015 (b). “Efficacy and Entertainment in Martial Arts Studies: Anthropological Perspectives.” Martial Arts Studies 1. 43.

Farrer, D. S. and John Whallen-Bridge. 2011. Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1977. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Frank, Adam. 2006. Taijiquan and the Search for the Little Old Chinese Man: Understanding Identity through Martial Arts. New York: Palgrave.

Gainty, Denis. 2015. Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan. Routledge.

Garcia, Raul Sanchez and Dale C. Spenser. 2014. Fighting Scholars: Habitus and Ethnographies of Martial Arts and Combat Sports.  New York: Anthem Press.

Hamm, John Christopher. 2005. Paper Swordsmen: Yin Yong and the Modern Chinese Martial Arts Novel. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press

Henning, Stanley. 2003. “Martial Arts in Chinese Physical Culture, 1856-1965.” In Martial Arts in the Modern World, edited by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth. London: Praeger. 13-35

Hurst, G. Cameron. 1998. Armed Martial Arts of Japan: Swordsmanship and Archery. New Haven: Yale UP.

Ip Chun and Michael Tse. 1998. Wing Chun Kung Fu: Traditional Chinese Kung Fu for Self-Defence and Health. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

Ip Man. “The Origin of Wing Chun.” http://www.vingtsun.org.hk/history.htm accessed 9/18/2017.

Judkins, Benjamin N. 2016. “The Seven Forms of Lightsaber Combat: Hyper-Reality and the Invention of the Martial Arts.” Martial Arts Studies. 2. 6-22.

Judkins, Benjamin N. “Does Religiously Generated Social Capital Intensify or Mediate Violent Conflict? Lessons from the Boxer Uprising.” Presented at the 67th MPSA National Meetings in Chicago, IL, April 2-5, 2009.

Judkins, Benjamin N. and Jon Nielson. 2015. The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Kennedy, Brian and Elizabeth Guo. 2010. Jingwu: The School that Transformed Kung Fu. Berkeley: Blue Snake Books.

King, Gary, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton University Press.

Lee, James Yimm. 1972. Wing Chun Kung Fu: Chinese Art of Self Defense. Santa Clarita, CA: Ohara Publications.

Liu, Petrus. 2011. Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts Literature & Postcolonial History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, East Asia Program.

Lorge, Peter. 2012. Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge UP.

Miracle, Jared. 2016. Now with Kung Fu Grip! How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented the Martial Arts for America.  Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.

Morris, Andrew. 2004. Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China.  Berkley: University of California Press.

Putnam, Robert D., Robert Leonardi, Raffaella Y. Nanetti; Robert Leonardi; Raffaella Y. Nanetti. 1994. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press.

Rogowski, Ronald. 1989. Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Shahar, Meir. 2008. The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts. Honolulu: Hawaii UP.

Vaccaro, Christian. 2015. Unleashing Manhood in the Cage: Masculinity and Mixed Martial Arts. Lexington Books.

Walkman, Frederic Jr. 1997. Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861. Los Angles: University of California Press.

Waltz, Kenneth N. 1979.  Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Wacquant, Loïc. 2003. Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford University Press.

Wert, Michael. 2016. Review of: Alexander C. Bennett.  2015. Kendo: Culture of the Sword. UC Press. The Journal of Japanese Studies. 42:2 (Summer). 371-375.

Wetzler, Sixt. 2015. “Martial Arts Studies as Kulturwissenschaft: A Possible Theoretical Framework.” Martial Arts Studies. 1. 20-33.

Wong, Doc Fai and Jane Hallander. 1985. Choy Li Fut Kung Fu: A Dynamic Fighting Art Descended from the Monks of the Shaolin Temple. Burbank CA; Unique Publications.

Zhao Shiqing. 2010. “Imagining Martial Arts in Hong Kong: Understanding Local Identity through ‘Ip Man’.”  Journal of Chinese Martial Studies 1, no. 3. 85-89.
Endnotes

[1] Judkins and Nielson 2015, 179-186; 211-263.

[2] Ip Man. “The Origin of Wing Chun.” http://www.vingtsun.org.hk/history.htm accessed 9/18/2017.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Hamm 2005, 34-36.

[5] Waltz 1979, 102-116.

[6] Cass (1999) provides an excellent discussion of the inherent social tensions within Chinese images of archetypal female warriors.

