This is a part of my study draftnotes, less or more ordered, about history and nomenclature of Wushu generally, more in particular focused about orthodox fighting system of Chenjiagou, the latter my specific ambit.
Among this studying working-flow, I evidenced and tried to organize in the most coherent possible way some common parts ascribable or linked to Wing Chun Quan, for a contextualization of the style as one of Wushu proper method.
Besides historical-social analysis, topic remains nomenclature and terminology which could be considered as one of the objective data available for attempting some crossing-references and etimologies activity.
Analogies and parallelisms among Chenjiagou Ortodox fighting system and Wing Chun Boxing share a common consideration as both as traditional Chinese Wushu methods, if by “traditional” is meant what
Chineses themselves indicate by the term 传统Chuán tǒng.
Study of modern and contemporary historical events seems to document that both Wing Chun Quan and Taiji Quan shared had and still having today common or at least comparable features, characteristics and dynamics into the development and spreading in the West.
Notes of analysis of available historical documents follows, with nomenclature study and – where possible – English and Italian annotations.
Friday morning posts are usually written the day before, and it just so happens that this week’s Thursday falls on Valentine’s Day. That complicates things for reasons that are both understandable and a few which are a little less obvious. It would be an understatement to say that my wife is very supportive of my writing and research within Martial Arts Studies. What success I have had in this field is due in large part to her. And that is not simply the sort of trite truism that one is expected to say on Valentines Day. Over the years Tara has become extremely well versed in the Martial Arts Studies literature. Even more critically, she generously edits almost all of my book chapters, article manuscripts, conference papers and blog posts. To put that into some sort of perspective, over the years that adds up to about 3,500 single spaced pages (or well over two million words) of blog posts alone. And she does this happily and with important insights.
So, to make a long story short, the very last thing that I want to give her on Valentine’s Day is another essay. A note of heartfelt appreciation might be nice. Yet by the time the rest of you are reading this on Friday morning, the holiday will have past. Such is my dilemna.
In an effort to stick to my regular publishing schedule, and also keep things brief for my wife, this post is my personal list of women who helped to shape the practice (and accessibility) of the martial arts in Southern China. Some of these figures are well known, while others are obscure. Some are basically legendary, but a few made important contributions to the practice of these hand combat systems in more recent times. In all cases, a close study of their lives reveals something new or unexpected about the evolution and development of the southern Chinese martial arts.
To underscore that last point, I decided to arrange this list in chronological order. We will be starting in the Ming Dynasty and working our way up to the post-war era. Obviously, there are thousands of female martial artists making important contributions today. But I have decided to stick with individuals whom I have already discussed on the blog to keep today’s post brief. Click on any of the links below to find a detailed discussion of everyone on the list.
I suspect that everyone reading this blog will be familiar with the legend of Ng Moy and Yim Wing Chun. Wing Chun’s creation mythology asserts that the former was a nun who survived the burning of Shaolin, while the later was her student and the first disciple of her new art. It should be noted that female martial arts heroes became all the rage in both the wuxia novels and more popular stories produced in the final years of the Qing and opening decade of the Republic. In actual fact most (though not all) martial artists in the late imperial period were male.
As Douglas Wile has noted, these stories are an important piece of evidence that help us to understand the ideological work that the Chinese martial arts were called upon to perform during this period. And it seems likely that they did inspire many women and girls to take up the actual practice of the arts during the later Republic era. But what historical sources did these mythmakers draw from? Was there a grain of historical truth hidden in the literary creation of figures like Ng Moy?
China has had its share of charismatic, revolutionary, female leaders. One of the most interesting was Tang Saier, who led a large revolt against the state during the early Ming dynasty, before eluding capture by vanishing into the country’s network of poorly regulated temples (or at least that is what the Yongle Emperor seemed to believe). Her story will be of interest to all readers of Kung Fu Tea, particularly those who are looking for the literary roots of figures like Ng Moy or Yim Wing Chun. You can read more about her rebellion, and literary after-life, here.
Two White Cranes by Ohara Koson ca. 1910. Source: Wikimedia.
Ding’s story is important on a number of levels. Hers is one of the few accounts we have of hand combat instruction during the first half of the Qing dynasty, and so it is important on those grounds alone. And it is also one of the few accounts that we have a female martial arts instructor gaining prominence prior to the advent of the Jingwu era.
Yet we are also fortunate to have written documents and oral folklore that can be (more or less reliably) dated to specific periods. This gives students of Chinese martial studies an unparalleled opportunity to study the process by which local martial arts teacher are deified through the mythmaking process. Ding is worthy of our admiration because both her teachings, and the legend that she inspired, had a notable impact on the martial arts of Fujian province.
Image taken from a vintage french postcard showing soldiers gambling in Yunnan province. Note that the standing soldier on the left is holding a hudiedao in a reverse grip. Source: Author’s personal collection.
Our next figure is a bit of a deviation. While a martial artist, she is probably best remembered as a professional gambler. More specifically, she is remembered as the owner of a gambling house that had the bad fortune of winning quite a bit of money from the son of a local magistrate. In world of high stakes gambling, as in life, one sometimes loses by winning.
Fei Ching Po makes our list not because of any specific contributions to the practice of boxing. Rather, her life is heuristically useful. News of her rise to prominence, and rapid decline, were first reported in the Canton Register. These articles were later reprinted in James Holman’s best-selling 1840 travelogue, Travels in China, New Zealand, New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, Cape Horn, Etc. Etc. Her life is an important illustration of marginal social classes that made up Guangzhou’s boxing community in the early 19th century. Further, her story is most likely the first account of a non-fictional female practitioner of the Chinese martial arts to be widely circulated in the English language literature. Click here if you are interested in further exploring the links between gambling and the martial arts in “Old Canton.”
A photo of female martial artists from the Jingwu Anniversary Book. The woman on the left is Chen Shichao, one of the most vocal campaigners for the equality of female martial artists within Jingwu. She toured China and south east Asia promoting female involvement in the martial arts.
Accounts of individuals such as Fei Ching Po suggest that female martial artists certainly existed prior to 1911. Such individuals also appear to have been somewhat uncommon and hence noteworthy. Yet by the mid 1920s tens of thousands of women, including many students in higher status middle and high schools, were practicing the traditional martial arts. Indeed, most newspaper accounts of large public martial arts displays during the 1920s and 1930s mention the presence of female participants. Their mastery of the martial arts felt “revolutionary” to spectators at the time. It was taken as clear evidence of the modern, progressive and scientific nature of China’s reformed martial arts. And that was generally seen as a positive sign of China’s modernization. Yet how did this come about?
One cannot understand the progressive turn within China’s elite martial arts community (and its subsequent embrace by a large part of the urban middle class) without discussing the critical contributions of the Jingwu Association. And you can’t really understand the appeal of that group without exploring the life and career of the ever energetic, and highly charismatic, Chen Shichao. The sister of Chen Gongzhe (one of the group’s key founding members), Shichao made sure that China’s new feminist sensibilities were reflected in Jingwu’s public statements and internal organization. She ran classes for female martial artists and eventually created a semi-autonomous “women’s section.” She made sure that Jingwu was advertised in the sorts of magazine’s that housewives read, and emphasized that a truly modern China could not be achieved without upgrading the human capital of female students just as quickly as their male counterparts. The openness of the modern Chinese martial arts to female students is due in large part to the early reforms promoted by Chen Shichao within the Jingwu Association. You can read more about her efforts here and here.
Mok Kwai Lan posing with a student. She is 68 in this photograph., Source: Real Kung Fu Vol. 1 Number 7.
Mok Kwai Lan is not (yet) a household name. Yet almost all kung fu students, or even fans of Hong Kong action films, are familiar with her husband Wong Fei Hung. Still, she was a well-trained martial artist and bonesetter long before she became Wong’s fourth wife (or more accurately, concubine). During the course of their marriage she was instrumental in running not just the household, but also Wong’s clinic and martial arts classes. She was responsible for instructing classes of female students, and even led the region’s first all-female lion dance society. Following her husband’s death, she moved to Hong Kong and established a school where she taught for many decades.
Indeed, Mok is a fascinating figure as her life transcended so many generational boundaries. Born in the late 19thcentury she would begin her training at the time of the Boxer Uprising, come into her own as a martial artist during the Republic, see the rise of Hong Kong’s golden era of Kung Fu culture in the 1950s, and even outlive Bruce Lee. By the time of her passing in 1982 Mok had seen much of the modern history of the Chinese martial arts. Indeed, she had shaped generations of students as she brought these practices firmly into the present. You can read more about her remarkable life here.
