the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Ramsey Dewey
Published on May 29, 2018

Q&A with the coach about the state of kung fu and martial arts in general in the People's Republic of China:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ng7PW7XriE

Well, he is in Shanghai... not exactly TMA centre of China.

Even so, there is still some TMA in Shanghai, and YES young people also practice it. You just have to know where to look.

He has some good points, but also quite a few misconceptions.

chenyaolong wrote:Well, he is in Shanghai... not exactly TMA centre of China.

Even so, there is still some TMA in Shanghai, and YES young people also practice it. You just have to know where to look.

He has some good points, but also quite a few misconceptions.

You think that apparently he's establishing his mma gym out there has anything to do with it.
I find amusing that people talk about looking for something but never seem to find, while others find it
but dont talk much about it.

He's right that young people are not interested in classical Kungfu except for watching it in movies. For the young generation, especially in the mainland, all Kung Fu is like folk music or folk dance, something old people like to do.

In HK, the situation is a bit different. They have no pensions, they never retire, everyone work until they die. So some old people teach kung fu to earn a living or to make an extra income. So many youngsters go and study for a relative like a grandfather or an uncle, in the beginning often mainly to help out.
...Or to gain a skill they can use to earn money when they get old...

(HK people live longer than anywhere else, so they really prove that working is a healthy thing to do and to retire something unhealthy in old age...

windwalker wrote:I find amusing that people talk about looking for something but never seem to find, while others find it
but dont talk much about it.

...Well, sometimes it takes a bit of luck or skill to find it.

Bao wrote:
(HK people live longer than anywhere else,

I thought Okinawans and Sardinians held that top position, maybe they work lesser these days 30 years ago there where Karate Dojos all over Okinawa, don't know these days, maybe going the same way as GongFu in China

Trick wrote:

Bao wrote:
(HK people live longer than anywhere else,

I thought Okinawans and Sardinians held that top position, maybe they work lesser these days

No, Hk is the leading city.

This seems to be more of a travel ad, but here are some of the reasons:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/02/heal ... index.html

The argument of accessible health care might not belong there as it can take a very long time to get treatment... And the hospitals are flooding over with mainland Chinese who goes there. Especially for giving birth. (This is one of the main reasons to the conflicts between Mainland Chinese and HK-citizens in the recent years.)

Okinawan folks tell me that there are still more karate dojos there than convenience stores... (Japan has tons of convenience stores)

Some people find nothing in Shanghai, others find taijiquan, lanshouquan, xinyiliuhequan, xingyiquan, etc.

Good kung fu is always hard to find -- including in China.

Without any connections or formal introductions, the sorts of CMA that are publicly available to outsiders are usually disappointing in the eyes of those who are looking for the real deal.

The Shanghai Chin Woo Athletic Federation is the best place to visit for traditional martial arts:

http://www.chinwoo.org.cn/

Off topic, but that's really interesting about HK! Thanks for sharing.

There is the college of Martial Arts at the Shanghai University of Sport, and they carried out the research project on Ma Wang Dui Dao Yin Qigong:

http://www.eduei.com/sus/wushuxueyuan/

Excellent sociological insight within the social milieu of modern China!

Based on his point of view, we can see that the appearance of an irrational worldview and expectation of son X being the lineage holder but cannot box himself out of a paper bag hence the MMA monopoly in the present political environment meaning if the expression is name recognition followed by monetary hegemony within the current political arena then it is a great neo Daoist paradignm of a simple country bumpkin taking up MMA, defeating the lineage holder while elevating himself and his station in life. The latter is actually a slap in the face of Daoist/Buddhist proportions where the winner become the pawn of the state and it (the state) naturally punishes the victor because he has destroyed the illusion of CMA defeating everyone under the sun.

Agree with what Will (chenyaolong) said. *As a percentage of the total population of young people*, he is right, traditional kungfu is not popular amongst people under 30 years of age, and amongst the young kids (say 7 - 18 yo) taekwondo / sanda / karate (or even kendo) are much more popular hobbies than traditional kungfu. In the big modern cities the percentage of young kids who do kungfu is probably around 1-2%.

*However* this misses out on the fact that trad kungfu used to be much much more popular amongst previous generations, and those generations are still around. For people of my sifu's generation (40-60 yrs old now), kungfu was/is much more common - and quite a few got to a v decent level.

So if you are looking for trad kungfu in China, it is still there, even in big cities like Shanghai - as I think other people have said, Shanghai has v good taiji / bagua / xinyi liuhe / lanshou / tongbei, etc etc - but it's likely the teachers will be middle-aged and they won't have many young students.