[7] Adam Frank (2006, 35-36), among others, has discussed the tendency towards self-Orientalizing within the Chinese martial arts.  It is not hard to imagine some of the motives behind this development.  Once the martial arts came to be linked to the project of building a robust sense of Chinese nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, the Central Guoshu Association and other actors showed a strong tendency to link these fighting systems with supposedly “essential” and “primordial” Chinese traits that they wished to promote.  Authors of Wuxia novels also marshaled idealized visions of the past to support their own vision of China’s future.  Nor has this project ever been totally forgotten.

[8] “Chinese Boxing.” North China Herald. July 13^th, 1872.

[9] Judkins and Nielson 175-176.

[10] Practically all of the basic guidebooks on the Wing Chun system relate this story.  Chun and Tse 1998, 16-21.  Even James Yimm Lee’s notoriously taciturn manual, Wing Chun Kung Fu: Chinese Art of Self Defense, produced from Bruce Lee’s class notes, includes a brief summary of the story.

[11] The concept of “reality” plays an important part in popular discussion of the martial arts.  Bowman (2015) 109-135.

[12] Scott 1985.

[13] King,Keohane and Verba 1994.

[14] Key contributions in this literature include Wacquant 2003; Farrer and Whallen-Bridge 2011; and various contributors in Garcia and Spenser 2014.

[15] The definition of the martial arts (and whether focusing on the topic is even a good idea) is contested: Channon and Jennings 2014; Wetzler 2015; Judkins 2016; Bowman 2016. Nevertheless, all of these authors share points of agreement regarding the fundamentally social nature of these practices.  That is likely the proper place to beginning a historical exploration.

[16] Amos 1983; Boretz 2011. Perhaps the best known statement on marginality and the combat sports in North America has been provided by Loic Wacquant (2003) who approached boxing as a way to understand life in the Chicago ghetto. All of these works touch on the interaction of social marginality and masculinity.  Those topics have been taken up more directly by Miracle 2016 and Vaccaro 2015. Collectively this literature suggests that the martial arts can be seen as an exercise in individual and community self-creation rising out of the experience of exclusion and self-doubt. Berg and Prohl (2014) note that this is how these fighting systems have self-consciously described themselves and their mission in the modern era.

[17] Judkins 2009.

[18] This tendency seems particularly well developed in the folk history of Choy Li Fut.  See for instance Wong and Hallander 1985; Judkins and Nielson 92-99.

[19] While most emic accounts of Chinese martial arts history seem to focus on lineage creation accounts and emphasize the “purity” of martial practice, contemporary etic reports indicate that one was most likely to find serious martial artists gainfully employed in roles that focused on the management of social coercion and violence.  Examples of such careers might include working as a tax collector for the Imperial salt monopoly, being an enforcer in a gambling house, working in law enforcement or traveling as an armed escort protecting merchant caravans.  Judkins and Nielson 73-74; 125-129; 205-206.

[20] Ibid 265-281.

[21] For a classic statement on how the expansion of free trade exacerbates social cleavages (sometimes to the point of violence) and effects political outcomes see Rogowski 1989.

[22] Shahar 2008. Kennedy and Guo (2010), in an otherwise fine work discussing the Jingwu Association, illustrate some of the problems that arise from universal extrapolations based on only a single city or region. The best introduction to the Chinese martial arts has been provided by Peter Lorge (2012). Unfortunately, for our purposes, this volume lacks a sufficiently detailed discussion of Southern China.  Much of Lorge’s work also tends to focus on earlier eras of military history.  More focused examinations of the modern Chinese martial arts have been provided by Stanley Henning (2003) and Andrew Morris (2004).  Yet again, the history of the martial arts in Southern China and Hong Kong has gone largely unexamined.

[23] For a discussion of the ways in which a single case study can be used to test progressively more complex theories see King, Keohane and Verba 208-229.

[24]Foucault 1977; Michael Wert (2016) has recently noted that scholars of martial arts studies who are also practitioners of the disciplines that they research are not immune to these traps.

[25] D. S. Farrer 2015, 2015(b).

[26] Zhao 2010.

[27] For a discussion of the importance of martial arts humor see Bowman 2016, chapter two.

[28] Hamm, in his study of martial arts fiction, noted that radio dramas (now a mostly forgotten genre) helped to bridge the worlds of early martial arts fiction and modern Kung Fu films. 39-40.

[29] Bowman 2015, 155-157.

[30] Miracle 163-165.

[31] Morris 195-228; Hurst 1998; Bennett 2015.

[32] Liu 2011.

[33] Almond and Verba (1989) and Putnam (1994) provide classic, social-scientific, studies of the concept.

