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Every now and again, time and space just seem to line up in an incredible display of fate/coincidence (delete as appropriate). For months now, we have been trying to get to grips with the strange brand of Uncle Tom-ism on display in the Shanghai ex-pativerse. It has so many unique facets that it appears to defy summary or clear explanation. Then along came Matthew Polly who wrote American Shaolin, a book that sets it all out with the purpose and prose of a Plato’s Republic. Albeit unintentionally.
The book details Polly’s trip to China in 1992. Told as a series of anecdotes, he flies in to Beijing without a plan, makes his way to the Shaolin Temple and stays there for 18 months to learn kung fu. At the time, Polly was a highly motivated and intelligent Princeton student who’d studied Mandarin to a decent level before leaving for China. The story covers his first year, which ended with him being entered into a tournament in Zhengzhou City.
Polly is intelligent and open minded. He can speak Chinese and knows what is happening around him. He uses words like orientalism and peppers the story with measured observations and jokes about uptight neo-cons back home. He is both a likeable and capable storyteller and the book is an easy and entertaining read. It is for all these reasons that, when read on a macro level, the book is a tragedy on an oedipal eye-gouging level.
Within the first two months he finds out that Shaolin as it was ended in 1912 and attempts to restart it were literally bombed through the warlords period, pacific war, civil war and revolutions. The ‘kung fu’ he is learning is stylized dance taken from Modern Wushu and the iron body skills are individually trained circus routines. Yet he decides to stay and join the town’s kick boxing club.
Thereafter he learns kickboxing in rural Henan for USD1400 per month. That’s right. One anecdote has him proudly negotiate it down to USD600 per month. Still twenty times over the average family income in that area at the time and at least double that again over what other students pay. Everyone calls him laowai to his face and constantly refer to his ‘tall nose’. He is used as a punch bag for most of his training. "Why are laowai so bad at kungfu?" He takes bullies out for banquets and kowtows in the old style to a master who will never teach him – because he ‘understands’ guanxi.
By the time other “laowai” start turning up in Shaolin, Polly laughs at their strangeness and prides himself on being more ‘in’ than them. Oh, those crazy laowai. The most brutal picture of this is when he helps fellow American John Lee get attention at the hospital by reprising his “crazy monkey foreigner kung fu” routine that amused his Chinese friends so much. As for the kung fu itself, Polly is painfully naïve. He spends a whole chapter befriending a mysterious caretaker who eventually relents and teaches him “Iron Arm” kung fu. This turns out to be bashing your forearms into a tree in a pattern, then using Chinese medicine to treat it. This is a common warm up/conditioning routine found openly in all traditional kung fu classes from Hong Kong to American Chinatowns.
Finally, when facing his first skilled opponent he is beaten to a pulp while the crowd chant ‘kill the foreigner’. If only he’d taken good advice to go to Taiwan or Hong Kong in the first place. Or better still, if he was going to do kick boxing, a Muay Thai camp in Thailand. Instead he decides to pay outrageous amounts of money to learn plain kick boxing in a third-rate school (he names the better schools in China) while being used as the butt of all around him’s ignorance – all because of the name Shaolin and the strange driving desire to prove that he ‘understands’ his oppressors. Polly himself often refers to better schools and a more open life in Beijing and Shanghai, even Wuhan, but instead is proud to represent Shaolin in the tourney – despite all but one of his teachers and classmates refusing to march with him and making him enter as the Princeton Team, USA.
Polly recalls all of this with cheerful nostalgia. We all get into situations in life, at home and abroad, where people with power over us abuse it. Sometimes we have to make do, but we don’t have to like it. We certainly don’t have to happily reproduce that behaviour. Despite his intelligence and open attitude towards China, Polly seems happy to give examples of “Chinese” behaviour while also stressing the individual personalities of the people he meets. His mind remains blissfully conflict free while talking about stereotypes and struggles while himself using generalizations and the word “laowai” on every second page.
And therein lies the book’s unintentional insight into the mind of the Uncle Tom Laowai. Read the book. It is one of the great philosophical novels of our time.
