“London Sees Thrills Of Japanese Sport.” A self-defense demonstration by a female martial artist, choreographed to as to be humorous for the audience. Vintage Newsreel. 1932.
Doing the Homework
Students of Martial Arts Studies are the fortunate few. As research areas go, ours is pretty interesting. Yet as I review the literature (even recent publications from big name academic presses), it is clear that many of us are not making the most of our good fortune. There seems to be a tendency to approach the literature in narrow slices and not to look for the sorts of insights that are frequently turned up in broader, more comparative, explorations. The pie can be sliced in a variety of ways. Students of Japanese martial studies rarely deal with concepts and theories laid out in works on the Chinese styles. The literatures on combat sports and traditional arts often seem to run on parallel tracks. And there is always room for a more substantive engagement between the theoretical and historical wings of the literature.
So here is my pre-Thanksgiving public service announcement: When offered pie, always eat more than one slice. Bringing multiple lens to an investigation leads to more insightful conclusions. Beyond that, it makes the process of doing research richer and more intellectually fulfilling.
Still, we all have blind spots. As I was reviewing folders of research materials, it occurred to me that I may have created the mistaken impression that the English language treaty port newspapers in cities like Shanghai or Beijing only discussed Chinese fighting systems. Over the last few years we have examined dozens of articles in which Chinese hand combat systems were presented to a global audience during the 1920s and 1930s. Doing so is helpful as it problematizes the often-heard trope that the Chinese martial arts were unknown to Westerners prior to the 1960s, or that everything about these arts has been shrouded in impenetrable secrecy. In fact, both KMT officers and private instructors worked (with mixed success) to publicize China’s reformed and modernized physical culture as a way of demonstrating to the world the reformed and modernized nature of the Chinese state.
Focusing on these conversations has been valuable. Yet it must be remembered that all of this was only one aspect of a much larger exploration of the martial arts and combat sports which one could find in these same newspapers. While it is easy to focus only on the guoshu or taijiquan articles, in truth these pieces need to be read in conjunction with the frequent discussions of the Japanese martial arts, accounts of vaudeville style strongmen acts, and articles on western style boxing events which also appeared in the same pages. It is all too easy to inadvertently create a siloed vision of cultural history in which boxing, kung fu and judo all existed in their own isolated spheres. In truth they all competed for exposure within the pages of China’s treaty port press.
In an effort to correct this bias I would like to introduce one of the more interesting Republic era articles on the Japanese martial arts that I have come across. Judo is frequently mentioned in these pieces. We can even find several glowing accounts of judo exhibitions in Shanghai in this era. Likewise, Chinese martial arts reformers often turned to judo as a symbolic foil for their rivalry with Japan. The following article, on the other hand, is interesting as the Japanese origins of judo have been almost totally erased. Indeed, the Western appropriation of judo as a means of self-defense is so complete that the Japanese are barely mentioned, while cities like New York and Paris are looked to as centers of martial excellence.
Nor is this the only transformation which readers will detect. While Kano Jigoro opened his practice to women fairly early, the vast majority of Japanese judo students in the 1930s were men. Indeed, these were men often bound for service in the Japanese military. They had well developed ideas about cultivating a certain sort of masculinity which would be placed in the service of the state. In contrast, the current article goes to great lengths to present judo as an exclusively female practice. More specifically, it was framed as a tool of urban self-defense and a bulwark against a new “masher” panic. The dojo as a training space, white uniforms, colored belts and other aspects of Kano’s now globally famous practice are totally missing from this discussion. Instead we find a slightly updated take on the pre-war American usage of “jiu-jitsu” to basically signify “dirty fighting.”
All of this is even more interesting as one suspects that these were not errors emerging from ignorance. By the early 1930s judo was a well-established practice in the West. It had been featured in newsreels, books and extensively debated in the sporting press. Just to give us the proper perspective, the current article “introducing” judo was written more than 30 years after Theodore Roosevelt had famously promoted the same practice from his residence in the White House. Well educated Chinese and Western readers living in Shanghai (The China Press’core audience) had ample opportunities to see Japanese demonstration teams as they visited the city on a regular basis. Indeed, the Japanese invasions of Manchuria (1931) and Shanghai (1932) had sparked renewed public debate as to the role of physical education in a state’s battlefield success.
I suspect that this article never dropped Kano’s name, or mentioned black belts, as there was simply no need. All of that was already part of the public consciousness during the 1930s. It instead focused on the topic of women’s self-defense as that was both timely (note the repeated references to Vivian Gordon’s murder in New York City), and front-page images of petite women throwing men around like rag dolls was sure to sell papers.
It is important to take note of a few other topics that are missing from this article as well. To begin with, The China Presswas a pro-KMT newspaper with a liberal editorial line. It ran more (glowing) stories about the guoshu, and China’s martial practices more generally, than any other Republican era paper that I have studied. Its editors never missed an opportunity to note that China was the true home of jiu jitsu, or to publicize the latest Jingwu demonstration. It is thus remarkable that there is no mention of the Chinese martial arts anywhere in this piece.
While the photographs and writing style suggests that this may have originally been a newswire article intended for an American audience, I doubt that this is the entire story. Given the levels of outrage directed at the Japanese in 1931 and 1932, it probably would have been impossible to run an article that lauded any practice with Japanese roots in such a “patriotic” paper. Yet by completely erasing Japanese culture and martial values from the discussion of judo, effectively transforming the art into a primarily female, and Western practice, the editors may have gotten the best of all possible worlds. On the one hand they could run a sensational front-page article that would sell lots of papers. At the same time, they could appropriate an important marker of Japanese masculinity and militarism, presenting it as a cosmopolitan and almost exclusively feminine practice. One can only guess how thrilled the Japanese military officers and government staff in Shanghai were to see this treatment of their national art.
Still, this was by no means a negative portrayal of the art. One of the things that struck me as I read this piece was the extensive “how to” section at the end. Such discussions are so common in Western martial arts conversations that they are easy to dismiss. Yet they were quite rare in the pages of China’s English language treaty port press.
While these papers ran hundreds of articles on the Chinese martial arts, I don’t think I have once seen them undertake a detailed discussion about a specific Chinese technique. Instead demonstrations or systems were discussed in general terms for the edification of the reader, but not their education. While there was some training of foreign students in martial arts classes in China in the 1930s, buy in large this didn’t seem to be something that many people (either Western or Chinese) were interested in. Yet this article clearly suggests that judo is something Western women can (and should) learn. That seems to be a frank admission that while Chu Minyi and other reformers had hoped to make the Chinese martial arts a modern and cosmopolitan practice, it was Japan that had actually succeeded. Nevertheless, we as readers are left to ask if the following vision of judo remains in any way Japanese?
Here’s “Judo”, the Newest Art of Self-Defense Against Mashers
The China Press, Feb, 3 1932. Page A1
Curious Details of the Smashing Surpise Receptions American and English Girls are Planning for “Catch-as-Catch-Can” Masculine Admirers.
“Wreck the necker!”
This warlike cry has gone up on both sides of the Atlantic since judo, an improved version of Jiu Jitsu, was perfected recently. Jiu Jitsu has always been primarily a man’s sport but judo is for women only. It enables the frailest flower of femininity to throw and knock out a burly assailant with ease and dispatch.
Women’s judo clubs are being formed in New York and other American cities. In England enthusiastic feminine exponents of the method of self-defense against the Mashers have formed a team that is touring France, Germany and other European countries, giving exhibitions of this tricky and fascinating new art of self-defense.
Slight pressure of the fingers applied at the right moment, combined with sudden twists of the body by a judo expert, often results in broken limbs for the assailant. There is no question that if judo’s popularity continues to increase at its present rate the obnoxious masher species may soon entirely disappear. Certainly nothing yet devised discourages the male flirt so quickly as a dislocated arm, or a broken head followed by several months in a jail or hospital.
Any close student of the subject will tell you how easily not only serious injury, but death, may come to the unwary roughneck who chooses to inflict his unwanted attentions upon a girl schooled in the far from gentle craft of judo. A single lightening quick arm thrust from a girl who “knows her stuff” is sufficient in most cases to discourage any masher. The young lady trained in Judo tactics may be outweighed by a hundred pounds and look as defenseless as a fawn but when she goes into action Mt. Necker had better run.
A famous Japanese wrestling champion once said that homicide committed by jiu jitsu provides “a lovely death, no pains from bullets, knives or violence, You just fade out in a pleasant dream—and don’t know that perhaps you will never wake again.” The newly-perfected science of judo is equally effective in producing lethal effects although the physical instructors who teach it are careful to exclude the death dealing holds from their curriculum.
Unlike most forms of combat, judo’s effectiveness depends ironically enough on the strength and intensity of attack of one’s opponent. The more powerful he is and or furiously he falls upon his intended victim, the more serious his injuries are going to be.
Certainly no more astonishing surprise could be imagined. Instead of screaming and shrieking the young woman who knows judo outdoes the masher at his own game. With a minimum of effort, she can throw the strongest “he-man,” laugh at his efforts to embrace her and continue on her way, unmolested and at her leisure.
The underlying principal of this science is balance. In judo it is vastly more important to control perfectly one’s posture than to have building muscles and enormous energy. Japanese physical culturalists tell us that a “man without balance has no strength.” This is particularly true in jiu jitsu and judo. The very first thing the beginner learns is to change an opponent’s posture while maintaining her own. This is done by maneuvering him to his heels and toes, which enables one to throw him with little exertion.
As a typical example of the judo science, let us take a girl weighing about 110 pounds and say a husky 190 pound man has seized her throat in both hands. Now the ordinary young woman, unschooled in judo, would naturally concentrate her efforts on attempts to tear his hands from her throat. The judo adept, however, would waste no time and strength on such a futile task.
Her technique, though simple, would be amazingly effective. Her first move would be to take a short step backwards with her left foot. This will bring the attacker’s balance to his toes, naturally weakening his equilibrium.
Next, she would quickly swing her right arm sharply across his left arm, pivoting her right toe and bringing her right shoulder forward. Her arm would pass close to her face until her right shoulder touches her chin. In that position she would exert irresistible leverage on the man’s wrist with her shoulder. This will break any grip, no matter how powerful, with the result that her assailant must fall slightly forward with face unguarded, leaving him a ready target for an elbow jolt to the face or a paralyzing cut on the back of the head.
If Vivian Gordon, the New York girl who was strangled to death in a taxi cab some time ago, had known such elementary judo moves she might have outwitted her slayer and escaped a gruesome fate.
The larger picture in the upper right half of the page shows a young woman swinging a husky male over her hip. The uninformed may well ask how this slight girl could carry a powerful man off his feet and throw him to the ground.
The answer is judo and a perfect sense of timing and balance. You will notice that the girl in the photograph is bending forward. The man had come up behind her and seized her by the throat. But she shot her head and shoulders sharply forward, throwing his weight on his toes and off balance. Seizing his shoulders, she adroitly rolled him over her hips. The picture was snapped just as she was about to throw him to the ground.
Perhaps you have seen one acrobat on the stage holding three or four partners on his shoulders. Ordinary men cannot do this, of course, because they have not studied the science of balance and timing. The acrobat has learned to distribute the weight of his companions evenly, to assume a posture that enables him to lift and hold an enormous number of pounds and to time his efforts so that his powers are never overtaxed. Strength is vital, but alone it is not enough. Until he has mastered these twin sciences his efforts at great weight-lifting will fail.
The same holds true of the judo students. The two photographs in the half center of this page demonstrate the ease with which a judo expert can disarm and knock down a stick-wielding assailant. In one picture you see her catching his arm just above the elbow. Her judo instructors have taught her that holding an arm above the shoulder greatly weakens the arm’s powers of resistance. Placing her knee behind his right leg she pushes his arm backwards until he is off balance. With this accomplished, she finds sending him backwards over her extended knee is child’s play.
Another photo on this page illustrates another effective judo maneuver that can be used when the assailant comes up behind his intended victim and seizes her by the throat. Instead of trying to wriggle from his strong grip, the girl merely grasps his elbows and bends quickly forward, catapulting him over her head and shoulders. This is called the shoulder throw.
Brutal attackers often use the chancery hold, which consists of encircling the victim’s neck with one arm and battering her face with the other fist. Judo teaches girls how to break easily this painful hold. If the assailant has gripped her neck in his left arm and strikes her face with his right fist, she reaches quickly up his back and over his right shoulder with her right hand and places the inner edge of her finger under his nose, where there is an extraordinarily sensitive nerve center. Pressing on this diagonally towards the back of the head will quickly cause the fellow to release his grip.
The next move is to extend the pressure backwards and downwards. If at the same time the girl grips him under the knee, raising him upward and forward, the gentleman will soon be spilled upon the ground with much violence.
The photograph depicting the young woman jamming the heel of her hand against the man’s chin demonstrates the perfect counter offensive against the mashers who sieze women about the waist. You can be sure when the roughneck caress is returned in this manner the likelihood of a repetition of the Casanova tactics is very small.
Possibly the most spectacular of the group of extraordinary photographs is the one which portrays the young woman lying on the ground and kicking her surprised assailant in the stomach. In this case the girl has fallen backwards to the ground, pulling the man into a flying fall. As she fell, she drew up her foot and, on reaching the ground, she sent him sprawling over her head with a powerful and well-directed kick to his abdomen.
This startling defense should only be employed by experts who have been adequately instructed in the science of relaxing. Like football coaches, the teachers of this new art and fascinating study teach their students to go limp when falling. A limp body does not strike the ground with half the violence that a stiff one does.
When Benny Leonard was the world’s Lightweight Boxing Champion he often attributed much of his extraordinary punching powers to his knowledge of anatomy. He exactly knew what spot to hit and consequently opponents crumpled up before what seemed likely fairly light punches. A knowledge of anatomy is even more necessary to girl judo experts than it is to boxers.
The new judo vogue began by a woman who saw in it a chance to reduce the ever-growing number of fatalities and injuries suffered by girls attacked in lonely sections of towns and cities. Certainly it equips young women with an excellent defense against the cave-man tactics of roughneck admirers.
Chinese soldier photographed by Harrison Forman. While part of a series of issues distributed in 1938 captions indicate that these images were probably taken in the early 1930s. Source: The Forman Collection in the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Digital Archives.
Deciphering an Icon
Recently I came across a few of Harrison Forman’s wartime photos, probably taken in the early 1930s, but circulated to newspapers and (re)published in 1938. While his photos of militia groups following the 8th Route Army (discussed here) remain less well known, these particular images have gained a quasi-iconic status. I suspect that they, and other similar images, helped to define popular Western notions of China’s struggle during the late 1930s. This also makes them of interest to students of Martial Arts Studies as they prominently feature swords and what appears to be a display of China’s traditional military culture.
Still, as I reviewed these photos I found myself wondering what was really going. Were these images actually taken in the field? Or were they composed by Forman himself? And if latter, how were such images of martial masculinity meant to be read? Why do so many of Forman’s photographs, as well as other images from the period, go to such great lengths juxtaposing the coexistence of “modern” military weapons with “traditional” martial culture, squeezing both elements into ever more complex symbolic frames? Lastly, what does this suggest about the ways in which the Republic era revival of the martial arts was used to shape China’s image on the global stage?
To fully answer these questions, we may need to compare Forman’s photos to some less well-known images of Chinese soliders collected and distributed in the late Qing and early Republic period. Doing so suggests the existence of certain key symbols which quickly gained a remarkable degree of stability in the popular imagination. Yet while the image of a Chinese soldier or martial artists holding an oversized blade has been stable, its social meaning has varied greatly. Many players, both within and outside of China, have deconstructed and contested these images. Controlling the visuality of the martial arts has been a key tool in a series of debates about the nature of the Chinese state and nation. A few of the ideas of the theorist Rey Chow may help to launch this investigation.
The Eternal Swordsman
Few images within the Chinese martial arts have proved more durable than the traditionally trained swordsman openly practicing his trade in the age of the gun. He can be seen everywhere, from Japanese postcards to Hong Kong kung fu films. But what sort of “person” is this individual?
In an attempt to negate both views he relates to his readers a curious incident of “War Dancing” (what we would term the performance of a solo martial arts set) in the middle of a fire fight which he observed as both rebel troops (who held the city) and imperial soldiers contested control of a graveyard outside of Shanghai. Meadows set the scene by describing the artillery and armaments of both sides. By this point in the war both parties were armed primarily with Western cannons, state of the art European made muskets and a surprising number of revolvers. He described the order of battle as being similar to that seen in the Crimean War with heavy volleys of fire being exchanged between groups of soldiers who were either sheltered behind the city’s walls, or moving between “rifle pits” and the sorts of cover that the graveyard landscape afforded. All of this was very similar to what one might have observed in a European conflict of the time.