[34] Judkins and Nielson 16.

[35] Liu 8-9; 29-38; 39; 59-60.

[36] Judkins and Nielson 160-163.

[37] Judkins and Nielson 116-124.

[38] Gainty 2015.

Introduction

One of the most exciting, and simultaneously frustrating, aspects of the academic study of the martial arts is their international nature.  Self-defense systems, combat sports or traditional martial arts can be found in practically every region of the globe.  Hence it is not surprising that the scholarly investigation of these fighting systems tends to be equally widely distributed.

This unending supply of observation and debate makes for an exciting field of investigation.  Yet scholars in different literatures and areas of the world have traditionally worked in isolation from one another.  This isolation has impeded the flow of ideas and the development of anything like a comprehensive scholarly literature on these practices.  Such a lack of engagement can be frustrating.

One of the main goals of Martial Arts Studies has been to move beyond the isolated “studies of martial arts” that have appeared in various disciplinary and nationally bounded literatures and to attempt to foster a more interconnected conversation.  Put slightly differently, it is time to bring the “globally connected” aspect of the martial arts and combat sports into sharper focus.

The Martial Arts Commission of the German Society of Sport Science took a major step in that direction earlier this month when they hosted their 5^th annual meeting at the German Sport University of Cologne.  From October 6^th to the 8^th they presented a set of meetings titled “Martial Arts and Society: On the Societal Relevance of Martial Arts, Combat Sports and Self-Defense.”

While always an important gathering of Martial Arts Studies scholars (especially for European students), this year’s conference was notable for its efforts to broaden the scope of the discussion in ways that would welcome the international academic community.  In addition to a number of German language presentations, this year’s conference provided English language panels in which a wide range of research projects and approaches could be discussed.  The conference organizers also graciously invited two foreign speakers (Prof. Paul Bowman from the UK, and myself) to present keynote addresses.

In the remainder of this post I would like to briefly discuss the background leading up to this year’s conference, the basic structure and schedule of the conference and some of the papers that were presented.  Finally I will offer a few of my own thoughts on both the lessons learned from this event and the future of Martial Arts Studies in Germany.

Paul Bowman, with coffee, walking through the poster session on Friday afternoon.

Three Days, Thirty Papers

As always, there is a lot going on at an academic conference of this size, and things can be a bit of a blur.  This is especially true when parts of the event are taking place in a language that you do not speak.  Surprisingly, that turned out to be less of an impediment than one might guess.  Germany is a relatively easy country for English language speakers to navigate, and the conference itself was remarkably accessible.

Still, a few words of orientation might be in order.  The relatively young Martial Arts Commission of the German Society for Sport Sciences has been hosting annual conferences for the last five years.  Each of these events proposes a theme that organizes the presentations.  For instance, the 2015 conference, organized by Martin J. Meyer, took as its subject “Martial Arts Studies in Germany: Defining and Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries.”

Unlike the annual UK based conference organized by the Martial Arts Studies Research Network (which seems to have found a permanent home in Cardiff), the locations of these meetings rotate from year to year.  Interested students should also note that the Martial Arts Commission publishes a set of proceedings for each conference which includes all (or most) of the papers presented that year.  Obviously most of these articles are in German, but when I was looking through the 2015 volume (which Martin was kind enough to give me a copy of), I was surprised to see a few English language entries as well.  These proceedings are a valuable resource and an interesting record of the evolution of the MAS literature in Germany.

Each conference also includes the annual working meeting of the Martial Arts Commission itself.  At this year’s meeting Prof. Dr. Swen Körner (head of the Institute of Pedagogy and Philosophy at the Germany Sports University of Cologne) was elected to be the commission’s new Speaker.  All of the scholars whom I spoke with afterwards saw this as an important indication of the increased respect that Martial Arts Studies as a field is garnering within Germany, and a sign that the next phase of institution building is about to begin.

I also had an opportunity to discuss some of these issues with Prof. Dr. Körner as he generously offered to host my visit.  As any of us who have been involved with academia know, “institution building” is always a challenge.  Yet it seems clear that he, and a number of other individuals, are working quite seriously to chart both an intellectual and organization pathway that will ensure the continued development of Martial Arts Studies in Germany.

The conference itself began at 2:00 pm on Thursday October 6^th.  After registration Prof. Dr. Körner opened the meeting with a short welcoming address.  He then introduced Prof. Dr. Norbert Finzsch of the University of Cologne’s Institute of History.  An expert on Anglo-American history (as well as an experienced boxer and martial artist) Finzsch delivered a German language keynote titled “On Style: Boxing and Intellectuals in the 20^th and the 21^st Century.”

