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Kung Fu Tea

Martial Arts History, Wing Chun and Chinese Martial Studies.

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taiping rebellion

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

***Its my birthday!  To celebrate we are taking a second look at an early photograph with one of my favorite pictures of a Japanese samurai.  And essay that comes with it is decent as well.  Enjoy!***   Giving Up the... Continue Reading →

Death, Taxes and the Inevitability of Change in the Chinese Martial Arts: A Historical Case

    Introduction   How should we understand China’s traditional martial arts? Minimal observation will reveal that these are multifaceted social institutions whose interactions with popular culture are complex and ever changing. Still, as Douglas Wile has noted, when discussing... Continue Reading →

The Political Economy of Southern Kung Fu: Thoughts on the Rise of Regional Identity within the Chinese Martial Arts.

Introduction Classification remains one of our central problems in the study and analysis of the traditional Chinese martial arts.  When thinking about the origin and relationship of these fighting systems most efforts begin with an attempt to create groups of... Continue Reading →

The Chinese and their Rebellions: Thomas Taylor Meadows on Taiping Warfare and the Emergence of the Traditional Chinese Martial Arts.

Introduction: One Post, Two Research Programs. The current post hopes to make a contribution to two ongoing projects here at Kung Fu Tea.  The first of these research programs has already led to a number of posts, while the second... Continue Reading →

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 →

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