Are we in a downward spiral? Chinese martial arts in the 21st C

I woke up this morning to find that a good friend had sent me a link to yet another “master” of Chinese martial arts being knocked unconscious in a challenge match. My friend, with an excellent pedigree in Chinese martial arts, particularly applicable Chinese martial arts, subtitled the message “and yet another embarrassment posted – why?”

I have long noted, both here on this blog and in other conversations, that problems of this sort within the Chinese martial arts world are NOT NEW. A good example is a previous blog of mine entitled “The people should be very ashamed”. There seems to be some sort of structural or cultural problem that lends itself to people overly concentrating on forms work, ignoring practical application work and still thinking they are fighters.

Shuai Jiao (Chinese wrestling) master Chang Tung Sheng (常東昇 aka Cháng Dōng Shēng) is often remembered for a rather forthright interview he gave to a Taiwan newspaper. Chang had traveled around China, had fought many matches and even won the 1933 heavyweight national Lei Tai tournament. He scoffed at claims of using “Chi” in fights, of “Dim Mak” or “Dian Xue”, and of the many claims of people who proclaimed themselves masters yet never seemed to fight. In a vein similar to the Gracie family, Chang said he’d still take on any comer, and that if he could put his hands on you, he would hurt you! Keep in mind that at a relatively advanced age, Chang engaged in two matches at the behest of a Moroccan royal family member and KO’ed both a Judo black belt and a Kyokushin fighter.

If you’ve read my book, “Chinese martial arts: A historical outline”, you will note how as soon as people began associating martial arts with Daoist practices such as Daoyin, and using that language to explain things, a slippery slope was created. There is certainly nothing wrong with martial arts practice for health, but the same slippery slope resulted in the Boxer Rebellion disaster and probably today’s Chinese martial arts carnival side shows.

NY based Sifu Frank Allen fighting full contact in 1982.

In response to my friend, I’d suggest, as I have just above, that we’ve always had that sort of problem. It’s nothing new. But, perhaps what IS new is that we used to have more “counter balance”. We used to have Chinese martial arts people organizing full contact events and students participating in them.

Even in the old days, not everyone was a fighter. The traditional Chinese martial arts school usually had a lot happening at any given time; some would be practicing lion dancing, some would be practicing sparring drills or actually sparring, some would be do Chi Kung. Everyone did forms back then. But I’d suggest two differences, people spent a LOT MORE TIME at their schools in the past. We were literally “kung fu bums”. And, while not everyone in a school fought, back in the “old days” I’d hazard to say that every school had at least one fighter. There was always that one person who fought and thus was responsible for answering the “challenges”. A lot of my circle happen to have been those kinds of students.

In the past, there also seemed to be a lot more teachers willing to show the sparring drills and the applications, the REAL APPLICATIONS.

Today’s problems seem to be rooted in people spending a lot less time in their schools AND instructors who have consequently let their students spend a lot less time drilling application yet without informing them that in doing so they have lost the essential combat skills. I am even tempted to say that a lot of instructors have BENEFITED from this trend, because many of them also seem to lack real combat skills. Today, it is MUCH EASIER to set up shop as a “master” even if you weren’t that student back in the day who took the challenges.