As many readers will already know, Master Hawkins Cheung Hok Jin passed away on Sunday February 3rd 2019, in Los Angeles. Within the martial arts community regrets take many forms. One of my great regrets is that I had never had a chance to study with Hawkins Cheung. Yet he still had a profound effect on my understanding of both the nature of this art and the wider Wing Chun community. When Jon Nielson and I were researching our book on the development of Wing Chun, we frequently found ourselves coming back to the published accounts and interviews that Hawkins Cheung had provided over the years. We felt that these were some of the best, most reliable, descriptions of Wing Chun’s early years in Hong Kong (1950s-1960s) that one could hope to find.
Some of these accounts have already gained a fairly wide following within the Wing Chun community as they provided a remarkably frank assessment of Hawkins Cheung’s relationship with both Bruce Lee (his close friend and schoolmate), as well as Ip Man, his Sifu. It should be noted that throughout his life he spoke on many other subjects. He offered his own assessment of the true nature of Jeet Kun Do (JKD) and William Cheung’s innovations, styling his own instruction “classic Wing Chun” at least partially in response to these other developments within the community. Readers of Black Belt magazine will even remember Hawkins Cheung as an early and passionate advocate of a more combative approach to Taijiquan.
There is much that one could say about the life and career of such a remarkable martial artist. Cheung possessed a restless spirit always seeking progress. Throughout his life he sought to not just master Wing Chun, but to understand what made it work. This same curiosity would lead him to explore several other styles. Hawkins Cheung was a student of Goju-Ryu Karate in which he achieved a fourth Dan. He also developed a strong interest in Wu Taijiquan, which he approached with his signature direct practicality. After coming to the United States he set up a succession of successful schools in Los Angeles and introduced countless students (including individuals like Phillip Romero and Phil Morris) to Ip Man’s art.
By any standard Hawkins Cheung’s career was remarkable. He was one of just a handful of individuals who really shaped Wing Chun’s spread to North America. This brings us to a second, deeper, level of regret. Despite his many contributions, Cheung’s life and career are not well understood, except perhaps by his closest students. Bruce Lee was a luminary figure who ignited a Kung Fu fever. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge his role in creating a global environment where Wing Chun might succeed. But we must also acknowledge his absolute talent for sucking the oxygen out of a room, or dominating any conversation that he might appear in.
Sadly, Hawkins Cheung is typically discussed only as Bruce’s sidekick. When reporters or researchers approached him, it was almost always to ask about his friend Bruce. This seemed to bother Cheung on a few levels, the most important of which was that Bruce had been a very close friend, and losing him was painful. Yet in death Lee’s myth grew to such proportions that it was impossible for anyone to escape his shadow.
All of this is in equal parts ironic and regrettable when thinking about Hawkins Cheung. It is ironic as he conveyed to current students so much historical knowledge about Hong Kong in the 1950s, yet accounts of his own career in the 1970s-1990s are extremely rare. It is regrettable as his life growing up in Hong Kong, and immigration to the West, mirrored Wing Chun’s global journey. Indeed, the two are inextricably linked. Serious historians and social scientists would better understand the process by which the Chinese martial arts succeeded as a global phenomenon if we could write his story. Even if Bruce Lee was critical to igniting the fire, it lasted because individuals like Hawkins Cheung were capable of feeding it.
Perhaps the first step toward better understanding is to simply appreciate what we already have. In the remainder of this post I will explore a basic outline of Hawkins Cheung’s life and contributions to the Asian martial arts. It is my hope that this will not only provide some insight into him, but also the ways in which history itself is memorialized and created. Indeed, traditional Chinese lineage structures have been making sense of the present by linking certain sorts of facts about the past for a long time. These highly stylized patterns of remembrance tell us something about the environment and sorts of challenges that our community faces. Yet other types of memory, ones that explicitly focus on the decades of quiet effort that are so often forgotten in our rush to construct martial immortality, are necessary to build a fuller understanding of how we got here and where we might be going. Hawkins Cheung’s life and career may be particularly important in this respect.
The Fighter
Only a limited amount of information about Hawkins Cheung’s early life seems to have made it into English language discussions. He was born sometime around 1940 and grew up in Kowloon. After 1949 the area became increasingly crowded with refugees and homeless individuals fleeing across the border with Communist controlled Guangdong. Even as a child Cheung was acutely aware of the bleak nature of life in Hong Kong emphasizing (as a repeated talking point in his later interviews) the problems with overcrowding, unemployment, homelessness and organized crime. These structural limitations would weigh heavily on the group of sometimes angry young men who gathered to train with Ip Man.
Still, Hawkins Cheung was more fortunate than most. He grew up in a relatively wealthy family. His father owned a luxurious car and could employ a professional driver to ferry his young son to school. It was also natural that Hawkins Cheung would be drawn to the martial arts given his small size, propensity for aggression and boundless energy. It was at the Francis Xavier Intermediate School that he first met and befriended the similarly predisposed Bruce Lee, who had recently been expelled (with good cause) from the much more prestigious LaSalle school. I will refer anyone who is interested in the gory details of that episode to Matthew Polly’s recent biography.
Some of our best accounts of life within Ip Man’s school come from a series of interviews that Hawkins Cheung gave to Inside Kung-Fu magazine in 1991. He speaks frankly about the competitive nature of outside challenge fights, but also the internal Chi Sao culture that developed among some of the younger Wing Chun students. Everyone wanted to be “top dog”, and Hawkins Cheung was at a real disadvantage due to his small size. I think that many Wing Chun students today will be able to relate to the frustrations that he expresses in these interviews.
Interestingly Ip Man, who didn’t typically handle the day to day training of the younger students, intervened at a point when he may have been considering quitting, guided him through an exploration of the basic defensive structures in the art’s unarmed forms. This helped Hawkins Cheung to build an understanding of Wing Chun that worked for him. Readers should remember that even by Hong Kong standards Ip Man was a pretty short individual of slight build. It would have been hard to think of a better mentor when addressing these problems.
Hawkins Cheung continued to study with Ip Man until 1959. One of the most important, yet often overlooked, causes of Wing Chun’s global success was the chronic under-development of Hong Kong’s educational sector in the 1950s and 1960s. There simply were not enough slots at Hong Kong University for all of the good students coming out the city’s school system. Nor were there enough high paying jobs to satisfy the children of the city’s middle class. The fact that Hong Kong was a British territory meant it was entirely possible for the children of wealthy families to do something about this.
Ip Ching has noted that many of his father’s better off young students traveled to North America, Australia or Europe to pursue both University degrees and better job prospects. Bruce Lee was far from alone in this exodus. Indeed, this pattern of global dispersal ensured that when Wing Chun became famous there were already a handful of well qualified individuals spread throughout the globe who could promote the art. Meanwhile, others had already acquired the language skills and life experience necessary to immigrate to the West and set up schools of their own.
Hawkins Cheung decided to further his educational prospects in Australia, but it seems that many of his experiences there were far from positive. As he noted in subsequent interviews, WWII had resulted in a high degree of anti-Japanese/anti-Asian prejudice, and it was not uncommon for Chinese students to be subject to racist attacks and other forms of violence. There were also tensions within the local Asian expatriate community, and Hawkins Cheung reports frequent fights with Thai kickboxers.
After finishing college Cheung returned to Hong Kong in 1962. He continued to study with Ip Man (now as a more senior student) until the time of his death in 1972. Adding things up, it appears that Hawkins Cheung enjoyed about 15 years of study as Ip Man’s student, both before and after college. While many individuals trained with Ip Man, due to retention problems and Ip Man’s many moves, relatively few students could claim such long periods of continuous training.
While in Hong Kong, Hawkins Cheung explored other arts, including Goju-Ryu Karate. Despite what one might assume, it was not uncommon for Chinese individuals to study Japanese arts (in either Hong Kong or Australia) during this period. What was much less common was for someone to maintain close ties to both communities while gaining a high degree of expertise. These styles were, after all, peer competitors.
Cheung relates that he was fascinated by the speed and power that Goju-Ryu practitioners could project through years of practice. He desperately wanted to learn how to counter this using Wing Chun structures, as well as to improve his own abilities. Yet he was also attracted to Karate as it offered a place where legal, socially approved, sparring could happen without the fear of police or gang involvement. He considered this essential to his training.
