Have you ever noticed that even within the same organization, individual martial arts schools are always a little different? How could they not be, with different teachers, students, locations, etc.
Below is an excerpt from an article that appeared at Kung Fu Tea that explores this question. The full post may be read here.
Fragmentation and Unification
Recently I had a chance to catch up with one of my old Kung Fu
training brothers. We had a great time training at the same Wing Chun
studio. That was years ago. Then I left Salt Lake City for Western New
York and, a few years later, our Sifu relocated to the mid-Atlantic
region. What had been an anchor for both of our identities, the place
that we trained five night a week for years on end, was once again
nothing more than an empty warehouse unit in a struggling industrial
mall. Neither of us have given up on our art, though we have both had
trouble finding a new “home.”
Which is odd when you think about it. The Chinese martial arts
(Taijiquan excluded) don’t have the same sort of market presence as
Taekwondo or BJJ. Still, if you do run into a Kung Fu school, there is a
pretty decent chance that one of the instructors there will offer Wing
Chun classes. It is easy to visit lots of WC schools as you travel
around the country, which I have always found valuable as a researcher.
I pointed this out, but my friend remained unconvinced. “Yeah, but
there is always something wrong.” Catching himself he added, “I mean
different. There is always something different about them. None of them
feel like our school.” This is certainly true. How could they?
Difference takes many forms. Wing Chun has as many competing
lineages as any similarly sized martial art that I have ever
encountered. They all have their unique take of the basic unarmed
forms, creation myths, tactical philosophy and sometimes even the basic
goals of the art. But I knew from my own experience that this wasn’t
really what my friend meant. Even within the same lineage (in our case
Ip Ching) different instructors had their own teaching methods and
interests. Every school seems to develop its own small rituals of
greeting, departing, and classroom management. One might visit a school
that is very friendly, but it still doesn’t feel “like home.” It is
difficult to simply jump into a new school, especially when there is the
subtle expectation that in adopting a new home you would also be
expected to repudiate the old one.
This conversation lingered in my mind long after it ended. I found
myself wondering why I was so sensitive to differences within WC
environments, and whether the highly idiosyncratic nature of the Chinese
martial arts was working against their success. How many other
displaced martial artists are there who were as likely to simply leave
training all together as to succeed in finding a new home?
It is not all that difficult to trace the sources of fragmentation,
in either practice or identity, within the traditional Asian martial
arts. In Northern China every small farming village seemed to have its
own boxing ground which would recruit its own instructor. Rarely did
hard working peasants have a chance to train extensively in the
surrounding region or an incentive to do so. One might tell a similar
story in Southern China but with clan or guild hall backed martial arts
institutions, slowly morphing into the roof-top schools of the Post-WWII
period that we are all so familiar with.
Something about the
fragmentation of traditional Chinese social organization seems to map
easily onto the isolating distances that define the potential (and
limitations) of any sort of training in America. I am still in frequent
contact with my Sifu, and regard him as such. But how often can we
really train? Within this continental landscape, where individuals are
often displaced by work or economic happenstance, maintaining the unique
identity of a martial arts community becomes a battle against entropy.
Why do we hold so tightly to those prior identities and social roles?
The Art and the State
There may be no simple solution to the challenges of geography, but a
number of organizations and groups have attempted to find solutions to
the question of one’s “home.” Almost universally they have come in the
form of standardization. That word immediately conjures images of a
McDonalds and Starbucks on every corner. These businesses carefully
curate their menus and dining experience not to maximize the quality of
the food, or to take advantage of the local setting. Rather, they want
every burger, or every cup of coffee, to taste exactly as you were
expecting when you walked in. No exotic local ingredients or blends are
necessary as the goal is to satisfy one’s expectations of what is an
appropriate cup
of coffee, not the best one imaginable. It is easy to criticize this
sort of project.
Yet we should acknowledge that these sorts of
businesses thrive for a reason. People may claim to desire quality, but
what they actually need is to have their expectations met. We are all
willing to pay for that sense of what is familiar and situationally
appropriate.
The martial arts world is no stranger to similar franchise models.
Traditional Chinese martial arts schools have resisted this mode of
organization better than other sectors of the community. Or more
likely, they have not proven themselves to be profitable enough to
attract its gaze. But we are all familiar with the “McDojo’s” that dot
the suburban landscape.
What we may not realize is that this phenomenon is not particularly
recent. Nor does it have as much to do with American consumerism as one
might guess. The Jingwu Association, which probably did more to shape
the development of the modern Chinese martial arts than any other
private organization, was a firm believer in the power of branding.
Created by a group of Chinese businessmen and friends in the 1910s (and
dominating China’s martial arts landscape through the early 1920s) this
organization sought to strengthen both the martial arts and the Chinese
nation by creating a standardized martial arts curriculum that could be
practiced by individuals anywhere in the country. This was comprised of
curated bits of a number of (mostly Northern) arts which could be
practiced by solo students arranged in long symmetric lines while being
led by a single instructor.
Matching uniforms were also a big thing.
In some part of China, new Jingwu branches were the very first
commercial schools, open to all members of the public, to be opened. It
would not be overstating the situation to say that Jingwu modernized
the martial arts, and in large part they did that through their own
system of franchised-esque expansion.
The unifying, modernizing and nationalizing mission of the Central
Guoshu Institute was, in many ways, a natural continuation of the path
that the Jingwu Association pioneered. Yet both groups were firmly
rooted in a species of early 20
th century nationalism that
sought to use physical culture to weld diverse communities into a nation
that would serve the needs of the state. Whether on the playing fields
of Eton or the training halls of Shanghai, physical culture was to be
the school of the “body politic.”
