Why Kung Fu masters refuse to teach

[Gerard]

In China, the traditional martial arts still have their cultural and social place at the table, but it’s a ceremonial seat, lacking in real power or influence. Outside of China, the kung fu wave that led to a thousand and one dojos is receding in the face of mixed martial arts and other more popular Eastern disciplines, like taekwondo and karate.

 

The dominant narrative as to why kung fu isn’t as popular anymore has to do primarily with its lack of effectiveness as a form of self-defense. Kung fu is great for movies and acrobatic performances, they say, but bad for a fight. It’s easy to point to the rise of MMA and say, “See? This is what the people really want.”

 

That would be the end of the debate, except for that fact that Chinese martial arts techniques are found throughout both the Eastern martial arts named above—both of which have their roots in China—and in MMA as well. Yes, even in the UFC, basic Chinese martial arts techniques and strikes are used, effectively, in pretty much every fight. Kung fu has a side kick, roundhouse, elbows, oblique kicks and more. Chinese masters teach their students to keep their hands up, how to knee someone, why kicking the meaty part of the thigh can really mess up your opponent’s day, and the secret to all strikes: footwork and strong hips.

 

So it’s really not a question of being effective in a fight, it’s more an issue of marketing and a few other issues. One of those issues being the training methods and regimens of traditional masters.

In a recent essay discussing intangible cultural heritage and the traditional martial arts, Professor Ben Judkins looks to an essay by Patrick Daly, “Fighting modernity: traditional Chinese martial arts and the transmission of intangible ”cultural heritage,” for insight into why kung fu is ailing.

 

Daly is perhaps more well known for his documentary film on Chinese traditional martial arts on the island of Borneo, “Needle Through Brick.” The film shows how Chinese masters left Mainland China in the last century to escape persecution at the hands of the Communists, only to watch their art slowly die as young capitalist children choose other arts, other values, other norms over the ones kung fu represents. Both essays and the documentary are well worth your time, but for now we’re going to focus on a passage in Daly’s essay that Judkin’s highlighted as indicative of what traditional Chinese martial artists believe is the reason behind their slow decline:

 

“…When I asked why he was not more active teaching himself, he answered in a gravelly voice:

 

In my opinion, the world has changed. I never teach my son and grandson. People ask me to teach, but people’s minds nowadays are wicked….”

 

 A real master can only teach real kung fu to his disciple who learns under him for at least 10 years in order to know his character well or he will create problems. We’ll not teach the practical use of Kung Fu to those who learn only 2 or 3 years. This is the traditional culture. That’s why a lot becomes extinct. Chinese traditional kung fu is like this.

 

When I asked whether it was possible to modify the way that students were selected and basic training methods, all of the masters at the table said ‘no.’ They made it clear that the processes through which they learned Kung Fu were integral to the arts and that it would not be possible to teach properly if things were made ‘easier.’…Furthermore, they said that even if they wanted to change the methods, they could not, because they made an oath and were obligated to continue teaching the way that they were taught by their masters. One commented:

It has carried on from generations to generations in this way. From master to student through time. So we can’t do it freely as we wish. We must respect the way things were done. This is how we respect our masters.”

 

This is very insightful. The methodology is the very identity these masters hope to pass on to their students, and changing even a bit of it dilutes the whole and defeats the purpose. Having a wooden dummy or a stone lock in your kung fu school makes you real and only students who dedicate themselves to these types of tools and the many exercises that accompany them are real kung fu students.

 

Just a basic look around at the martial arts that do flourish and the fighters thriving, tells us that training methods must and do evolve with the times. Even Cain Velasquez most recent injury brings up discussions of archaic training methods and their counterproductive effect on the body.

 

Yet traditional Chinese masters stick stubbornly to their methods, which revolve initially around the “iron body” philosophy of training, a turn-off for anyone who has watched their kicks grow stronger after a few months hitting Thai pads. Masters say the youth are weak and can’t handle the heat; young martial artists hear “10 years of beating this iron pole and you’ll be ready” and make a B-line for the MMA gym. Not to say your average MMA or BJJ gym doesn’t draw every ounce of energy out of your body. People tear their ACL in training all the time … it’s just much harder to see the light at the end of the kung fu tunnel.

 

Judkins and Daly look into the cultural heritage and social values these training tools and methods represent, and find there the core of traditional martial arts: that which must be protected and saved from modernity and the reason why masters would rather die without students then teach a fake art.

 

Traditional masters stick to traditional training methods (and timeframes!) because they believe their system creates a morally sound, responsible, mentally honed martial artist. There aren’t any BJJ black belts under 18 for much the same reason. It takes that type of person to stick with it, usually, and there is a reward at the end of the journey.

 

For many traditional Eastern martial artists, the training is a process to weed out the unready, because the true goal is developing and cultivating qi gong and the enlightened behavior that should result from strong internal energy.