In fact, it seems that Hawkins Cheung was almost as skilled a diplomat as he was fighter. That might be a surprise given his often direct, kinetic and demanding teaching ethos. But even within the complex and fractured political landscape that emerged following Ip Man’s death, it is hard to think of any of his students who immigrated to the West who were more generally liked. As anyone who has read his articles or interviews knows, Hawkins Cheung was not shy about making his opinions known. Whether the subject was the true nature of JKD or the Taijiquan’s combative potential, Cheung was always willing to wade into the fray. Yet he remained almost universally respected. As any political scientist can tell you, diplomacy is also a martial art.
Romero’s reminisces are valuable and readers are encouraged to head on over and examine them in full. They suggest an outline of the California period of Cheung’s career. But beyond that, they provide the same sorts of highly textured description of a school life that Hawkins Cheung himself had given us when describing his own training with Ip Man. Indeed, these rich descriptions are every bit as valuable to students of martial arts studies as any biographical details that may be related.
Romero paints a picture (largely supported by accounts from other students) of Hawkins Cheung as a demanding teacher. If as Sifu he embodied the “fatherly” archetype, his was the exacting and goal driven Chinese patriarch.
On a more technical level, as a still relatively young man he was concerned with how Wing Chun structures could be made to work in a variety of combative environments. The sorts of students who thrived in his early schools were those willing to risk bruises, split lips and other injuries in full contact drills and sparring that didn’t employ the sorts of safety equipment that would now be standard issue. Rather than MMA gloves (which did not yet exist) Romero relates how he found Cheung and his students using lightly padded gardening gloves where the fingers had been cut off.
Romero followed Cheung through multiple school locations. After closing his martial arts supply business (something that I would like to learn more about) to focus exclusively on teaching Hawkins Cheung opened a larger, two story school on Venice Blvd., “not far from the Culver mall.” This must have been a good location as Romero goes on to describe nightly classes with over 90 students split into three separate sections. This was followed up by another class for the senior students who helped to teach large sections of beginners. Still, not everyone was interested in the intensity and “reality” of the training on offer.
I must confess, however, that many of the reminisces of Cheung’s training in this period remind me of the sorts of contact levels and expectations that I experienced when I began my own Wing Chun apprenticeship some years later. Prior to the eruption of the UFC, MMA and BJJ there was more combative interest (and talent) being invested into the traditional striking arts. Yet every art has a certain reputation, or set of social expectations, which allows it to survive in a competitive marketplace. These seem to have changed dramatically for many systems following the rise of MMA.
In 1989 Hawkins Cheung closed the Ventura Blvd. school, and opened his final location a few miles away. This third school ran until 2014. It seems that with age his interests and teaching methods evolved (though his intensity did not necessarily mellow). And Romero points out that the blossoming of BJJ and MMA had a definite impact on the type of training that happened.
Still, Cheung’s contributions to the global martial arts community were not confined to his teaching activities. His name appeared in martial arts magazines, both in articles and letters, throughout the 1980s. Nor did he confine his contributions to the discussion of Wing Chun. He even emerged a popular advocate of a more combative understanding of Taijiquan, another art that he was deeply invested in.
In the early 1990s Hawkins Cheung gave what can only be considered a seminal (four-part) interview to Inside Kung Fu magazine. It must be considered mandatory reading by anyone interested in the development of Wing Chun during the post-WWII period. And it is hard to understate how much these articles shaped subsequent discussion of Bruce Lee’s legacy. Just check the footnotes of any of his biographical treatment published after 1992 to see what I mean.
Memory is not an automatic thing, at either the individuals or the social level. We are all constantly curating our past as we choose what to remember and what we will allow to slip away. This process of remembering and forgetting is actually key to the construction of intergenerational Chinese martial arts communities. The social identity of a practitioner is defined, at least to some extent, by the lineage that they identify with.
Yet lineage is not history. It tells us a strong story about who we are now, but the ahistorical nature of the legend building process suggests that this way of viewing the martial arts is much less helpful if our goal is to understand how exactly we got here, or where we might be going.
The irony of Master Cheung’s life is that through his interviews he did much to preserve our history. Yet his story, like that of so many instructors in his generation, remains to be fully explored. Even in death he is still remembered as “Bruce Lee’s friend,” which is true, and something that he was proud of. Yet if this is the only fact that we remember, we are in danger of forgetting so much more about how Wing Chun evolved as it moved onto the global stage.
It is my fervent hope that in the coming months we will see more detailed remembrances and discussions of a critical career, one that should not be forgotten. But we should also take this moment to ask what other work must be done. Oral history projects are an important means by which non-specialists can contribute to the preservation of martial arts communities. It is something of a truism to say that the martial arts are always evolving, but we are in a particularly critical moment when so much of the post-WWII history of the TCMA will either be preserved or lost. All of this will only become our history if we first choose to remember it.
Some of the essays at Kung Fu Tea are the result of several days of careful research and thinking. This is not going to be one of those pieces.
I started out with a great topic. It was my goal to explore the stochastic progress of duanbing, a type of competitive short-weapon fencing, conducted with specific safety gear, which has been on the verge of “really taking off” within the TCMA community ever since the late 1920s. As I began to assemble some articles and descriptions of the first phase of duanbing practice in the 1930s, one name just kept coming up. In fact, I ran across so many references to this individual that I just had to find out more about him.
Sadly, he has nothing to do with Chinese fencing. But Col. Voldemar Katchorovsky did make quite an impression on anyone who met him. His colorful career suggests something about the general attitudes which shaped the development of Guoshu, as well as the types of adventurous individuals, peripatetic either by choice or circumstance, who shaped the global transmission of all martial arts (both Eastern and Western) during the 19thand 20thcentury. Lastly, his career is also a valuable reminder that duanbing did not emerge in a vacuum. It was developed at a time when both Japanese Kendo and Western foil fencing were making inroads into Chinese schools and popular culture. As I (and many others) have already noted, the development of any “local” and “traditional” practice must arise in discourse with notions such as “international” and “modern.” Katchorovsky’s writings provide us with a very specific example of how these concepts entered discussions of martial and combative pursuits in China.
Who was V. A. Katchorovsky? It is difficult to say with absolute certainty. As with many martial artists, we simply do not have a complete life story. Yet a review of period newspapers reveals two competing narratives. The first was something that Katchorovsky’s inherited. Despite his enormous height (over seven feet), and unusual profession (fencing instructor), most people saw him primarily as a refugee, a former Russian military officer displaced by the Bolshevik Revolution. Indeed, quite a few Russians refugees would eventually end up in China, and they seem to feature prominently as “threatening outsiders” in many kung fu legends. Perhaps we should not be surprised that displaced individuals (many with a military backgrounds) would end up coming into contact with China’s own martial artists.
Still, Katchorovsky’s path to China was far from direct. The first mention that I can find of him comes in the form of a short article in a local paper in New South Wales, Australia. It seems that in 1924 Katchorovsky was passing through on his way to Tahiti. Yet he was viewed as such a tragic figure that an article on his visit was necessary.
Giant Refugee
Body Guard of Murdered Czar
Melbourne, Saturday. –Penniless and physically worn, after years of intense anxiety, Artillery Colonel (W)oldemar Katchorovsky, once of the first Artillery Brigade attached to the late Czar’s Imperial Russian Life Guards, arrived in Melbourne on Wednesday. He stands over seven feet one inch high.
Having been hounded out of his country by the Bolsheviks, Katchorovsky is on his way to Tahiti, where he will join another refugee, Colonel Basil Nik[]tine. His fortune having been confiscated, he was obliged by necessity to travel steerage on the French liner Ville de Strassbourg.
Katchorovsky was one of the late Czar’s bodyguards. As a refugee in Malta with the Dowager Empress Maria Deodorovna, he learned the authentic story of the death of the Royal family.
While the Royalist Generals were organizing volunteer corps in the Caucasus and Crimea, the Czat and his family were taken prisoners to Ekaterinburg, Western Siberia. According to the Dowager Empress, his majesty was killed by the prison guard against military orders. The rest of the family, after suffering terrible humiliation, were likewise done to death.
Katchorovsky carries with him treasured photos of himself taken with members of the royal family when holidaying in Lividia Palace in the Crimea.
Northern Star(Linsmore, NSW) 16 June 1924. Page 4.