While I was obviously unable to follow his talk in detail it was clear that he touched on the spread of not just boxing but also the globalization of other forms of martial arts in the current era.  His talk also seems to have framed at least part of this discussion in terms of the rise and fall of various discourses of masculinity.  Obviously this is a fascinating discussion and I had a number of opportunities to talk with Prof. Dr. Finzsch over the course of the conference.  He was ever kind enough to provide me with real time translations in a couple of the other German language sessions.  Needless to say, I will be asking for an English language version of his paper that might be shared either at Kung Fu Tea or the journal at some point in the future.

Following this first keynote the time was turned over for panel presentations from 4-6 pm.  Most panels at the conference seem to have had from 3-5 papers, each of which was allotted about half an hour for the presentation and discussion.  It appears that there were always two panels running simultaneously, so at best an attendee might see half of the papers that were presented in this year’s meetings.

The Thursday panels were all held in German, and I am afraid that I am simply unable to do the researchers who presented most of these papers justice.  But I will note that Martin Meyer did present what appeared to be a fascinating study of the interaction and overlapping development of wrestling in America and Sumo in Japan, particularly as they related to questions of national identity and rivalry.  This is another paper that I look forward to seeing an English language treatment of.

Later in the evening a set of “Open Training” modules were held in which various issues in pedagogy and practice could be explored in the more “hands on” manner that martial artists seem to find so attractive.  These included a technical demonstration of a new system of recording 3-D motion capture, a method for introducing middle school students to boxing, an exploration of emotional and psychological responses in self-defense situations, and lastly the demonstration of a karate system that is being used with students in wheel chairs (I still regret missing that one).

At 8:00pm we headed to a local restaurant for the first conference dinner.   The food was great, as was the opportunity for more informal introductions and reconnecting with old friends.

A helpful waiter at a small restaurant in the Munich airport suggested that this was a “real” German breakfast.  Apparently the mustard was for the sausages and the pretzel was to be eaten with butter.

Things resumed the next morning at 9:00 when Prof. Paul Bowman of Cardiff University presented an English language keynote titled “What Can a Martial Body Do: Or, Theory Before Definition in Martial Arts Studies.”  This address had a two-fold purpose.  First it expressed Bowman’s growing unease with the sorts of debates around the “proper” definition of the martial arts that have emerged within the literature in recent years.

Bowman noted that while such efforts seem to “stabilize” the martial arts as a mutually understood subject of study, they inevitably result in the creation of a Procrustean bed in which violence is done to complex and complicated real world practices to make them fit (or simply to dismiss them from) our preconceived notions.  The danger in defining a thing is the impulse to do away with any element of semiotic openness and disorder by simply “defining it all away.”  In so doing we often lose the ability to see what is most interesting in a case.  Bowman argued that scholars should focus instead on the moments of association and identification that happen prior to definition.

This introduced the second aspect of his argument.  Once we cease to approach these questions through strictly empirical or “scientific” methods, an opening is presented whereby the tools of critical and post-structural theory can become a key lens by which scholars make sense of the world.  Rather than asking what the martial arts “are,” he concludes that we should adopt these theoretically driven approaches to inquire instead what they have done, where they have traveled and what meanings they have carried along the way.

As one might expect this line of argument opened up the most sustained discussion that I saw during the conference.  Various members of the audience asked questions including the difference between “indication” and “definition,” how Bowman balanced this unease with the idea of “definitions” with his attempts to define a new field of study, and lastly, supposing that scholars adopt the tools of deconstruction in the investigation of the martial arts, how then should they go about explaining our findings regarding the history and nature of these systems to the general public.

After a quick break for lunch the conference resumed with another round of panel presentations.  These papers were presented in English.  The first paper in the panel that I attended was presented by Martin Minarik (“Tae Kwon Do as Cultural Performance: A performance oriented evaluation of norms and values in the practice of Taekwondo in South Korea.”)  In this paper Martin introduced his research topic and discussed the area in which he was doing his field work.  He also presented some initial findings regarding the varieties of social functions performed by Taekwondo in South Korea today and noted that simplistic frameworks focused only on questions like nationalism could not really explain the range of values that the art was passing on in local communities.

