In a previous post we presented a general overview of the introduction of different Asian martial arts to Latin America and the state of martial studies which has continue to evolve as new contributions towards our understanding of these and other fighting practices e.g. machete fighting, have being published in these countries. In this entry […]
One of my favorite topics of research is the history of the Da Dao Dui (Big Knife Teams) whose most famous promoter was Feng Yuxiang. Once in a while new photographs come to light as the ones in this short entry. I originally came across them in the Scherl/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo website a while back […]
As the saying goes “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step” it’s been thirty three years since I started my martial arts practice and over a decade when I discovered a paper that triggered my interest on the historical evolution of Chinese martial arts. The article in question was “The Chinese Martial […]
When I started my at times rocky martial arts journey thirty three years ago, Chinese martial arts (CMA) was (at least for me) something unattainable. The only arts at hand in my city were Japanese and Korean ones, which I trained for almost a decade. However, I always felt something was missing, in the early […]
In previous posts we have given a quick introduction to the practice of Chinese martial arts in the military during the republican period and the Sino Japanese War. English literature dealing with martial arts practice in the PLA in recent years is at best scarce. The first articles and books that covered this subject were […]
Security forces training While the books used in our survey already discussed in part I were aimed to civilians a few had either the police or the army as target audience. One of the first comprehensive curriculums created in the early XXth Century was Ma Liang’s Zhonghua Xing Wushu (New Martial Arts of China) published […]
Special thanks to Dennis Rovere for his valuable insights and corrections Martial arts in general and Chinese martial arts in particular have been characterized by an aura of mystery on what a devoted practitioner can achieve after mastering a traditional style. Many of these misconceptions stemmed from novels, movies and in a great degree from […]
During the early XXth Century a recurring theme in the different introductions and articles written during this period refers to strengthening the nation through physical culture This thesis is explained by Mao Zedong (1893-1976), who became the leader of the Communist Party, in the article A Study on Physical Education (Tiyu zhi yonjiu) published in […]
The Big Knife (Da Dao) is an iconic weapon that even today regularly appears in popular culture outlets such as TV drama series, movies, books, mail stamps, monuments, toys and even graphic novels available for the general public in China. It serves as a stark reminder of national resistance against Japanese aggression in WW2 and […]
An interesting perspective from one of the son’s of the original Ma family siblings. Ma Yue son of the late Ma Xianda (1932 – 2013) a respected and influential martial arts teacher. Ma Xianda was interviewed by the Kung Fu Taichi Magazine in 2002 where he discussed about his life and the state of Chinese martial arts […]
Zhongguo Wu Xue 