In this one we pick up our story of Xing Yi, examining the influence of Yue Fei and the great Song generals on the people who were inspired to challenge the increasingly degenerate late Yuan Dynasty. We also look at the influence of the “mythology of the West” in China and of Central Asian religious and spiritual traditions on the White Lotus Society, of which the leaders of the rebellions were members.
Did Western movies and TV lead to the creation of the Shaolin Warrior monks? Did the modern Shaolin fake something that had already been reinvented anyway? Did the Qing Dynasty really destroy the Shaolin temple, or did they instead create it? What influence did three subsequent phases of communism have on Shaolin? Was there a Southern Shaolin Temple, and what about the modern stuff at Wudang Mountain? These questions and more answered in our new episode on the infamous temple and its monks.
Shuai Jiao is a popular modern Chinese martial art, but is it related to other arts and if so, which ones? In this episode we also look at the Chinese cosmological concept of Qinglong, or the Azure Dragon.
This episode explores the connection between the martial arts of the great Song generals’ tradition and Chinese theatre, which was emerged during the height of the Yuan Dynasty.
We pick up our series on Xing Yi with a new dynasty, the Yuan, examining the social changes that Mongol rule brought to China and their implications for the martial arts through the lens of the artwork of the period.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/9404101/70-xing-yi-part-12-rocks-and-bamboo
Why is Baguazhang so strange? What does it have to do with Mongolia? In this episode we have a chat about this very unusual martial art, often considered a sister art to Xing Yi and Tai Chi.
In our last look at Tai Chi for a while, we examine the context of the times in which Chen Zhaopei and Chen Fake became prominent for their martial arts in Beijing, and then at a national level, joining the wave of commerciality that had been originally instigated by the legacy of Yang Luchan and the Wu brothers. In addition we explain why the forms are similar in general order between the Yang/Wu and Chen lineages.
In this episode we examine the Chen family’s relationship with General Yuan Shikai, the friction between modernising and conservative factions within China and the events of the Boxer Rebellion.
In this episode we look at the events surrounding Yang Luchan’s expulsion from the imperial service in 1861 in the context of the rise to power of Empress Dowager Cixi. We also examine how the involvement of the western powers in Chinese affairs directly led to the Self Strenghtening Movement and the establishment of the first public martial arts schools in North China.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/9404101/54-the-tai-chi-myth-part-4-the-fall-and-
In this episode we look at how the effects of the Taiping Northern Expedition and the Nian Rebellion of the mid-Nineteenth Century drew the Confucian Wu brothers and the fighters of Chen Village towards each other for the first time.