Readers should note that this piece contains no discussion to fencing, leading me to wonder whether Katchorovsky had begun to teach. Tahiti in the 1920s, while probably lovely, would not have been my first choice of location to open a new fencing salon. Beyond that, this article offers readers very few biographical details. We do not learn how old Katchorovsky was, or whether he ever had a family. Nor do we learn where he was coming from.
Like many refugees in our own era, Katchorovsky seems to have been subjected to a process of biographical flattening. His entire life is reduced to only those elements most interesting to the paper’s readers. One suspects that in the 1920s any number of White Russian refugees might have passed through the same area and inspired almost identical articles. In this discursive movement Katchorovsky, as an individual, was hollowed out and reduced to a symbol of the era’s increasingly well-developed fear of Bolshevism.
Col. V. A. Katchorovsky as he appeared in the pages of The China Press in 1933.
Maitre d’Armes
Whatever business Katchorovsky had in Tahiti, he seems not to have stayed long. In 1927 his name resurfaces in another newspaper in New South Wales. Then in 1930 we catch a glimpse of him in Honolulu. While most of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa was consumed with an upcoming football game against BYU, the school newspaper reported that an exhibition fencing tournament had been planned between the students of Katchorovsky and those of Cedric Wodehouse (a local instructor who had been trained in the UK). Once the preliminary matches were finished, the student body was promised an exhibition match between the two instructors. This was billed as a “real match between experts.” Without digging into more detailed local historical sources, it is difficult to say how long Katchorovsky stayed in Honolulu.
In any case, he did not put down roots. Two years later a student newspaper for the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) ran a brief notice stating that Katchorovsky had taken up residence in the area and was looking to establish a class for local university students. Any student wishing to take him up on the offer needed to hurry. By the spring of 1933 Katchorovsky would be seeking to establish a somewhat larger presence in Shanghai.
This is the period of Katchorovsky’s career that generated the most interesting paper trail. Between February 19-22 of 1933, he wrote a series of three, highly detailed, articles for The China Press. Each of these sought to explain and promote Western style fencing as a desirable type of personal exercise and competitive sport. [Readers should note that, confusingly, both the second and third articles in this series are labeled as “number two,” so it is necessary to actually check the dates of publication]. Collectively these discussions seem to announce the arrival of a more prosperous stage of Katchorovsky’s teaching career.
Readers may recall The China Press was one of Shanghai’s leading English language “treaty port” papers. While the editor of this paper was Chinese, and a virtual agent of the KMT government, the China Press prided itself on its connections to the American tradition of journalism and liberal editorial slant. The paper served three audiences. Obviously, it spoke to the needs of the expatriate English speakers in Shanghai. Yet unlike other foreign language papers, it reported extensively on Chinese political and social events. Indeed, its ostensible foreign ownership helped the paper to skirt certain censorship regulations, and it thus also appealed to educated, English reading, Chinese citizens. Lastly, the KMT tolerated papers such as this as they hoped that they would bring news of what was happening in China (unfiltered by the always hostile Japanese newswire services) to citizens in the West.
Given this complex readership, it is significant that The China Press was unrelentingly enthusiastic about all aspects of the martial arts. It seems to have published more stories on Chinese boxing (or “national boxing”) than any other treaty port paper. But it also reported on judo, kendo, boxing and fencing. One suspects that someone in the editorial office took a keen interest in martial pursuits.
Still, the degree of coverage that Katchorovsky’s thoughts on fencing received seems exceptional, even by the standards of The China Press. As I mentioned in our prior discussion of Ma Liang’s New Wushu movement, certain outlets also offered their services to government officials or important individuals who sought (for a price) to promote a project that was generally in line with a paper’s editorial policy. For a few years the China Press even seems to have run an ad hoc English language public diplomacy program for the KMT. I suspect that Katchorovsky may have entered into a similar promotional arrangement with the paper.
His first three articles, in April of 1933, were immediately followed up by another piece at the beginning of March. This article (written by a reporter) sought to both promote fencing in general and Katchorovsky’s classes more specifically. It noted that he had recently been hired by St. John’s University as a fencing instructor for the students. The paper proclaimed (probably incorrectly) that these were “the first Chinese [boys] to take up this typically European sport.” It was also noted that his experience in America demonstrated that fencing was really a sport for everyone, regardless of age or gender. A local girl’s school was also considering adding fencing classes.
Again, it is difficult to know exactly when Katchorovsky arrived in Shanghai and began teaching. But at the end of March (22nd) the China Press ran another story, probably independent of any formal advertising campaign, noting that due to the increased popularity of the sport an exhibition had been scheduled at the International Branch of the YWCA. Exactly one week later (March 30th) another unsolicited article was run reporting on the result of this social and athletic gathering. Such stories are relatively common in the pages of The China Press. Still, it seems that this event made a positive impression on the reporter. Like Hawaii, the student tournament was followed by two exhibition matches in which the various coaches and organizers demonstrated other weapons and superior techniques for the crowd.
Skimming various accounts of tournaments and exhibitions, it seems that much of the fencing in Shanghai was led by, or included, Russian refugees. Indeed, one wonders whether this was what drew Katchorovsky to the city in the first place. His own match was against Dr. Schoenfeld. Col. Minuchin, who coached many of the participants, is reported to have graduated from the Officers’ Fencing and Gymnasium School in Petrograd just before the outbreak of WWI in 1914. He had been living in Shanghai for approximately five years.
All of this publicity resulted in two photographs of Col. Katchorovsky in his role as fencing instructor. The first, published on Feb. 27th, shows a sophisticated looking individual, hair parted in the middle, sporting round glasses and a neat mustache. He holds his trademark foil and fencing mask on his lap as he seems to look beyond the camera with a pensive gaze. If the first image is serene, the second is slightly unsettling. It was taken on the day of the YWCA tournament/exhibition. Several female students sit in the front with their instructors standing behind them. Shown at his full height, Katchorovsky towers over the others. At first one guesses that the other coaches must have been sitting as well, but of course they are not.
The China Press revisited fencing again on October 27th with another article by Katchorovsky. This piece quoted liberally from the Art of Fencing by Senac and Fencing by Brek in an effort to argue for the athletic, personal and somatic value of the practice. Not to be outdone, the North China Herald also ran an article by Katchorovsky on November 7th. Unfortunately, this rehashed many of his prior points without adding much new to the discussion. Still, in a remarkably short period of time Katchorovsky had written or been discussed in at least eight articles and received two photographic features.
That is a remarkable amount of press coverage for anyone in this period, let alone someone from the martial arts community. But his efforts paid off. The introduction to the October China Press article noted that Katchorovsky was currently serving as Master of Arms at both the Shanghai American School and St. John’s University, while running his own fencing academy at 73 Nanking Road.
Modernity’s Knight Errant
Given the volume of material that Katchorovsky produced, it is important to ask how he (and other instructors) sought to promote fencing in the 1920s and 1930’s. More specifically, how are the values that they sought to promote similar to, or different from, the sorts of discussions that other martial arts (especially Guoshu and Judo) were generating? One might suppose that given his military background, Katchorovsky would be something of a traditionalist when it came to the sword. He came of age in an era when there was still an expectation that officers might have to fight with their swords. And all of that seems to fit with the more tragic and orientalist ways in which the press sought to frame his life narrative.
Yet Katchorovsky was no traditionalist. One suspects that he would have had little tolerance for the sort of essentialist cultural rhetoric that followed Kendo. His understanding for the need for modernization and reform within the martial arts would have fit well within the more progressive currents of China’s own Guoshu movement. Note, for instance, the following excerpts from his discussion on the topic of traditionalism vs. modernity in his third article for The China Press, titled “Modern Fencing Reaches High Sate of Perfection.”
…There are so many people who have never given up the old-fashioned idea that fencing is an ancient art, graceful and beautiful to behold upon the stage. Many never think of fencing as competitive sport, which it really is—the fastest and most brilliant of all man to man sports in existence.
Fencing progresses like everything else. A fencing bout of two hundred years ago and a present day match have very little resemblance. Fencing today is very fast, very competitive, and a study of it gives one a deep and interesting experience in the thoughts of modern science and philosophy, such as timing, motion, space, reflex-action and counteraction, and shows one the vast differences between perception and intuition.
Suits Modern Youth
Fencing today is very modern, very athletic, very fast, sparkling and vivid, almost scientific. It should suit the modern youth to perfection. He can still keep his identity, his individuality, be a little swaggering and devil-may care, and possibly fence better for it….