American Shaolin by Matthew Polly (Gotham Books) can be found in Garden Books, on the corner of Changle Lu and Shanxi Nan Lu.
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Oh please do tell us how we loawais should relate to the chinese in order to please you, oh wise and noble recent university graduate! Please forgive our ignorant and racialistical ways!
Despite what I say in the review the book is a good read for what it is and the stories can be quite funny.
He meets a guy called Mikael who wants to warn everyone about "The Sixth Race" and has come to Shaolin to prove he has an unbeatable move.
600USD a month might be expensive for martial arts lessons, but it's not bad for the kind of BDSM treatment this guy seems to crave
It's funny that the poster -- or "reviewer" -- notes and breezes by the fact that the author of the book uses the term "orientalism," even though this term figured pretty heavily into that last bit of cliche-ridden, second-year lit theory student garbage that was this poster's review of the That's Shanghai review of Snapline.
This poster is obviously just so above it all...He must have finished the entire introduction to Said's book.... Maybe he finished a whole course on 20th century critical theory... Or at least he got a hold of some kind of Critical Theory anthology. Maybe he can find more useless shit to bash using lots of words in quotations and watered-down discourse theory. What a service that would be to the deluded expat community...
It may be a terrible book, but at least the guy who wrote it was somewhat original and didnt just repackage ideas from the 70s into criticism of stuff that doesnt even really need to be criticized.
This wouldn't even get a decent grade on a typical university essay... which is obviously what these posts are trying to be.
That's another way of looking at it :) The BDSM reading of the text.
Grandwizard, if you're referring to me (the post author), I graduated over ten years ago. Do you find that you don't see the kinds of attitudes described in the book? The review is critical of a proscribed view of how to relate to 'a people' so I'm not sure what the rest of your comment is about.
What's your take on the topic?
Can I suggest some future reviews/key words for this author?
"Yellow Fever" - A review of some white guy with the nerve to write a Szechwanese cook book.
"Oreo" - A review of some white guy who writes about living in rural China.
"Race Traitor" - A review of a Chinese-English dictionary.
'"Race Traitor" - A review of a Chinese-English dictionary.'
Whether the point fijo is making is true or not, that's a funny quote!
I guess you can see from the comments that people tend to bristle when you high-handedly call them racists. Yes, there is racism, but in general, I think that in general, the relationship between laowais and local residents is quite good.
Of course, there is racism and some unfair labels (from both camps, to be sure) that are thrown around, but I think that's inevitable in such an environment. But the idea that the foreign community is to blame for this or employs language and definition in a chauvinistic, imperious fashion is simply bogus. That said, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with describing certain behaviors or mannerisms as "Chinese," and if you differ, I suggest you take it up with the Chinese themselves.
Just the picture on the cover is enough to turn me off. **INSERT JUXTAPOSITION PHOTO HERE** Looks like Iron & Silk Redux.
The sarcastic tone of the review makes it unclear what Best is trying to accomplish. Especially this :
"It has so many unique facets that it appears to defy summary or clear explanation" So I will expect and receive neither. Cheers for occupying my six remaining brain cells.
Hi Edsayswhat, Grandwizard, fijo and el jefe.
I'm the 'reviewer'.
I'd love to know what you actually think of the book, if you've read it, or what you think of the topic in general.
I've been involved in this sort of writing for about 15 years and your comments are typical of a certain section of people. There's little mention of the topic and lots of attacking the writer with meaningless nitpicking etc. That's fine, if that's what you like.
I remember Peijin Chen getting a similar reaction when he posted about racism at a nigthclub - people telling him he was up himself.
Why do you equate being concerned about race and representation with students? What's wrong with university papers and students anyway? Why are people who write about these issues just taking themselves too seriously etc?
Why do you feel the need to jump in against concern for these issues anyway? Grandwizard, is there any specific reason you feel you've been called racist yourself? Are you?
Ed, I read Orientalism and Culture and Imerpialism - all the way through - gosh. And?
Read the book and post your reactions to it. I quite liked it and recommend it for a read.