Next Henrike Neuhaus discussed her current fieldwork which is also concerned with the creation of norms within the Taekwondo community.  However, she is conducting her research in local martial arts schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  After noting the various ways in which individuals from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds were integrated into seemingly egalitarian social structures (in the form of martial arts training institutions), she became interested in whether these practices were becoming a pathway for the creation of norms of equality and community building within a society that was otherwise marked by growing inequality and subtle social barriers.  Her presentation was particularly impressive given the depth of her engagement with the theoretical literature (I even noted a couple of references to Victor Turner), and the richness of her ethnographic field work.  While watching her presentation it became evident that this is a dissertation which I will be reading in a few years.

Next, my friend Martin Wolfgang Ehlen presented a paper exploring more of his ongoing project to come up with a better translation of the Wing Chun rhymed formula as taught within the Gary Lam lineage (though other branches of the Ip Man system share much of this same material).  His paper appears to have had a three part structure.  The first explored the broader world of southern Chinese oral traditions and verbal expressions.  Secondly, it turned to an explanation of Ip Man’s sayings (or those that his students have attributed to him).  Lastly it sought to ask where the Wing Chun tradition falls within the larger cultural pattern of rhymed aphorisms.  While a fascinating topic, time ran short and we did not make it all the way through the second point.  But I look forward to reading a complete version of this paper at some point in the future.

Finally Wayne Wong (who has recently moved from Hong Kong to the UK and is working on a joint doctoral program at King’s College) presented a paper titled “Reinventing Chinese Kung Fu: Wing Chun and Combativity in Donnie Yen’s Ip Man series (2008-2015).”  In this paper (which will be of great interest to many Kung Fu Tea readers) Wayne takes a closer look at the recent Donnie Yen films and argues that they advance a fundamentally new paradigm in Chinese martial arts cinema.  Or in his own words:

“It is aided by a new paradigm of cinematic representation emphasizing what I call shizhan (實戰; Combativity), which privileges practicality over intricacy, efficiency over complexity, quick fight over extended “dance” performance. This shizhan paradigm adds a sense of practicality to the zhanshi (真實; Authenticity) paradigm of kung fu cinema, which has long been dominated by theatricality and operatic traditions such as Peking Opera.

Originally, I used the term “Combative authenticity” instead of combativity. But the notion of combativity can better differentiate itself from the existing models, such as Leon Hunt’s idea of “authenticity”. While kung fu cinema is built on the premise of “realism” since its conception through The Story of Wong Fei-hung (1949) (as opposed to the wuxia tradition), the genre has highlighted the didactic dimensions of kung fu, portraying it as a means to philosophical and moral enlightenment rather than as a lethal combat technique. In addition to the content, the theatricality and cinematic expressivity of the genre also undermines the ideas of practicality and efficiency (Hunt 24).”

Donnie Yen’s films are significant precisely because they upend what has become the traditional way of publicly discussing Kung Fu in an attempt to capture why Wing Chun is “different.”  Once again, I expect that we will be hearing a complete version of Wayne’s argument in the next few months.

Following these presentations a poster session was organized.  About a dozen researchers presented their work while conference attendees had time to explore the papers, mingle and grab a snack.  I noticed quite a few of these projects had been published.

Finally at the end of a long day, most of the conference attendees headed off for a “pub crawl” through some of Cologne’s better known beer gardens, followed by the second conference dinner.  I decided to sit these festivities out in favor of some last minute preparation and sleeping off my jet-lag, but I hear that a great time was had by all.

The Saturday morning session began at 9:00am with my keynote address, “Creating Wing Chun: Towards a Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts.”  This discussion began with a focused comparison of two different accounts of life altering “challenge matches” within the world of the late imperial Chinese martial arts.  The first of these was the relatively well known story of Yim Wing Chun, and her fight with the marketplace bully, as it was passed on by Ip Man.

This legend was contrasted with a recently discovered newspaper report on a real marketplace fight between two boxers that had taken place near Shanghai in the 1870s.  That account, describing the death of one of the fighters and the social fallout that followed, provided a much less romanticized view of the social world of the Chinese martial arts.

After introducing and comparing these accounts (neither of which proved to be totally reliable sources), I argued that students of martial arts histories are often presented with the sorts of puzzles found in these documents.  That provided a jumping-off point to briefly explore the process by which we might attempt to write more rigorous and theoretically informed studies of these fighting systems.  Finally I explored the social relevance of this type of academic discussion for martial artists and even general readers.