Helps Eliminate Time
I know of no other sport today which has become as ultra-modern as fencing. In my opinion fencing develops such keenness and precision that it becomes far more mental than physical. A fencer finds that along with modern inventions, modern science and its fourth dimension, this sport goes a long way to eliminate more of the encumbering element of matter we call time.
To think is to set, i.e., when you think “thrust” your arm is already extended: when you think “lunge” your right foot hits the floor with pantherish agility.
It is especially true that in a hardfought bout between equals you are never conscious of your body. It has ceased to exist; that is, it is no longer the tool of the mind, but becomes the mind itself.
Ultra-Modern Thrill
You lose all consciousness of self and exist as the mental qualities of speed, precision, accuracy, distance, balance, judgement or seem to exist as life and action itself. For your time is not, and each moment of action flashes from the future into the past without the realization of its passing.
After a twenty-minute bout, whether you have won or lost, you feel that if you have not spent a second in eternity, you have least lived more vividly, more intensely during these minutes than is ordinarily lived in a week.
Thus fencing, once necessary as a means of bodily protection between the exponents of the art, has today become a new mental and physical thrill for the ultra-modern.
1933. A. Katchorovsky. “Modern Fencing Reaches High State of Perfection.” The China Press. Feb. 22 1933. Page 8.
This is one of the more interesting first-person accounts of any martial practice which I have encountered during the 1920s or 1930s. While most of Katchorovsky’s articles tend to emphasize the fully-body muscular development that fencing provides, or its utility for students seeking to lose weight, it seems clear that he was motivated by a quest for altered states of consciousness. This article provides a very detailed account of what it is like to experience a “flow state” in weapons work. Yet rather than seeing this as a universal psychological phenomenon, something that might occur in any number of activities, he supposed both that it is unique to fencing and its modern reforms. Katchorovsky even points to the achievement of personal goals and individually attained altered states of consciousness as core qualities of his “ultra-modern” martial art. Reading these passages I am left to wonder how many practitioners of combat sports in or own era might agree with him, even if they have never picked up a foil.
All of this might seem very distant from the world of Guoshu and the development of duanbing. And, in a sense, it is. Yet it must also be remembered that the great reforms of the 1920s and 1930s did not happen in a vacuum. Both Jingwu and Guoshu sought, in their own way, to appropriate and respond to the discourse of modern superiority which was projected by the Western imperialist powers. That is why the “traditional” Chinese martial arts which we practice now are, in fact, a product of modernity.
Given his frequent discussion of the benefits of fencing for female students, and his quotes from Senac’s text, it seems only appropriate to end with this image. Source: THE ART OF FENCING BY REGINALD AND LOUIS SENAC, “PROFESSIONAL CHAMPIONS OF AMERICA,” 1915.
Conclusion
Of course, fencing is also modern art. Katchorovsky’s embrace (even celebration), of this fact is probably a multi-layered phenomenon. On the one hand, it may have been commercially necessary to distance fencing from its historical association with dueling if one wanted to win middle class female students. Doing so might have been more challenging than one might guess as even newspapers in China were carrying stories of duels (some carried out with sabers, others with pistols) which were still happening in France as late at the 1930s. At least some of Katchorovsky’s rhetorical efforts to carve out a space for sport fencing as a distinct modern practice, unrelated to the art’s bloody past, were probably necessary. [For a sample of what else his audience might have been reading see “Savage Duel is Fought by Paris Lawyers.” The China Press, March 10, 1935. Page 3.]
Of course, “ultra-modern” practices are by definition young, trendy and more likely to be popular with university students. Such things are also transnational and transcultural, values that he probably felt very strongly about given his constant wandering. Undoubtedly Katchorovsky reveals something of his life experience in all of this. Scientific rationalism and international community may have been things that he could ground his identity in after the nation-state and political ideology had failed him. He many even have seen these values as tools to push back against the socially dominant narrative that defined him solely as a refugee.
Modernity takes on a variety of meanings as we read these accounts of fencing’s brief flowering in Shanghai during the 1930s. Yet all of this was happening in concert with larger intellectual trends and global events. Katchorovsky is a valuable remainder of the role of marginal and displaced people in the popularization and spread of modern martial practices. Beyond that, his writings offer a particularly clear glimpse into the sorts of concepts that shaped both the development of the Guoshu movement and the modern Chinese martial arts we know today.
oOo
If you enjoyed this discussion of the the martial arts scene is Shanghai in the 1930s you might also want to read: Mixed Martial Arts in Shanghai, 1925
Wang Ziping (1881-1973) was an iconic figure within the world of the Republican martial arts. Having gained fame through his many feats of strength and public fights, the Muslim martial artist from Heibi province went on to hold important positions in the Central Guoshu Institute. Indeed, he was one of the few Chinese martial artists ever discussed by name in the New York Times prior to the Kung Fu Craze of the 1970s. Readers may recall that I recently wrote a brief biographical sketch of this important figure which you can review here.
Every essay must have a focus, and that piece was most concerned with the early years of Wang’s life and his contributions to the Guoshu movement. Unfortunately, I could only touch on his remarkable “second act.” While many important teachers fled to Taiwan, Hong Kong or South East Asia in 1949, Wang stayed in mainland China and went on to have a distinguished career both as a traditional Chinese medical practitioner and as an elder stateman of the martial arts. The Communist government would tap Wang for several important appointments and honors, all of which served to call him back into service as a supporter of the newly emerging Wushu program.
I hope to explore this later phase of Wang’s career in some of my future writings. Yet I think all would agree that the greatest honor came in 1960 when Zhou Enlai requested his presence on a state visit to Myanmar. Here he was once again called upon to demonstrate, and to be the public face of, the Chinese martial arts.
Multiple histories have already noted the significance of this trip. Less appreciated is the fact that in the years immediately following this expedition Wang was also used to educated English speaking Western audiences about the importance of the Chinese martial arts and their connection to the “New China.” In many respects, Wang’s role as “Kung Fu diplomat” was just getting started in 1949. His name would appear in publications such as China Reconstructs, one of the few official English language propaganda channels that the PRC sponsored during the period.
Still, I must admit that I have always had questions. When Wang was tapped to go to Myanmar he would have been close to 80 years old. After a lifetime of fights and punishing strength training (we often forget that in his youth Wang was also famous as a wrestler and professional strongman), what sort of demonstration would he have been able to offer? Did he undertake this trip primarily as a martial artist, or more as an elder statesman of what Western scholars refer to as “cultural diplomacy”? Short of finding some detailed film footage from the era, I assumed that this would be an impossible question to really answer. Many issues in the field of martial arts history will, by their very nature, remain a mystery.
Two Views of Wang Ziping
One can only imagine my surprise when I came across not one, but two, pieces of footage, both shot in 1963, that provided a pretty definitive answer to my question. Not only was Wang still active at the age of 80, he moved fantastically. Better yet, these films compliment the few other clips I had been able to locate on YouTube. Yet they did not come without some questions of their own.
Interested readers can link to these films here and here. Both clips are just under two minutes and offer a clear, well directed, vision of the period’s developing Wushu culture, complete with English language narration. Ironically, I came across both of these clips on the Getty Image database earlier in the Spring of 2018 when I was looking for newsreel footage of Chinese soldiers with dadao’s during the 1930s. I realized that both films were quite exciting, but it took a while for my own writing and research to catch up with them.
Sadly, Getty does not provide their properties with the types of citations that are generally required in academic publications, but we do have some information. Their labels make it clear that both clips came from some sort of English language “cultural survey” that the Chinese government completed in 1963. The actual title of this project, and how it was distributed to the West, are all left to the imaginations of the reader.
I have yet to resolve these questions and would appreciate any input that readers of this blog might have. Yet as I further explored the archive it became clear that there were many other clips from the same project. Some of these dealt with other traditional Chinese arts (such as the construction of miniature wood carvings). But the majority of them reflected the dominant discourses seen in other period propaganda pieces. China was shown as a technologically advanced, wealthy, nation that had already achieved a high degree of industrialization. Indeed, it was getting ready to challenge the West on its own terms. In one clip Chinese scientists were shown researching new petroleum products. In another Chinese surgeons successfully reattached a hand that had been severed in an industrial accident.