Oh, I had a thought. The Opinionist feature is open to all - why not submit a piece with a counter point.
Something like "Don't heed the students, race and representation are things of the past."
Seriously.
Mata -
I think that this reaction to your prose is understandable, particularly in a forum such as this. Your criticism, based on theories taught in Intro to Humanities classes round the globe, is perhaps a little tired. Add some very elliptical language, and a dash of high mindedness, and it all sounds a shade pedantic.
But congrats for putting it out there and contributing. Even if I don't agree with what you say or the way that you're saying it, it's nice to read something thoughtful and ambitious here.
..err ..thanks (I guess) ... but it's a standard reactionary answer/diversion to criticise writing about 'issues' by saying it's high minded, misguided or belonging in a intro class of some sort. It's also playing the man not the ball.
I write that the book is interesting, the author is intelligent and insightful - but that it unintentionally sums up an attitude that I encounter here on a regular basis.
There is nothing controversial or high minded in that at all.
The 'reaction' is standard 'knee-jerk'. Read them again, they don't actually describe what I wrote very accurately.
Since you feel these issues/words are 'intro level', what do you think about them? If you haven't read the book you can choose another example?
Sorry, I read again, and I agree with my initial assessment of your critical theory. You have, in line with your previous post, decided to explore the notion of identity, or lack thereof, and its representation through a foreign lens. Orientalism, Occidentalism, (insert-culture)-ism. I haven't read the book.
How do I feel about the issue of the Laowai and his interpretation of the life and times of China? Hard to say. I certainly wouldn't tackle it in a blog posting, but I admire your courage in doing so.
Grandwizard, I'm confused. What exactly is the connection between a screen name that evokes images of hooded white Americans torturing and lynching black Americans and a goofy white guy trying to ingratiate himself with Chinese martial arts dudes in the 1990s and/or a somewhat critical blog post about that book?
For that matter, Mata Hari, I'm confused about the connection between Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel and this dude's extended self-inflicted Shaolin vacation.
I guess my question is: How applicable is the case of white American racist abuse of blacks analogous to white American unrequited sinophilia and/or expat anxiety about perceived excessive panda hugging on the part of a fellow expat?
never mind all that- is there any shagging in it?
Steamy sex involving the writer and some hot Shaolin monks! Now that would make the book fly off those shelves!
Yeah, those guys are so acrobatic, there's no telling what would.... oh, god, that's disgusting. They could probably poke new holes.
WatchBagDVD, I chose this name just to be a jerk, but thanks for noticing.
Oh, yeah, WatchBagDVD, FTR it's not about "unrequited sinophilia and/or expat anxiety about perceived excessive panda hugging." It's about being called a dirty, stinking racist with references to Uncle Tom's and Orientalism and all that.
Well Andy,
This is certainly the most unique review that my book has yet to receive. I'm tempted to use "the book is a tragedy on an oedipal eye-gouging level" on the cover of the American edition. But then again, as you point out, I'm a sucker for abuse.
I will say in defense of Shaolin that while there are better places to learn modern wushu (Beijing) or Chinese-style kickboxing (Wuhan) there is no better place to learn Shaolin kung fu than at the Shaolin Temple, which is why I went there in the first place. It is also why thousands of foreigners and tens of thousands of Chinese have gone there to study.
As for my naivete, I've actually trained in NY's Chinatown, Hong Kong, and Thailand. I didn't find the attitudes towards laowai to be any less chauvinistic (if anything familiarity breed contempt) or the training any better than at Shaolin. Also the price for room, meals, and training was much higher than $600 per month.
While I'll grant you that my tone in the book is light and humorous, I think I made it fairly obvious that I didn't enjoy being treated like a circus freak. It was pretty miserable being the only foreigner in a small rural Chinese village. But that's what made it interesting. And that's what made it an interesting book to write.
