Spreading the Gospel of Kung Fu: Print Media and the Popularization of Wing Chun
pt. 1
Introduction
It is frequently and loudly asserted that one cannot learn Kung Fu from a book. We are often told that the Chinese martial arts exist primarily as an oral tradition. Little of value was written down, and the essence of an art can only be conveyed through direct contact between the teacher and a students. All of this is true enough. A dedicated and talented teacher is a virtual prerequisite for achieving any degree of mastery in the Chinese martial arts, at least for us mere mortals. Yet if everyone knows that books are dispensable, why do we have so many of them?
Any examination of the subject will quickly show that for a supposedly oral culture, the Chinese martial arts have had quite a fixation with writing things downs. Detailed manuals, historical legends, medical texts and even philosophical pondering have been published in great numbers by martial artists since at least the 1910s. Some of my own research indicates that in Southern China the market for printed boxing material may be even older.
In truth the printed word has been critical to the spread of the martial arts in the modern era. New styles of swordsmen novels (both in the 1920 and later in the 1950) helped to spread and romanticize martial culture. Practical manuals allowed ideas and techniques to be dispersed across an expanding market. Further the potential for advertising allowed for the emergence of truly national “martial arts brands.” Various Jingwu and Guoshu groups even ended up publishing their own newsletters and weekly newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s.
While there is an undeniable element of oral and physical culture within the Chinese martial arts, the often overlooked truth is that it was the printed word that allowed them to become a mass phenomenon. Print seems to have enabled the commodification and distribution of the martial arts in ways that we are only beginning to fully appreciate. Without printed manuals, magazines and newspaper stories the 20th century development of the Chinese martial arts would have looked very different.
Nor was this a phenomenon that was confined to China proper. Print was a critical vehicle that carried the traditional Chinese arts along the currents of a rapidly expanding global marketplace. A limited number of western individuals had been lucky enough to come into contact with the Japanese and Chinese martial arts early in the 20th century, and a handful even made some attempts at bringing this knowledge back to their home country.
After WWII the number of servicemen and government employees who encountered the martial arts while stationed in Asia (and Taiwan in particular) began to grow. Yet the Chinese martial arts could not become a widespread phenomenon in the west if there was no general knowledge of their existence and little demand for their instruction. When thinking about the “Kung Fu Craze” of the 1970 we tend to concentrate on the contributions of cinema (Bruce Lee) and television (“Kung Fu” the TV series). What is often forgotten is that there was a substantial period just prior to that when the Chinese fighting styles were built up and promoted to a growing body of martial arts aficionados through print. Even after “Enter the Dragon” burst onto the international stage individuals still turned to books and magazine articles for basic discussions of what the Chinese martial arts were, practical advice on selecting a style and more in-depth discussions of the history and philosophy behind their newly discovered passions. Martial arts publications did not cause the Bruce Lee phenomenon, but they certainly played a role in enabling it.
In no way do I wish to diminish the value of visual media in the post-Vietnam Kung Fu explosion. Still, it is important to remember that there is another media market that also deserves careful consideration. In this post I would like to quickly review and discuss two works (a book and a magazine article) that helped to introduce Wing Chun to the western, English speaking, world. Both of these works predate the 1973 explosion of interest in Bruce Lee and the Chinese martial arts. In part II of this post I will discuss two additional publications (both books) which emerged in the wake of the Kung Fu craze.
I hope to accomplish three things with this review. The first, and most obvious goal, is to learn a little bit more about the spread and early history of Wing Chun in the western world. Secondly, by looking at these works (and others like them) we may begin to gain a better understanding of the global expansion of the Chinese martial arts more generally.
Lastly, we do not actually have a full record of all of the various pamphlets, books and articles published on the martial arts in late Qing and early Republic era China. Authors like Kennedy and Guo have done an excellent job of discussing the later parts of this period, but the era from the 1870s-1911 is still not well understood. Perhaps by looking at the relationship between print media and the martial arts in the modern era we will discover puzzles and research questions that might help guide our exploration of the past.
-BENJUDKINS
*Photo:
Working class patrons of a stall selling sequentially illustrated martial arts novels. This 1948 AP photo illustrates the importance of heroic martial arts tales in southern China, even for individuals with limited literacy.
