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The International Kung Fu Festival hopes to put guoshu back on the local map

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words ‘kung fu’? An overly muscled man flying through the air, fists tightly clenched and leg extended in a bruising kick? A cheesy film that features lots of ringing gongs and the frequent use of the word ‘grasshopper’? A certain novelty disco song that rhymes the phrase ‘kung fu fighting’ with ‘expert timing’?

Regardless of which specific images pop up, chances are that, if you think about kung fu at all, you picture something dramatic, exotic and obsolete. To many, kung fu is nothing but a stylized type of fighting that exists only onscreen or in a distant, sepia-toned past.

Hing Chao, though, knows better. He’s the founder, CEO, and Managing Director of the International Guoshu Association Limited, an organization dedicated to promoting and developing indigenous Chinese sports – including kung fu.

Guoshu, which literally translates into ‘national arts,’ is an umbrella term for a system that, in Chao’s words, ‘encompasses all aspects of Chinese physical culture, including martial arts, of course, Chinese wrestling, Chinese archery, Chinese fencing, dragon boat racing, shuttlecock, Chinese weightlifting, and a host of other Chinese sports.’ It seems there’s no limit to the number of activities covered by this single term – when asked how many sports qualify, Chao only replies, ‘Many.’

But then he goes on to explain that guoshu is so unquantifiable because ‘a lot of these different sports events are still very much fragmented, and do not have a unified system of regulation or competition.’ Although Chinese martial arts have as much history as their Japanese and Korean counterparts, sports such as sanda (Chinese kickboxing) and shuaijiao (Chinese wrestling) have never developed an overarching, standardized structure. This lack of organization means that Chinese martial arts are now a lot less visible than their counterparts, such as judo and tae kwon do, from other countries.

Structural deficiency, however, can only explain so much. Today, Chinese martial arts don’t enthral and inspire the people of Hong Kong in the same way they did back in the 1970s, the golden age of superstar Bruce Lee. Kung fu in particular is widely viewed as irrelevant or, worse, silly. How and why have our opinions of something once so vital to the identity of Hong Kong changed so dramatically?

Chao, a tall man with a square jaw and long, flowing hair pulled back into a sensible ponytail, has some answers. Although vague about why Chinese sports are so unstructured – the closest he comes is ‘all sorts of historical reasons’ – he is much chattier when telling the story of kung fu’s once privileged cultural position. Surprisingly enough, it doesn’t have to do just with kung fu masters looking cool while beating the opposition to a messy pulp. In fact, the physical aspect of martial arts was only a small part of the allure. ‘After the 1940s, as China became more mature as a nation state and struggled against foreign aggression, martial arts eventually acquired the symbolic status of national strength,’ Chao says. Sports like kung fu became eponymous with Chinese identity, representing the staunch sturdiness of a people caught in a rapidly changing world.

And that became only more important once the Dragon entered the scene. ‘What Bruce Lee represented is not only martial arts as such. The roles he played in films represented a marginalized ethnic person living in a dominant, often white, society,’ Chao explains. ‘So he expressed a lot of the repression of these people.

‘And in terms of Hong Kong, Bruce Lee is someone who grew up in Hong Kong, went away to America to study, learned a lot of the cultural aspects of the West, including incorporating a lot of techniques of foreign martial arts, and brought that back to Hong Kong. So he’s a bridge of communication between Hong Kong, the West and China, which is how a lot of Hong Kong people perceive themselves,’ he continues.

Lee’s prestige cemented the cultural weight of martial arts in Hong Kong – at least, until the passing of time and cultural change led to a dwindling of the younger generation’s interest. It hasn’t helped that most people now have a skewed impression of guoshu: ‘Martial arts are somehow perceived to be something outside of the realms of normality, outside of the realms of science,’ Chao says. ‘There’s a lot of sensationalization involved.’ Films like Hero have been especially guilty of exaggerating the power of martial artists and removing elements of guoshu from their proper context.

Martial artists can, of course, achieve amazing things after extreme conditioning. Chao remembers recently watching television and seeing a friend of his break the Guinness world record for poking through coconuts using only his fingers.