Regarding the issue of Uncle Tomism, I fail to see why my efforts to fit in and adapt to the local customs make me a traitor to my race. Should I have expected my hosts to change their behavior to fit in with my customs? As the only foreigner there I didn't have the luxury that so many ex-pats in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong enjoy of living in their little ex-pat world, hanging out only with other ex-pats, drinking at ex-pat bars, all the while complaining bitterly about China and the Chinese. It seems to me that your review says a great deal more about your personal issues as an ex-pat than it does about my book.
All of that said, I'm glad you enjoyed the book on the micro-level.
Cheers,
The Uncle Tom Laowai
"Regarding the issue of Uncle Tomism, I fail to see why my efforts to fit in and adapt to the local customs make me a traitor to my race. Should I have expected my hosts to change their behavior to fit in with my customs?"
How about selling yourself out? It is pure stupidity, not high minded multiculturalism, to put up with physical and mental abuse, as well as outright theft for such a long period of time.
It is also pure stupidity to ignore the writing on the wall in front of you...that Chinese are educated to be racist monsters. It is idiotic foreigners like Matthew that infect the US State Dept, Wall St, board rooms and even the US DOD with regards to China relations.
The only positive that can come out of this book is to show the true nature of such an ugly, dirty, racist country.
bad, dirty pig China.
Thank you, nanheyangrouchuan, for proving my point so eloquently.
Yeah, I get the "just to be a jerk" part. And But the question remains: What's up with the analogy between white American racism against blacks and Chinese xenophobia? Yeah, yeah, they're both about skin color and culture etc.... But it's a pretty lame comparison to draw all the way around. Make that extremely lame.
Nanny,
You are really off the mark. I have had many encounters with racism in China, and most of them are results of ignorance rather than maliciousness. You, however, should be ashamed of your hypocrisy and race-baiting. It seems your only contact with China is through BBS's, which makes it clear why you are so shamefully wrong. Sadly, your favorite haunts only attract the extremists (including you) and the people with nothing better to do that argue over minutiae (including me) with closed-minded and unswayable adversaries. People are undoubtedly paid to troll the China Daily website and others to trumpet support for pointless arguments. What's your excuse? Fighting the good fight? You are selling your people out by pushing a zero-sum game message. Hopefully any Chinese people reading your baseless nonsense will pity you rather than hold you up as a representative for other non-Chinese.
I disagree; I think it's fine. So suck it.
Btw, come on down to our next rally. Fuxing Park. 4:30 pm. This Sunday. All are welcome. Be there!
Yeah, I get the "just to be a jerk" part. And I get the Uncle Tom thing, too. But the question remains: What's up with the underlying analogy between white American racism against blacks and Chinese xenophobia? Yeah, yeah, they're both about skin color and culture etc....
But centuries of white Americans enslaving, terrorizing and lynching black people is a long way from Chinese being somewhat resentful (or even deeply resentful) of white people hanging out in China to make money, "have an experience," shag Chinese girls and all that. Guess I'm just annoyed by the basic move to equate one kind of vicious racism with another kind of very different xenophobic behavior.
But yeah, wiz, I do have to agree with you on how annoying it is to be called racist (or even just have it implied) in a kneejerk dopey way just because you're white and American. And the idea of an *actual* grand wizard hanging out in contemporary China and teaching English or something's kinda funny. I think I read a Sinocidal skit along those lines...
And nanheyaddayaddayadda. I've got an idea you might like. Let's form like this like coalition of like Western nations and like march into Beijing and like torch and loot the place and like get all the Chinese like hooked on like psychopharmaceuticals and oxycontin and Twinkies or something like that (it'll reverse that obnoxious trade deficit, even). That should take care of the bad ol' yellow peril for a century or two. And we can totally manage it now that the surge has worked over on the other side of Asia (the part of the "orient" Said was actually writing about, by the way; don't recall he had a ton to say on China per se, but hey, whatevs).
Cool. I'll come in my Al Queda suicide bomber outfit.
Hey Matthew
Thanks for coming on and posting.
As I wrote, I think it's an entertaining book that I bought with my own money and still have on my shelf.
