“I trained under William Ch’en in Taiwan and in New York City. He fools you. Meek, slender, and quiet, he might be a scholar or a student of the Book of Changes, never a boxer.….He is so relaxed that he... Continue Reading →
The Kukri in Three Symbolic Registers As regular readers will know, I have a keen interest in both the history of bladed weapons and vintage postcards. The kukri, a type of fighting knife from... Continue Reading →
Introduction This occasional series of posts is dedicated to the display and discussion of vintage images of the Chinese martial arts. While occupying an important place in popular culture, the martial arts were traditionally associated with... Continue Reading →
A Second Look at a Rare Photograph It would be an understatement to say that period photographs of Qing-era martial arts activities are rare. For a variety of reasons these themes were less popular with both western... Continue Reading →
***This will be the concluding post in our brief series on the role of southern China's maritime environment on the development and spread of the traditional martial arts. Please see the end of this post for a complete list of... Continue Reading →
The Album Recently I had the good fortune to come across a photograph of a Chinese dadao (big knife) that dates to the late 1930s. Images such as these were sometimes collected by Japanese soldiers in occupied... Continue Reading →
Introduction Conflict seems to inspire trophy hunting. In the west this often takes the form of fading photographs of someone’s grandfather holding a vintage Luger. A large number of katanas also made their way back to the United States... Continue Reading →
***Recently I was having a discussion about the state of Kung Fu in China with a friend. (You can see his detailed post on the topic here). He was lamenting the general decline of interest in the arts and... Continue Reading →
***One of the questions that I have been attempting to tackle in my more recent writing is the degree to which we should be thinking about the "traditional" Chinese martial arts as a quintessentially modern activity. From the perspective... Continue Reading →
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