Yet similar should never be confused with identical. While playing no part in the actual siege, Meadows notes that “cold weapons” were evident on the battlefield. One Imperial spearman, having nothing to contribute to an exchange of gun fire, took shelter behind a building with Meadows and other Chinese onlookers. Another soldier, armed with a sword and rattan shield, approached the battle differently. He walked out into an open area (where a companion was firing a musket at rebel forces) and proceeded to demonstrate his sword set, all while shouting insults at the enemy, slashing at imaginary opponents and tumbling over his shield.
On a substantive level he contributed little to the battle. Indeed, one suspects that most such skirmishes were actually decided by the artillery. Nor was this individual the lone exception. Meadows told his story because he believed it would convey something about the nature of the conflict to his readers back in the UK. Very similar reports were also lodged by British soldiers involved in the First and Second Opium Wars in Southern China, and much later by units participating in the costly march on Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion. It is an often overlooked fact that by 1900 the Imperial Chinese troops had weapons just as advanced as any of the Western nations that came to save the Legation. Yet battlefield martial arts displays, usually attributed to “possessed Boxers,” remained fairly common. All of this seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to Forman’s much later photograph.
Accounts such as these are why so many Westerners became obsessed with the image of the sword wielding Chinese boxer, soldier or pirate. The basic image might be labeled in a variety of ways. Yet in each case it seems to have invoked the same combination of fascination and disgust. It would be more difficult to think of a better example of Rey Chow’s critique of “visualism,” in which modernity functions by reducing people or ideas into two dimensional depictions, than the early 20th century explosion of photographs of Chinese men wielding swords.
Such images facilitated the mental, and then political, classification of China, justifying its imperial occupation. A close reading suggests that many of these classifications rest on seeming contradictions. While focusing on men, their subjects are emasculated through an association with obsolete technology, poverty or backwards superstitions. Chinese territory is potentially dangerous, yet in need of Western protection and guidance. And when modern weapons occur in an image, rather than focusing our attention on the breakneck speed of social change, the existence of traditional tools subconsciously reinforces the notion that China is somehow eternal. A land without history can never change. It is a country without a future.
Late Qing portrait of the Changtu Prefect and his personal guard. Photographer unknown (at least by me).
Such notions would likely have been projected onto this image by early 20thcentury Western viewers as well. Once again, notice the prominent juxtaposition of modern (Western) weapons with their traditional (Chinese) counterparts. Judging from the legible inscriptions in this photograph, Douglas Wile has concluded that it is a portrait of the Prefect of Changtu (now part of Liaoning Province) and his personal guard. Obviously, such an image would have been taken prior to the 1911 revolution.
At that time the long Mauser rifles with WWI era “roller-coaster” sights seen in this photo would have been state of the art. And having a couple of guys with halberds standing at a door or gate would also have made a lot of sense. Yet one suspects that rather than a well-armed bodyguard, post-Boxer Rebellion viewers would likely have seen one more piece of evidence of a nation incapable of change. In certain quarters such images (invoking fears of beheadings for minor offenses) were taken as powerful justifications for the preservation of Western legal privileges (such as extra-territoriality) and even colonial “guardianship.” The observation and dissemination of images of the “traditional” martial arts was often coopted by the forces of imperial discourse. That is vital to remember as it strongly suggests that there was nothing inevitable about the reemergence of similar images in the post-WWII era as anchors of the post-colonial discourse. Bruce Lee probably would have played quite different to audiences in 1901.
The production and widespread dissemination of such images in the early 20thcentury opened Chinese society to conflicting social pressures. On the one hand there was immense pressure to “modernize,” making the nation equal to the Western powers. This would mean discarding much or all of China’s traditional culture. Yet Chow has also warned her readers of another danger in these situations. As “ethnic” individuals in colonial situations grapple with the meaning of their identity, perhaps by trying to find domestic sources of pride or strength necessary to resist imperialism in their own autobiographies, they risk internalizing the dominant critique of their culture and performing an increasingly two dimensional act of what was once an authentic culture as they respond to a set of critiques that were likely based on (malicious) misunderstandings.
A vintage Japanese postcard showing images (likely taken in the late teens or twenties) of “Big Sword Units training their bravery.”
Perspective matters. And it is interesting to think about the role of both bodily experience and cultural expectations in shaping one’s perspective. Meadows wrote in an era when it was increasingly evident swords had little utility on the battlefield, but they were still very much part of Western 19thcentury military life. By the Republican era that had changed. The Japanese situation was more complicated.
Our next image was taken from a Japanese postcard, probably produced during the 1920s, which shows Chinese soldiers, dressed in smart civilian clothing, demonstrating their sword forms. We have already read numerous accounts of demonstrations such as these (particularly those staged by General Ma), but it is interesting to see that Japanese publishers decided that there was an market for such an image at home.
The Japanese discourse towards China in the 1920s and 1930s was much more belligerent than anything seen in the West. One need not carefully analyze their literature or trade practices for hints of imperialist discourses. You only needed to watch where their armies marched or read their formal diplomatic declarations. This is not to say that their popular culture was not of immense interest. Japanese youth literature of the period tended to portray China as a land of adventure where adventurous boys could not just serve the nation, but prove their worth. And the increasing militancy of government mandated martial arts practice in Japanese schools helped to ensure that the nation’s youth would be prepared to do just that.
It goes without saying that within this internal nationalist discourse the sword (or more properly, the katana) meant something entirely different from what it signaled on the pages of the North China Herald or New York Times. While a traditional symbol, it did not denote national backwardness. Rather, it was a symbol of national identity. And it became the vessel for much more positive cultural content. It represented the notions of sacrifice, spiritual determination and individual physical strength placed in the service of the nation. It represented that aspect of primoradial Japanese identity that both made it distinct, but also well suited for global competition among its national peers.
One byproduct of mandating years of state sponsored kendo or judo training was the creation of a large number of individuals who were bound to be at least somewhat curious about Chinese martial practice. One suspects that the young men who collected these postcards may have been intrigued by images of solo-forms practice (rare in modern kendo), and the different sabers favored by the Chinese. Yet it is highly unlikely that such an image would have struck them as a symbol of national backwardness. Indeed, the Chinese soldiers in this image were dressed much more “progressively,” and in a more Western manner, than Japanese Kendo students.
Such an image, while highlighting differences in national martial practices, likely would have suggested the existence of the sort of cultural affinities that supported the logic of Japan’s desired “co-prosperity” sphere. Once again, images of the Chinese martial arts might be used to undermine notions of China’s national independence, but now for very different reasons. Rather than pointing to the backwardness of these practices, the Japanese could instead claim to be best positioned to promote their future development.
A second angle of Forman’s iconic photo, this time with an improved and more dynamic composition. Source: The Forman Collection at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee library.
All of this may be part of the answer to our initial question. Yet we still have not considered the evolving Chinese interpretation of this key image, or what they might gain from cooperating in its reproduction and global distribution. The Japanese postcard is important as it suggests that such images did not actually undermine one’s claim to modernity, or legitimacy within the nation state system, in an absolute sense. Even more important than the production of these images was how their interpretation was negotiated, destabilized, contested and claimed on the world stage. This was a project that an increasing number of Chinese reformers would turn their attention to in the 1920s and 30s, re-entering a space that had been largely dominated by outside voices since the Boxer Uprising.
Much like the Japanese architects of Budo, Chinese social reformers carefully searched their history and culture for the tools to resist imperialism. Part salvage project, and part nation building exercise, such impulses had given rise to the “self-strengthen” movement in the late 19thcentury which saw in the martial arts strategies for resisting the West through “Yin power.” Later (in the 1920s and 30s) similar impulses would be promoted by the “national essence” and guoshu reformers.
Yet just as Chow warned, the harnessing of Yin power was first premised on the acceptance of often skewed externally inspired narratives of national weakness. It is well worth remembering that it was Chinese journalists and intellectuals who harped on the image of “the sick man of Asia”, not their counterparts in New York or London. The promotion of China’s “traditional” martial arts seemed a ready-made cure for this self-imposed cultural syndrome.
Many of China’s more liberal reformers disagreed with these prescriptions. Accepting that superstition and backwardness were at the root of China’s weakened state, the May 4th Reformers favored a much more enthusiastic embrace of Western social, economic and cultural institution. They were inherently suspicious of attempts to save China’s future by reimagining what its past practices had been. The disastrous events of the Boxer Uprising were still too fresh in their minds to embrace Jingwu’s (or later guoshu’s) promises of a modernized and reformed martial art placed at the disposal of the nation. Chow’s work on the various strategies involved in the construction of “ethnic images” would seem to be a fruitful place to begin to untangle the debate between these two factions as to what role (if any) the martial arts should play in the creation of New China.
All of this suggests a new perspective from which to view Forman’s original photograph. KMT officials and the guoshu reformers embraced the traditional martial arts because they saw in them a chance to disrupt Western expectations about Chinese society. Yes, domestic unity and nation building were their primary goals. Yet the KMT constructed a public diplomacy campaign around guoshu (foreshadowing in significant ways the PRC’s current wushu strategy) because they perceived an opening to demonstrate-through staged spectacle and newspaper story-that China was in fact strong, courageous, and modern. Better yet, it possessed a unique culture capable of making important contributions to global discussions.
It is interesting to read Forman’s photograph within the framework of that ongoing contest of ideas. The old and new are contrasted not just within the right and left side of the frame, but even within the two halves of the swordsman’s body. In one hand he holds a dadao, China’s now iconic sword. In the other we see Mauser 88 rifle (either a Chinese produced copy or an imported German model). While it is often claimed that the dadao was issued only because the Chinese were too poor to produce modern rifles, this photo problematizes such statements.
While genetically descendent from the Mauser rifles carried by the private bodyguards seen above, it should be noted that these examples have been altered in significant ways. The barrels are shorter, carbine length, conversions and the complex WWI era sights have been replaced with something simpler and lower profile. In short, the Chinese small arms seen in this photo are more or less identical to the modified bolt action rifles then being issued by countries like Japan, Germany, the USSR and the UK. Clearly this soldier does not cling to his dadao out of sheer necessity. In this photograph it serves another purpose.
The fact that this image exists in two forms (one with two soldiers, the other with three) confirms our initial suspicions that the composition is an artificial one arranged by Forman, rather than a spontaneous display of Chinese martial culture. As such we must begin to consider how its creator meant for this image to be read by the public.
The University of Wisconsin Milwaukie archives (which holds the original version of this image) have also preserved three of the original captions that it was distributed with. Editors who bought the image through a newswire service were free to choose any of these when they ran the photo. Interestingly, each of captions reads slightly differently. The first view is the most negative, placing the sword within the symbolic realm of backwardness and superstition. In many ways it is a continuation of press traditions from the turn of the century.
Caption 1: “The ‘big sword man’ as the symbol of the warrior of traditional China. He was brave, agile, and fought his enemy hand-to-hand. He lasted into the twentieth century, gradually accepting the rifle as a weapon for modern warfare. The Japanese invasion of China in 1931 finally convinced the Chinese to discard the outmoded ‘big sword,’ even as a secondary weapon as here shown in the invasion of Manchuria.”
These observations notwithstanding, the dadao remained common throughout WWII. Produced in large numbers by innumerable small shops, they were issued both to second line militia units as well as to fully equipped professional troops who carried them as the Chinese answer to the Japanese Katana or the British/Indian/Nepalese Kukri (a topic near and dear to my own heart). Given that American newspapers were full of headlines about China’s “big sword troops” in 1938, I am not sure how many editors would have decided to run this caption.
The second possibility reads as follows: “’The Spirit of Ancient China.’ Big Swordmen -great hand-to-hand fighters, in the old traditional manner – with a modernly equipped trooper of Chiang Kai-shek’s famed 88thDivision. (Photographed in North Station).”
This caption is interesting as it begins the process of presenting the dadao to the Western reader in a “spiritualized” fashion. Yet it is still fit within the Western motif of romanticism for “vanishing China.” Regardless, it is difficult to accept that this individual is fully representative of that past as he too carries a rifle identical to that possessed by the “modernly equipped trooper.”
Finally, the third and most interesting caption reads: “The Spirit of Ancient China! – The fellow with the big sword. In the crook of his arm is modern China – the trooper with the steel helmet and modern rifle. Together they oppose Japan.”
Here we begin to see what Forman may have intended with the curious composition of this photograph. Rather than invoking the historical memory of accounts like that by Meadows, his meaning was more symbolic. One soldier, representing the national essence, spread a protective arm (holding a highly symbolic weapon) over the head of his comrade busily taking aim at an (imaginary) opponent. This photography was never intended to be a historical, let alone an ethnographic, document. Rather it was a symbolic argument about the relationship between the Chinese nation and the state. In the great debate over the shape of “New China,” Forman was making clear his sympathies with the national essence position.
Soldiers demonstrating a dada set before a crowd celebrating the donation swords and helmets to the war effort.
Conclusion
This global rehabilitation of the Chinese sword in the Republic era suggest that the government’s “Kung Fu diplomacy” efforts paid off. Once a symbol of backwardness within an imperialist discourse, by 1938 it was at least possible to see a sword wielding soldier as a symbol of national strength. Of course Westerners were also fascinated with the Japanese katana, and that seems to have provided a mental map for bringing the dadao back into the political lexicon.
The fact that three possible captions were circulated with this iconic image is an important reminder that symbols are never self-interpreting. Each image holds many possible meanings, some of which overlap, while others may even contradict. While the Chinese swordsman has proved to be surprisingly resilient, his meaning has been far from stable. Various political and social reformers (not to mention martial artists) have attempted to destabilize, contest and renegotiate this figure. While the reproduction of “ethnic images” was conserved, the political implications that they have carried over the 20th century has varied drastically.
Likewise, the meaning, values and goals of the martial arts are not set in stone. While certain bodily techniques may be stable over a period of 100 years or more, their social function and meaning has changed. They too have been subject to successive rounds of destabilization, negotiation and interpretation. If surveyed over a period of one or two centuries, a wide variety of period practitioners would likely agree on the appearance of the Chinese martial arts, but would hotly debate their meaning or purpose. Chow’s theories of ethnicity and visuality suggest some of the reasons why that would likely be the case.
A foreign martial arts teacher practices at Wudang. Source:
Barnum’s Daughter
I was recently watching the news when I saw a brief segment on “the last” Japanese swordsmith. The whole things is a little overwrought as there are lots of individuals making swords in Japan today, and (multiple) government offices in place to make sure that they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. While alarmist, I am no longer surprised by this sort of rhetoric. For better or worse, it has become a defining feature of the modern martial arts and all of the other cultural practices that are associated with them. I usually just brush it off. Yet it can be jarring to those who have less experience with it.
By any metric Heather* is a pretty worldly individual. A Hollywood veteran and longtime producer of reality TV shows (touching on everything from home improvement to dating contests), she could only be described as a modern daughter of P. T. Barnum. She can regale one with tales of writing room misbehavior or the wholesale fabrication of budget numbers on those home renovation shows that dominate the American dream. She had recently “retired” and moved to Ithaca to take up a teaching position, and at the time of this conversation we lived in the same apartment complex.
Heather approached me on her bike as I was working through a new jian (double edged straight sword) set. “Hey, I didn’t know you were a martial artist!” she proclaimed. “That is what finally chased me out of TV.” Asking for clarification it turned out that it was not actually Wudang Jian that had done her in. Rather, she had been working on the project titled “The Last Samurai”* when she finally decided to retire. I asked her to explain, which she did at length, finally concluding
“Look, I don’t know anything about the martial arts, but I know a racket when I see one. That guy wasn’t “the last Samurai.” What does it even mean to be a “Samurai” in Japan today? And God only knows how any of this could have been significant to the poor kids we dragged over there to meet him.”
After pausing to ruminate she continued, “That was how I knew it was time to get out. Sure, the dating shows are all staged, and no one has yet pulled a dish out of the oven that actually looks like it does on the Food Network. I could do all of that. But when it came to martial arts documentaries, it was a sign. I just knew I couldn’t do this anymore. That’s when I knew it was time to do something real, and finally put my MFA to good use.”
I had never heard this part of Heather’s story before and stood there at an actual loss for words. After a career spent fabricating the budgets of home improvement shows, it was martial arts mythmaking that finally brought down a jaded Hollywood producer.
A trip to any public park in China would seem to indicate that the average of traditional martial artists is increasing. At the same time these individuals may have a greater need for strong social networks and more resources to devote to finding them.
The Last Masters
As I reflected on the recent story of the “last” Japanese swordsmith (who, I suppose, is responsible for outfitting the aforementioned “last” Samurai) it occurred to me that that these were not just any random lineage myths or poorly researched newspaper articles. Rather, they were widely shared stories that lamented or prophesized the end of the martial arts altogether. Indeed, they have acquired the status of cultural touchstones. Both practicing martial artists and the mainstream media seem to relish stories promoting some teacher, or school, as either the first or (more commonly) the last of their kind.