All of this should help us to properly frame and understand these clips. The view of China which this “cultural survey” set out to construct was overwhelming that of an advanced and industrialized nation. While clearly noting that the Wushu was an aspect of China’s traditional physical culture (or more specifically, a type “traditional calisthenics”), one got the sense that all of this was meant to underline the fundamental modernity that ran throughout the rest of the project. Foreign audiences were not meant to see in these scenes a romantic view of an unchanging China. Given the film’s avowedly Marxist viewpoint, its fundamental argument was that China had changed, and so had its martial arts.
These large themes can be seen in both clips. But beyond that, each clip seems to accomplish different goals for its Western audience. The first of these runs for 1:51 seconds. It opens with an establishing shot of senior citizens preforming Taijiquan in the park. Indeed, the age of the practitioners seems to be an organizing principal of this brief film. Having hailed the audience with what was already a fairly common trope, the camera then cuts to a shot of Wang Ziping leading a large group of children through a similar type of exercise. This scene seemed to have its own message. While “New China” was moving on, the younger generation would not forget their fundamental identity.
Questions of identity come up repeatedly in the narration of this brief clip. The next shot shows an enthusiastic young boy demonstrating a dynamic dao routine. The narrator informs the English speaking audience that Wushu was an art with uniquely “Chinese characteristics.” These could be found in its penchant for combining opposed sorts of movement.
As if to illustrate that point the camera then cut to Wang, who was demonstrating a sword set using a long, two handed jian. This is perhaps the best sequence in the film as it clearly establishes the virtuosity of his techniques. Yet rather than naming the master, the narrator simply informs the audience that such practices are “popular among the broad masses of the working people.”
Even when dealing with foreign audiences, China’s new government sought to define and justify the martial arts at least partially through a class-based narrative. Yes, this was “traditional” physical culture but, more importantly, it was property of the masses. Wang’s anonymous performance stood in technical contrast to what was about to come next. It seemed to exemplify the neo-historicism of certain aspects of the Republican period (such as a fascination with the archaic two handed jian) which was in contrast to the streamlined and socially conscious Wushu to come.
Having introduced both the very old, and the very young, the film then cut to the athletic performance of young adults in their prime. First an individual (who bears at least some resemblance to Wang’s son), dressed in a white silk performance costume, performed a more vigorous Jian set. The performance was spectacular and kinetic. After that we are introduced to the more acrobatic aspect of Wushu when an unarmed fighter is forced to “defend” himself from a dao wielding opponent. The visual tension was further escalated with a spear vs. double dagger performance. Both exciting and theatrical, such sets had been the mainstay of public demonstrations in the 1920s and 1930s. Finally, the clip ends with a female performing a solo set with the Emei piercers. She was dressed in the same silk uniform as the other university age performers who had come before.
None of the individuals in this clip were named. Rather, everyone was presented as a general cultural type: the group of old people doing Taijiquan in the park, the enthusiastic young students, and (most importantly) the mysterious teacher. Yet all of them were shown as contributing to the explosion of kinetic vigor seen in the final Wushu demonstrations. The narration of this film sought, in simple terms, to define this new Wushu for Western audience. Yet the director’s arrangement of visual images presented an equally compelling argument as to how a resurgent China was reframing and transforming its traditional cultural heritage.
The second film seeks to tell a very different story. Rather than defining Wushu, it uses traditional martial arts practice to explore the lives of a “typical Chinese family” living in a luxuriously furnished apartment in Shanghai. Of course, the patriarch of this multi-generational family is Wang Ziping.
If anything, the second clip is even more dramatic. It begins with a shot of Shanghai in the evening, focusing on the street lights and scenes of vehicles driving by the water. We then see the glowing windows of Wang’s residence as though we were visitors walking up the sidewalk.
As the camera moves inside, a family comes into focus. Whereas all of the figures in the previous clip were anonymous representation of the nation, we are now guests in a home. Introductions are in order. These begin with Wang himself, who is shown working on a piece of calligraphy. The audience is informed that Wang is a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, and the camera cuts to a quick shot of his clinic where he can be seen manipulating a patient’s arm.
Next, we meet Wang’s son. While his father wears traditional clothing, the son, like everyone else, is smartly dressed in western attire. He plays some type of shuffle board game with a number of other family members. We learn that he too is a physician.
After that we are introduced to Wang’s daughter and her husband, both of whom are professors. The camera then pans from a shot of the two speaking with their children, to a framed photograph on the wall in which Mrs. Wang is putting a group of identically dressed Wushu students through their paces. This would seem to answer any question as to what subject she taught.
Once we have established for the Western audience that this is indeed a “typical” Chinese family, we are then told that the Wang’s do have one unique characteristic. Despite their many professional commitments, they all gather during their free time to practice various types of Wushu in the park. A set of traditional weapons are shown leaning against a park bench and one by one a set of hands appears to claim them. A long continuous shot then weaves through the family group showing everyone involved in their own solo practice.
Finally, the viewers gaze is allowed to settle on Wang. He has again resumed his role as teacher and cultural guardian. We can see his face as he happily instructs one of his grandchildren. The segment ends as the camera pulls back to reveal a family united by practice.
Conclusion
There are many remarkable things about this second film. Perhaps the most basic might be that Communist (and even Republican) authorities tended to treat family/lineage-based practices with a fair degree of suspicion. These were seen as being based on pre-modern modes of social arrangements, and individuals ended up investing their loyalty in the group rather than the party or the nation.
The advent of the Cultural Revolution in 1965 would see a forceful reemergence of these claims, and the subsequent suppression of much traditional martial arts practice. This film shows a very different vision of family practice, one in which there are no doubts as to anyone’s loyalties, or their equal value to the group. Indeed, Wushu has been adopted as a means to tell Western viewers something important about the modern Chinese family. Under the guiding hand of the CCP, practices that might have been harmful to individuals or the nation have been rectified and made socially useful. If this is true for the martial arts, we can also rest assured that it is true for gender and family relations.
Nor was the first clip actually content to simply define Wushu. If the second film sought to use a visual portrayal of these practices to explain the family, it appears that the first’s real subject is the Chinese nation. The intergenerational portrayal of the Wushu was not a coincidence. Indeed, it can be read as an argument about transmission. What exactly does the narrator mean when he notes that Wushu possesses “Chinese characteristics?” The virtuosity of the anonymous teacher, and the explosive potential of his adult students, suggest that the stabilization of these traits was not a random or automatic process. Rather it was one of refinement and discernment, the creation of something essential by those who worked under the authority of a benevolent state.
These clips are remarkable not just because of the technical prowess that Wang and his family display. They also indicate that even prior to the advent of the Cultural Revolution the Chinese government was seriously investigating the use of the martial arts as a soft power resource. More specifically, in these clips they sought to use visual representations of Wushu to convey basic principles about the nature of the new Chinese state and the reformed (yet still reassuring traditional) family. Wang himself can be seen not just as a leading figure within the traditional Chinese martial arts community, but as a pioneer of the basic Kung Fu Diplomacy strategy which would come to define much of the global view of these practices in the current era.
***I am off visiting family over the holiday weekend, so we are headed back to the archives. Since our (American) readers have just celebrated Thanksgiving, I though it would be appropriate to revisit an essay that asks what we should be grateful for as martial artists and students of martial arts studies. Spoiler alert, the answer is Bruce Lee.***
Introduction: Bruce Lee at 75
Yesterday I celebrated Thanksgiving with my family. As is customary on this day of remembrance I took a few moments to think about the last year and review the many things that I had to be grateful for. The year has been an eventful one.
In the professional realm I had a book published on the social history of the southern Chinese martial arts. I also delivered a keynote address at the first annual martial arts studies conference in the UK and, just recently, saw the publication of the first issue of our new journal on that same topic. I have had opportunities to meet and share my interests with all sorts of fascinating people from all over the world, and have started a number of other projects that should be bearing fruit months and years down the road. As the old Chinese saying goes, a wise man thinks of the source of the water that he drinks, and as I did so it occurred to me that I owe a profound debt of gratitude to Bruce Lee.
Today is the 75th anniversary of Lee’s birth in San Francisco. Born in California and raised in Hong Kong before returning to the West Coast at the end of the 1950s, Lee had a profound effect on the worlds of film, popular culture and the martial arts. While many claims about his career are exaggerated (one should treat with a certain degree of suspicion any assertion that someone was the “first” to do anything) there can be no doubt as to his ultimate impact on the public perception of the martial arts in America, as well as their rapid spread and popularization in the post-1970 era.
