Brian Kennedy: nice article about chinese gods/myths

[nianfong]

just read your article in kungfu magazine man. nice work
so... where are the good luck talismans you were going to post before?

regarding good old guan gong, I always thought he was not only the god of wude (武德), righteousness (義氣）, and sworn brotherhood (義兄弟), he was also simply the god of all things martial.

-Fong

[cerebus]

Nice. Imma hafta check it out...

[Brian L. Kennedy]

Good Morning Fong, Cerebus,
Thanks for the complement on the piece. I will pass that along to Elizabeth. As to Kuan Gong, yeah, all the years I was living back in California I used to view Kuan Gong as kind of the Patron Saint of Chinese Martial Arts. But—here in Taiwan, he is not viewed as having any special connection with martial arts. If you grabbed ten Taiwanese off the streets and asked them, they would identify him as the Patron Saint of Business! No fooling. In any event he is not the Chinese version of Mars The God of War.

In a sense Taiwanese martial artists, if they are going to choose a patron saint other than Matsu or the founder of their system, will choose someone like Neizha or Zhong Kui or one of the many Daoist Heavenly Generals.

And of course many Taiwanese martial artists (including me!) really enjoy, although do not worship, the Budaixi 布袋戲. If you ever get a chance to see Legend of the Sacred Stone (I am told it is available on DVD in North America) do see it. It is a crack up, great film and Budaixi is a great Taiwanese martial entertainment art. Here are two of the characters, White Lotus with his Lion’s Head Saber and I forget the other guys name. The stories and images of the Wulin (the Martial Forrest) are quite interesting in the sense of how real life martial artists have both influenced and been influenced by the stories, the names, and the motifs.

Take care,
Brian

[chud]

I'll have to check that article out. I enjoyed the previous one you wrote, about the eight celestial generals.

[nianfong]

huh. that's really weird, because when I was in high school, training kungfu hard, I visited the 文武 temple at the sun moon lake, which is a temple dedicated to Kong zi (confucius), the patron saint of cultural learning, and Guan Gong, the patron saint of martial things. neither my parents nor my uncle corrected me when I said that I need to pay deep respects to both of them, because of my personal pursuits. And my uncle even bought me a jian from there.

[Muad'dib]

Did someone mention my patron?

Of course, if I keep posting like this, I too will fail the "exam" and wind up ramming my head into a staircase.

[cerebus]

Now we need someone to write an article on the patron saints of Emptyflower Forum, such as Saint Sooty, and Chuck Norris....

[Muad'dib]

not to mention sifu Z.