All sorts of practices and institutions come to an end, and yet the media rarely remarks on their passing. The martial arts are, if nothing else, survivors. While the end of the Chinese martial arts has been regularly prophesized since the end of the Ming Dynasty in the 17thcentury, they are still going strong. Given their frequently predicted demise, on some level I think it would be appropriate to conceptualize the Asian martial arts as a community that exists in a state of perpetual revival (understood in the Religious Studies sense of the word). Yet what makes the image of the end of Kung Fu, the last Viking or the final Samurai so appealing? Where do these images get their emotional appeal, and why are they embraced with seemingly equal enthusiasm by those both within the traditional martial arts community and those who only know these practices through their mediatized image? As we unravel the puzzle of the perpetual demise of the martial arts, we may gain additional insight into the modern social functions which these practices perform.
Yang Style Taiji in Shanghai, 2005. The traditional Chinese martial arts are always forced to create a sheltered space within the larger community. Source: Wikimedia.
“Tradition” as Fetish in the Martial Arts
As we review the various historical essays within Kung Fu Tea’s archive, one might be forgiven for concluding that the Chinese martial arts are not so much a smoothly transmitted system as an assortment of stochastic discontinuities held together by the fervent belief that they ought to be (or at one point in the distant past were) a cohesive whole. I find it useful to sit back and consider how much (or rather, how little) my Wing Chun training (a product of the 1950s) has in common with either the Dadao clubs of the 1930s, or the Red Spear village militias of the 1920s. These two distinct visions of the Chinese martial arts were among the largest social movements of their day. Collectively they trained and organized many millions of people. And yet the Red Spear militias that once rules China’s northern plains seem to have had little impact on the surviving martial arts. If this is true for huge social movements that existed less than 100 years ago, how much further removed is my understanding of the Chinese martial arts from one of Qi Jiguang’s Ming era soldiers, or an ancient scholar-warrior welding a bronze sword?
Nevertheless, the threads of culture provide continuity that bridges our personal, localized or purely internal, experience of reality. It is here, rather than in embodied practice, that scholars might start their search for a more stable understanding of the Chinese martial arts. More specifically, it is within their long tradition of shared stories, literary references, venerated figures, imagined geographies and even values (though these do tend to shift from era to era) that Chinese martial culture finds (and contests) its central coherence. It is within this most basic stratum that our search must begin. And it is here that we first encounter the uniting fear of the “end” of martial practice.
Within a Confucian lineage system intergenerational transmission, whether genetic or social, is the great responsibility. Fathers must have sons to inherit the land, and in turn they must provide sacrifices to the ancestors. Knowledge, which existed in perfect clarity in the past, must be faithfully transmitted. The martial arts, understood as systems of military defense at both the local and imperial levels, was no exception. Driven by the importance of the military examination system, archery manuals became one of the most successful genres of popular literature in the late imperial period. Likewise, the act of boxing is irreducibly social. Neither teacher nor student can exist without the other.
It is thus interesting to note that within the very first stratum of existing Chinese martial arts manuals (16thcentury) we find authors like Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayou already concerned that the nation’s hand combat practices are in decline and in need of revival. Cheng Zhongyou likewise undertook his important study of the Shaolin pole method both because he wanted to make it available to other members of the gentry seeking to train village militias, but also because he was worried that their “original” method would be lost in a deluge of second-rate imitators. Already within the oldest stratum of printed (sometimes commercially distributed) works on the Chinese martial arts, we see a concern with their end. This is truly remarkable as these same authors (and many other nameless instructors within their generation) were responsible for laying the foundation of the martial arts that we now enjoy today.
This basic complex of social values largely survived the transition to ideological nationalism, and market-based methods of transmission, during the late Qing and early Republic period. In the period of “self-strengthening” (1860s-1890s) the entire nation was seen as under threat, and the martial arts came to be understood by some individuals as a way of preserving what was essential within Chinese society to resist the West. Thus fears about the disappearance of boxing could be mapped directly onto a larger historical dilemma. Likewise, Republic era reformers sought to place the traditional martial arts at the disposal of the nation building project, and (drawing on the Japanese example) saw within them the tools necessary to forge China into a single, modern, people. When individuals foresaw or debated the end of boxing, they were at the same time ruminating on the nature of the modern Chinese state, its values, and relationship with society.
Yet such discussions still emerge with some frequency in the Western media and martial arts circles. And it goes without saying that the cultural values that underlay these discussions are quite different from traditional Confucianism’s concerns with faithful transmission on the one hand, or the sorts of all-encompassing nationalisms that characterized the 1930s on the other. Is there a single theoretical lens which we might apply to the narrative of the vanishing Kung Fu master which both explains the popularity of the story today, while still (within reason) shedding some light on its previous manifestations?
Martial arts historians and social theorists alike would probably begin by pointing out that it is quite significant that the West encountered these hand combat systems during the great period of imperial expansion in the late 19thcentury, and then again during the era of the consolidation of the global financial order in the immediate aftermath of WWII. This suggests that we cannot separate the social function of the martial arts from the emergence of late capitalism and modern consumer culture.
Indeed, modern capitalism plays the pivotal role in the post-WWII dissemination of the Asian martial arts. It gave rise to a set of economic, social and personal insecurities which came to define Western culture, and then promised the delivery of goods, ideas and practices that could solve these same issues. The first two of these issues are perhaps the easiest to understand. The rapid opening of markets to global trade flows always creates sets of winners and losers as the increased flows of new types of goods eliminate some jobs and threaten the fabric of traditional communities. While most individuals will be better off (in the long run) as the national economy expands, they will now be forced to deal with the basic existential questions of life (who am I, what is my purpose) without the support of the types of traditional communities and institutions that sought to provide those answers in the past.
The surplus of goods which modern capitalism facilitates seems to always be accompanied with a deficit in social meaning. Increasingly individuals are left to their own devices to determine what makes them unique, which groups (if any) they are part of, and what larger purpose they are meant to fill. Unsurprisingly individuals seek to find meaning within the sorts of goods and experiences that they consume. For instance, I might signal, and develop, a certain type of identity through the clothing that I wear, the type of car that I drive (or don’t drive), and the hobbies that I fill my free time with.
Yet in a world where everything can be purchased, and any individual with the same set of means might purchase a similar set of goods, how secure is such an identity? The perfectly interchangeable and anonymous nature of markets threatens the ability of these institutions to provide answers for the terrible existential questions of human existence that are always looming in the darkness. One logical response to this is to remove certain goods from the universal marketplace, thus preserving their cultural power by providing a non-economic gateway to their use. This strategy has been seen many times in history, but in the current era it seems to most closely approximate our current anxiety over cultural appropriation.
Several theorists have noted that we respond to the anxieties and threats of the modern consumer society by seeking something that exists beyond mere economic exchange with which to anchor identity. Given their importance to the counter-culture movement of the 1950s-1970s, Asian philosophies, religions and modes of aesthetic expression were often adopted as strategies for resisting the commercialization and hollowing-out of Western life. Chinese Daoism, Japanese film and, of course, the martial arts all exploded into the popular consciousness as a new generation sought to find a better set of values to anchor their lives in a rapidly changing post-War West. Strictly speaking, none of these things were actually “new.” Most of these images and ideas had been available to Westerners since the 1920s. The supply was already present. It was the post-war reevaluation of modern life that provided an explosion of demand.
Nevertheless, one must think carefully about how individuals, from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, actually encountered these ideas and practices. The old standby is to assert that Judo or Karate was popularized by vets returning from the occupation of Japan (or perhaps a stint in Taiwan). There is certainly some truth in this statement. And yet most of the vets who took up martial arts in the 1960s had never been stationed in Okinawa, Japan or Taiwan. Some key individuals and future tastemakers had. Don Draeger and R. W. Smith are both important examples of how a certain vision of the Asian martial arts was exported to the West.
Yet the vast majority of individuals who followed in their virtual footsteps had neither the life experience or financial means to travel East and South East Asia, documenting the martial arts. Some may have encountered aspects of these systems as “dirty fighting” in boot camp. Yet for the most part they came to Judo, Karate and later the Chinese martial arts through newspaper and magazine articles, TV specials and commercial transactions carried out in strip mall dojos dotting the American post-war landscape.
The central paradox of consumer culture is now laid bare. It promises to sell us goods, ideas and practices that can substitute for the loss of older types of community. Yet the very fact that such goods can be purchased by anyone leads us to question their authenticity and efficaciousness. If personal-transformation and escape from the woes of late capitalism can really be purchased for $60 a month, and I hand over my $60, what exactly have I escaped?
Once we have reached this point a variety of thinkers, from Slavoj Zizek to Jean Baurdrillard, could be invoked to help. Zizek’s work on “Western Buddhism” is in many ways particularly relevant here. But I would like to turn to a different source as it brings the discussion back to the frequent appearance of the words “last” and “first” in our discussions of the martial arts. Specifically, Amanda Fernbach’s 2002 Fantasies of Fetishism: From Decadence to the Post-Human(Rutgers UP) deserves consideration.
Specifically, the logic of Fernbach’s argument suggests that procumers (consumers who simultaneously produce Western martial arts culture through their participation in these systems) seek to solve the essential dilemma of counter-culture consumerism by reformulating their practice as a type of fetish. While the martial arts will continue to be distributed through a competitive marketplace this move relieves the latent anxiety about the authenticity of these goods. Specifically, discourses focusing on the origins or ending of an art serve to form a relationship between the practice and its students in which the now fetishized art becomes a powerful tool of its own marketing as well as a symbol of its own legitimacy.
Fernbach notes that the origins of the notion of “fetish” seems to lie in the colonial trade that occurred between Portugal and West Africa. Fetish goods were spiritually powerful, culturally defined, objects which could not be traded. Their exchange lay outside of normal economic channels, and they were believed to have a transformative effect on individuals or communities. Given our attempt to apply all of this to a discussion of the martial arts in the early and mid-twentieth century, it is important to note that the core concept of the fetish really derives from imperialist discourse and denotes an area that is somehow insulated from socially corrosive market forces.
This notion (focusing on the object which resisted exchange) would go on to inform the basic anthropological definition of the fetish which saw them as otherwise mundane objects thought to be endowed with tremendous spiritual powers (often used in worship). More specifically, they could grant great strength or ability to someone with the proper knowledge of their use. Freud took this basic notion and instead focused on the absence, or the fear, that might cause one to seek out a fetish in the first place. Fernbach finds his treatment of the concept wanting in a number of respects.
Karl Marx, on the other hand, found modern fetish goods within the Western economic marketplace. Here the good most certainly exchanges hands through trade. Yet some aspect of its value (perhaps its prestige, or ability to act as a status symbol) might outstrip its actual utilitarian worth. The fetish is thus a second good, encoded in the value of the first, which we might purchase within a marketplace.
Each of these definitions of the fetish are related to the others. Yet the original notion of an area (seemingly) protected from the corrosive effects of trade seems most relevant to what we see-or seek-in modern martial arts. Still, Freud’s very different take on the problem reminds us that what is often most important in understanding human behavior is the fear of the thing that is lacking.
Nor is the Marxist interpretation without some merit. As with any good in the marketplace, one must increase the demand for your product through advertising. Creating discourses that fetishize aspects of the martial arts communicates to consumers that they will receive value that goes above and beyond the simple instruction that we are outwardly paying for. For instance, when I put my child in a Taekwondo class she doesn’t just learn the basic kicks and punches that I am paying for. Undoubtably there will be a brochure in the school’s lobby informing me that she will also gain “self-confidence,” “discipline” and the ability to “work with others.” These are all core social values and a good example of the Marxist theory in action.
Still, I suspect that there is a more primal layer of myth creation that underlies all of this, one better explored through the older anthropological understanding of the fetish. As adult consumers look for a tool of self-actualization, guided perhaps by latent Orientalist notions about a “purer” East, they build a belt of protective fetish fantasies around the martial arts precisely to “save them” from the taint of the mundane. Perhaps the easiest of these fantasies to construct (and hence the most widespread) is that of origins and endings.
Such stories effectively sperate the martial arts from the world of endlessly repeatable consumer consumption by positing the existence of temporal discontinuity. It is time itself (or what Eliade might have called “sacred time”) that places the martial arts beyond the reach of “mere consumerism,” but not actual consumers. That which has vanished from the world can no longer be sold, even if I feel that I can access some aspect of this shared sacred past in my weekly Kung Fu classes. To be on the verge of disappearance is to also to be on the verge of having the sort of cultural surplus that we always bequeath of the long lost masters. To be the “last master” is to be remembered. At least in our more romantic imagination. One suspects that in real life practices vanish precisely because no one cares to remember them at all.
Likewise, something on the verge of extinction is also a candidate for revival. Ip Man became the “grandmaster” not because he was the first, or the best, Wing Chun practitioner. Rather, he was venerated by generations of students in Hong Kong and the West for “saving the art” from extinction. Whether that was actually the case is a topic for another day. But I don’t think that anyone doubts that Ip Man has come to be seen as an epochal figure in the Southern Chinese martial arts that the “generation” of most modern Wing Chun students is now counted from. His career is interesting precisely because it illustrates how closely linked the death and rebirth of an embodied identity can be, not just in historical practice but also in the stories that we come to tell.
To be a member of the last (or first) generation of an art is find a place in history that appears to be beyond the whim of market forces. As witness to historical events it is hoped that one gains a sense of identity and purpose. Indeed, one may even wish for a bit of immortality. Given the universal appeal of these outcomes it is perhaps not surprising that media markets, in both the China, Japan and the West, have fetishized the imminent death of the martial arts. This often functions as a democratizing move. Lamenting their passing, or attempting to spark their revival, have become critical modes by which countless students experience these practices. And many more media consumers are exposed to the same feelings (often in a more nationalistic or cultural guise) as they consume news stories about the disappearance of these once great cultural artifacts. When these fetishes are exposed (throwing us back into the “desert of the real”), the result can be the sort of destructive feeling of disillusionment that Heather experienced upon actually coming face to face with Japan’s “last Samurai.”
Any student of martial arts history can illustrate, in great detail, that we are not the first generation to read premature obituaries of Kung Fu’s passing. Nor, through the simple process of extrapolation, are we likely to be the last. Yet when examined through the lens of Fernbach’s theory of the fetish it quickly, becomes apparent that the sorts of popular narratives that we tell about the death and rebirth of the martial arts are very important. The process of fetishization which she outlines (and is particularly amenable to the study of physical or embodied practices) suggests not just a mechanism by which these practices yield real transformative influence on the individual level, but also suggests much about the social ills that they seek to respond to. A theoretically informed examination of the martial arts suggests much about the terrain that lays behind us, and what we might yet become.
*All names and program titles have been changed to protect the innocents.
As the indomitable Professor Farnsworth would say, good news everyone! The long anticipated Martial Arts Studies Reader (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) is now shipping. Weighing in at 244 pages, and featuring articles by over a dozen of the most respected names in the field, this volume is sure to be referenced for years to come. Its timely chapters can easily be integrated into a wide variety of course reading lists. And if you look closely, you may even find my latest paper on the lightsaber combat community. This book will be of interest to both scholars and practitioners seeking to understand the evolution and social meaning of the modern martial arts. Featuring articles by Peter Lorge, Douglas Wile, Meaghan Morris and D. S. Farrer, it is sure to find a place on all of our holiday gift lists.
Speaking of which, D. S. Farrer has been kind enough to post the text of his chapter on performance ethnography. His paper opens a window onto the sorts of content that one will find in the Martial Arts Studies Reader. It also provides students with a great discussion of one of the most important research methodologies being employed in the field today. Take a look at the volume’s table of contents, read Farrer’s chapter, and order your copy today!
Table of Contents
Introduction: “What, Where and Why is Martial Arts Studies?” Paul Bowman
2. “Early Chinese Works on Martial Arts” Peter Lorge
3. “The Battlefield and the Bedroom: Chinese Martial Arts and Art of the Bedchamber” Douglas Wile
4. “Martial Arts by the Book: Historical European Martial Arts” Daniel Jaquet
5. “The Phone Book Project: Tracing the Diffusion of Asian Martial Arts in America Through the Yellow Pages” Michael Molasky
6. “Martial Arts, Media, and (Material) Religion” Esther Berg-Chan
7. “Liminoid Longings and Liminal Belonging: Hyper-reality, History and the Search for Meaning in the Modern Martial Arts” Benjamin N. Judkins
8. “‘He’s an Animal’: Naturalizing the Hyperreal in Modern Combat Sport” Janet O’Shea
9. “Martial Arts as a Coping Strategy for Violence” Sixt Wetzler
10. “Performance Ethnography” D. S. Farrer
11. “Martial Arts Studies and the Sociology of Gender: Theory, Research and Pedagogical Application” Alex Channon
12. “Masculinities, Bodies, and Martial Arts” Dale C. Spencer
13. “Martial Arts as Embodied, Discursive, and Aesthetic Practice” Tim Trausch
14. “Carnival of the Drunken Master: The Politics of the Kung Fu Comedic Body” Luke White
15. “Learning from Martial Arts” Meaghan Morris and Paul Bowman
Chapter 10: Performance Ethnography
DS Farrer
The human mind is apt to perceive many things, and more so according as its body can be disposed in more ways. —Spinoza, Ethics IIP14 (1977: 52)
Performance ethnography, where the researcher sets out to learn a martial art, or other skill, is a somatic extension of participant observation where the body may become both subject and object of research. This chapter traverses essential features of ‘how to do’ performance ethnography in martial arts research, thereby introducing a methodological toolkit to a new generation of ‘fighting scholars’ (García and Spencer 2013). Perfor-mance ethnography itself, however, is an open quarry for further research. Hence, in addition to a discussion of practical, methodological concerns, this chapter aims towards a fresh theoretical understanding of performance ethnography in terms of ‘immanence’ and ‘emergence’, where the method facilitates creative outcomes, knowledge or theory to surface from within a community of martial artists, dancers or other skilled practitioners (Deleuze 1988, 76).