I'm not sure why it has to be explained but 'Unlce Tom' is just drawing a comparison with someone who takes racism passively. I don't believe in concept's of race myself. And do not belive you can be a 'race traitor' only a self-traitor.
What shocked me, Matt, is that, as you say, you are aware of all those things I talk about but then use the word 'laowai', for example, all the time. Laowai is not a polite word for foreigners, it's is ironic slang.
I know what you mean about Chinatowns and I don't accept the term 'gwai loh' and more than I'd accept the word 'chink' or 'spic'. They are all bad.
It also must be clear that - as a country - I don't think China is more or less racist than any other. Nanheyangrouchuan is the John Bolton of China net forums. It's instersting to hear that Thailand isn't much different. But, I've also trained in a variety of situations and know that training in classes in North America is not the same as your experience in Shaolin.
When I first started training here it was in the state run Jingwu School and I got the same treatment. As soon as I found a reasonable teacher I bailed.
When I read "The 6th race" I was laughing and immediately thought of similar people I'd met in Shanghai of the past 6 years. But when you put these images into a book they become representation that take meaning from their new context.
By saying you're not naive are you implying that you knew Iron Arm training is open knowledge and that the caretaker story is laid out like that for dramatic effect intentionally? Nothing wrong with that - but you must see how it looks.
Also, Jimneycricket thanks for you replies.
And by the way, there is sex - not with the monks though - although that is covered in an abstract way in a chapter on homosexuality.
Like I said. Read it. Garden Books.
I wasn't going to get into this side of things here at the risk of alienating non-kung fu people but a friend just convinced me it's relevant.
Shaolin Kung Fu is not a style. In fact 'Shaolin Kung Fu' lives on much more outside of Henan than in there today.
I'm talking about Hung Gar, Choi Lee Fut, Wing Chun, Mantis etc. The Shaolin Kung Fu styles that can be found alive and well all over the world.
The stuff that has surfaced since 1976 at the Temple site is a new hybrid re-imagined 'style'. Thousands of foreigners flock there each year because they are dreamers. As we all are, me included.
When I first went to the Jingwu school in Shanghai they marketed it as a direct continuation of the original. They could teach roughly similar versions of the "Ten basic Forms" but with no application knowledge. The rest of the classes were modern wushu. It was a scam.
I later found out that some of the old masters were around but couldn't teach without first paying the bosses outrageously high deposits.
Like Shaolin, they now claim the name as their own and try to charge international schools membership for using it. Incredibly, some do pay.
A good choice for Shaolin Kung Fu would be the Hong Kong school of famous Hung Gar master and Shaw Movie director Lau Kar Leung - which is open to all students. The Chiu Wai Hung Gar school, run by Graham Player is good too.
Dear Andy,
Thank you again for buying my book, reviewing it, and recommending it. I also appreciate your measured reply.
And I think I've discovered the source of the confusion.
You write in your reply post: "Laowai is not a polite word for foreigners, it's is ironic slang."
As you should know having read and reviewed my book, I don't agree, because I wrote on page 5 of the British edition: "I was laowai—literally "old outsider"—a polite term for white foreigners."
The neutral term for foreigners is "waiguoren" — literally "outside country people." The Chinese, as they often do, shortened that by adding "lao" and dropping "guoren" to create the term "laowai." While "lao" literally means "old", it also means "honorable", because age is revered. So the term means "honorable outsider."
Now, like everything in Chinese, a lot depends on the tone of voice. Said with a sneer, "laowai," can be used as an insult. And perhaps in Shanghai over the last six years the term has taken on that connotation. I don't know; I haven't been living in Shanghai over the last six years.
What I can say is that I lived in Henan in the early 1990s, and the term "laowai" had no negative connotations. It was a neutral descriptive term. It was no more insulting for a Chinese person to describe me as a "laowai," then it was for me to describe him as a "Chinese person."
If the Chinese wanted to insult a foreigner, they would call him or her a "yang guitz" — "Western devil." That was the equivalent of "chink." I got called that a couple of times, and I always responded to that angrily
Therefore, while it must have sounded to you like I was using and internalizing a racial insult, I was not. Perhaps "laowai" is like the term "negro", a once perfectly acceptable description that gradually turned into an insult.