For anyone wondering what the point of Kung Fu was, Lee had a very specific answer. It combined a laser like focus on the problems of practical self-defense with a need to find personal and philosophical meaning in practice.
Like others who came before him, Lee argued that the martial arts were ultimately a means of self-creation. Yet drawing on the counter-cultural currents of the time he freed this discourse from the ideological chains that had linked such quests with ethno-nationalist projects for much of the 20th century. He instead placed the individual student at the center of the process. For Lee the martial arts went beyond the normal paradigms of personal security and self improvement and became a means of self actualization.
His own image on the silver screen promised that through these disciplines and their philosophies one could craft a “new self,” one that was fully fit for the challenges of an age of global competition and strife. It was promised that this “new self” would grow out of the process of self expression which the martial arts facilitated. Of course one had to first understand the true nature of these systems to free oneself from their stultifying structures. Individuals might agree or disagree (sometimes violently) with Lee’s assertions, but its hard to underestimate the impact that he had on the ways in which the martial arts are discussed in the West today.
Does this mean that in the absence of Bruce Lee I would not have written my book, or that we would not currently be reading a blog about martial arts studies? Ultimately those sorts of counterfactuals are impossible to answer, and they may cause more confusion than light. Japanese teachers had been promoting their arts in the West since the dawn of the 20th century. Sophia Delza knew nothing of Bruce Lee when she introduced Wu style Taijiquan to New York City. And the Korean government’s heavy support and promotion of Taekwondo had more to do with their own post-colonial struggles with the memory of the Japanese occupation than anything that came out of China.
I suspect that even in a world in which Lee had never existed the martial arts would still have found a respectable foothold in the West. A demand for these systems existed as part of larger cultural trends following WWII, Korea and the Vietnam War. Lee’s genius lay in his ability to understand and speak powerfully to the historical moment that existed.
Following his own advice he bent with the flow of history rather than fighting against it. Certainly some things would remain the same. That seems to follow from the structural nature of 20th century modernization and globalization. Ultimately our theories about the history of the martial arts are very much stories about these two forces (among others).
Yet would I be a student of Wing Chun, a somewhat obscure fighting system from the Pearl River delta region, without Bruce Lee’s rise to fame? Would I have had an opportunity to convince a university press to publish a book whose central historical case was built around a detailed, multi-chapter, biography of Ip Man, Bruce Lee’s teacher? And what of those individuals who study the martial arts? Would this body be as diverse (and sometimes radical) in the absence of Lee’s striking ability to speak to African and Latin-American martial artists (as well as many women and Asians) in the volatile 1970s?
Anthropological studies of the martial arts and social marginality remind us that people who are the most attracted to messages of resistance and individual empowerment are precisely those who have also been disempowered by the dominant social systems of the day. While the globalization of the East Asian martial arts would have come in one guise or another, its clear that I do have a lot to be grateful for when thinking about Lee’s contributions as a film maker, teacher and popularizer of the Chinese martial arts.
Birthdays are also important times for looking to the future. There can be no doubt that Lee’s image has retained a remarkable grip on the public imagination. Decades after his death he still frequently appears on magazine covers and in video games. Books bearing his name (either as an author or in their title) are found in every bookstore with a martial arts section. And Lee’s impact on the realm of martial art films can still be detected with ease. Countless allusions to his more iconic fight sequences can be seen on both the big and small screen. Ninjas may come and go, but even in the age of MMA it seems that Bruce will always have a home on the cover of Black Beltmagazine.
Still, one wonders if we are not starting to see changes in some aspects of how Lee is remembered and discussed. AMC recently aired a new series titled “Into the Badlands.” I have been following the advertising efforts around this project with great interest. The show’s creators have prided themselves in their extensive use of the martial arts. In fact, much of their advertising copy focuses on the fact that they are bringing “real” martial arts to the American small screen for the first time. Of course to make this claim with a straight face it is first necessary to seriously downplay, explain away or “forget” quite a bit of equally revolutionary TV that has come before, from Bruce Lee in the Green Hornet to Chuck Norris in Walker Texas Ranger.
A lot of discussion has also focused on Daniel Wu, the lead actor of this project. The show’s promoters have discussed the supposedly revolutionary nature of his role and the many ways in which he is changing the portrayal of Asian males in the entertainment industry. Yet if one drills down into this rhetoric very far what quickly becomes apparent is that Wu is seen as revolutionary in many of the exact same ways that Lee was seen as exceptional in his own era. The one real difference that stands out is that Wu’s character has the potential to develop a truly romantic story-line, where as this was something that was usually not seen with Lee’s films.
While the blame for this is often put on Hollywood (and there is no doubt that much of that is justified) one must also remember that Lee’s heroes came out of a genera of Cantonese storytelling and filmmaking in which romantic and martial leads tended to be somewhat segregated for important cultural reasons (see Avron Bortez for an extensive discussion of the construction of masculinity in the world of Kung Fu). While I applaud Wu for being able to pursue the sorts of roles that he finds interesting, I worry that his revolution is simultaneously erasing some of the traditional conventions of Chinese film and literature rather than challenging Western audiences with something unfamiliar. This is essentially the same discussion of hybrid borrowing vs. hegemony that seems to emerge in so many discussions of the globalization of popular culture. But whatever the ultimate resolution to this debate, it seems that there is an effort on the part of certain advertisers to retool and downplay Bruce Lee’s achievements in an effort to create a new moment of “revolution” in the current era.
Readers interested in looking at this specific discussion can see a number of the links that were included both in the most recent news update and on the Facebook group (in particular the Slate article titled “Daniel Wu is the Asian Action Hero that Bruce Lee Should have Been.”) Actually resolving the specific questions raised by all of this might take some time and far exceeds the space available in this post. Yet reviewing it led me to ask whether Bruce Lee is still the revolutionary figure that he once was. In our current moment do we still need Bruce Lee and his message of radical self-creation through the martial arts? Can he still act as a force for the popularization and spread of these fighting systems? Or is he becoming too culturally remote from modern students, readers and audiences? Is it likely that the public will remember his 100th birthday with the same enthusiasm that is greeting his 75th?
Ip Man and his best known student, Bruce Lee.
Bruce Lee and the Tao of Gung Fu
As I thought about these questions over the last couple of days I found myself turning to Lee’s unpublished “manuscript” The Tao of Gung Fu. In some respects this may seem like an odd choice. This book was never published in Lee’s lifetime, and as such most of this material had a rather limited impact on the way that people discussed either him or the martial arts in the 1970s and 1980s.
Nor is it always clear to me the degree to which this collection of chapters can be considered a true “book.” From the editor’s (John Little) description it appears that Lee abandoned the project before a complete manuscript was pulled together. A number of the early chapters were in place (they even make internal references to each other) but after that there may only have been an outline. This has been flushed out with notes, drawings and other pieces that Lee wrote over the years. Some pieces are in a more finished state than others, but none of it was ever intended to be made public during Lee’s life. In fact, it must be remembered that he made the rather conscious decision to walk away from the project. As such we can only speculate as to what would have made it into the final version had Bruce decided to actually pursue publication.
One of the things that bothers me about this particular book, as it was posthumously published by Tuttle and the Lee estate, is that it attempts to seamlessly weave this mass of material together into a coherent whole rather than letting the individual pieces, written over a range of years, stand on their own. Nor does it attempt to label what the original documentary sources of the various “chapters” actually were and how they fit into the larger body of Lee’s papers.
Obviously this is an annoyance for other historians working on Lee. And it is especially problematic when one realizes that a number of these essays were originally composed as papers for Lee’s classes at the University of Washington. While clearly bright and interested in philosophy (as well as its application to the martial arts) Lee is the sort of student who likely gave his teachers heart burn. As multiple other scholars (including John Little and James Bishop) have pointed out, Lee was guilty of plagiarizing a number of passages and key ideas throughout these essays.
In a few cases he simply borrowed text while dropping the quotes and footnotes, while in others he followed his sources much too closely (a problem known as “patchwriting”). In a number of other cases he appropriates ideas or insights without proper citation, or plays fast and loose with his sources. For a student of philosophy a surprising number of very detailed arguments are simply attributed to “Taoism” with no further support.