In recent years Louis Cha’s novels have become subjects for comic book artists.
The Loss of Heroes
The Chinese martial arts community has lost two giants. The death of Rey Chow (who was instrumental in jumpstarting Bruce Lee’s martial arts films) and Louis Cha (who wrote under the name Jin Yong) comes as a double blow. Granted, neither man is remembered primarily as a practitioner of the martial arts. Yet as story tellers they had a huge impact on the development of the shared web of signs, meanings and desires that would shape the development of the Chinese martial art community from roughly the 1950s until the present. As scholars we need to pay close attention to this cultural web as it is the software that structures the human experience. While not strictly determinative, none of us will strive to accomplish that which we cannot imagine.
Both of these figures are deserving of an essay. Yet at the moment I find myself drawn to reflect on Cha. His stature as a literary figure, and frequent forays into modern Chinese politics (both from the editorial page and his service on various governmental committees) are fascinating in their own right. Yet I will admit to having some ambivalence regarding the cultural impact of his novels. To put the question simply, I find myself wondering what Hong Kong’s martial culture would look like today had “Jin Yong” accepted a newspaper job in Taipie in 1947 rather than Hong Kong.
Simply asking such a question smacks of heresy. In many ways Loius Cha is synonymous with Hong Kong, his adopted home. He was the co-founder, and long-time editor, of the Ming Pao daily, a major publication. While Cha is still remembered for his blistering anti-Beijing editorials during the Cultural Revolution, he became the first (non-Communist) Hong Kong resident to meet with Deng Xioping as he sought to steer China on a more open path. And with over 100 million copies sold (not counting untold pirate editions), as well as derivative films, TV programs, radio dramas, comic books and video games too numerous to count, Cha’s novels are quite possibly Hong Kong’s most important cultural export within the Chinese cultural zone. Yet his impact on the Southern Chinese martial arts has been complex.
Perhaps the best way forward would be to review the contours of a remarkable career as we ask how it was that Cha, and a generation of immigrants like him, came to call Hong Kong home. This may suggest something about Cha’s impact on the development of Southern Chinese martial culture in the post-1949 era, as well as the continuing echoes and reverberations of his legacy today.
I should state for the record that I do not claim to be an expert in the analysis, or criticism, of Cha’s work, and have only read a few of his in novels in translation. I am sure that there are others who are better qualified to write an essay such as this. Nor is that admission an artifact of false modesty. The immense popularity of Cha’s novels have actually sparked the creation of an entire academic subfield (some of which even appears in English) dedicated to the study of his legacy. Still, his influence on the world of actual Chinese martial arts practitioners has been so great that I cannot leave his passing in silence. The complexity of his relationship with this community seems to stretch far beyond the platitudes that we encounter in his many newspaper obituaries.
Jin Fong reviewing a copy of his own work. Source: BBC
Making a Hero
Like so many others, Cha first arrived in Hong Kong as a way station as he was headed somewhere else. He was born as Zha Liangyong in 1924 in Zhejiang province. His family had deep, multigenerational, scholarly credentials and it was only natural that Liang would also find a career in literature. But his pathway was far from straight. He exhibited his trademark penchant for fiery political rhetoric as a youth and was expelled from high school in 1941 after publicly denouncing the KMT’s government as “aristocratic”. Indeed, he would continue to identify himself as “anti-feudal” and “liberal” throughout his life.
After graduating from (a different) high school in 1943, Cha was accepted at the Department of Foreign Languages at the Central University of Chongqing. His initial plan was to become a foreign service officer or diplomat. However, he quickly dropped out of this program, and applied to study international law at Soochow University.
To help finance his studies Cha took a job in journalism with a major British owned paper. Fortuitously his company transferred him to the Hong Kong office in 1947. Things did not go well for all of Cha’s family who stayed behind after the Communist takeover in 1949. His father was arrested as a counterrevolutionary and executed in the early 1950s. Critics, like John Christopher Hamm (who has written one of the best English language studies of Cha’s work), note that his early novels are marked with a profound awareness of the plight of exile, alienation and loss. Like so many others who had come to Hong Kong for business or work, it quickly became apparent that there was no going home. Cha would be forced to build a new life in a largely Cantonese city under British colonial rule.
In the early 1950s Cha befriended Chen Wentong, a fellow journalist, who worked at the same paper. He encouraged Cha’s interest in writing and in 1955 (writing under the pseudonym Jin Yong) he began to produce the first of the serialized wuxia novels that would make him famous. In English this story’s title is typically rendered The Book and the Sword.
In 1959 Cha and his high school classmate, Shen Baoxin, established the Ming Pao daily newspaper with Cha serving as editor. The small paper started off as a home for “Jin Yong’s” increasingly popular novels, but it has since grown to be on the largest Chinese daily papers. In its first two decades Cha was responsible for writing not just the serialized novels but also the daily editorials and many small features. It is reported that at times he was publishing more than 10,000 characters a day.
In total Cha produced 14 novels and a single short story under the Jin Yong pseudonym. Then, in 1972, he retired and announced that he would concentrate on consolidating and editing his already extensive literary legacy. This was a complex undertaking as these novels had first appeared as serialized newspaper columns, which operated under their own set of literary conventions. In 1979 Cha released the first “complete and definitive” set of novels, many of which had been streamlined or slightly reworked in the editorial process.
The 1970s-1990s were a period of increased political activity in Cha’s life. He had always maintained an interest in politics (often understood through a more traditional Chinese cultural lens focusing on “the national interest”). Initially this led Cha to make many enemies on the left when he forcefully denounced the Cultural Revolution. Still, his reputation as someone capable of bringing together complex competing perspectives led to an invitation to meet with Deng Xiaoping and his subsequent appointment to the committee drafting Hong Kong’s Basic Law. Cha resigned that position in 1989 in protest over the Tiananmen Square Incident. Yet in 1996 he was once again working on the important Preparatory Committee, prior to the 1997 handover.
Not content to rest on his literary or political laurels, Cha pursued his lifelong fascination with Chinese history by pursuing a Doctorate in Oriental Studies at Cambridge University. His degree was awarded in 2010 when he deposited his dissertation focusing on imperial succession in the early Tang dynasty. Cha remained an important public figure throughout his life and his works have remained popular. A highly publicized English language version of his Condor Heroes series released its first installment in 2018. Cha died on October 30th2018, at 94, after a long period of illness.
John Christopher Hamm has argued that it is impossible to understand Jin Yong’s meaning or social significance without thinking very carefully about the environment that this literary phenomenon emerged in. Hong Kong’s newspapers were already well acquainted with the notion of serialized martial arts novels well before Cha’s arrival in the city. Indeed, the region had a rich, well-established, tradition of Kung Fu novels stretching back through the 19th century. Many of these were firmly rooted in Cantonese colloquialisms and local heroic figures. While one must be careful not to draw what were always shifting social borders too strictly, these stories typically appealed to the transient workers and merchants who came to Hong Kong to do business before returning (either at the end of a season or a career) to some other location in the Pearl River delta.
With the national upheavals of the late 1930s and 1940s, the city’s complexion began to change quite rapidly. Increasing numbers of displaced persons made their way to Hong Kong in an effort to escape the turmoil elsewhere in China. Since these Northern immigrants had the means to travel, they were often better off financially and more educated than much of the local population. Following the 1949 liberation of China by the Communist Party, they streamed in, effectively overwhelming the Guangdong culture that had dominated Hong Kong since its inceptions. It is interesting to note, parenthetically, that Ip Man and Louis Cha arrived in the city within a year and a half of each other, though they represented different cultural currents.
Like Cha these individuals slowly came to the realization that the 1949 crisis was not a limited event like the others that had marked China’s tumultuous 20thcentury. Rather than a temporary haven, Hong Kong had become their home for the imaginable future. Cultural clashes were common. Local Cantonese residents referred to these newcomers as “outlanders.” For their part the Northern refugees tended to see Hong Kong as a cultural wasteland. Cantonese culture was dismissed as backwards and new radio stations, theater groups and even newspapers quickly sprang up to cater to these northern “outlanders” who brought their own ideas about what modern Chinese life should be.
The Ming Pao daily was one of these institutions. And as Hamm notes, Jin Yong’s novels were a clear departure from the local kung fu tales that had previously dominated Hong Kong story telling. Acutely self-aware, his stories focused not on local heroes, but epic tales of contests for control of the Central Plains during periods of foreign occupation. When the heroes suffered their inevitable defeats, they retreated to the fringes of the empires and went into exile, just as Jin Yong’s readers had.
This is not to say that Jin Yong’s work didn’t have immense appeal, or that it was incapable of reaching a cross-over audience. As so many writers have recently noted, his novels have proved to be culturally enduring precisely because they speak to individuals across the geographic, ideological and economic lines that have traditionally divided the Chinese cultural area. They have managed to do so in large part by advancing an appealing, nuanced, vision of Chinese nationalism. Self-determination and cultural identity seem to rest at the heart of Cha’s understanding of patriotism. And in his later works he goes to lengths to praise China’s many ethnic minorities (particularly the ones that have contributed to its martial arts traditions) advancing a more open and liberal vision of what Chinese nationalism might be.
All of this is combined with a reverence for traditional Confucian values, particularly when they order the relationship between teachers and students, family members or leaders and followers. Yet the feudal past, in which all of his stories are set, is not accepted uncritically. Cha remained deeply suspicious of the feudal and aristocratic, and so his characters can be seen to wrestle with, and critically examine, practices that no longer work in the “modern” world of the 14thor 15thcenturies.
A lack of Cantonese colloquialisms notwithstanding, these themes were likely to have a broad appeal within Hong Kong society. Cha made sophisticated discussions about identity, belonging and the nation available to those with a variety of educational and cultural backgrounds. Yet these stories always originated from a specific place, or point of view. Nor can one help but wonder what other vision of martial arts culture they displaced, or pushed to the margins, as Jin Yong attained a sort of hegemonic dominance within the Wuxia genre. In my own research I frequently run across accounts of martial arts students in the 1960s and 1970s who, while enthusiastic to learn the southern martial arts, carried with them different visions about the values or identities that motivated these systems. Generational conflict over such matters is not unique to this case. Though as I read one testimonial after another as to how critical Cha was to defining the world view of a generation of Southern martial artists, I cannot help but wonder what he displaced, and to what degree he helped to shape the disjointed expectations of the period. Indeed, in my own account of Wing Chun’s history during the post-war era, Jing Yong’s novels are more likely to play the role of “loyal opposition” than protagonist.
Cha, second from left, in 1960, with the cast of the film “Return of the Condor Heroes.” Source: The New Yorker
The Journey North
The burgeoning hostility of local Hong Kong residents towards Northern visitors or residents is nothing new. It is easy to find recent newspaper articles and editorials referring to Northerners as “locusts” who sweep in to consume not just cheap goods, but increasingly the best real estate and jobs, pushing long-time residents ever further from the center. In the wake of his death some individuals openly wondered whether a figure like Cha could succeed today given the open hostility to immigrants. The great irony, of course, is that the majority of Hong Kong’s “legitimate” residents today were once northern transplants themselves, and Cha’s stories helped their parents to negotiate an environment that was not always friendly, familiar or welcoming.
By becoming the quintessential Hong Kong storyteller (a lack of Cantonese roots notwithstanding) Cha is once again acting as a cultural bridge. Amidst all of the anxiety about the death of the Hong Kong film industry, and the future of the Southern Chinese martial arts (which are being priced out of the city by skyrocketing rents), it is easy to forget that in some ways the Cantonese martial arts heroes are now more popular than ever throughout the PRC. Ip Man has become a household figure (and his art has exploded in popularity) not just because of his association with Bruce Lee. Rather, Wilson Ip’s 2008 film and its many successors have been key in spreading this bit of Southern culture throughout the mainland.
It has been noted (by myself and others) that the vision of Ip Man that these films conjure does not bear a close resemblance to the real life (and rather well documented) figure. In the place of the undeniably mercurial and modernist Ip Man, what do these films present? A figure that in many ways splits the difference between the traditional Kung Fu genre and one of Cha’s stories. Yes, the action is still gritty and “realistic” with minimal wire work. But we now have a hero who exemplifies martial virtue, who demonstrates Confucian values in his relationships, who is a patriot who fights for China, and in defeat he retreats in exile to the edge of the empire. Does that sound familiar?
The flavor of these films is undeniably influenced by the Hong Kong tradition. Yet the mold that shapes the stories bears an uncanny resemblance to the ideal hero (a patriot who endures rather than wins) as laid out in Cha’s many novels. Where as Ip Man and Louis Cha had once existed as contemporary historical figures, whose lives ran on parallel tracks, their legacies now interact in complex ways. Rather than simply displacing the Pearl River Delta’s traditional Kung Fu narrative, Cha seems to have provided a pattern by which its heroes can travel North, testing their own fortunes in the Central Plains.
While I have a few connections in New York City’s TCMA community, it has always been my experience that one turns up different sorts of insights by getting out and exploring the terrain on one’s own. It was with that notion in mind that my wife and I set out to reconnoiter the older Manhattan Chinatown, which now seems almost quaint when compared in scale to its larger and more vibrant neighbor in Queens. The weather was great, and we got some memorable photos of tourists from China stopping to take photos of Chinese-American businesses and families. The gods of globalization move in mysterious ways.
The afternoon was not a total bust. We briefly made contact with two people working on Xingyi in a local park, though it was abundantly clear that no manner of martial art was going to distract the local residents from the many card games that dominated the district. After purchasing a book (by my friend Mark Wiley) from a local martial arts business, we were able to learn a little more about the neighborhood’s martial arts scene. Things sounded quiet, but we found out about two other instructors (Taijiquan and Wing Chun) who occasionally taught in the same park.
Still, there was very little evidence of the vibrant martial arts scene that had been so prominent during the late 1970s and 1980s. While the gentrification that has reshaped so much of the island was less evident south of Canal Street, Chinatown evolves and changes, like everything else. It seems that the warehouse schools which I read about in memoirs and doctoral dissertations have suffered the same fate as many of the more colorful elements of New York life.
In search of some historical perspective my wife and I next visited a local non-profit dedicated to preserving as much of Chinatown’s local and oral history as possible. The young employees (all in their 20s) thought that our subject sounded fascinating. Yet as they searched their databases and various key-word indexes they didn’t hold out much hope of finding anything useful. While they approached their job with infectious enthusiasm, they freely admitted that most of the neighborhood’s older residents didn’t share their zeal for preserving the past.
In fact, convincing older Chinese-Americans to sit down for oral history interviews was proving to be every bit as difficult as one might suspect. While there was some interesting history available on various musical and opera societies, once the tape recorders were turned on no one seemed willing to admit to knowing anything about martial arts instruction or Lion Dancing. In fact, the young researchers who staffed the office were hopeful that as a “total outsider” I would have better luck than them when it came to interviewing individuals and ferreting out this chapter of the historical record.
The situation was even bleaker when looking for resources that might discuss martial arts training in the pre-war period. Outside of a few stories and names, not much of substance seems to have survived. Giving me a mournful look, my ever-earnest historical guide explained that with so few surviving sources much of the texture of the community had been irrevocably lost. So ended my hopes of unearthing a rich trove of New York’s early Chinese martial arts history.
Or so I thought. Research is a funny thing. All of our sources are oddly specific, and even the most comprehensive database catches only a fraction of what is already sitting in some archive or library. While conducting a search for Chinese newsreel footage of martial arts practice during the Guoshu decade (1928-1938), I stumbled across something much more valuable. I found perhaps the best preserved and oldest footage of North American Southern Kung Fu practice that I had yet seen. Even better, it was shot on the same New York City streets that my wife and I had recently explored.
The Footage
Anyone interested in viewing this film can do so by clicking this link. This priceless visual record has been preserved on a reel of out-takes and raw newsreel footage that is held by the Historic Film archive. The entire reel is quite important as it helps to contextualize how images of the Chinese martial arts were classified and framed at the time of their production and cataloging. All of the clips on the reel were produced during the 1920s and most of them focus on scenes of entertainment. The period’s jazz tradition is well represented, and scenes of Chinese-American life find themselves juxtaposed with visual records of the African-American community. It should be noted that there are multiple recordings of Chinese New Year Festivals on the reel, suggesting a persistent interest in the subject.
