Kung Fu Tai Chi Janaury - February 2016

If you can binge watch TV, can you binge train Kung Fu? This question has been nagging at me lately. I confess that I’m a Kung Fu film addict and as you’ll read in my Chollywood Rising column (see page 90), there’s been a lot of great vintage Kung Fu cinema available for home entertainment lately. It’s tough on a Kung Fu flick junkie like me. I can’t spend all night watching Kung Fu movies. Never mind the impact it has on my training time, I got to get up and go to work in the morning. We’ve been monitoring the martial arts TV trend quite closely here, hence this issue’s cover story. At the Into the Badlands Hollywood premiere (see page 55), I had the pleasure of a private chat…

October in Chen Village is harvest season. Piles of freshly husked corn stand in the front courtyards of each home in this venerated farming village where Taiji began. Corn kernels dry on the shoulders of the roads like gold-carpet runways. Walking on it makes a “creak, creak” sound. The refreshing autumn air couldn’t be sweeter for a series of celebrations that I was delighted to attend. From October 1–3, I witnessed the Chen Taiji 19th Lineage Holder Chen Xiaowang’s Sixtieth Anniversary of Martial Arts Training celebration and China Chen Taijiquan Summit Forum (第十九世掌门人陈小旺大 师习武六十周年庆典活动暨中国陈氏太极拳高峰论 坛). It began with a huge baishi ceremony (拜师仪式) where seventy Taiji enthusiasts bowed down and vowed to become Grandmaster Chen’s disciples. A special ceremony observed ancestral rights (祭祖仪式), followed by a marvelous exhibition of Grandmaster Chen’s…

Wushu Loses 2020 Olympic Bid In late September 2015, Tokyo’s organizing committee for the 2020 Olympic Games announced the five contenders for new Olympic sports: Karate, Sports Climbing, Surfing, Skateboarding and, under a combined bid, Baseball and Softball. In June, Wushu had made the short list of new Olympic sports alongside the five remaining contenders and two other rejected sports: Bowling and Squash. This fall announcement sealed the fate for Olympic Wushu for the next half decade. The International Olympic Committee will make the final decision in August 2016. http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?64475-2020-Olympics Traditional Chinese Medicine wins the Nobel Prize Tu Youyou (屠呦呦) was awarded half of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for her role as the lead discoverer of artemisinin, a drug used to fight malaria. During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese forces…

ON September 21, 2015, Grandmaster Chen Qingzhou (陳慶州) passed away. Grandmaster Chen was a 19th-generation lineage holder in Chen Family Taijiquan and a direct descendant of the ancestral founder of Chen Village where Taijiquan originated. He was the cover master of the Fall 95 issue of Kung Fu Tai Chi in a story titled “Secrets of Chen Village with Master Chen Qingzhou” by Marian K. Castinado. Grandmaster Chen was the 4th child of a farmer family. He was born on May 13 by the lunar calendar, a day known as “Guan Gong sharpens his blade (关公 磨刀日),” so he earned the nickname Er Guan Gong (2nd Guan Gong, Guan Gong is the patron saint of martial artists 二关公). He was frail, so his father Chen Wufang (陈五芳) taught him Chen Old…

On October 18, 2015, the Tiger Claw Judges’ Union held its first Luncheon Gathering at the Tiger Claw Headquarters in Fremont, California. The buffet luncheon was provided by Tiger Claw as a benefit for TCJU members to socialize. Progress with the TCJU, as well as preliminary plans to accommodate the expansion of the 2016 Tiger Claw Elite Championships and KUNG FU TAI CHI DAY (scheduled for May 21-22) were discussed informally. Beyond this event, the TCJU is now represented at Chinese Martial Arts Tournament at U.C. Berkeley and the Northern Californian Chinese Athletic Federation International WuShu Invitational. The TCJU membership is nearing 100 strong. For more information on the Tiger Claw Judges’ Union, visit http://tigerclawjudgesunion.org.…

The number four is unlucky for Chinese. Four (si 四) is a homophone with death (si 死). For Shaolin, this feng shui superstition proved fatal for the 4th Shaolin Festival. The Shaolin Cultural Festivals began in 2012. The festivals are very unique, much more than just a martial arts gathering or tournament. There have been academic forums, theatrical shows, competitions and examinations, all under the parasol of these festivals and presided over by Shaolin Temple’s Abbot, Shi Yongxin. Loyal readers of Kung Fu Tai Chi know the history of its development, but for new readers, the following overview is offered. Its beginning can be traced to a precursor to the Festival, the Shaolin Summit, which was held in Los Angeles, California, in May 2011. This was an international gathering with panel…