My little corner of the Web, to talk about things as and when they become available.
I have a lot of things I find interesting, and hopefully I will be able to write more about them here. This blog is an experiment, an exercise in creation, an outlet for getting things out of my head so they can live longer in a relatively nicer place.
The Importance of the “Foreign Language Literature” in Chinese Martial Studies
It is very hard to pierce the veil of the mid-19th century and to understand what exactly was happening in the development of the popular martial arts between about 1820 and 1880. This is particularly true in areas that suffered a great deal of social disturbance during the 19th century like Guangdong (and many other places as well). The wall of silence is all the more disconcerting as it seems that lots of interesting stuff was happening. If you go back as far as the late 18th century only a few of the modern Chinese martial arts styles existed in a recognizable form. Yet by the late 19th century, exactly 100 years later, the groundwork was fully in place for the modern martial arts explosion that would happen in the 20th century. So what exactly happened in this critical 100 year period? We just don’t have all the answers.
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