Introduction: Gender and the History of the Chinese Martial Arts Women are a challenging subject in Chinese martial studies. One the one hand traditions about female boxers, nuns, bandits and heroes abound in the folklore of the “Rivers and Lakes.” ... Continue Reading →
Introduction Its been months (and multiple conference trips) since our last news update, which means that there is no better time to get caught up on recent events! For new readers, this is a semi-regular feature here at Kung Fu Tea ... Continue Reading →
An Unexpected Find It is basically a truism to say that the Western public didn’t know very much about the Chinese martial arts in the 1920s. More interesting is the question of why. Given the global popularity of Judo and... Continue Reading →
Introduction Friday morning posts are usually written the day before, and it just so happens that this week’s Thursday falls on Valentine’s Day. That complicates things for reasons that are both understandable and a few which are a little... Continue Reading →
Doing the Homework Students of Martial Arts Studies are the fortunate few. As research areas go, ours is pretty interesting. Yet as I review the literature (even recent publications from big name academic presses), it is clear that many... Continue Reading →
***In honor of the recent celebration of Mother's Day. Enjoy!*** Introduction This post is the third entry in our series examining the lives of female Chinese martial artists. While it is the case that the vast majority of... Continue Reading →
Introduction It is hard to think of a recent martial arts studies title that has been more successful in capturing the general public’s attention than Wendy Rouse’s (2017) Her Own Hero:The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement... Continue Reading →
T’ai Chi Ch’uan is not a by-product, as it were, of any other art-dance form; it is not derived from ancient Chinese commemorative dance [ritual], folk, or classical Chinese theatre dance [opera], and does not resemble them in dynamics,... Continue Reading →
Men fighting men to determine worth (i.e., masculinity) excludes women as completely as the female experience of childbirth excludes men….The female boxer violates this stereotype and cannot be taken seriously—she is parody, she is cartoon, she is monstrous.... Continue Reading →
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