The same movement towards standardization within the martial arts was
evident (indeed, had been pioneered) in Japan. The modern sports of
kendo and judo are a product of similar discourses and reform
movements.
Chinese modernizers within the arena of physical culture followed their development with great interest.
What was created was in many ways remarkable. Certainly, dojos
differ, and instructors have always been a diverse lot. Yet the
cacophony of competing fencing schools and training methodologies that
had dominated the Tokugawa period largely gave way to a single national
sport (kendo) which was played in largely identical ways across the
country. One might feel out of place traveling to a new city for
business. Yet entering the local Butokukai you would find something
familiar, a metaphorical home. Jingwu schools across China’s diverse
landscape, and even through the South East Asian diaspora, functioned in
a similar way.
That was exactly the point. If a diverse group of communities are to
be welded together into a singular modern “nation” they must be given a
shared place where they can imagine (to use benedict Anderson’s famous
turn of phrase) and better yet physically experience (say, through
standardized martial arts training), what it means to be a member of the
Chinese or Japanese nation. The creation of this shared space, full of
students executing the same shared lessons, succeeded because it
created social roles that could be experienced, built upon and combined
into new identities.
Similar projects were underway throughout society. It is the
intersection of many such institutions, foreclosing older and alternate
ways of understanding the self, by which “the nation” grows. And yet
what happened in East Asia’s martial arts schools was critical as it not
only wrapped an “invented tradition” in a shared flag, but actually
walked students through the process of being thrust into a new and
strange social role, transforming that into a legible social identity,
and then allowing these new institutions to shape what behavior would be
considered appropriate for a person of this status. The martial arts
schools of the 20
thcentury not only indoctrinated individuals
into new identities, but they prepared them to become active
participants in a process of social reconstruction that was unfolding
all around them.
Dennis Gainty has even argued
that this process (possibly inadvertently) granted martial artists a
sense of agency and the tools necessary to negotiate their own vision of
Japanese (and Chinese) modernity with the developmental state.
Yet we must return to the flag that I noted in the previous
paragraph. My old Wing Chun school in Salt Lake City lacked any overt
trappings of nationalism. It’s only declaration of identity was a giant
neon “Kung Fu” sign (which had once graced the front of a previous
location) hanging from the rafters. Few of the other Wing Chun schools I
have visited display a Chinese, or American, flag. Yet our disciplinary
preference for traditional Chinese memorial walls over flags actually
seems to mark us as outliers in the traditional martial arts community.
Chinese flags seem to be much more common in Wushu schools. And I
don’t think I have ever entered a Taekwondo school (at least in the US)
that did not prominently display both a South Korean and American flag
at the front of the school. Individual Japanese citizens are often wary
of displaying their national flag in public as this often is associated
with the far right. As such, it is not surprising that Japanese
schools have had a more mixed relationship with the flag. Yet I noted
that American students of the Budo arts often have no qualms about
displaying the colors of the rising sun. If asked they would likely
answer that it just seems like the “appropriate” thing to do.
In this way the standardization of the traditional martial arts is
actually quite different from the sorts of global fast-food and coffee
brands I noted above. Critical theorists have no difficulty in
identifying them with a sort of pernicious American neo-imperialism. I
have often wondered whether the same writers would judge Tim Horton’s as
harshly as Starbucks. But within this specific context such critiques
may be overblown. When entering the Tim Horton’s in my hometown there
are no immediate markers that I am taking part in a Canadian commercial
project. Of the many tasty items that are offered, Canadian nationalism
doesn’t seem to be anywhere on their racks. Much the same could
probably be said of deli cases at any Starbucks. The goal of these
establishments is to maximize their profits rather than to evangelize a
national cause. Their reach aspires to be truly global in a way that
one never really sees within a traditional martial arts school.
I suspect that our Wing Chun school lacked Chinese flags as few of
the schools in Hong Kong in the 1960s-1980s (the era that gave rise to
American Wing Chun) were so appointed. When we discussed Wing Chun it
was always as an exclusively Southern Chinese practice, even though by
the late 1990s
I suspect that more people in Germany were probably
practicing the art than Hong Kong proper. Our warehouse school in Salt
Lake was imagined as a microcosm of the apartment and warehouse schools
in Hong Kong which it emulated. They defined the social roles to be
found within such a school, as well as outlining the curriculum and
basic teaching methods. We sought to follow them in ways that fit with
our North American location. Thus “appropriateness” must sometimes be
negotiated.
I have only had the chance to visit South Korea once, but I suspect
Korean flags dominate American Taekwondo schools not because of any
sense of acquired nationalism on the part of the Western students (many
of whom are children). Rather, Korean schools prominently display flags
and have long connected the practice of their art to an awareness of
Korean nationalism. American Taekwondo schools (and Wushu academies,
and Capoeira groups, and Krav Maga classes) basically follow these
perceived rule of appropriateness.
Some schools care more about the transmission of cultural values than
others. But in general you would be hard pressed to guess which is
which simply from the presence (or absence) of a flag. Rather, the flag
serves as a constant reminder that so many of the modern arts are
products of 20
thcentury nationalism and identity
formation. When I enter a Starbucks I have stepped into a global
marketplace, and it may not be immediately evident whether I am in North
America, Europe or Asia.
That is a feature of the experience, not a
bug. This is a brand that aspires to universalism. But there is no
doubt that when entering most traditional martial arts schools I am
setting foot within a sort of cultural embassy, a place designed to
reflect and transmit social roles and identities that were crafted
elsewhere. While the modern combat sports may seek to escape this sort
of particularism, it remains deeply ingrained in a wide variety of
traditional practices.