 

Kung fu is not a just fighting art to today’s masters, but also a path toward enlightenment. Wrapping kung fu up with Taoist or Zen Buddhist philosophy and linking the quasi-religious martial art with the concept of internal qi gong is basically canon for many traditional martial artists.

 

To skip out on part of that process means you will never reach your goal, and all is more or less for naught. This helps to explain why traditional masters have been very slow to take to more modern training methods and also why the traditionalists tend to scoff at MMA fighters. If you can see it from their perspective, fighters are akin to barbarians playing with something they do not understand. If seen this way, then it is hard to imagine traditional masters ever changing their methods.

 

As Judkins writes toward the end of his essay:

 

“The traditional martial arts, whose demise is lamented by the masters that Daly interviewed, was not understood as simply a set of self-defense skills. Rather it was a means of conveying a range of values and relationships that supported a social world that had now vanished due to economic change. The preservation of these techniques would require institutional innovation, yet by definition, the values of these new institutions (capable of competing in the rational, standardized and linear world of modern pedagogy) could not be the same as those that had shaped the now elderly group of masters in their youth.”

 

Traditional masters are constantly seeking the five-year-old boy willing to dedicate his young life to brutal training regimes, because by the time he is in his twenties, he should be solid enough in the “hard arts” to begin training the “soft arts.” And by the time he is in his forties, the young boy will be a true master and on his way to leaving this silly mortal life and becoming one with the Way.

 

Anything else is just sport. 

 

Source: http://bit.ly/2EANpxe

 

 

Note: Some stuff a bit dogmatic and simplistic. But overall spot on.

 

Edited February 3, 2018 by Gerard

[Mig]

I guess there is a lot of misconceptions about Kung-fu, self defense, fighting arts especially in China where fighting was one the few options to survive so many styles I have seen and the one I practice (hongjiaquan, hunga kyun) are effective in street fighting, armed conflicts and brawls. Of course, it depends on the practitioner. Also, I think there is the cultural factor that has not been understood in the west, not to mention the differences in popular beliefs and knight errands stories. Fighting is ugly and not pretty at all when it turns bad, it is not like in the movies or in novels. As someone said, if you want to fight then fight with professional fighters then you will see the difference.

[Gerard]

Yes but this article is not about fighting. 

 

It is how the young Daniel in The Karate Kid (1984) learned from Mr. Miyagi that karate is more than just fighting:

 

Wax on, wax off, wax on, wax off.

 

And oh boy, in the end he learnt well and a lot more than karate! 

 

So why would you want to learn IMA really for? Fighting really? In that case you’d better sign up for a Krav Maga class. 

 

Edited February 5, 2018 by Gerard

[Vajra Fist]

I think if a teacher shows a student how to fight, then that student goes on to misuse his ability and murder someone, then that teacher would also suffer karmic consequences. You see this in Tibetan delog literature, where blacksmiths who make weapons are also suffering in the hot hells. 

 

I think this is the reason teachers were picky about students in the past, because they were aware of this fact. Rather than any deep secret of magical effectiveness that has now been lost.

[windwalker]

 a historical out look

 

a good blog that touches on some of the post here presented from a historical perspective 

 

https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2013/01/07/lives-of-the-chinese-martial-artists-4-sun-lutang-and-the-invention-of-the-traditional-chinese-martial-arts-part-i/

 

"For the martial arts to succeed in the 20th century they would need to transition.  They had to be made appealing to increasingly educated and modern middle-class individuals living in urban areas.  It would be hard to imagine a group more different from the rural farm youths that had traditionally practiced these arts.  But this is the task that the early martial reformers of the 20th century dedicated themselves too."

 

 

 

"A number or reformers during this period concluded that for the martial arts to survive they had to become more appealing to educated middle class individuals.  Sun’s emphasis on health and self-cultivation was one way of accomplishing this goal.  The Jingwu strategy of offering classes on photography or western sports was another.  This period of time is also important for the development of the five modern styles of Taiji, including Sun Lutang’s own offering that combines the essential insights of Taiji, Xingyi and Bagua."

 

"But sometimes individuals teach for other reasons.  A friend of mine in Chengdu has been interviewing local martial arts masters.  One of the interesting (and sad) things that emerged from these interviews is that with the current contraction of interest in the martial arts, there are not enough students to go around.  There are a lot of individuals with a lifetime of skills who wish to pass something on, but they just can’t find anyone who is interested in learning.  It seems that teachers need students as much as students need teachers.  At its most basic level what we are discussing is a profoundly human relationship."

 

 

[Gerard]

Yes true it is but that’s the direction our world is heading to:

 

1. Increased use/need of technology

 

2. Increased urbanisation

 

3. Decreased use of the traditional way

 

Many modern migrant Chinese and Taiwanese I encounter here in Australia, when I mention to them I am a Ba Gua practitioner they don’t know what it is. 