Regarding naivete, I didn't know about iron forearm at the time. I was 21 and from Kansas; I was naive. I learned more about the world of kung fu afterwards. Which is to say, I'm not naive now.
Finally, you imply as do others that I should have simply packed my bags and left for some place that would have treated me better. In not doing so, I was either foolish or an Uncle Tom. But as I wrote in my book, I was a Religion and East Asian studies major at Princeton. The official justification for my trip to Shaolin was to complete anthropological research into the current state of the Shaolin Temple. Therefore, I couldn't leave until my research was complete. It took me two years to feel like I understood the place. At that point, I returned to Princeton and wrote my senior thesis on the Shaolin Temple.
I hope that clears up some of the confusion.
Matthew
Andy,
I'm afraid I can't let your second post go without comment, because it contains several slanders against the Shaolin Temple that are quite common and quite misinformed.
First, because the Shaolin Temple is the birthplace of Chinese kung fu, in a certain general sense all kung fu styles are "Shaolin styles." In this very broad interpretation, Hung Gar, Choi Lee Fut, Wing Chun, and Mantis, etc. are Shaolin. However, in a more narrow interpretation, the traditional kung fu style taught at the Henan Shaolin Temple is clearly distinct from these other styles mentioned. It is generally referred to as "Northern Shaolin style" to distinguish it from the "Southern Shaolin styles" that include Wing Chun for example.
Or to put it another way, it would be like saying there is no difference between humans and apes, because both are primates. "Shaolin" is a general term, but "northern Shaolin" refers to a specific style. I dropped "northern" in my book, because I figured it was too technical for a general audience.
Secondly, it is simply not true that, as you write, "The stuff that has surfaced since 1976 at the Temple site is a new hybrid re-imagined 'style'."
This is a very common slander too often perpetuated by Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Chinatown masters who resent Shaolin's popularity and have a political ax to grind with Maoist mainland China. It is part of the "kung fu" myth that "my style is the real style but yours is fake."
As I took great pains in my book to point out, during the Cultural Revolution, Shaolin kung fu went underground. While the Temple was abandoned, at least three of the head monks continued to teach their students in secret. After Jet Li's movie came out in 1982, these monks and their students returned to the Temple.
I personally went to the 70th birthday party in 1992 for Suxi, the acting abbot and one of the three surviving monks. Thousands of his disciples showed up. He and his disciples were the people who kept northern Shaolin style alive during the most brutal of times when the masters in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Chinatowns, who now bad-mouth Shaolin, were enjoying a much easier life.
I'm not saying that certain forms and techniques weren't lost during the Cultural Revolution. I'm sure they were. But the bulk of the style is the same now as it was when former abbot Suxi was a boy.
And let me be clear, I'm certainly not saying that northern Shaolin is a better style or a more valid style because it is older. All kung fu styles have their strengths and weaknesses.
I'm simply sick of hearing people who have never been to Shaolin call it "fake." Or claim that the its lineage was broken during the Cultural Revolution. (A) it was not, (B) if it was, what proof do they have to offer? and (C) more directly, what proof do you, Andy, to make this claim other than hearsay? Did you spend two years studying at the Shaolin Temple? Have you repeatedly visited the Shaolin Temple since then? Did you spend the last ten years talking to the Shaolin monks? Did you spend three years writing a book about the Shaolin Temple? No? Then why on earth would you post something that directly contradicts everything I wrote in the book you just read and reviewed? Are you saying I'm lying?
And so in summary Andy, while it is nice that you liked my book, bought my book, and recommend my book, there is no getting around the fact that you called me an Uncle Tom (the kind of ad hominem attack that most book reviewers, myself included, avoid), my book a tragedy, and the Shaolin Temple a fake.
That's three for three, chief. Good thing for you that I'm not Norman Mailer.
Cheers,
Matthew Polly
@Matthew Polly:
"Regarding the issue of Uncle Tomism, I fail to see why my efforts to fit in and adapt to the local customs make me a traitor to my race."