A number of questions also followed this keynote.  Perhaps my favorite, and the one that led to the most sustained discussion, came from Prof. Dr. Finzsch who also studies the history of photography.  He commented on a number of the 19^th and early 20^th century postcards and photos of martial artists that I had shown during the course of my talk.  We discussed some of the complex interpretive problems that these images raised, issues that in many respects mirrored those of the challenge fights discussed at the start of my paper.

The final round of paper presentations followed my talk.  These were once again in German.  Luckily my friend Sixt Wetlzer was able to provide me with some simultaneous translation, allowing me to better follow along with the arguments.  Perhaps the most surprising element of the last panel was its emphasis on virtual and gamic elements that touched upon the martial arts.

Much of this discussion also involved questions of pedagogy.  One paper in particular looked at ways in which games (often including the martial arts) could be used to encourage increased rates of physical activity among children.  Mario Staller (who offered at least three different projects over the course of this conference) presented his own study of whether (and to what extent) individuals could learn actual tactical concepts from the current generation of increasingly realistic first person shooter video games.  I will need to wait until I see an English language version of his paper before commenting on it in detail, but what I could make out from his discussion seemed very interesting.

Following this session there was a brief farewell address and we broke for the final lunch of the meeting.

Mario Staller presenting what must have his third paper at the last section of this conference!

Concluding Thoughts

Reflecting back on the conference, it is evident that some important trends were at play.  As I spoke with the organizers of previous meetings in this series it is clear that much progress has been made over the course of the last five years.  In many respects the success of this conference was the result of sustained efforts to move the German discussion of Martial Arts Studies in a more academic, professional and theoretically informed direction.

Obviously my experience of this conference will not be quite the same as anyone else’s (particularly as I do not speak German!).  Yet my impression was that the quality of work presented was generally quite high.  Further, many of the projects drew on the existing literature in interesting ways or posed new questions.  By any objective measure the efforts of the past conference organizers have started to bear fruit.

In addition to the meeting’s declared emphasis on social questions, a few other themes seem to have emerged from the papers presented during these meetings.  The interaction between martial practice, pedagogy and theory was a reoccurring element within many of the panels.  Likewise, a number of papers explored the boundaries of the martial arts, whether understood as firearms training for police officers, the connection between professional wrestling and national image, or even the virtual violence of video games.

I think that this speaks to an increased feeling of confidence among students of martial arts studies.  Rather than simply asking how social factors impact the practice or meaning of the traditional martial arts, we are increasingly comfortable taking concepts that we have learned from the study of these fighting systems and applying them as tools to understand larger social processes that might lay outside of the “martial arts” as they have been traditionally defined.  This is a good sign as it speaks to our ability to develop theories and insights that are relevant to core discussions that are currently happening in a variety of disciplines.

Martial Arts Studies in Germany clearly has a bright future.  At this conference I saw an entire generation of young scholars and graduate students making progress on important projects.  Serious thought is being given to the difficult task of securing resources and building institutions that will ensure both a continued supply, and demand, for this type of research in years to come.

It seems likely that Germany will become an important center for the production of martial art’s related scholarship in the near future.  Better yet, this conference demonstrated a notable commitment to ensuring that this literature will develop in dialogue with the best scholarship being produced in other areas of North and South America, Europe and Asia.  This is precisely what is needed for Martial Arts Studies to realize its full potential.  I left these meetings with a sense of enthusiasm for what is to come.

It goes without saying that I strongly encourage any international scholars thinking of submitting a paper to the next round of meetings to do so.  I personally found these meetings to be unusually productive, and Germany is a wonderful country to visit.  We all have a part to play in expanding the boundaries of our shared conversation.

Lastly a few heartfelt words of thanks are in order.  First off I must thank Leo Istas and Prof. Dr. Swen Körner for taking the time to organize this conference and making it possible for me to attend.  Prof. Körner’s entire family generously hosted my stay.  Lastly, I need to thank my good friend Sixt Wetzler for his efforts in translating a number of presentations and showing me around the area (more on that latter).  This experience once again illustrated the amazing ability of the martial arts to bring people together and create vital new communities.

Where the magic happens. The Speaker Council meeting of the commission at the German Sport University Cologne. From left to right: Mario Staller, Peter Kuhn, Leo Istas, Sebastian Liebl, Holger Wiethäuper and MartinMeyer with Sixt Wetzler in the foreground. Source: https://www.facebook.com/dvskommissionkuk

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If you enjoyed this conference report you might also want to see: Religion, Violence and the Existence of the Southern Shaolin Temple

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