 

Imagine in the West. This forum is an outlier though. 

 

 

 

[windwalker]

Because they do not mention it does not mean they do not know it or of it.

 

 

The traditional way is what allows them to succeed and thrive in many other cultures and places around the world.

 

 

 

In Taiwan it's not expected that a westerner would have the skill sets that many note when I work with them

.  https://journeytoemptiness.com/about-2/

 

 

Edited February 22, 2018 by windwalker

[Starjumper]

Concerning the effectiveness of kung fu and the rise of MMA, the opening post was good.  I'll just try to add a couple more cents to it.

 

Some kung fu is incredibly effective and very deadly, but those ones are all kept secret, and for good reason.  The good reason is that we do not want other fighters to see what we can do so that they can not develop defenses against it.  There are many tricks that are used to take advantage of the normal instincts of fighters and they work very well.

 

The rise of MMA is mainly attributable to the popularity of the television competitions.  The important thing to note here is that these fighters are all protected by many rules designed to prevent serious injury, they are also protected by the soft floor and the lack of walls or oncoming buses to smash people against.  These people generally become helpless when faced with someone who breaks all the rules and who knows the tricks of how to defeat their natural fighting instincts.

 

Another thing is that those in the sporting arts claim they are superior because the assassin types will not fight them in the ring.  The real reason for this is because if most of what we do is against the rules then we are left with no effective techniques to use on them.  We would have to fight them on their terms with their rules and that is just stupid.

 

Another thing is that the rules favor big giant meatheads to the exclusion of normal people.  The only soft spot on some of them is the eyes, and it's against the rules to blind people.  (Edit: OK there's another soft spot but that is also against the rules)  So the simple matter of fact  is that the most advanced and deadly stuff is vanishingly rare and you simply are not going to find it unless you come and see me, which you won't.  In fact I'm just a beginner and people who come here have to do chi kung, hahaha.  Or you would have to see one of the few others who know the same stuff, and they are vanishingly few, and no one on a public forum needs to know who they are.

 

The Chinese who know these tricks not only will not teach Westerners the inner stuff, they often will not even teach Chinese.  The result of this is that most of the Chinese 'masters' these days are like hollow shells compared to masters of even the recent past.

Edited March 31, 2018 by Starjumper

[thelerner]

I dig what you guys are saying, but there's also a good chance that year for year, hour for hour,  MMA is a better, faster rout to effective fighting then Kung Fu. 

 

Course I agree that top masters are a world apart and the deeper lessons in such classical arts improve life dozens of ways, versus simply learning to fight. 

 

 

addon> Would be cool to see an older single stylist master wipe the floor of the UFC then walk away. 

Edited March 31, 2018 by thelerner

[Starjumper]

On 3/31/2018 at 1:51 PM, thelerner said:

Course I agree that top masters are a world apart and the deeper lessons in such classical arts improve life dozens of ways, versus simply learning to fight. 

 

Would be cool to see an older single stylist master wipe the floor of the UFC then walk away. 

 

That's a nice dream that I think a lot of us have had at one time or another.  When I got started I mentioned this to my teacher Dave, who really was one of the more deadly kung fu guys in the world, and he could also hit really hard.  He could have had a good chance to do just that.  His answer was something along the lines of:  "We don't even want those blockheads to know we exist"  (name calling is all mine).  Dave taught people like special forces, Navy Seals, etc, you know, the serious killers out there.  A big part of that is we don't want them to know what we can do or what is possible.  I myself was never interested in fighting or martial arts, but I happened to be in this 'family' and I saw the most amazing things so I became interested merely from a scientific point of view.

 

Imagine if some master did wipe the floor at the UFC, then he would suddenly be very popular, which is against the ethics of our system.  It also means that all kinds of block heads would come to class, not so much to learn, but to test the teacher themselves.  Dave had enough of this already, without even being too popular.  Big bad 'martial artists' would come from around the country to try to punch him, with similar results ever time (more details in my PPF).

 

Then another student chimed in and added some more wisdom.  If the MMA guy won then people would say he was bad for beating up an old man; if the master won people would say he was bad because the mean old master beat up some helpless widdle beginner, not that we give a damn what people think, it's just another view of the situation.  It is absolutely a no win situation no matter how you look at it.

 

A lot of our tactics involve neck breaking, well that would be damn near impossible on some of those fighters because their necks are so muscular.  It wouldn't be hard to get behind them and drop them and break their back, but I have a suspicion that may be against the rules.  Plus there may be some legal ramifications, possibly claiming self defense wouldn't work in a ring.   It's also against the rules to smash peoples heads open against the floor.  We are trained to end a fight in one second and it takes some incredible aerobic conditioning to spar for even a couple of minutes, that's another reason we can't play with those guys.