You make yourself look like a fool in order to fit in, which you never will and you know you never will. You paint a portrait of foreigners as being weak fools and pay good money to do it. You have no point to prove, you only burn cash like you need the heat. And it can probably be said that your martial arts skills didn't end up being that good after all of that effort, humiliation and money. Go into a golden gloves competition and see how good your training is.
well I don't know about anyone else, but I can't wait to read the book and see who's side of this fight I'm on!
There's only one way for the two of you to settle this disagreement and show which style of kung-fu is the most legitimate, and it doesn't involve posting messages to an expat Bulletin Board.
Thanks again for coming on the thread Matt. I'm sorry that you've broken down to the Norman Mailer threat thing. Using your book as a way to illustrate what I see as an 'Uncle Tom' type attitude is certainly provocation enough for people who like to settle intellectual challenges with threats and fists. No worries. I understand.
I hope you realise that putting your book and yourself out there may meet with opposing views, as my review did here in the comments section.
In my whole life I have never found it necessary to talk about all non-British as 'foreigners' using a slang term. And in 6 years in China I have never heard 'laowai' used in a genuinely polite way. I'm not confused and I make my point clearly in the review. I even think that newspapers using the heading 'foreign news' as opposed to 'international news', are xenophobic.
I think it's enough that you now have your side represented under my comments and people can make their own minds up.
As for the Shaolin comments. There's tons of old photos and material from the pre-war era. I've watched Shaolin performances and watched performances from traditonal clubs in non revolution communities. Put together with my own training experiences and historical knowledge, it seems pretty clear to me.
People in the Mantis community talk shit to each other all the time too, who is fake who is the best who can actually fight. I and my teacher, have seen a lot of it, but it's not really relevant to the training.
@fijo
Sounds romantic in the Kung Fu sense. Matt trained kickboxing there, which is not disputed in the post and is very effective for sure.
I'm just a hobbyist type who gets kicks from being able to do stuff like in my avatar. Squatting my body weight on one leg while on a shakey hollow plastic block.
Kickboxers would just kick you.
Andy,
I do very much appreciate your review and the opportunity to respond to it and respond to your responds, etc.
Of all the reviews my book as received, I found yours to be the most fascinating, because I assumed I would be accused of being the Ugly American. And when I was writing the book, I structured the jokes to rebut that accusation. I never imagined I might be reviewed critically from the other-side, as a sell-out. I must say it threw me for a loop. And it is a perspective I never encountered when I was in China. I suppose that represents a certain amount of progress.
I feel I should make one thing clear having read your last two post after promising myself I would take a couple of weeks as a time-out. When I said, "it's a good thing I'm not Normal Mailer", I was feeling a little frisky. But I meant it.
I'm not, nor would I ever physically threaten someone who took the time to read, review, and write a review of my book simply because I didn't care for their conclusions. If I gave the impression that I was threatening you, then I apologize. As a disciple of the Shaolin Temple, I was taught by the monk's about "martial morality". And its basic premise was to never use force unless there were no other alternatives. The monks didn't always live up to this, but then again, they were humans and we don't always live up to our ideals.
If you are ever in NYC and in the mood, I offer you an open invitation to dinner. My invitation. Or "wo ching ke." (Please excuse my pinyin; I learned under a different system.)
Anyway, I enjoyed the debate. And I enjoyed hearing that "laowai" has become a derogatory term. I'll simply restate that it wasn't when I was in Henan in the early 90s. And as you've learned, I'm fairly sensitive to being disrespected.
Regarding, the old photos and material from the pre-war ear I'd be more than happy to see them. In the book, I went with what I was told and what I observed. But I've recently been reading Meir Shahar's "The Shaolin Monastery", which dispels a number of Shaolin legends with remarkable scholarship. So I'm always open to being proven that I am wrong.
I hope that settles the matter.
Amituofo,
Matthew
Thanks for coming on, once more, Matt, and for the invite. If you're ever in Shanghai the same invite goes for you.
Andy.