Worst of all, some of Lee’s best known personal stories, such as his exchange with his teacher Ip Man about the problem of relaxation, turn out to have been lifted from other sources (in that particular case the important popularizer of Zen, Allen Watts who had a striking similar exchange with his Judo teacher). James Bishop seems to be the best source currently available on the extent of Lee’s plagiarism and the sources that he was actually drawing on. Of course Lee never intended that these essays be published, let alone to be printed on t-shirts.
Given this list of problems and cautions, one might wonder why I would even discuss such a book. Simply put, the Tao of Gung Fu is a critical work not because the material in it is in any way original, but because it does a great job of clarifying the issues that were being discussed among a certain type of Chinese martial artist at a specific moment in time, and the sorts of sources that they had available to them (both in terms of technical manuals, but also cultural and philosophical resources) to make sense of all of it. While fans might be crushed by some of the instances of Lee’s patchwriting and plagiarism (which varied from unintentional to egregious) the transparent nature of these problems is actually a great blessing to cultural historians and students of martial arts studies.
Lee often starts by outlining questions that a wide variety of readers in his era would have found interesting, and with only a few minutes of googling you can figure out exactly what resources a young, somewhat educated martial artist would have had access to in both the Chinese and English language literatures. In short, for anyone interested in the specific steps by which the Chinese martial arts were culturally appropriated by the West, this book is a remarkable resource.
If you want to better acquaint yourself with the sources of Lee’s philosophy on the martial arts, this is the book that I would recommend. And for Wing Chun students it has the additional bonus of providing critical insight into how (at least some) individuals were discussing that system during the late 1950s and 1960s.
What then is the ultimate root of Lee’s philosophy of the martial arts? What ideas did he turn to in order to both make sense of these fighting traditions and to provide them with increased social meaning (and status) against the backdrop of Chinese culture and thought?
The Tao of Gung Fu provides an embarrassment of riches on these sorts of questions. Students of Wing Chun will likely find Lee’s discussions of Chi Sao (some of which is quite philosophical) to be the most interesting. And readers of history will no doubt want to pay close attention to Lee’s understanding of the subject as discussed in the book’s closing chapters.
Yet perhaps one of the most important themes in Lee’s thinking is set down in the very first chapter before being expanded upon throughout the rest of the manuscript. Here we see Lee outlining a three step process (one that he attributes to Daoism) in which something progresses from 1) the “primitive” stage 2) the stage of “art” 3) the stage of “artlessness.”
Most often this progression is applied to the martial arts themselves. Lee sees in this pattern the meta-history of the Chinese martial arts as a whole. They progressed from a simple, but natural, system to a more sophisticated but stultifying understanding. Finally, after years of hard work Chinese martial artists practiced, experimented and realized what non-essential material could be stripped away, leaving a set of systems what was both sophisticated but once again natural in its execution.
In other places Lee appears to apply this same process to the life history of individual styles. It can also be viewed as the stages that any given martial artist must progress through. In fact, Lee’s iconic “Liberate Yourself from Classical Karate” article is premised on this idea, as well as Lee’s contention that most Western martial artists at the time were stuck in stage two.
Yet Lee’s use of this basic framework extended far beyond the martial arts. At times he seems to have seen it as a more general lens by which we could examine the struggle of humans with both the natural and social worlds. Note for instance that Lee attempts to explain this teleology to his readers by using it as an explanation of the evolution of Chinese grammar between the classical and modern periods. And grasping its logic seems to be a precondition for the introduction of his later discussion of the nature of Yin and Yang in both the martial arts and Asian philosophy.
Given the centrality of this idea to Lee’s thought, it might be useful to ask where it originates. Lee himself claims that the idea is indigenous to Daoism and, at other points, Zen. This later claim may be bolstered by the observation of some Japanese stylists that their own systems suggest a similar progressive understanding of katas (or forms) in three progressive stages.
At the same time it must be remembered that Lee was a philosophy student when much of this material was written, and the resonances with some of the western thinkers he would have been introduced to is noteworthy. The system Lee is proposing seems to be somewhat in debt to Hegel and his progression from “thesis,” to “anti-thesis” and ultimately “synthesis.” We have already seen that Lee was very familiar with the works of Allen Watts, and its possible that this idea may have found its genesis in his writings. Indeed, this might be why Lee sometimes claims that he was outlining a “Zen” theory of progress.
While I suspect that this element of Lee’s thought reflects his study of Western writers and sources, once established it is the sort of thing that you can begin to see everywhere. We know, for instance, that Lee was influenced by the ideas of the mystic and writer Krishnamurti. While I have yet to find an exact statement of this idea in his writings, once it has been established in your mind it’s the sort of thing that will find easy parallels and support in some of Krishnamurti’s statements. Much the same goes for the Dao De Jing. I suspect that this theory of “becoming” struck Lee with such force, and became a cornerstone of his thought in this period, precisely because it seemed to find support in so many sources. The ease with which both Eastern and Western (and possibly even Marxist) sources could be used to illustrate aspects of this theory must have made it seem both universal and self-evident.
I suspect that this idea was also critical to Lee because while it facilitated a rejection of stultifying forms, it also argued that these things could only be overcome through study, experimentation and exhaustive practice. When we look at Lee’s workouts in this period (also provided by John Little) we see that Lee was drilling himself in basic techniques at the same time that he was advocating empirical verification and freedom from pointless tradition. There has always appeared to be a fundamental tension here, between what is necessary to learn a technique, and the desire to transcend it in the search of something more natural or personal. This three step teleology spoke directly to that dilemma, and claimed that the way forward was not a return to a primitive state that rejected scientific advances, but rather through a long and arduous process of additional practice, refinement and (most importantly) experimentation.
Bruce Lee sketching on the set for Game of Death. Photograph: Bruce Lee Estate. Source: The Guardian.
Conclusion: Walking On
While interesting on a technical level, its also important to think about the social implications of all of this. The claim that the only true knowledge which is possible is self-knowledge, gained through extensive practice and experimentation, is most likely to be attractive to individuals who feel themselves to be alienated from other sources of social power or meaning. Indeed, the basic ideas about self-actualization that Lee draws on have their origins in China’s martial arts sub-cultures which often acted as an alternate means of self-creation for marginal individuals within Chinese society.
As I have argued at length elsewhere, this would have been the context in which Lee first saw the martial arts being taught in Ip Man’s school to a generation of often angry, surprisingly alienated, young men in the Hong Kong of the 1950s. Lee’s contribution was to take this basic pattern and to combine it with the philosophical and counterculture currents of his own day in such a way that westerners could access this same technology of self-creation.
The 1970s, when the Chinese martial arts first exploded into popular consciousness, was a volatile decade. Globalization in trade markets was causing economic pain and increased income inequality at home at the same time that some western nations faced both security challenges and open conflict abroad. Nor did the gains of the civil rights movement in the US ensure the spread of racial harmony. Everywhere one looked traditional social institutions seemed to be under attack and society was struggling to produce new ways of understanding and coping with these challenges. Given these structural factors, it is not surprising that Lee’s onscreen presence and martial arts philosophy (to the extent that it was known at the time) had a profound effect on a generation of seekers looking for a new set of tools in their quest for self-production.
In many respects we seem to be entering a similar era. Clearly the situation today is not identical. The Cold War is gone, and an information and service based economy has replaced the manufacturing one (at least in the West). Yet many of the more fundamental concerns remain the same. Economic insecurity, militarism abroad and social conflict at home are once again challenging basic notions of what our nations stand for. Levels of public trust in a wide range of institutions has reached an all time low, and social organizations that once supported vibrant communities in past eras are struggling to survive.
Indeed, many of these factors are directly challenging the economic health and social relevance of the traditional martial arts today. Yet where large schools might falter one wonder’s if we are not seeing a renewed opportunity for the expansion of Lee’s ethos of individual struggle, experimentation and practice. If nothing else the recent discussion of Daniel Wu by the advertisers at AMC could be seen as evidence that there is a hunger for the renewal (and expansion) of the sort of revolution that Lee originally introduced to the West in the 1970s.
As the needs of students and audiences change I fully expect that the ways in which we see Bruce Lee will continue to evolve. That is the sign of a healthy discourse, and it suggests that Lee might be just as important for understanding the current situation within the martial arts community as its mid-twentieth century history. Given the cultural moment that we now find ourselves in, Lee’s promise of self-creation and his basic philosophy seem more important than ever. And as long as his achievements continue to be the yardstick by which each new “revolution” in the martial arts is measured, it seems likely that the memory of the Little Dragon will indeed live to see its 100th Birthday.
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.
