Suppose you had a friend or a colleague who was interested in Chinese Martial Studies, was willing to invest some time and effort in learning what it was about, but had substantial professional commitments. What sort of a reading list would you put together to show the possibilities of the field without overwhelming them? Your list must not include more than five entries and no more than two books. What would you choose and why? And keep it brief, she is a busy woman!
- Peter Lorge. Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty First Century. Cambridge University Press. 2012.
I wish this book had been out when I was first trying to get my hands around the field! If you are new to the area Lorge provides a very workable single volume introduction to practically everything you want to know about the Chinese martial arts in under 250 pages. Sure I have a couple of issues with this book, but creating a single volume introduction with that much information in so few pages is just a remarkable achievement. Strong work.
2. Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo. “Chapter 4: Chinese Martial Arts Historians.” In Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals. Blue Snake Books. 2005.
Again, minor quibbles aside the entire first half of this book is a very readable introduction to the field of Chinese Martial Studies that should be pretty accessible to anyone. I choose chapter 4 because it provides a great introduction to the early (pre WWII) Chinese language academic literature on the martial arts which is basically inaccessible to most students in the west, but is still very important to know about.
3. Andrew D. Morris. “Chapter 7: From Martial Arts to National Skills: The Construction of a Modern Indigenous Physical Culture, 1912-1937.” in The Marrow of the Nation. University of California Press. 2004.
This chapter is a great place to go next after reading Kennedy and Guo. Morris has done the field a huge service by excavating the 1930s dialogue about the fate of the traditional martial arts out of old newspapers, magazines and journals, all of which are basically inaccessible without spending some serious time in rare book collections in China. It also seems that Morris’ work ends up in a lot of secondary sources (like magazine articles) without proper credit being given. More people should read the original. He has perhaps the best brief overviews of the Jingwu (Pure Martial) and Guoshu (National Arts) movements available in the literature.
4. Stanley Henning. “The Martial Arts in Chinese Physical Culture, 1865-1965.” In Green and Svinth (eds) Martial Arts in the Modern World. Praeger. 2003.
Henning offers a very solid overview of the evolution of modern Chinese martial arts. His approach is similar to Lorge and it is easy to see the influence between the two. I like this piece because you can achieve a certain level of focus in a well-crafted essay that is just not possible in a volume. Also, the edited volume where this essay was published is a wonderful example to the possibilities available to creative researchers in the modern field of martial studies as a whole.
5. Meir Shahar. The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion and the Chinese Martial Arts. University of Hawai’i Press. 2008.
Looking back over my list I saw a lot of discussion of the modern era. So for my final selection I am going old school. As a matter of fact, you just can’t get any more “old school” than the Shaolin Temple. This highly readable volume documents the martial traditions of what is probably China’s most venerated Kung Fu institution. It also looks at the evolution of the Shaolin mythology and the reality of their fighting arts in the Ming and Qing dynasties. I have read it multiple times and for my money this is the best book out there in the field of Chinese martial studies right now. I can’t wait to see Shahar’s upcoming research of the myth of the southern Shaolin temple (spoiler alert: no, it never existed.)
Ok, so that is my starter list of books, chapters and articles to introduce someone to the field of Chinese martial studies. How did I do? To historical perhaps? Maybe I need some ethnography, or critical theory? What would be on your list?
Kung Fu Tea 
August 6, 2013 at 4:35 pm
That’s a good list! I’d add:
Holcombe, Charles. 2002. “Theatre of Combat: A Critical Look at the Chinese Martial Arts.” In David E. Jones (ed), Combat, Ritual, and Performance: Anthropology of the Martial Arts. Westport, CT: Praeger.
I don’t necessarily agree with everything that Holcombe writes in that article, but it provides a nice, cultural counter-perspective to the more historical work of Henning and Lorge.
August 6, 2013 at 5:27 pm
Great suggestion. Holcombe’s article is a foundational piece in the field. I recently discusses it if you are interested:
https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2013/06/28/reevaluating-the-theater-of-combat-a-critical-look-at-charles-holcombe-popular-religion-and-the-traditional-chinese-martial-arts/
Best,
Ben
August 3, 2015 at 11:06 am
Your final choice is one I will have to add to my collection. I enjoy reading your pieces and respect the time you have taken to produce these articles. However, I couldn’t help but wonder why you seemed so adamant and confident that the Southern Temple never existed. You mention this erroneous position [IMHO] in almost all of your writings. Now I know why.
This ‘evidence’ that Shahar presents regarding its ‘Non-existence’ should be entertaining provided the evidence of the Temples foundation was unearthed a few years ago, as well as many secondary finds within the area.
The fact is, especially with regard to the Shaolin community, Communist China has become adept at re-writing history.