Judo and the Chinese Martial Arts: the View from 1928
Staging a Global Controversy Origin stories are very often political. People everywhere intuitively understand this. If you can pinpoint (or simply construct) the moment of something’s creation you...
View ArticleReport: A Martial Arts Studies BBQ and the Power of Local Networks
On May 27th just under 20 people gathered in Myers Park over the course of an afternoon to celebrate the arrival of summer with fellow students of martial arts studies and martial arts enthusiasts....
View ArticleTranslating the Sicilian Knife
“If translation is a form of betrayal, then the translator pays their debt by bringing fame to the ethnic culture…It is in translation’s faithless that [Sicily] survives and thrives. A faithlessness...
View ArticleBerlin 1936: Chinese Martial Arts on a Global Stage
China Picks 2 Women Boxers For Olympics — Four Men Also Chosen to Give Display of Old Chinese Art — Six candidates for the Chinese boxing [sic] for the World Olympiad at Berlin in August were...
View ArticleThrough a Lens Darkly (53): Traditional Weapons in China’s 20th Century...
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If true this will be a weighty essay. Yet that was always the thing about Harrison Forman, the renowned photo-journalist, writer and explorer. As a...
View ArticleLives of Chinese Martial Artists (22): Wang Ziping and the Strength of the...
Telling a Tale Brief biographical sketches of Chinese martial artists are some of my favorite posts to write. I am not sure why, but I find the challenge of reconstructing a very different type...
View ArticleChinese Martial Arts in the News: June 18, 2018: MMA, Taijiquan and Bruce Lee
Introduction Welcome to “Chinese Martial Arts in the News!” Lots has been happening in the Chinese martial arts community, so its time to see what people have been saying. For new readers, this...
View ArticleAddiction, Wellness and Martial Arts
Winning and Losing In the movies martial artists win their battles. Early losses, inserted into a script for the purposes of “character development,” are redeemed in a climatic final scene. Those...
View ArticleJingwu and the Creation of the “Kung Fu” Brand
Rethinking the Conventional Wisdom Our daily conversations are made up of innumerable facts drawn from what might be termed, “the conventional wisdom.” The contents of this warehouse of social...
View ArticleLabor Unions, the Growth of Kung Fu and the Survival of Wing Chun
National boxing is very popular in Fatshan city. It is reported that there are some eight national boxing schools which are directed by well-known national boxers. School fees are only from two to...
View ArticleMartial Arts Training in the Summer Heat
Feeling the Heat Here is a fun fact to consider. The modern mechanical air conditioner was invented by Willis Carrier (a Cornell graduate I might add), not in Arizona or Florida, but in western...
View ArticleThinking About Kung Fu Families
Veronika Partikova and George Jennings. 2018. “The Kung Fu Family: A metaphor of belonging across time and place,”Revista de Artes Marciales Asiáticas.Volume 13(1), 35-52. A Success Story The latest...
View ArticleResearch Notes: Martial Arts and a History of Desire
A History of Desire When thinking about the diffusion of the Asian fighting arts to the West, we must distinguish between the history of the martial arts as they were practiced, and their...
View ArticleChinese Martial Arts in the News: July 16 2018: Ip Man, Bruce Lee and the...
Introduction Welcome to “Chinese Martial Arts in the News!” Lots has been happening in the Chinese martial arts community, so its time to see what people have been saying. For new readers, this is a...
View ArticleConference Report: Bruce Lee’s Cultural Legacies
***Luke White has generously offered Kung Fu Tea the following report on this year's fourth annual Martial Arts Studies Conference at Cardiff University. Sadly I was not able to attend, but reading...
View ArticleMartial Arts Studies 6: New Research on Japanese Martial Arts
Paul Bowman and I are happy to announce that the sixth issue of Martial Arts Studies (an imprint of Cardiff University Press) has been published and is now available. This interdisciplinary academic...
View ArticleMartial Arts and the Body Politic: A Review in Memory of Denis Gainty
Denis Gainty. 2013. Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan. London and New York: Routledge. 208 pages. $55 USD. Reviewed by Benjamin N. Judkins. The passing of Denis Gainty in 2017...
View Article1920: Jingwu Brings Kung Fu to Guangzhou’s Public Schools
It goes by many names. Organization, bureaucracy…”hard work”… It’s the sort of social effort that defines modern industrialized life. Weber famously termed it the “iron cage” of rationality. We so...
View ArticleResearch Notes: Weird Lions and Chinese Jiu-Jitsu in 1934
I should be packing for a weekend visiting family. But before leaving I wanted to share something from my recent reading. Growing up in Western NY I had many opportunities to visit Toronto. Its...
View Article16 Facts You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Chinese Martial Arts, Part II
Welcome to the second half of our discussion of 16 facts about the Chinese martial arts that you probably don’t know. If you are just joining us for the first time this list is a playful attempt to...
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