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Kung Fu Tea

Martial Arts History, Wing Chun and Chinese Martial Studies.

Chinese Martial Arts in the News: August 27, 2018: The Back to School Edition!

  Introduction Welcome to “Chinese Martial Arts in the News.”  The nights are getting chilly and the new semester is just getting under way.  That means it is time for our "Back to School" news update.  While we have been... Continue Reading →

Remembering Macau Wing Chun

      “Echoes of Memories”   It is the elusiveness of memory that captivates us. People tend to think of their memories as a personal hard drive, always running in the background, silently backing up the minutia of our daily... Continue Reading →

The Purpose of “Place” in Wing Chun and the Chinese Martial Arts

  A Sense of Purpose   I was taking notes when I heard one of the most interesting comments to come up in the session. “I am not just another person, I have a purpose.” I wasn’t part of this... Continue Reading →

General Zhang Zhijiang: Mixing Christianity and Kung Fu

    A Different Take on an Old Debate   If you study the traditional Chinese martial arts and have spent any time on the internet, you will have heard some variant of these debates before. Do I need to... Continue Reading →

Through a Lens Darkly (54): Preserving a Fading China

  Introduction You may not know her name, but if you have any interest in modern Chinese history, it is almost certain that you have seen her photographs. Hedda Morrison (1908-1991), while not acknowledged as a leading artistic photographer during... Continue Reading →

16 Facts You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Chinese Martial Arts, Part II

  Welcome to the second half of our discussion of 16 facts about the Chinese martial arts that you probably don’t know.  If you are just joining us for the first time this list is a playful attempt to highlight... Continue Reading →

16 Facts You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Chinese Martial Arts, Part I

  We all love clickbait. Sure, we say we hate those gimmicky titles that populate our YouTube play lists.  And none of us would willfully admit to clicking on “108 Facts about Rick and Morty” or, “20 Things that You Didn’t... Continue Reading →

Research Notes: Weird Lions and Chinese Jiu-Jitsu in 1934

    I should be packing for a weekend visiting family. But before leaving I wanted to share something from my recent reading.  Growing up in Western NY I had many opportunities to visit Toronto.  Its Chinatown was the first... Continue Reading →

1920: Jingwu Brings Kung Fu to Guangzhou’s Public Schools

  It goes by many names. Organization, bureaucracy…”hard work”… It’s the sort of social effort that defines modern industrialized life. Weber famously termed it the “iron cage” of rationality. We so frequently speak of, or imagine, the martial arts as... Continue Reading →

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