At minute 19:42 viewers will encounter footage of a New Year celebration which happened on January 10th, 1929. In addition to the more common scenes of enthusiastic crowds, fireworks and Lion Dancing, two minutes of footage was also shot of the sorts of martial arts exhibitions that accompanied these festivals. While such exhibitions are occasionally noted in period newspaper reports, this is the most complete visual record of such a performance (in North America), that I have yet encountered.
This material rewards a close examination. None of this footage has been narrated, nor are there scene cards. As such I suspect that most of this material was probably treated as “out takes.” Still, it’s a rich source. While we might lament that we only have two minutes of material, by the standards of a 1920s newsreel, two minutes is an eternity.
This footage is composed of a series of much briefer clips (most ranging in length from 10 to 30 seconds) which focus on the performance of individual martial artists, all performing on a single day in what appears to be the same crowded outdoor venue. In total 11 sequences are shown, each focusing on some sort of forms performance. Both unarmed and weapons sets are represented in the sample, as well as a few two-person weapons sets. (For the sake of clarity this post is discussing only the martial arts demonstration, and not the excellent Lion Dance footage found on the same newsreel which probably deserves specialized treatment of its own).
If we assume that most of these sets could be introduced, set up and performed in about two minutes, it seems that the original demonstration was at least 22 minutes long. Even more remarkable is that very few individuals (maybe one or two) made any repeat performances in this show. Thus it took at least a dozen martial artists to stage this demonstration.
Most of the individuals in the show were wearing regalia suggesting that they had just come from (or were headed to) Lion Dancing. The standard uniform appears to have been a white shirt, black bowtie and Kung Fu pants, but a number of individuals can also be seen to wear the typical street clothing of the period. All of the performers in this film are male (though I have seen newsreel footage of female martial artists in NYC in the 1930s). Some are dressed as common laborers, while other have the air of shopkeepers or clerks.
A detailed breakdown of the film is as follows:
19:49-19:53 Unarmed Solo Set 1 (conclusion)
19:54-20:05 Unarmed Solo Set 2 (opening)
20:06-20:29 Unarmed Solo Set 3 (opening)
20:30-20:36 Solo Weapon, Eyebrow Staff
20:37-20:40 Solo Weapon, Southern Style Long Pole
20:41-21:08 Solo Weapon, Pudao
21:08-21:22 Solo Weapon, Hudiedao (Butterfly Swords)
21:23-21:32 Two Man, Long Poles
21:33-21:52 Solo Weapon, Rattan Shield and short saber
21:53-21:55 Two Man, Spear vs. Shield and Sword
21:56-22:00 Two Man, Spear vs. Shield and Sword
Analysis
So what sort of demonstration are we looking at? To begin with, one of remarkable sophistication. The conventional narratives suggest that modern Chinese martial arts schools, as we know them today, did not begin to appear in Chinatowns in cities like New York, San Francisco and Toronto until the 1950s. Prior to that it is not the case that the martial arts were never taught. Rather, their instruction tended to be sponsored by the various fraternal societies, theater groups and criminal organizations that dominated much of these neighborhoods’ associational life. Indeed, as Charlie Russo has demonstrated in his book on the Bay Area martial arts community, the first generation of public instructors often opened their school after having first established a reputation in community these group. For their part, the various Tongs are generally thought to have been more interested in training “street soldiers” capable of collecting gambling debts, acting as bouncers in a variety of establishments and dealing with belligerent tourists.
Still, the existence of this film problematizes any attempt to bifurcate early 20th century Chinese-American martial arts into a “practical” pre-war phase and a post-war era that might be more recognizable. While it seems unlikely that any of the individuals received their instruction in public commercial martial arts schools in New York City during the 1920s (to the best of our knowledge there simply weren’t any), it is now clear that there were a large number of individuals who were regularly gathering to train in the traditional martial arts. Further, staging a Lion Dance and demonstration with as many individuals as we see on this film suggests a fair degree of organizational sophistication. While they may not have been organized as a public school, it would appear that their institutional Kung Fu must have been pretty good.
What about their physical practice? All of this film was shot from a single elevated camera angle, so the various martial artists move in and out of the frame. This combined with the repetitive nature of many Southern sets, and the short duration of most of the clips, makes it very difficult to positively identify the various forms being displayed. After sharing this film with Hung Gar instructors on various continents, and a couple of Choy Li Fut students, we were not able to identify any of the sets with 100% certainty. Most of the unarmed and weapons work bears a resemblance to pre-Wong Fei Hung style Hung Gar. Alternatively, the one set in which we see the rattan shield and sword combined with tumbling is highly suggestive of some sets that are still practiced in Choy Li Fut.
Identifying these sets has proved to be somewhat frustrating. The film suggests that the general movement culture (or possibly “habitus”) of the Southern Chinese folk arts have remained remarkably consistent over the last century. It was genuinely interesting to see how the seventh performer moved with the hudiedao. Figuring out just what these guys were doing might be an important clue in reconstructing the early TCMA community as it existed in New York city during the 1920s. If anyone has any insights into the identities of these sets (or better yet, the martial artists) please leave a comment below.
While I have a few connections in New York City’s TCMA community, it has always been my experience that one turns up different sorts of insights by getting out and exploring the terrain on one’s own. It was with that notion in mind that my wife and I set out to reconnoiter the older Manhattan Chinatown, which now seems almost quaint when compared in scale to its larger and more vibrant neighbor in Queens. The weather was great, and we got some memorable photos of tourists from China stopping to take photos of Chinese-American businesses and families. The gods of globalization move in mysterious ways.
The afternoon was not a total bust. We briefly made contact with two people working on Xingyi in a local park, though it was abundantly clear that no manner of martial art was going to distract the local residents from the many card games that dominated the district. After purchasing a book (by my friend Mark Wiley) from a local martial arts business, we were able to learn a little more about the neighborhood’s martial arts scene. Things sounded quiet, but we found out about two other instructors (Taijiquan and Wing Chun) who occasionally taught in the same park.
Still, there was very little evidence of the vibrant martial arts scene that had been so prominent during the late 1970s and 1980s. While the gentrification that has reshaped so much of the island was less evident south of Canal Street, Chinatown evolves and changes, like everything else. It seems that the warehouse schools which I read about in memoirs and doctoral dissertations have suffered the same fate as many of the more colorful elements of New York life.
In search of some historical perspective my wife and I next visited a local non-profit dedicated to preserving as much of Chinatown’s local and oral history as possible. The young employees (all in their 20s) thought that our subject sounded fascinating. Yet as they searched their databases and various key-word indexes they didn’t hold out much hope of finding anything useful. While they approached their job with infectious enthusiasm, they freely admitted that most of the neighborhood’s older residents didn’t share their zeal for preserving the past.
In fact, convincing older Chinese-Americans to sit down for oral history interviews was proving to be every bit as difficult as one might suspect. While there was some interesting history available on various musical and opera societies, once the tape recorders were turned on no one seemed willing to admit to knowing anything about martial arts instruction or Lion Dancing. In fact, the young researchers who staffed the office were hopeful that as a “total outsider” I would have better luck than them when it came to interviewing individuals and ferreting out this chapter of the historical record.
The situation was even bleaker when looking for resources that might discuss martial arts training in the pre-war period. Outside of a few stories and names, not much of substance seems to have survived. Giving me a mournful look, my ever-earnest historical guide explained that with so few surviving sources much of the texture of the community had been irrevocably lost. So ended my hopes of unearthing a rich trove of New York’s early Chinese martial arts history.
Or so I thought. Research is a funny thing. All of our sources are oddly specific, and even the most comprehensive database catches only a fraction of what is already sitting in some archive or library. While conducting a search for Chinese newsreel footage of martial arts practice during the Guoshu decade (1928-1938), I stumbled across something much more valuable. I found perhaps the best preserved and oldest footage of North American Southern Kung Fu practice that I had yet seen. Even better, it was shot on the same New York City streets that my wife and I had recently explored.
The Footage
Anyone interested in viewing this film can do so by clicking this link. This priceless visual record has been preserved on a reel of out-takes and raw newsreel footage that is held by the Historic Film archive. The entire reel is quite important as it helps to contextualize how images of the Chinese martial arts were classified and framed at the time of their production and cataloging. All of the clips on the reel were produced during the 1920s and most of them focus on scenes of entertainment. The period’s jazz tradition is well represented, and scenes of Chinese-American life find themselves juxtaposed with visual records of the African-American community. It should be noted that there are multiple recordings of Chinese New Year Festivals on the reel, suggesting a persistent interest in the subject.
At minute 19:42 viewers will encounter footage of a New Year celebration which happened on January 10th, 1929. In addition to the more common scenes of enthusiastic crowds, fireworks and Lion Dancing, two minutes of footage was also shot of the sorts of martial arts exhibitions that accompanied these festivals. While such exhibitions are occasionally noted in period newspaper reports, this is the most complete visual record of such a performance (in North America), that I have yet encountered.
This material rewards a close examination. None of this footage has been narrated, nor are there scene cards. As such I suspect that most of this material was probably treated as “out takes.” Still, it’s a rich source. While we might lament that we only have two minutes of material, by the standards of a 1920s newsreel, two minutes is an eternity.
This footage is composed of a series of much briefer clips (most ranging in length from 10 to 30 seconds) which focus on the performance of individual martial artists, all performing on a single day in what appears to be the same crowded outdoor venue. In total 11 sequences are shown, each focusing on some sort of forms performance. Both unarmed and weapons sets are represented in the sample, as well as a few two-person weapons sets. (For the sake of clarity this post is discussing only the martial arts demonstration, and not the excellent Lion Dance footage found on the same newsreel which probably deserves specialized treatment of its own).
If we assume that most of these sets could be introduced, set up and performed in about two minutes, it seems that the original demonstration was at least 22 minutes long. Even more remarkable is that very few individuals (maybe one or two) made any repeat performances in this show. Thus it took at least a dozen martial artists to stage this demonstration.
Most of the individuals in the show were wearing regalia suggesting that they had just come from (or were headed to) Lion Dancing. The standard uniform appears to have been a white shirt, black bowtie and Kung Fu pants, but a number of individuals can also be seen to wear the typical street clothing of the period. All of the performers in this film are male (though I have seen newsreel footage of female martial artists in NYC in the 1930s). Some are dressed as common laborers, while other have the air of shopkeepers or clerks.
A detailed breakdown of the film is as follows:
19:49-19:53 Unarmed Solo Set 1 (conclusion)
19:54-20:05 Unarmed Solo Set 2 (opening)
20:06-20:29 Unarmed Solo Set 3 (opening)
20:30-20:36 Solo Weapon, Eyebrow Staff
20:37-20:40 Solo Weapon, Southern Style Long Pole
20:41-21:08 Solo Weapon, Pudao
21:08-21:22 Solo Weapon, Hudiedao (Butterfly Swords)
21:23-21:32 Two Man, Long Poles
21:33-21:52 Solo Weapon, Rattan Shield and short saber
21:53-21:55 Two Man, Spear vs. Shield and Sword
21:56-22:00 Two Man, Spear vs. Shield and Sword
Analysis
So what sort of demonstration are we looking at? To begin with, one of remarkable sophistication. The conventional narratives suggest that modern Chinese martial arts schools, as we know them today, did not begin to appear in Chinatowns in cities like New York, San Francisco and Toronto until the 1950s. Prior to that it is not the case that the martial arts were never taught. Rather, their instruction tended to be sponsored by the various fraternal societies, theater groups and criminal organizations that dominated much of these neighborhoods’ associational life. Indeed, as Charlie Russo has demonstrated in his book on the Bay Area martial arts community, the first generation of public instructors often opened their school after having first established a reputation in community these group. For their part, the various Tongs are generally thought to have been more interested in training “street soldiers” capable of collecting gambling debts, acting as bouncers in a variety of establishments and dealing with belligerent tourists.
Still, the existence of this film problematizes any attempt to bifurcate early 20th century Chinese-American martial arts into a “practical” pre-war phase and a post-war era that might be more recognizable. While it seems unlikely that any of the individuals received their instruction in public commercial martial arts schools in New York City during the 1920s (to the best of our knowledge there simply weren’t any), it is now clear that there were a large number of individuals who were regularly gathering to train in the traditional martial arts. Further, staging a Lion Dance and demonstration with as many individuals as we see on this film suggests a fair degree of organizational sophistication. While they may not have been organized as a public school, it would appear that their institutional Kung Fu must have been pretty good.
What about their physical practice? All of this film was shot from a single elevated camera angle, so the various martial artists move in and out of the frame. This combined with the repetitive nature of many Southern sets, and the short duration of most of the clips, makes it very difficult to positively identify the various forms being displayed. After sharing this film with Hung Gar instructors on various continents, and a couple of Choy Li Fut students, we were not able to identify any of the sets with 100% certainty. Most of the unarmed and weapons work bears a resemblance to pre-Wong Fei Hung style Hung Gar. Alternatively, the one set in which we see the rattan shield and sword combined with tumbling is highly suggestive of some sets that are still practiced in Choy Li Fut.
Identifying these sets has proved to be somewhat frustrating. The film suggests that the general movement culture (or possibly “habitus”) of the Southern Chinese folk arts have remained remarkably consistent over the last century. It was genuinely interesting to see how the seventh performer moved with the hudiedao. Figuring out just what these guys were doing might be an important clue in reconstructing the early TCMA community as it existed in New York city during the 1920s. If anyone has any insights into the identities of these sets (or better yet, the martial artists) please leave a comment below.
A period depiction of Ming Soldiers involved in the Piracy Crisis which inspired Qi Jiguang’s now famous discussion of military training. Source: Ming Qiu Shizhou Taiwan Zoukai Tu (Victory in Taiwan by Qiu Ying [pseudonym Shizhou] of the Ming, 1494 – 1552). Click here to learn more about this important source.
Translator’s Note
Here is the full translation of the Qi Jiguang’s Fist Method as it appears in the Wubei Zhi, offered as a follow-up to my initial discussion of the challenges of translating this text into English verse. If you are coming to this discussion for the first time, you may want to read that initial essay before proceeding on. I want to make this available to everyone who expressed interest and to anyone else who might find it helpful. I do not intend this to be authoritative or even unchanging. Input and discussion is always wanted and appreciated. I hope you find it enjoyable to read.
Historical context
“拳經捷要篇 -The Essential Chapters of the Fist Cannon” was first published in Qi Jiguang’s seminal training manual “JiXiaoXinShu”. It was later republished in the Wubei Zhi in it’s complete form. Understanding the content of this work is dependent upon understanding its historical contexts both in the military and broader social or societal arena.
Social
There are several social factors of this period in the Ming Dynasty that one must take into account when trying to place this treatise in its proper context. The traditional hereditary military system was breaking down. There were simply not enough officers or soldier being produced from those families to keep the Ming military at its former glory. The breakdown of Ming forces contributed to a rise in social violence including, rebellions, highway men and banditry, organized cannibalism, and other fairly horrific behaviors that occur when populations become desperate and have nowhere to turn.
While violence and crime were important factors in daily Ming life, there were also more positive influences. Printing and publishing saw an enormous rise during the Ming as did literacy. With a more literate populace, the demand for books of all types grew. Printed books became big business. The publishing boom of the 16th century produced thousands of texts to be consumed by a growing lettered class. It is in this environment that we find the rise of the martial arts/military treatise purchased by non-military readers.
As the Literati grew in numbers, more and more books on every subject were produced. Those with an interest in military or martial affairs now had the ability to study these topics even if not born into the military class. People like Mao Yuanyi who wrote and compiled the largest written document on military affairs in the Chinese language, the Wubei Zhi, were able to access this information without being a memberof a hereditary Military family. This brought an entirely new perspectives to discussions of the martial arts.
It is difficult to say when the Martial arts manual that we know today truly came about, but we have little evidence of these texts prior to the Ming dynasty. Surviving martial art texts from before the Ming are often vague and general, offering more strategic and tactical insight and philosophy than step by step instruction of technique. The true illustrated martial arts text was, more than likely, a product of the Ming publishing boom as the audience for such texts grew.
Qi’s first book “JiXiaoXinShu” was published in this environment and one can make a convincing case that this is the oldest example of a martial arts manual for the training of individual skills. Where as prior, this information was mostlikely held by the military families as “trade secrets,” Qi decided to include examinations of various martial arts for the battlefield and focus on the individual training of troops.
Military
Qi Jiguang wrote “JixiaoxinShu” in the late 1500’s near the end of the Ming Dynasty. The circumstances of his writing this book and subsequently re-editing it later, concern the Woku Coastal pirate crisis. The Woku, more commonly referred to as ‘Japanese Pirates’, were an enormous problem for the Ming at the end of the 1500’s. These bands of raiders, which consisted of mostly local Chinese citizens (often former fishermen or merchant sailors), werebankrolled or under the command of self appointed Japanese Sea Lords. They operated under the nose of the Ming government, effectively undermining their trade war with Japan.
