Mainland China’s communist government must take a lot of the blame for the misinformation and misconceptions surrounding kung fu today. This topic is too big to be fully discussed in an interview like this so I can only sketch out what has gone on. In the late 20th century, the government systematically suppressed and reinvented, if you will, China’s native art forms. This was one of its methods to manipulate and control the people. For instance, during the Cultural Revolution, the government promoted a total of eight “politically correct” stage plays created specifically for propaganda purposes. For ten years, an entire decade, these eight were the only plays one hundred million people were allowed to see. Another tactic was creating a fictional person—a “sample” or “model” hero--with a long story line of obedience and sacrifice for Chinese children and citizens to emulate. The art of traditional wushu (kung fu) was suppressed and reinvented in the form of modern wushu, a performance art that fuses western and eastern influences. Today, the real art of kung fu is, in fact, suffering....
Chow:
Many thanks for bringing to the attention of this communist treatment of the traditional martial arts.
I teach Wing Chun Kung Fu to a selected group of students in my home basement Kung Fu gym. I say selected because on my first meeting with potential students, I show them just the one movement...the straigth punch...for one hour I get them to practice it.
Then I tell them...just don't bluff thenselves or me....punch 10,000 times quick speed before they come back to me to start the first class. Less than 10% of them come back to me....two reasons: they find me too selective and the other reason, especially among the Chinese, is that Wing Chun (traditional kung fu) is NOT nice and they ended up learning the communist China Wushu where they jump around with all types of fancy kicks and punches.
For those who come to me....only 3 in each class of 2 full hours.....I tell them real kung fu is NOT nice to see. Wing Chun kung fu is simple but confusing and I tell them the during the Cultural Revolution in china 1966 to 76, all traditional kung fu were banned and replaced by the wu shu....for show and demonstrations only and the sha tha (free sparring) does not allow to use elbow ...if they all to use elbow, all those communist fighters will be killed by the Muay Thai boxer.....in fact Muay Thai can be traced back and even most of their movements are Wing Chun movements....like Bruce Lee's Jeet Kwan Do.
To learn true Chinese traditional kung fu, one must NOT go to communist China but to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Vietnam and now in western countries. It was in S.E Asia and Hong Kong and Taiwan where the true traditional kung fu were preserved....during the mid 1960s, our uncles and elder brothers were the ones who had the pugulistic competition for traditional kung fu...during that time there were no representative from the damn communist China.
