The "Three Prayers to Buddha" section seen in the Wing Chun set Sui Lim Tao. While many modern interpretations of this art coming out of the Ip Man lineage are essentially secular in nature, the Chinese martial arts remain replete... Continue Reading →
Introduction: The Symbolic Language of Weapons Victor Turner, the cultural anthropologist, famously argued that all symbols are "multivocal," meaning a single symbol can take on a multiplicity of meanings. Humans have a way of looking at complexes of symbols, perhaps... Continue Reading →
Catching Qigong Fever. I have read my fair share of books on religion in late imperial and modern China. Unfortunately I had been neglecting a classic. In 2007 David Palmer released a volume titled Qigong Fever: Body, Science and... Continue Reading →
Introduction: What is a Qilin and why do they dance? Let me start off by wishing everyone a happy New Year! The Lunar New Year is the longest and most important festival in the traditional Chinese calendar. Individuals celebrate it... Continue Reading →
Sun Lutang and the Field of Chinese Martial Studies This post is the third and final installment of our three part review of the life and contributions of Sun Lutang. Sun was a master of Xingyi, Bagua and Taiji boxing... Continue Reading →
I am currently working on a paper that has me thinking about Sun Lutang again. To my mind he has always been one of the quintessential pioneers of the modern Chinese martial arts. So here is Part One of a... Continue Reading →
Introduction This is the third and final installment of our in-depth review of Meir Shahar’s groundbreaking work, the Shaolin Temple. Today we will be looking at the evolution of unarmed boxing in late Ming and Qing era China. I... Continue Reading →
Introduction Welcome back to the second installment of the Book Club. In this series of posts we will be taking a more detailed look at some of the most important works in the field of Chinese martial studies. Our first... Continue Reading →
***Ah the book club! I had almost forgotten about these posts. They were a common feature of Kung Fu Tea's early days as I tried to give several of the "classics" a very close reading. Maybe it is something that... Continue Reading →
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