 

On 3/31/2018 at 1:51 PM, thelerner said:

I dig what you guys are saying, but there's also a good chance that year for year, hour for hour,  MMA is a better, faster rout to effective fighting then Kung Fu. 

 

Leaving the UFC giants behind and talking about regular people now ...

 

That is the common conception of it, and I used to thank that way too.  We see in tai chi for example, that even if the teacher knows the deadly stuff, and most don't, that it takes a decade or more to get there.  In the other kung fu arts the traditional way is to lay a good foundation for a long time, to strengthen the student and teach them the basics, so it is slow compared to boxing, for example.

 

However after learning from Dave and a couple of his top students, and teaching it a little, we find that it is really easy to take advantage of most attacks.  For example even most or all beginners can learn to do an an elbow break in the first class, when someone gives you their arm in a punch.  It's extremely simple, and so is a lot of the other stuff.  The thing is we watch out for people who have fighting mind or violent or egotistical characters and won't show them much of anything till they leave, and they get persuaded to leave right away.

 

It's not like in the hard style competition arts, like Karate, where the instructor tells the little kinds to not fight while teaching them to fight.  The first thing we learn is to defuse the situation if possible by assuming a certain posture and attitude, we are trained to keep our distance (an essential part of how it works because it makes them reach) and back away so an attacker can't get to us, they would have to rush, which puts them at a huge disadvantage.  After keeping our distance we run away.  It's only if we have someone with us, like a child or woman who can't or won't run that we stand ground, and then there are lots of fake outs to get them to give themselves away and make it easy to put them down.  Not fighting is trained into the system, and it's only used in serious life and death situations, not for sports in the ring.

 

Some people, Jesse Glover for example, called it Non Classical Kung Fu, not approved of by the traditional masters.  However I got it more from the original source so I don't call it that.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Starjumper

[Starjumper]

I don't mean to imply that my system is the only one by any means, it's just the only one I know.  There are other systems out there which are for the serious stuff like special forces and not for sports.  A couple that come to mind are Systema, and Krav Maga,  Systema is a 'soft' art like ours, I don't know how soft Krav Maga is; but anyway ... this thread is supposed to be about the Chinese arts.

[vonkrankenhaus]

On 2/3/2018 at 4:34 PM, Mig said:

the one I practice (hongjiaquan, hunga kyun)

 

You learning Hung Gar?

 

Who is your teacher and what school?

 

Just interested. I also have experience with Hung Gar Kuen a long time ago.

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[thelerner]

Coming from an Aikido background (and earlier Karate and <sigh> Taekwondo) I always ask newcomers from other martial arts about there arts versions of Quick and Dirty.  Most martial arts have them, Aikido too, change of an angle.. this way throws, this way breaks..ie going from Aikido to Jujitsu.  Karate is littered with them, illegal for competition but fast and dirty.   Taking advantage of natural quick movements.

 

Olde school too, since wrasslin in colonial time had it's share of eye gouging and ear tearing techniques. 

 

So for me, depending on circumstances its nice to have tools in my pocket from Aikido (mostly getting the hell out of the way) and Quick & Dirty..

Edited April 2, 2018 by thelerner

[Starjumper]

3 hours ago, thelerner said:

So for me, depending on circumstances its nice to have tools in my pocket from Aikido (mostly getting the hell out of the way) and Quick & Dirty..

 

It sounds like you have the idea, the most important thing is not getting hit like in Aikido, plus the quick and dirty.  It seems to me that no one can appreciate the brilliance and quickness of Yueng Chuan without experiencing it, maybe I'm wrong.  Bruce Lee called it intercepting fist but he didn't really show is in the movies.  Intercepting fist does not mean that you block their fist, it means you hit them when they expect to hit you, and at the same time.  The way it works is like this:  at the time the attacker expects his fist to hit your face your face is already in his face but to the side, outside, breathing down his neck, with your hands around his neck or in his eyes.  Or about the time he expects his fist to hit you you are already behind him and running away, of course running away doesn't work in the ring.

 

We're getting pretty for off topic here now so it would be better to discuss methods in my PPF or some other thread dedicated to it.

[Mig]

On 4/2/2018 at 2:07 PM, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

You learning Hung Gar?

 

Who is your teacher and what school?

 

Just interested. I also have experience with Hung Gar Kuen a long time ago.

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

Indeed, Hung ga (not hung gar, I find that an aberration to kill the close pronunciation of the Cantonese ga or Ka). I started long time with a Chinese fellow and it is until recently that joined Bucksam Kong school. Short range fighting and 5 basic forms to work on. Lately learning tidsin kyun for internal exercise, breathing, relaxation and isometrics.