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Kung Fu Tea

Martial Arts History, Wing Chun and Chinese Martial Studies.

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chinese martial studies

Forgetting about the Gun: Firearms and the Development of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts.

Giving Up the Gun: Revisiting a Classic Argument. In 1979 a Dartmouth English Professor named Neol Perrin wrote one of the more popular and more widely read books on the history of the martial arts.  It was titled Giving Up... Continue Reading →

The Book Club: The Shaolin Monastery by Meir Shahar, Chapters 5-Conclusion: Unarmed Combat in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

  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 →

Ip Man and the Roots of Wing Chun’s “Multiple Attacker” Principle, Part 2.

Introduction and Review This is the second part of an extended article on Ip Man's career in law enforcement, and the subsequent emphasis on "ambush" and "multiple attacker" scenarios that later developed in his lineage of Wing Chun.  See here... Continue Reading →

Ip Man and the Roots of Wing Chun’s “Multiple Attacker” Principle, Part 1.

Law Enforcement and the Martial Arts in Republican China The intersection between law enforcement and the development of the modern Chinese martial arts is a fascinating topic that deserves a lot more attention than it normally gets.  In many ways... Continue Reading →

The Book Club: The Shaolin Monastery by Meir Shahar, Chapters 3-4: Monastic Violence in the Ming Dynasty.

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 →

Yim Wing Chun and Gender: the Stories of Ip Man and Yuen Woo Ping in a Comparative Perspective.

Why Talk About Gender in the Chinese Martial Arts? In my years of teaching I have noticed that any discussion of “gender” will usually elicit great interest from a certain percentage of my students, while you can literally watch the... Continue Reading →

Chinese Martial Studies: Kai Filipiak, Ph.D. Discusses the State of the Discipline.

Asian Martial Arts: Constructive thoughts & practical applications: The good, the bad and the ugly. I recently received my issue of Asian Martial Arts: Constructive thoughts & practical applications, edited by Michael A. Demarco. So far I have only read... Continue Reading →

Through a Lens Darkly (6): China Rediscovers the Shaolin Temple, Igniting a Kung Fu Craze.

Accepting the“traditional” Chinese martial arts as a product of the modern world. If I were to conduct a pole and ask the average student of the Chinese martial arts when the “Golden Age” of Kung Fu was, what sort of... Continue Reading →

How Yoda Helped to Invent Kung Fu: Star Wars and the Martial Arts in the Western Imagination.

Introduction: The only Star Wars post on WordPress this week not about Disney or Lukas. Admit it, you have all done it.  At one point or another each of you has looked at your Sifu or Sensei and thought “Its... Continue Reading →

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