But he wants to shatter the misconception that martial arts are all about feats that defy the laws of nature. Guoshu is not only a physically challenging style of combat, it’s a way of life. A true martial artist must have a sharp mind as well as a strong body, according to Chao. ‘We have always believed in China that for a martial artist to truly attain the level of a master, he has to be not only a very skilled person in martial arts, but also a person that is learned in the requisite Chinese classics,’ he says. Chao’s group has even founded a new publication, the Journal of Chinese Martial Studies, which he hopes will help to ‘ultimately elevate the study of martial arts into an academic discipline, similar, for instance, to musicology’.

Even the physical aspect of guoshu is different from the ruthless, winner-takes-all attitude that characterizes Western sports. Chao says that Chinese sports emphasize respect above all else, respect ‘of yourself, towards your opponent, and towards a way of doing things. We believe sports should be a way of cultivating a true moral attitude towards living.’ According to this mentality, it would be dishonourable to gloat after a victory: ‘It shows a lack of self-restraint,’ says Chao.

That said, competition is a vital component of all guoshu sports because quite simply, he says, improvement is impossible without competition. In fact, Chao believes that recently competition has been unfortunately overlooked in the martial arts community, partially because of the rise of stars like Jet Li whose actions are more oriented to performance. Ideally, says Chao, one should find a balance between competition and performance – both are essential to creating a true martial art.

The desire to return competition to its rightful place alongside performance is what inspired Chao to organize the first World Guoshu Competition, the central event in Hong Kong’s upcoming International Kung Fu Festival. During the competition, athletes from around the world – martial artists as well as those who practise Chinese wrestling, kickboxing and fencing – will compete both for glory and to ignite a resurgence of guoshu.

But the competition is only the beginning. In the coming months, Chao says that his association will be establishing educational programmes all through Hong Kong, especially in rough areas that have many youth problems. He hopes such programmes will help build guoshu’s reputation again, eventually leading to a school encouraging learning in both the literary and action aspects of martial arts.

And by ‘school,’ Chao really does mean a place of learning – not a fitness centre. ‘We’re not really interested in building a gym,’ he says. That would only reinforce the misconceptions most Hong Kongers already have about martial arts. Chao’s ultimate goal is to help Hong Kong citizens understand that martial arts are about more than roundhouse kicks: guoshu ‘should be a way of tempering one’s mind, soul and spirit,’ he says.

Although on paper his words may sound suspiciously mystical at best and hackneyed at worst, while speaking to Chao it’s easy to believe that guoshu really is a holistic discipline. Even if you don’t buy his claims about the power of martial arts, it’s probably worth checking out the World Guoshu Competition. Who knows – perhaps, after seeing a man casually and gracefully toss his opponent over his shoulder like a sack of rice, you’ll reach your own moment of transcendence. Stranger things – like someone breaking a coconut with his index finger – have happened.

Kung Fu Festival At A Glance

World Guoshu Competition
July 22-23
HITEC (1 Trademart Drive, Kowloon Bay, Kowloon, 2620 2222)
Both male and female athletes from around the globe compete in a variety of events. Two hundred free tickets will be distributed for the competition at the Exhibition Centre on a first-come, first-served basis.

1st International Martial Studies Academic Symposium
July 23
Agnes B Cinema, HK Arts Centre
(2 Harbour Road, Wanchai, 2582 0200)
A scholarly forum about martial arts, featuring academics and experts from all over Hong Kong and China. Subjects as varied as philosophy and martial arts in popular culture will be discussed.
Tickets are $250 for half a day, $450 for the full day, and are sold via URBTIX (www.urbtix.hk).

Spirit of a Nation: Development of Chinese Martial Arts 1900-Present
July 24-August 6
Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre
A mixed-media art exhibition that traces the development of martial arts from the early days of modern China to the 21st century. Tickets are $45 or $30 for students and seniors and can be purchased via URBTIX.

World Guoshu Competition Finals
July 25
HITEC, Star Hall,
The best battle the best in this championship competition, featuring a special performance by Shaolin monks from the Songshan Shaolin Temple in Henan province. VIP tickets are $800, while regular seats cost $500 or $200. All are available at Hong Kong Ticketing (www.hkticketing.com).

Kung Fu Carnival
July 25-26
Avenue of Stars, TST, 3118 3000)
A free, family-oriented event that will expose passersby to martial arts via exhibitions, live demonstrations, and even free martial-arts classes. Performances run from 10:30am to 6pm on Saturday and 12pm to 6pm on Sunday.