Not only were the raids themselves a security problem for the region, but due to rampant corruption, many local authorities were actually collaborating with the Woku. This allowed them to bring their raids far inland and away from the coast. They were able to reach and pillage communities that were previously considered safe.
Assigned to the region was another famous and influential writer of the Ming dynasty, General Yu Dayou, author of “Jian Jing”. General Yu was frustrated with the lack of support he received from the Capitol, who in turn withheld funds and equipment due to lack of real progress in the crisis. General Yu insisted that he needed more fire arms and ships to adequately meet the threat. The government refused.
When General Qi arrived on the scene, he knew that asking for material support would be a fools errand. Instead, he came up with progressive if not novel approaches to the lack of technology and men available to them. He formed a mercenary army, consisting of volunteers from the affected farming communities. He specially chose these people as they were used to hard work, they were defending their homes, and they would be paid for their trouble. The problem was, that in the past, soldiers and military personnel came primarily from the hereditary military families and had some experience in the act of warfare. This system had begun to break down in the mid-Ming, which also contributed to the public’s general lack of faith in the imperial forces.
Because these recruits were not from traditional military back grounds, there was a need to train them from the ground up. It is this method that Qi later detailed in his treatise “JiXianXinShu”- the New Methods of Military Effectiveness. One of the unique features of this book is that it is one of the first military treatises to cover the training of individual martial arts by soldiers. Since the men he was using a the time did not have formal training in military exercise or fighting on the battlefield, Qi included the training regimens for several weapons and one chapter devoted to empty handed technique.
The martial arts that Qi choose to represent in his writing is linked to the strategies that he devised for the crisis. The spear takes the lead followed by the shield and dao, sported by archers with both conventional and fire/explosive arrows.At the end of the section is talk of the staff and finally is the bare handed section. Qi’s reason for including unarmed martial art is, as he states, mainly for conditioning and keeping the troops occupied and focused. While these techniques may have found some direct application in friendly wrestling bouts of the sorts that soldiers have while encamped, even Qi states in his introduction that there is little use for such things in the theater of war.
The Art Represented
Much of our discussion of Qi’s unarmed method must remain conjecture. The names of each technique are familiar to modern practitioners of Chinese martial arts. Many of these names appear in several separate martial traditions. Taijiquan, for instance, shares a fair number of these names within the various lineages of the art. Some historians have taken this to mean that this document is the direct antecedent to the art of Taijiquan. While it is difficult to say if there is a direct connection, or if Qi’s writing indicate the survival of an art that has been practiced since the Ming, it should be remembered that the names and techniques described here are actually shared by several styles including Baji, Fanzi, Pigua, Cha Quan, Tang Lang (mantis), and many others. Qi says that he has taken these techniques from various sources. It could be that the origins for the names are to be found in them, and thus may indicate an unbroken “lineage” into modern times.
However, if one looks at the situation of new conscripts learning new skills and bringing them back to their home villages, a migration of common names through a wide variety of people and communities does not seem so far fetched. Let’s remember that Qi’s book was published and sold to non military readers as well and that it did gain a following among the literati. If these techniques were used in the training of provincial troops from surrounding areas, these men would take these technique, names, and sequences home with them and repurpose them for the needs of the community. It is in my opinion easy to assume that this is at least one factor in the creation of styles that share technique nomenclature yet no apparent technical base or common lineage.
The techniques themselves seem to be centered around what could be deemed “fast wrestling” today. Fast wrestling is a sport in which wrestling moves are performed as quickly as possible and points are scored with successful throws without the use of extended ground fighting. Essentially, pin them as fast as you can. Battlefield techniques do not usually include lots of wrestling. But grappling and wrestling are far more useful than hitting in this context. Qi admits that this is included for exercise and conditioning only and has little direct relevance to war.
Qi also makes the claim to have extracted these techniques as the best examples from the famous styles being practiced during the day. He then lists many of them with the impression being given that this is very much like a hybrid style made up of techniques from others. Some may be tempted to call this “mixed martial arts.” However, I believe it is an error to equate the purpose of Qi’s fist method with the modern sport of MMA. Martial arts have always borrowed and taken from other arts to add and expand their own. It does not follow that the mixing of techniques from different traditions was particularly rare or frowned upon. The sport of MMA is a mix of martial art for a single purpose of getting the most effective techniques for submitting your opponent. The use of fighting in the armed forces is much broader and, in Qi’s method, the unarmed exercises serve health and fitness purpose almost exclusively. In that sense at least, it is not that different from many modern practitioners of taijiquan practice today.
Translation notes
Qi Jiguangs’s Empty-handed method is perhaps one of the best known Ming era martial arts texts. This is in large part due to the fact the many of the names of techniques used in this text are still found in martial arts today. Many traditions (most notably Taijiquan) cite this document as an early predecessor to the modern arts they practice. These arts often refer back to this document without much in the way of analysis. As the names are often popular, they have over the years acquired some conventional glosses. I have made a directed effort not to simply use these familiar translations but rather to render the name in as clear language as I can to describe the action taking place or to give a clearer context with the language. No doubt this might cause some initial confusion amongst readers who are looking at this through the lens of their own art. But, I am approaching the text as a separate practice, however influential it might have been.
One specific note that should be pointed out is the translation of the word “Quan” 拳. While the word is a familiar suffix denoting a martial art, it is used in a few different ways in this text. In the past the word has ben translated as “boxing”. I have stayed away from that gloss for the most part as its is imprecise within the discussion we are currently having. I will at times translate it as “fist” to stay within the idiom, but when discussed in general terms, I have used the rather wordy “unarmed techniques/combat”. By using both approaches I hope that it reads more naturally without forcing the reader to code switch as much.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ting from the Great Ming Military blog, Clifford Lao, and Ma Xianfeng for their invaluable help and input in the subtleties of Literary Chinese and Ming history. Thanks also go to Ben Judkins for allowing me the platform to present my work. It is my sincerest wish that practitioners of martial arts will find these at the very least interesting if not illuminating to past practices. I also hope that it encourages more people to make their own translation attempts of these texts. Multiple perspectives are always needed.
Any errors are my own and I accept any and all criticism or correction.
[While this art is not very useful for preparing troops (for war), it can help with excess energy, or as an initial practice of martial arts. However, most people cannot become strong this way. They only listen to their own ears (only do movements with which they are familiar). Therefore, this section is placed at the end of the other sections as per it’s significance. Chapter 14]
Unarmed combat seems to offer nothing in the way of the preparation for large scale war, but the exercising of the hands and feet forms habits for moving the limbs as a unit, making this practice a doorway to learning the art (of war).This chapter is provided last to complete the preparation of skills.To learn the fist (unarmed techniques) it is necessary to have the body mechanics lively yet simple, the hand work simple yet keen,footwork is light, giving the ability to advance and retreat at will and legs that can leap and jump. How wonderful it is; To rise high and fall low, and how fierce; the chopping across with the fists, how quick; lively grasping for the sky, and how soft; to know how to endure and evade. For this reason I have chosen 32 of the best unarmed techniques, each one follows from the previous, with applications to an opponent, it can be adapted in unpredictable ways. How refined, how deep! The uninitiated will watch you and claim you are a supernatural master. A common saying; “The fist hits without knowing”, surely it is like trying to cover your ears before the thunder.They say no provocation, no resistance, just one action will bring them down; attack will provoke resistance, then ten attacks of their own will follow. Play the game but remember the larger lesson, Those that strategize and plan will be victorious.
The Ancient Schools of the Fist; Taizu has 32 stances of long fist, also six step fist, monkey fist, decoy fist, the names of the stances each have their own qualities, but in reality they have a great amount of similarities and only small differences. Today the styles of note are Wen Family 72 step Fist, 36 locks, 24 throws of Testing Horse, 8 dodging turns, and 20 short (hits). Lu hong’s 8 take downs, although it is strong, it does not match the “cotton fist” or “Short Hit”. ShanDong’s Li BanTian’s kicks, Eagle Claw King’s grappling, 1,000 throws of Zhang’s throwing (method). Zhang BaiJing’s striking. The staff methods of Shaolin Temple and QingTian compliment each other, Yang Family Spear and Baozi style staff, this is all we have today, although they have their own strengths. Some systems may have the upper and not the lower, or have the lower and not the upper, victory may be possible for one man, but this is not a comprehensive approach. If each Family Fighting method is combined and practiced, the principle of the Mountain Snake Formation, strike the head and the tail must follow, strike the tail and the head must follow, strike at their body and both head and tail must react. This is what is meant by upper and lower are together, and victory is certain.
Overall, the practice of the fist, saber, spear, fork, trident, sword, halberd, archery, hook, scythe,and others in this class, first have the fist method to train the movement of body and hands.And therefore, this method of unarmed combat is the wellspring of martial arts. Here the movements are transmitted by illustrations of the stances, explanation of the secrets, introducing the student to the method. Those that have learned this will surely test the enemy, do not be ashamed of the outcome, instead, ponder why you were victorious or how you were defeated. Make a concerted effort and experiment for a long time, if you lack courage your skill will be shallow, good fighting surely decides the essence of the art. The ancients have said; “The exulted artist is a man with great bravery”, trust this without reservation.
余在舟山公署，得參戎劉草堂打拳，所謂「犯了招架，便是十下」之謂也。此最妙，即棍中之連打。
When I was in ZhouShan, I was able to train with Liu Cao-Tong in boxing at the public hall, they say “If one commits only to blocking, ten more blows will come”,just as with the very clever staff attack of chaining strikes together.
1.
懶扎衣出門架子
變下勢霎步單鞭
對敵若無膽向先
空自眼明手便
Lǎn zhā yī chūmén jiàzi
biàn xià shì shà bù dān biān
duì dí ruò wú dǎn xiàng xiān
kōngzì yǎn míng shǒu biàn
Tie Your Coat and come outside,
Single Whip with sudden stride,
Without the courage to advance,
Sharp eyes fast hands will have no chance.
2.
金雞獨立顚(顛)起
裝腿橫拳相兼
槍背卧牛雙倒
遭着叫苦連天
Jīnjīdúlì diān (diān) qǐ
zhuāng tuǐ héng quán xiāng jiān
qiāng bèi wò niú shuāng
zāozhe jiàokǔliántiān
Golden Rooster stands on top,
Present your leg then sideways chop,
Rush in low and Trip the Bull,
They cry to heaven loud and full.
3.
探馬傳自太祖
諸勢可降可變
進攻退閃蒻生強
接短拳之至善
Tànmǎ chuán zì tài zǔ
zhū shì kě jiàng kě biàn
jìngōng tuì shǎn ruò shēng qiáng
jiē duǎn quán zhī zhì shàn
Testing Horse was Song TaiZu’s,
Stances all can drop and move,
Attacking and dodging will give you strength,*
Receive their punches in short range
4.
拗單鞭黃花緊進
披挑腿左右難防
槍步上拳連劈揭
沉香勢推倒太山
Ǎo dān biān huánghuā jǐn jìn
pī tiāo tuǐ zuǒyòu nán fáng
qiāng bù shàng quán lián pī jiē
chénxiāng shì tuīdǎo tài shān
Crossed Single Whip firmly pries it’s way in,
When finding it hard from their kick to defend,
Rush in with continuous, liftings and chops,
Knock down Tai Mountain into low stances drop.
5.
七星拳手足相顧
挨步逼上下隄籠
饒君手快腳如風
我自有攪衝劈重
Qīxīng quán shǒuzú xiānggù
āi bù bī shàngxià dī lóng
ráo jūn shǒukuài jiǎo rú fēng
wǒ zì yǒu jiǎo chōng pī zhòng
In The Seven Star Fist, the hand follows the feet,
Stepping in close, upper lower to beat,
The enemy limbs are fast like the wind,
My own heavy chops will disturb them to win.
6.
倒騎龍詐輸佯走
誘追入遂我回衝
恁伊力猛硬來攻
怎當我連珠砲動
Dào qí lóng zhà shū yáng zǒu
yòu zhuīrù suì wǒ huí chōng
nèn yī lì měng yìng lái gōng
zěn dāng wǒ liánzhū pào dòng
Ride the Dragon Inverted to feign a defeat,
As they enter I turn and reveal my deceit.
His attack it is fierce his hits they are strong,
But my beating continues, he can’t last for long!
7.
懸腳 虛餌彼輕進
二換腿決不饒輕
趕上一掌滿天星
誰敢再來比亚
Xuán jiǎo xū ěr bǐ qīng jìn
èr huàn tuǐ jué bù ráo qīng
gǎn shàng yī zhǎng mǎn tiān xīng
shuí gǎn zài lái bǐ yǎ
Hang up the Leg as bait for a trick,
It’s not easy to follow when I switch it to kick,
My Palm makes him see the heaven and stars,
To fight me again, afraid all of them are.
8.
丘劉左搬右掌
劈來腳入步連心
挪更拳法探馬均
打人一著命盡
Qiū liú zuǒ bānyòu zhǎng
pī lái jiǎo rù bù lián xīn
nuó gèng quánfǎ tànmǎ jūn
dǎ rén yīzhe mìng jǐn
Hill Attack changes left with a palm to the right,
They chop, I come in with a heart level strike,
Further I go with Testing the Horse,
With one hit I end them with just the right force.
9.
下插勢專降快腿
得進步攪靠無別
鉤腳鎖臂不容離
上驚下取一跌
Xià chā shì zhuān jiàng kuài tuǐ
dé jìnbù jiǎo kào wú bié
gōu jiǎo suǒ pī bùróng lí
shàng jīng xià qǔ yī diē
Hidden Below drops down fast with the legs,
Step in and knock them downoff a few pegs,
Hooking the foot and locking the arm,
Feint high, go low, trip and do harm.
10.
埋伏勢窩弓待虎
犯圈套寸步難移
就機連發幾腿
他受打必定昏危
Máifú shì wō gōng dài hǔ
fàn quāntào cùnbù nán yí
jiù jī lián fā jǐ tuǐ
tā shòu dǎ bìdìng hūn wēi
Lying in Wait for the beast in it’s den,
The inch step corrals them like they’re in a pen,
Continuously kick with the legs and the thighs,
Receiving a hit means they surely will die.
11.
拋架子槍步披掛
補上腿那怕他識
右橫左採快如飛
架一掌不知天地
Pāo jiàzi qiāng bù pīguà
bǔ shàng tuǐ nà pà tā shí
yòu héng zuǒ cǎi kuài rú fēi
jià yī zhǎng bùzhī tiāndì
Throwing Technique enters, splits and then hangs,
Take advantage with kicks fearing them seeing your plans,
Fly to the left across from the right,
Fend off with one palm and out go the lights!
12.
拈肘勢防他弄腿
我截短須認高低
劈打推壓要皆依
切勿手腳忙急
Niān zhǒu shì fáng tā nòng tuǐ
wǒ jié duǎn xū rèn gāodī
pī dǎ tuī yā yào jiē yī
qiè wù shǒujiǎo máng jí
Defend from their legs with Pluck the Elbow,
I intercept close watching high and then low,
Chopping and pushing and pressing you need,
To hit them not rushing your hands or your feet.
13.
一霎步隨機應變
左右腿衝敵連珠
恁伊勢固手風雷
怎當我閃驚巧取
Yīshà bù suíjīyìngbiàn
zuǒyòu tuǐ chōng dí liánzhū
nèn yīshì gù shǒu fēngléi
zěn dāng wǒ shǎn jīng qiǎo qǔ
Instant Step waits for the time it can change,
Kick with both legs when you come into range,
Their stances are solid, their hands like the wind,
Why accept the attack when I can dodge it to win?
14.
擒拿勢封腳套子
左右壓一如四平
直來拳逢我投活
恁快腿拳不得通融
Qínná shì fēng jiǎo tàozi
zuǒyòu yā yī rú sì píng
zhí lái quán féng wǒ tóu huó
nèn kuài tuǐ quán bùdé tōngróng
Grabbing and Seizing envelopes the foot,
Left and Right press Si Ping standing with root,
A straight punch comes in, lively I throw,
So that his kicks and his punches, they all are too slow.
15.
井欄四平直進
剪鐮踢膝當頭
滾穿劈靠抹一鈎
鐵樣將軍也走
Jǐng lán sìpíng zhíjìn
jiǎn lián tī xī dāngtóu
gǔn chuān pī kào mǒ yī gōu
tiě yàng jiāngjūn yě zǒ
Blocking the Well stance goes directly ahead,
Scissor their knee while blocking the head,
Roll, pierce, chop, lean, wipe off, and hook,
Armored Generals themselves to their cores will be shook.
16.
鬼蹴腳槍人先著
補前掃轉上紅拳
背弓顛披揭起
穿心肘靠妙難傳
Guǐ cù jiǎo qiāng rén xiānzhe
bǔ qián sǎo zhuǎn shàng hóng quán
bèi gōng diān pī jiē qǐ
chuān xīn zhǒu kào miào nán chuán
The Ghost Kick begins and shoots out toward them first,
Rush in, turn and hit them, their heart will then burst,
Stand with them on your back like a coat,
An elbow to the heart is no playful joke.
