Kung Fu Tea

Something of a hodgepodge, isn’t it, with the variety of weapons, and theatrical performances. Seems Tan Dun of all people scored the video, which sounds in places like all the musical clichés in the West for China – but Tan Dun is the real McCoy, or “real Wong,” so what was he thinking then?

You’ve detailed the background of Gamble’s film in fine fashion. Especially interesting is your breakdown of the martial arts segments, which sent me back to the sequence in the video to look again at what I barely grasped at first.

And…the Flying Fork Society? No end of entertainment for even the casual observer!

“The martial arts have many functions, and personal or village defense is certainly one of them.” That insight goes some distance in answering my persistent question of whether and how to portray, and how much to include, of martial arts arcana in descriptions of the armies of Taping, Qing,and Western-led Chinese surging around the Yangtze delta in the 1860s. The villagers recruited by Ward and such for their armies of jia-yang-gui-zi might have had some martial arts experience gained from village defense and participation in local militia, and thus been able to employ what skills they had in battles with Taiping. However, it’s still hard to imagine that very many men had such skills or were very far advanced in training.

Also, after reading your post on Red Boats and Wooden Dummies, I whispered a little “shucks” when it occurred to me that I could have included Taiping holy soldier raiding martial arts schools for wooden dummies to include among the other wooden statues they were said to have erected atop stockades surrounding Hangzhou in 1860, described in this passage from Yang Shen:

“The chunk of axes on wood echoed over the hillsides as small pines and camphor trees were felled and quickly thrown together in facades of wooden stockades under waving Taiping banners. Holy soldiers ransacked Taoist and Buddhist temples in the hills and suburbs for wooden statues of the pagan gods, carried them back to the outworks, dressed them in Taiping uniforms, and sat them in rows atop the stockades. From sufficient distance, the gleeful gods of wealth and health, the solemn gods of longevity and literature, and the grimacing god of war, together with Kuan Yin 觀音 and the lesser bodhisattvas looked quite like a large army of besieging longhaired rebels. More quiet than their rebel brethren, the new recruits glared out over the Hang-chou audience from their hilly proscenium and never flinched, even when struck occasionally by a musket ball. The people of Hang-chou were convinced tens of thousands of Taiping swarmed around them.” (Yang Shen, Vol. 1, p. 153.)

Thanks for all your effort researching and publishing on these topics. The depth you achieve is remarkable and very much appreciated.

Best regards,
James