Images of Chinese Martial Arts

***This was one of the more popular posts I wrote during the first year of KFT (2012). I still love talking about, and training with, wooden dummies. What better training companion can you have in the middle of cold weather... Continue Reading →

***Many traditional Chinese martial artists today actively distance their practice from its more "theatrical" aspects which may have been displayed in theaters propers or marketplace demonstrations. Still, these were the activities that supported countless martial artists over the centuries.... Continue Reading →

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 →

***Is there any topic more beloved by modern students of Chinese martial arts history than the dadao? I can't think of one. Enjoy!*** Rediscovering the Dadao: A Forgotten Legacy of the Chinese Martial Arts. Any review of the history... Continue Reading →

***Recently I was having a discussion about the state of Kung Fu in China with a friend. (You can see his detailed post on the topic here). He was lamenting the general decline of interest in the arts and... Continue Reading →

Introduction: Practical Martial Arts in the Age of the Gun As I have mentioned elsewhere, when thinking about the traditional Chinese martial arts we have a tendency to assume that these systems were created in an era without firearms. ... Continue Reading →

Introduction: Addressing a Difficult Subject No topic is more difficult to approach than the varied roles that traditional Asian fighting systems have played in defining and strengthening nationalism during the 20th century. Governments in Japan, China and later Korea all... Continue Reading →

Introduction: The Butterfly Swords and Southern Martial Arts Defend the Nation I recently ran across two photographs that I think students of the southern Chinese martial arts may find very enlightening. They speak to interesting tactical and cultural questions. On... Continue Reading →

Silent Riddles Our discussion of the origins of modern martial arts is always haunted by twin specters. The first is the claim of great, almost unimageable, antiquity. The second is arguments from silence. We have explored at length all of the cultural,... Continue Reading →

A Collection of Chinese Arms, Published in 1905, posted by Peter Dekker. Spring Cleaning I sat down this morning to work on a project looking at sword aficionados in China, their customers in the West, and how the relationship between... Continue Reading →

Attack of the Wooden Dummies!

Through a Lens Darkly (3): Chinese Martial Artists in a Local Marketplace

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

A Social and Visual History of the Dadao: The Chinese “Military Big-Saber”

Through a Lens Darkly (7): Selling Swords and Printed Martial Arts Training Manuals in a 19th century Guangzhou Market.

Through a Lens Darkly (9): Swords, Knives and other Traditional Weapons Encountered by the Shanghai Police Department, 1925.

Through a Lens Darkly (11): Japanese Martial Artists in China.

Through a Lens Darkly (8): Butterfly Swords, Dadaos and the Local Militias of Guangdong, 1840 vs. 1940.

A Life in Stone: Images of Weapons During the Han Dynasty

Chinese Weapons and the Western Gaze