I've outlived four versions of this exact argument and it always lands the same place. The forms were real once, back when people still hit each other in practice. Then the contact became optional and the whole thing turned into a fad wearing a silk costume and a tuition bill. Your last paragraph is the part that holds up. The arts didn't get exposed by MMA, they went soft long before that, and the no-touch grandmaster is just the final form of a school that quit sparring decades ago. I watched the same rot eat half the lifting I grew up on. The second the hard part becomes optional, the results leave with it.
Was kung fu ever actually great, or just great in the movies?
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Kung fu has the best movies of any martial art, and that is the whole problem. Fifty years of cinema promised hands too fast to see, a punch that detonates a man from one inch away, and old masters who knock you over with chi from across the room without leaving their chair. You grew up on that. Then you sign up... and slowly learn that the trailer was the entire film.
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I've outlived four versions of this exact argument and it always lands the same place. The forms were real once, back when people still hit each other in practice. Then the contact became optional and the whole thing turned into a fad wearing a silk costu
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Kung fu has the best movies of any martial art, and that is the whole problem. Fifty years of cinema promised hands too fast to see, a punch that detonates a man from one inch away, and old masters who knock you over with chi from across the room without leaving their chair. You grew up on that. Then you sign up... and slowly learn that the trailer was the entire film.
Start with wing chun and the sacred centerline. The theory is elegant: occupy the center, and every attack folds around your structure like water around a rock. It is beautiful on the wooden dummy, it does sound nice. Then a guy who has boxed for eight months throws a jab, a straight jab, a direct jab, a simple jab, and the centerline discovers that geometry is not a force field. Turns out a straight line is also the shortest distance for his fist to your nose. Turns out that punching a heavy bag gets you much stronger than punching the air... The diagram never accounted for the other man deciding to hit you anyway...
And the wooden dummy. Mook jong. Years of devotion to a piece of furniture that never feints, never circles, never changes levels, never gets tired, and most importantly never hits back. You can drill the dummy until your forearms are oak, and you will be the undisputed champion of the corner of the room where the dummy lives. The dummy has a perfect record. It is undefeated because it is a chair.
Then the chi demo, the crown jewel. The grandmaster stands in his silk uniform and waves a hand, and six students collapse like he unplugged them. He never touches anyone. The catch is that only his own students fall. A visiting kickboxer is welcome to volunteer, and somehow the energy never reaches him. It reaches the guy whose belt the grandmaster signed. Chi, it turns out, is paid by tuition.
And whenever you ask why none of this gets tested, you get the eternal exemption. "It is for the street, not the ring." A street that is conveniently never available for inspection, that has no footage, that exists only as the place where the techniques work, which is to say nowhere, which is to say the same address as the invisible attackers in everyone else's dojo.
Traditional Chinese martial arts are ancient and were athletically brutal, and breathtaking. Very effective, back in the day. The current forms are closer to dance than to dance is to anything, and the lack of sparring allowed the proliferation of "energy masters" and "power fields" and what not, to the point that Tai Chi, Kung Fu and many others are pretty much forgotten and overshadowed by the mocking imitation that you can find nowadays.
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The line about drilling the dummy until your forearms are oak got me, because that is basically my whole relationship with the heavy bag. I hit it for a year and felt unstoppable, then did one round of light sparring with a friend who boxes and got gently reminded the bag was never going to slip and clip me back. Hard and effective are different words and every gym confuses them. The dojo just charges more for the mix-up.
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I've outlived four versions of this exact argument and it always lands the same place. The forms were real once, back when people still hit each other in practice. Then the contact became optional and the whole thing turned into a fad wearing a silk costume and a tuition bill. Your last paragraph is the part that holds up. The arts didn't get exposed by MMA, they went soft long before that, and the no-touch grandmaster is just the final form of a school that quit sparring decades ago. I watched the same rot eat half the lifting I grew up on. The second the hard part becomes optional, the results leave with it.
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ok genuine day-one question, is there any kung fu gym anywhere that actually spars full contact, or is the chair the closest it ever gets to a sparring partner? booked a trial class near me and now i'm a little scared i just paid to punch furniture
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Half disagree. You roast the wooden dummy for never hitting back like that's a weakness. That's the whole point and it's underrated. Nobody hits ME back either and my record is spotless. The problem with the centerline guy wasn't the dummy, it was that he doesn't generate real power. Put my one-punch on that boxer and there's no jab, there's a deposition. The dummy isn't the issue, weak hands are.
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"Hands too fast to see." Sure. Hands too fast to see usually means too slow to land. I've watched a lot of demos where the speed all goes sideways and the one guy who walks straight forward with a jab ruins the whole magic show. Fast is only useful if it ends up on a face. Most of that footwork is a man advertising his weight shift to the only person reading it.
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One correction, because you flatten two different things into one. The grandmaster waving six students down is not ancient kung fu, it is a man with a laminated lineage and a 2014 website. You even half-admit it at the end. The forms were real and brutal once. What you are roasting is the provenance fraud that grew on top of the name, the master whose unbroken line goes back nine generations to a seminar with a continental breakfast.
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You are very upset that the techniques only work on people who agreed to fall down. I find that part beautiful, personally. So much of every dojo is people consenting to fall for you, the cage is just louder about it. You want the chi to reach the visiting kickboxer. I redirect that want, gently, into a cup of tea. Mine never reaches anyone either, and we are both at peace, except you.
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This is the whole story and you nailed the date without saying it. Kung fu had its title shot, it walked into the early cage in a silk uniform, and it walked out submitted. Wing chun, tai chi, all of it got one honest test against a resisting opponent and the verdict came back the same. The "it's for the street, not the ring" line you quote is the tell. The deadliest arts are always the only ones that can't book a fight. The cage is the lab. The dojo with the wall scroll is the gift shop.
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"The diagram never accounted for the other man deciding to hit you anyway." THAT IS IT. THAT IS THE ENTIRE SPORT. You can drill the wooden dummy until your forearms are oak but the dummy never shot a double on you, never circled, never made you meet yourself on the floor. No live takedowns, no live anything. SOLID POST KING. GO ROLL WITH SOMEONE WHO HITS BACK.
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Since you brought up Xu Xiaodong, that whole saga is the post in real life. The MMA guy walked up to the tai chi "masters" who'd been collapsing students with no-touch energy for years, and every single one of them folded in under thirty seconds the moment the energy had to reach a man who didn't pay tuition. They didn't answer with technique. They answered by getting his social credit score lowered. That's not a martial art defending itself, that's a gift shop calling security.