17.
指當勢是箇丁法
他難進我好向前
踢膝滾躦上面
急回步顛短紅拳
Zhǐ dāng shì shì gè dīng fǎ
tā nán jìn wǒ hǎo xiàng qián
tī xī gǔn cuó shàngmiàn
jí huí bù diān duǎn hóng quán
Directed Defense Stance has feet like a “T”,
My defenses make it hard to attack me freely,
Kick the knee, turn, and jump up to their face.
Fast Red Fist short range to show them their place.
18.
獸頭勢如牌挨進
恁快腳遇我慌忙
低驚高取他難防
接短披紅衝上
Shòu tóu shì rú pái āi jìn
nèn kuài jiǎo yù wǒ huāngmáng
dī jīng gāoqǔ tā nán fáng
jiē duǎn pīhóng chōng shàng
The Beast Head comes in if the opponent is near.
When we meet, my quick footwork will grip him with fear.
Feint low, go high, they cannot defend,
Receive his short chops and charge into them.
19.
中四平勢 實推固
硬攻進快腿難來
雙手逼他單手
短打以熟為乖
Zhōng sìpíng shì shí tuī gù
yìng gōng jìn kuài tuǐ nán lái
shuāng shǒu bī tā dān shǒu
duǎn dǎ yǐ shú wèi guāi
Middle Siping is pushing with root,
Hard attacks and quick footwork are both rendered moot,
With two hands their one hand is quickly subdued,
A short hit from here is skillfully shrewd.
20.
伏虎勢側身弄腿
但來奏我前撐
看他立站不穩
後掃一跌分明
Fú hǔ shi cèshēn nòng tuǐ
dàn lái zòu wǒ qián chēng
kàn tā lì zhàn bù wěn
hòu sǎo yī diē fēnmíng
Subduing the Tiger leans back for a kick,
But, he returns my attack I must brace forward and quick.
I look and see that his stance is not steady,
I sweep him behind before he is ready.
21.
高四平身法活變
左右短出入如飛
逼敵人手足無措
恁我便腳踢拳捶
Gāo sìpíng shēn fǎ huó biàn
zuǒyòu duǎn chūrù rú fēi
bī dírén shǒuzúwúcuò
nèn wǒ biàn jiǎo tī quán chuí
High Siping method is agile and changes,
Like flying zig zag in and out of short ranges
Block the enemy limbs so they cannot attack.
My foot it may kick and the fist can beat back.
22.
倒插勢不與招架
靠腿快討他之贏
背弓進步莫遲停
打如谷聲相應
Dào chā shì bù yǔ zhāojià
kào tuǐ kuài tǎo tā zhī yíng
bèi gōng jìnbù mò chí tíng
dǎ rú gǔ shēng xiāngyìng
Inverting Thrust does not provoke with a guard,
With quick tripping legs their foundation bombard,
Stretch the back like a bow, step in with a dash,
The valley will echo with the hit’s sudden crash.
23.
神拳當面插下
進步火焰攢心
遇巧就拿就跌
舉手不得留情
Shén quán dāngmiàn chā xià
jìnbù huǒyàn cuán xīn
yù qiǎo jiù ná jiù diē
jǔ shǒu bùdé liúqíng
Spirit Fist blocks in front to invade down below,
Step in, gather fire, use your chest as bellows,
Meeting skill, simply seize them and make them fall down,
Raise your hand to prevent them from gaining new ground.
24.
一條鞭橫直披砍
兩進腿當面傷人
不怕他力粗膽大
我巧好打通神
Yītiáo biān héngzhí pī kǎn
liǎng jìn tuǐ dāngmiàn shāng rén
bùpà tā lì cū dǎn dà
wǒ qiǎo hǎo dǎtōng shén
One Lash hacks across and down,
Block their legs and face them down,
Fear not men who’s strength is crude,
They’ll talk with gods through my hits true.
25.
雀地龍下盤腿法
前揭起後進紅拳
他退我雖顛補
衝來短當休延
Què de lóng xià pántuǐ fǎ
qián jiē qǐ hòujìn hóng quán
tā tuì wǒ suī diān bǔ
chōng lái duǎn dāng xiū yán
Ground Dragon trains the legs to go low,
Lift them then enter with a heavy red blow,
They run from me, fine, I will still take the day,
Rushing in close to block, stop or delay.
26.
朝陽手偏身防腿
無縫鎖逼退豪英
倒陣勢彈他一腳
好教他師也喪身
Zhāoyáng shǒu piān shēn fāng tuǐ
wú fèng suǒ bī tuì háo yīng
dào zhènshì dàn tā yī jiǎo
hǎo jiào tā shī yě sāng shēn
The Hand of Dawn’s body slants defending from feet,
Seamlessly lock them to compel a retreat.
Knock Down the Pillar by quickly kicking their thigh,
Teach them so well, their own master will die.
27.
鷹翅側身挨進
快腿走不留停
追上穿莊一腿
要加剪劈推紅
Yīng chì cèshēn āi jìn
kuài tuǐ zǒu bù liú tíng
zhuī shàng chuān zhuāng yī tuǐ
yào jiā jiǎn pī tuī hóng
The Eagle’s Wing inclines in close,
Footwork fast and continuous,
Chase them down and kick through their base,
Chop, shear, and push you must keep the pace.
28.
跨虎勢那移發腳
要腿去不使他知
左右跟掃一連施
失手剪刀分易
Kuà hǔ shi nà yí fā jiǎo
yào tuǐ qù bù shǐ tā zhī
zuǒyòu gēn sǎo yīlián shī
shīshǒu jiǎndāo fēn yì
Ride the Tiger moves and kicks,
Hide your legs with subtle tricks,
Sweep your heel both left and right,
The hand can slice them like a knife.
29.
拗鸞肘出步顛剁
搬下掌摘打其心
拿鷹捉兔硬開弓
手腳必須相應
Ǎo luán zhǒu chū bù diān duò
bān xià zhǎng zhāi dǎ qí xīn
ná yīng zhuō tù yìng kāi gōng
shǒujiǎo bìxū xiāngyìng
The Crossed Phoenix Elbow steps out poundingto start,
Then fast going under to palm strike their heart,
Like an eagle with talons grab and tear them asunder,
Surely hand must unite with foot that is under.
30.
當頭炮勢衝入怕
進步虎直攛兩拳
他退閃我又顛踹
不跌倒他他忙然
Dāngtóu pào shì chōng rù pà
jìnbù hǔ zhí cuān liǎng quán
tā tuì shǎn wǒ yòu diān chuài
bù diédǎo tā tā máng rán
Block the Head Canon charges in with out fear,
Step in like a tiger, throw both fists like a spear,
When they dodge I will trip them and stomp them again,
Even if they don’t fall they must start again.
31.
順鸞肘靠身
搬打滾快他難遮攔
復外絞刷回拴
肚搭一跌誰敢爭先
Shùn luán zhǒu kào shēn
bān dǎgǔn kuài tā nán zhēlán
fù wài jiǎo shuā huí shuān
dù dā yī diē shuí gǎn zhēngxiān
Tame the Phoenix by leaning and use the elbow.
Move, strike, and roll, they have no where to go,
Return to the outside and twist them to bind,
Throw them down, to fight back they’d be out of their mind.
32.
旗鼓勢左右壓進
近他手橫劈雙行
絞靠跌人人識得
虎抱頭要躲無門
Qí gǔ shì zuǒyòu yā jìn
jìn tā shǒu héng pī shuāng xíng
jiǎo kào diē rén rén shí dé
hǔ bàotóu yào duǒ wú mén
Banners and Drums comes in to suppress,
Approaching them chopping like crossing the chest.
Everyone sees the throw with the twist,
Embracing the Tiger no way to resist.
End
A contemporary depiction of Qi Jiguang’s troops from the recent film, “God of War.”
Notes
* Readers may note that this is alternate translation of this passage and differs from the one discussed in the previous post. As previously noted, this is an evolving work and I am open to ideas and suggestions:
Testing Horse was Song TaiZu’s,
Stances all can drop and move,
Advance attack, retreat to dodge,
Come in close with a fist barrage.
oOo
About the Author: Chad Eisner is a martial arts practitioner and instructor in Ann Arbor Michigan, teaching Ma She Tongbei and Taiji Quan. His experience in Chinese martial artsand as a professional interpreter have naturally lead to a fascination with the translation of Ming dynasty martial arts texts. He is also the co-founder of Terra Prime Light Armory which uses historical based weapon arts to create lightsaber and fantasy martial arts for use in competition, performance, and learning.
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Mao, Yuanyi茅元億. 武備志Wu Bei Zhi. [China: s.n. ; not before, 1644] Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2004633695/.
Miracle, Jared. Now with Kung Fu Grip!: How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2016.
Qi, Jiguang戚繼光. Wu Shu Xi Lie武術系列. chu ban. ed. Vol. 6, Ji Xiao Xin Shu.績效新書 Tai bei shi: Wu zhou, 2000min 89.
Sawyer, Ralph D. The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China =: [wu Jing Qi Shu]. History and Warfare. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993.
Shapinsky, Peter D. Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies. Vol. 76, Lords of the Sea: Pirates, Violence, and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2014.
It has been a busy weekend, so this news update will be brief. Nevertheless, I wanted to comment on some of the more interesting stories that have been floating around. For new readers, 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 may have missed something. If you are aware of an important news event relating to the TCMA, drop a link in the comments section below. If you know of a developing story that should be covered in the future feel free to send me an email.
Its been way too long since our last update so let’s get to the news!
In the 1950s and 60s, when the artisans of Beijing’s last seven bow-making workshops were reassigned to state collectives, a craft that had been practised for more than 3,000 years came to a sudden halt. By the mid-90s, all remaining bowyers had passed away, with the exception of Yang Wentong. Come his death, it was believed, all knowledge of traditional Han Chinese ox-horn bow making would be lost forever.
I was recently reading something by Paul Bowman in which he reviewed the ways that various newspapers in the UK have discussed the martial art over the years. I think that one of the phrases he applied to articles in the Daily Mail was “perpetual wide-eyed wonder.” That immediately popped into mind as I looked at their latest photo essay titled ‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’: Inside the Chinese village where all residents practise martial arts.
If memory serves we have heard about this village in Guangxi before. They seem to have some sort of communal (early morning and evening) martial arts training, but sadly this article never actually states the style. What we do get it is yet another variant of the burning of the Shaolin Temple myth, complete with a wandering survivor who takes up residence in the village, founding its current martial arts tradition. Good stuff!
A Chinese Kung Fu teacher visiting a school in Africa.
At first glance our next article appeared to be a boilerplate account of the sort of educational exchange program that governments frequently sponsor. Basically, a few dozen Chinese physical education instructors were sent to the USA to visit and observe how teaching was conducted in local classes. And of course they also taught some Kung Fu to the American kids. I was surprised that the style they introduced was Five Ancestors Fist, a very important southern school. Suddenly I want to hear more!
Senior woman doing Tai Chi exercise to keep her joints flexible, isolated.
Taijiquan was one of the big winners of the last news cycle. A couple of studies had come out on the practice’s ability to build strength in older students, and this unleashed a torrent of near identical articles in several outlets. My favorite was titled “Building Strength Through Tai Chi” in the Seattle Times.
Watching a group of people doing tai chi, an exercise often called “meditation in motion,” it may be hard to imagine that its slow, gentle, choreographed movements could actually make people stronger. Not only stronger mentally but stronger physically and healthier as well.
I certainly was surprised by its effects on strength, but good research — and there’s been a fair amount of it by now — doesn’t lie.
What caught my eye about this one is that the author is actually something of a skeptic. Rather than seeing Taijiquan as a progressive exercise that can be done at many levels of intensity, the assumption seems to be that it is useful only as a sort of remedial rehabilitation program for senior citizens who are looking to build the physical capital necessary for a more “strenuous” (western style) workout. Taijiquan gets a lot of good medical press these days, but this article made me stop and wonder how common these attitudes might be in certain corners of the medical profession. Not actually understanding much about the art in question, it would be difficult for such experts to visualize what it might do for a wider range of patients.
I wasn’t quite sure how to classify the next story. It touches on a number of topics including contemporary film, ancient Chinese history and 20th century crime novels. It turns out that Detective Dee has had many careers through the ages. This is a really good article to read if you are interested in the interplay between history and popular culture. And somehow it all ends up as a series of kung fu films. I personally found this to be one of the more surprising and enjoyable articles in this month’s review.
Quick, what is your favorite martial arts film? Now what are your top 50? If you are still working on that second question Newsweek has some suggestions. Incidentally Ip Man (2008) comes in at 35. If you want to find out what they chose as #1 you will need to read the article. In addition to the list, this piece also provides a capsule overview of the genre. It should be noted that they employ a rather loose definition of what counts as a “martial arts film.”
Collin Chou as Seraph in Matrix Reloaded.
Do you remember watching the the fight with Seraph (Collin Chou) in the first Matrix sequel? I do. It might have been my favorite fight sequence in that film. And it turns out that the film’s creator originally intended for it to be carried out by Jet Li, who was very interested in the part. But in a recent interview he went into more detail as to why he ultimately turned it down. It seems that the film’s producers were interested in capturing more than just his on screen performance. They were looking to use motion capture technology to digitally record Jet Li’s movements and build some sort of database.
“I realized the Americans wanted me to film for three months but be with the crew for nine,” Li recently mentioned during a Chinese talk show appearance. “And for six months, they wanted to record and copy all my moves into a digital library. By the end of the recording, the right to these moves would go to them.”
I thought this story was interesting as there are many projects (in the commercial, scholarly and non-profit sectors) that are digitally cataloging the movements of various martial arts masters. Some of these archives are used to produce films and video games, and other go into cultural institutions. Jet Li’s story is revealing as it illustrates some issues with what happens to all of this intellectual property. Are we simply recording for posterity something that is communally owned (an unchanging folk tradition)? Or are we instead attempting to capture a effervescent moment of performance by an individual artist who holds a unique IP claim to their own interpretation of the work. Li seems to have decided that the situation was more the latter and, in his case, walked away from the film. This story is all just a footnote in the history of the Matrix, but it raises interesting ethical and theoretical questions for students of martial arts studies.
So long as we are on the subject of film, I should mention that there is one upcoming movie that I very much want to see. The central premise of the “Kung Fu League” is a fantasy team-up between some of the genera’s greatest characters, Wong Fei Hung, Huo Yuan Jia, Ip Man and Chen Zhen. Clearly its a gimmick, but I am genuinely interested to see how figures from different eras and niches within the kung fu universe are made to address each other. This seems like the perfect time for some inter-textual comedy and reflection on the development of the genre. It will be interesting to see what the director ultimately does with it.
Alexander Bennett in Kendo gear.
The next couple of stories step back from an exclusive focus on the Chinese martial arts. Our first piece is a discussion in the Japan Times of Alexander Bennett’s latest book, Japan: The Ultimate Samurai Guide. Or maybe it should really be titled “an insider’s guide to surviving in the world of the Japanese martial arts.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t, at least momentarily, considered joining a martial arts club upon moving to Japan. However, comparatively few actually take the plunge. One of the biggest hurdles is that clubs can seem to be worlds unto themselves, inaccessible to non-Japanese, even those with fluency in the language. Knowing where to start, especially if you have no previous martial arts experience also puts up barriers: Which is the right martial art for you? What should you look for in a teacher? How can you hope to compete when everyone in the club already seems to have a black belt?
This is where “Japan The Ultimate Samurai Guide,” authored by longtime kendo practitioner Alexander Bennett, hopes to step in, providing answers to some of these questions from the perspective of an insider. The book is part encyclopedia of martial arts — a historical resource tracking the evolution of Japanese martial arts over the last millennium — and part present-day guide to surviving in the world of budō and, more generally, in Japan.
This all sounds very interesting. I really enjoyed Bennett’s work on the history of Kendo, and he is well positioned to write a popular yet highly informed guide to the wider world of Japanese martial arts. I suspect that this one will end up on my Christmas list.
Me leading a break out group of students through a lightsaber set at Ithaca Sabers.
And now for a few stories touching on one of my personal research areas which seems to be getting a lot more exposure in the news lately. First off, a local TV channel visited the lightsaber class that I run here in Ithaca. You never know how these things will go, but I thought that the final story came out quite nicely. Are you interested in what lightsaber combat might look like if approached as a traditional martial art? If so you can check out the full story here.
A lot has happened on the Kung Fu Tea Facebook group over the last month. We looked at antique weapons, pontificated about the value of seminars, and learned what happens when Capoeira meets Kung Fu! Joining the Facebook group is also a great way of keeping up with everything that is happening here at Kung Fu Tea.
“A Sword Fight.” 1917, magic lantern slide showing Wang Wen-lin and Wang Shhh-Ching. Source: The Digital Collections of Springfield College.
