Attack of the Wooden Dummies!
***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...
View ArticleThrough a Lens Darkly (3): Chinese Martial Artists in a Local Marketplace
***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....
View ArticleThrough a Lens Darkly (6): China Rediscovers the Shaolin Temple, Igniting a...
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...
View ArticleA Social and Visual History of the Dadao: The Chinese “Military Big-Saber”
***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...
View ArticleThrough a Lens Darkly (7): Selling Swords and Printed Martial Arts Training...
***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...
View ArticleThrough a Lens Darkly (9): Swords, Knives and other Traditional Weapons...
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...
View ArticleThrough a Lens Darkly (11): Japanese Martial Artists in China.
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...
View ArticleThrough a Lens Darkly (8): Butterfly Swords, Dadaos and the Local Militias of...
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...
View ArticleA Life in Stone: Images of Weapons During the Han Dynasty
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...
View ArticleChinese Weapons and the Western Gaze
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,...
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