Zombies
The air is distinctly crisp, the end of October is upon us, and Halloween rapidly approaches. Clearly, it is time to talk about zombies. We seem to go through periods of collective fascination with the image of empty human husks shambling across a barren landscape, neither truly alive or dead. These monsters fascinate us not because of their cunning or strength. Taken one at a time they are incapable of accomplishing any goal. Their only defining characteristic is a paradoxical immunity to death. They just keep walking across the historical landscape.
Jurgen Habermas had a lot to say about zombies though, to the best of my knowledge he never used the term. Rather than the Walking Dead on the outskirts of Atlanta, he was more concerned with the sorts of failed states that sometimes appeared on the historical stage. In his writing on the “Legitimization Crisis” (1973) he noted that the loss of popular support didn’t always result in revolution or state collapse. Instead one often encountered a situation where the institutions of government continued to amble along (often for an improbable length of time), and yet found themselves unable to effectively call on society’s resources to accomplish their core political goals. The government had clearly lost its authority, yet no replacement could be seen on the horizon.
Both a social theorist and public intellectual, Habermas is one of the great thinkers of the 20thcentury. This does not mean that his work has been universally accepted. He famously clashed with Derrida, and Habermas wrote a widely cited essay in the early 1980s taking aim at the excesses of post-modern thought. Still, as the Western democracies approach a critical historical crossroads while gripped by social and political paralysis, it’s hard to see his work on the origin and nature of the legitimization crisis as anything other than prophetic.
To oversimplify, Habermas began by asking students to think carefully about how authority emerges and functions within a social system. Such systems are composed of the governmental institutions (both formal and informal) that wield authority, socio-cultural considerations (values, identities, norms, etc) and economic exchanges (who gets what resource). In a well-functioning social system it may not be necessary to split out these various realms as they will tend to blend into one another, supported by overarching social discourses. Individual values will uphold political authority, as will economic markets.
Issues arise when competing discourses emerge and the fractures between these realms become more pronounced. Or we might imagine them as being constructed or reconstructed by a new set of competitive discourses. More specifically, a “crisis of legitimacy” erupts when citizens cease to believe that a political system reflects their socio-cultural values, or that the old values that it is based on continue to have utilitarian (political/economic) value. In this instance their “life world” (lebenswelt) ruptures. One would hope that the political system would adapt to the new reality, but that is never the only possibility. It might rupture into competing factions (civil wars) or simply shamble along as a failed state, incapable of drawing on the creative resources of society.
That brings us back to the zombies. One does not have to watch the news for very long to realize that modern nation states are not the only institutions that can suffer this fate. Indeed, we are increasingly surrounded by all sorts of economic and cultural institutions who have been crippled by rapid social change. If I were to level a single criticism at Habermas it would be that he drew the boundaries of his discussion of the legitimization crisis much too narrowly, focusing primarily on states. Historical investigation would seem to support the hypothesis that all sorts of other social values and cultural institutions must fall into crisis before the nation-state (typically a very resilient entity) is imperiled. Thus, for the logic of Habermas to be true at the macro level (something that is hard to empirically test) it must first hold true at the at the micro level (which is more easily observed).
Admittedly, such a project would explicitly contradict Habermas’ avowed goal to re-establish “grand theory” as a valued realm distinct from the plebeian world of “empirical testing.” I personally have always been a bit suspicious of “grand theory,” probably because it is not very helpful when one is attempting to write local history. In any event, good theories should be portable, and all sorts of “life worlds” (including the martial arts) could be thought of as possessing governing structures, social/cultural values and mechanisms of economic exchange. In fact, one would be hard pressed to come up with a more apt description of the social structure of traditional martial arts communities.
A detailed look at a pair of Shuang Gau. This is pair measures 95 cm in length and may be of a similar vintage to the swords seen in these images. Source: http://www.swordsantiqueweapons.com/s1015_full.html
Who Killed Kung Fu?
It is not difficult to perceive the signs of a legitimization crisis within the traditional martial arts. Class enrollments are down almost across the board and many schools struggle to stay open. Traditional styles are openly derided in one-sided contests with MMA or Muay Thai stylists on social media. There even seems to be fewer martial arts movies.
Yet not all of the trends are easily interpreted. There is more high quality popular, and even academic, publishing on these systems being produced and consumed than ever before. Judged by the quality of the information we have access to, we are living in the golden age of kung fu scholarship. Yet popular magazines are struggling. While the potential market for information on the traditional martial arts is expanding in terms of the number of serious readers, its dollar value has radically diminished. While this trend has hurt traditional publishers and book sellers, more small scale “prosumers” are putting out content (typically on Youtube or Facebook) than ever before.
The general state of affairs might best be summed up as one of confusion. The leading traditional forces that have structured the Chinese martial arts community still exist. We still have large lineage-based schools. There are a number of stylistic and regional associations, as well as commercial producers of both books and training gear. Yet they all seem unable to lead the community toward a meaningful revitalization effort. In the mean-time, large numbers of students adopt unorthodox modes of practices or simply leave the martial arts all together.
As with zombies, I am not aware that Habermas ever mentioned the martial arts community. Yet if he did, I suspect that he would not be surprised by the general state of affairs. Drawing on the more sociological aspects of his work, I he would note our situation is particularly complicated as we face a legitimization crisis on not one, but two, fronts. Further, these two sources of tension might interact with each other in complicated ways. All of this, in turn, stems from a change in the cost of communication, making transformative contact between people much less expensive than it had been. Yet to see how a change in one social variable (the price of communication) might lead to two slightly different types of legitimization crises, we first need to revisit the last era of major social/political realignment within the Chinese martial arts.
During the Republic period internal communication within China was relatively expensive. Even the Chinese government, which dedicated substantial resources to the project, found it practically impossible to transmit its point of view on critical diplomatic issues to citizens in Western countries. In this sort of situation, effective communication required a sponsor with substantial resources. This forced the Chinese martial arts into alliances with various political actors. Traditionally these had either been the Imperial military, or local social elites who needed to maintain a degree of order within their own village, marketplace or clan. As such, Chinese martial arts networks derived their legitimacy from their relationship with regional or clan based identities. At the risk of vastly oversimplifying a complicated situation, it was their tight alignment with these narrow forces that gave them access to (and legitimacy within) local communities.
None of this was particularly helpful to the wave of national reformers who came to power after 1911. Seeing the importance of budo in the creation of a cohesive and modern Japanese state, they wished to do something similar in China. Yet that required talking and thinking about the martial arts in a fundamentally different way. What had been particularistic and local now needed to be universal and open. Whereas local elites had benefited from their relationship with martial arts societies, these allegiances needed to be transferred to the national level.
A variety of new institutions were created to do just that. Formal establishments like the New Wushu and Guoshu movements sought to give the state direct control over the organization of local martial arts societies. Other reformers (such as the Jingwu movement, and much of the Taijiquan community) favored a less statist (but equally nationalist) strategy in which universal creation myths were promoted and “lineage” communities that may have once been very local were reimagined as being national in scope.
It should be remembered that this new vision of the Chinese martial arts did not emerge in a vacuum. Rather, it was the result of a sophisticated debate on what the “new China” should be. Nor was the victory of these views immediate or even total. A full blown legitimization crisis emerged within the Chinese martial arts. The Guoshu program looked very powerful on paper, but most of China’s local martial artists simply ignored its tournaments and directives as they did not directly address their values or local needs. Worse yet, many intellectuals within the May 4thmovement openly derided its goals and methods. The result was a long legitimization dispute which Jon Nielson and I described in our book.
Yet from this transformation arose the system of allotting “authority” within the traditional Chinese martial arts that most of us now take for granted. A system of dual legitimization was created. Formal political institutions (first Guoshu, and later Wushu) claimed legitimacy through their adherence to scientific and modernizing principals which placed the martial arts at the disposal of the state. This became the dominant way in which the Chinese martial arts were legitimated within the PRC. In this case the “political element” of the community was a set of actual formal institutions answerable to the government. Outside of that realm, a new set of “traditions” were made available to national, and then universal, communities. Regardless of your location or country of birth, one could experience some aspect of the Chinese nation by studying in any one of these open, commercial, schools. They reconfigured China’s traditional folk arts in such a way that they were now available to students anywhere in the world. This social system gained dominance in Taiwan, the South East Asian diaspora and the West.
A “Sword Dancer” by Hadda Morrison. Source: Harvard Digital Archives.
Recent changes within the Western social realm have created a new set of challenges for this second mode of legitimization. The rise of a renewed emphasis on empirical verification in many places in Western society during the 1970s-1990s posed a direct challenge to all sorts of “arguments by authority”. One of the places that we can see this playing out is in an erosion of public trust in all sorts of “expert” bodies. The decline of traditional religious communities might be another place (though here we must also account for the modernization and related secularization hypotheses).
Rather than allowing either the nation or “tradition” to arbitrate what techniques were effective (and therefore legitmate), a new generation of martial artists, not culturally beholden to the norms of the previous systems, advocated putting such practices to the test. This tendency has long been present in the West. Indeed, we can even see it in Bruce Lee’s writings in the 1970s. Yet by the 1990s this was increasingly the dominant current of thought which would give rise to practices like the Mixed Martial Arts.
It is critical to realize that the traditional arts involved in these disputes are in crisis not simply because they often lose in Youtube challenge matches. Being repeatedly pummeled in viral videos certainly doesn’t help their cause. Yet even if they were to win there would still be an almost identical crisis of legitimacy as the older generation of Masters (who hold the keys of “tradition”) no longer have the ability to determine when violent conflict is publicly allowed and how it will be socially interpreted. Under these circumstances even a win represents a loss of standing for the traditional faction as it suggests that young fighters training under “scientific conditions” can succeed largely without their blessing.
I was recently part of an (extended) conversation that illustrated this situation quite nicely. It began when I was chatting with a Wing Chun instructor of my own generation about the state of the art today. While others take a dim view of “kids these days,” he has a cheerful disposition and is something of an optimist. He is also an outspoken advocate of placing non-cooperative sparring (often with people from outside your style) at the center of serious Wing Chun training.
Needless to say, doing so tends to have a definite effect on one’s body structure. You can still apply Wing Chun concepts to most competitive sparring sessions, but it doesn’t look like a sticky hands drills. Nor does it look like anything you would see in the unarmed forms (unless you really knew what you were looking for). In fact, my own Sifu (who also engaged in some similar practices) often told me that in actual combat my fighting should not look like Wing Chun. I shouldn’t necessarily appear to have any style at all. My movements should just appear to be clean and effective.
As more and more Wing Chun students start to spar at local “open mat nights,” my friend was happy to note that he could see visible changes within the physical culture (perhaps the “habitus”) of the younger generation of students. At least that was his opinion. He noted that the tactical and athletic issues facing students today are vastly different than sixty years ago when Ip Man (who, for the record, was also an innovator) began to teach in Hong Kong. Our approach to the art needs to adapt just as his did.
This opinion was not shared by an older instructor in the same field who I had spoken with some time earlier. Sparring, especially with random individuals from outside one’s style, was a problem in his view. It led to students becoming “confused.” What the younger sifu saw as an “effective defense” in a practical situation, he perceived only as sloppy and ill informed. Indeed, he proclaimed that this wasn’t kung fu at all. Mirroring a criticism I have heard dozens of other times, he decried such sparring as “mere kickboxing,” and proclaimed that in fact no actual martial art was being practiced. In his view, if one’s Wing Chun did not look the same in a fight as in the training hall, it wasn’t Wing Chun at all. Nor was he willing to concede that modern combat sports (such as boxing, kickboxing or MMA) might be “authentic” martial arts that also required huge amounts of dedication and training.
Beyond merely being a difference of opinions, it is also worth noting that these instructors drew their personal authority from very different sources. The more senior instructor leaned heavily (as one might guess) on tradition and lineage as a source of authority. The younger coach based the legitimacy of his views in large part on the success of his students in many local mixed style tournaments. In the social world of the older Sifu, only the authorized guardians of tradition were able to judge if something met the criteria of “good” Wing Chun. But in a public boxing match, anyone can add up the points on the score card at the end of a fight.
The real threat to traditional modes of legitimization within this particular community is not that the younger Sifu’s students might be seen losing a fight on Youtube. Authorities have always found it easy to explain away “dissidents with bad attitudes” when they lose. The actual crisis occurs when more modern interpretations of Wing Chun are seen to publicly win, providing an alternative framework for judging the legitimacy of someone’s training practice.
Beyond this we must also consider the economic basis of these arts. Who can teach, and who can profit, from the dissemination of knowledge? While related to the issue of authority, movement in this area can also trigger a distinct set of legitimization crises.
In a 2014 paper, Adam Frank looked at the issue of “family secrets” in one Taiji community regarding who was authorized to benefit from teaching or withholding this information. When this community had few contacts outside of China, and little opportunity to benefit from lucrative teaching positions in Europe and North America, there was less concern as to who taught this material. Once the international profile of the school began to rise, a reconsolidation occurred in which some previously authorized teachers were marginalized within the community, thus reassigning the “right” to teach the complete art to a smaller number of “family members.”
Students of Martial Arts Studies are free to have a variety of opinions about this, and all sorts of values are implicated in the story that Frank lays out. Yet from Habermas’ perspective, such an outcome was not unexpected. One would naturally expect that the economic aspect of how benefits are apportioned within the community to match the “political” dimension of how authority is defined. In a stable social system those who are widely perceived as the legitimate teachers should be the one’s to economically benefit from the spread of the community. This would provide them with an incentive to make sure that the system perpetuates itself.
Yet these bearers of tradition are not challenged only by shifts in social/cultural values. The radical decrease in the cost of communication has impaired their ability to monetize their authority, even in areas of the community that share their values. Selling books and magazine articles was, in the past, a critical aspect of building a strong community. From the 1970s-1990s it allowed leaders to both profit from their teaching while ensuring that their understanding of a system’s values and techniques remained hegemonic. Again, in a stable social system the political, economic and social discourses reinforce one another.
The rise of social media dealt a serious blow to the martial arts publishing industry. In its place we now have an explosion of Youtube channels in which the very same senior students and junior instructors (and sometimes simply random class members) who would have previously been the core consumers of centrally distributed materials, are now producing their own instructional content.
This is an important phenomenon as it reflects a shift in the values within the underlying social system. It is easy to criticize the uneven quality of much of this free material, but even a sceptic must stand back and admire the sheer volume of information that is now being produced. While in a previous generation one might have defined their identity (at least in part) by the sorts of media that one bought and consumed, individuals now make similar judgements based on what they produce and disseminate. In the age of the “prosumer” (or producer/consumer), broadcasting your views on Wing Chun has become a valid way of performing one’s membership in this community. Needless to say, this explosion of free communication has made it nearly impossible for the guardians of tradition to dominate the economic exploitation of the art.
Indeed, many of the most profitable and fastest growing areas within the TCMA seem to be the most marginal. The announcement of newly discovered lineages, weapon sparring leagues, or attempts to “rediscover” lost arts through the interpretation of historical texts all elicit excitement. And at least some of these things should. Yet in some respects they all diminish the center’s ability to monetize its claims to traditional, lineage based, authority.
A photograph (probably 1930s) showing a marketplace martial arts demonstration. Note the Shuang Gau led by the man on the left. Source: The personal collection of Benjamin Judkins
The Stakes
So how does it all end? Within the popular press we are frequently treated to dire predictions about the death of kung fu. I think it is worth remembering that the martial art have suffered other legitimization crises in the not so distant past and they are still very much with us today. Indeed, a brewing crisis seems to be exactly what opens to the door to “political change” (in the sense that Habermas used the term) within a social system.
Perhaps the most obvious possibility is that the utilitarian and empirical values that are widely held by practitioners of the various arts come to be written into our collective understanding of their “traditional” identity. Given that these notions of “tradition” were almost entirely socially constructed in the 1920s-1950s, that may be less difficult than one might at first glance suppose. Indeed, if you carefully read the front-matter of many of martial arts books produced between the 1910s and the 1940s you will discover that in point of fact the martial artists of the Republican period can provide a lot of ideological cover for today’s rationalizers and modernizers. Alternatively, a shift in our current social values might lead Western consumers back towards a more community focused appreciation of the martial arts at some point. These sorts of trends are very difficult to predict in the long run.
A less pleasant possibility, however, is increasing schism. The issues in these disputes are not merely ones of style or effectiveness. While those points may be debated, more fundamental questions about our core social values and identities are clearly implicated in all of this. How do we know good kung fu when we see it, and who is allowed to make that determination? As Paul Bowman noted, the gap between traditional modes of establishing authority, and those favored by either utilitarian norms or academic training (in the case of historical debates), is unlikely to be bridged. It is when a substantial segment of the community increasingly tunes out, or simply walks away, that we see the emergence of zombie institutions. They continue to shamble along, but with no real ability to draw on the resources of their members or to respond to their essential demands. It remains to be seen how all of this will play out in the current era, but like the younger Sifu discussed above, I remain optimistic.
