Sirus
10-21-2005, 08:52 AM
All Philosophy asides, I think what is really missing in Chinese arts is structure.
Japanese, Korean arts are much more structured as a whole, with every dojo belonging to a well-defined school or art with a strict federation, and each of these responsible within the hierarchy to uphold certain standards and consistency. In fact in most Japanese & Korean arts students must measure up to the master's master or grandmasters in a very direct way, even if it means travel across continents to do so.
Yes, the flip-side is too much formalization may run the risk of make the structure more important than the art, in which case you start "sportifying" the art and run into the risk of becoming large commercial organizations, with all the greed/corruption, and politics involved.
However no structure means no accountability, no standardization, or relative measure of skills. Thus in chinese arts every school and lineage is fractured, with only loose ties at best within the same "art" and so there is no reliable gage of skill or accountability.
This difference is due to many things, largely cultural and historical repression. But it is cultural as well; Outlawing martial arts during the cultural revolution was the final nail in the coffin - but even before that chinese society, with its hundreds of factions and ethnicities and hence its martial arts, has always been extremely fractured, and held together by the softest of silk threads. Japan on the other hand was an extremely tight-knit unified fabric, better placed to organize large "formal schools" of the arts. The only thing that came close in chinese history were the schools of martial monks - Shaolin 1st among them - of which so many of today's CMA come from. But what do monks care of measuring each other periodically and in strict fashion??? To a monk the process of learning is more important than any gage, and thus again we have a loose structure, which we inherited today.
If you want to be able to restore CMA you must first be able to measure what you want to restore. Thus what is really missing is formal structure. We need larger federations and tighter bonds within the same "styles" or arts. We need to get beyond the Confucian ideas of "lineage" (My master does it this way, yours does not, etc) and draw more parallels within similar schools so as to unify, include and eventually reliably codify same or similar arts. We need to open larger and more formal federations with a direct and vested interest in peer review, and in directly grading the quality of those members within. We need formal testing processes and examinations to ensure consitent levels of skill - no more "McBlacBelts". And we need to do this for the traditional arts and offer an alternative to the sport Wushu structure. Yes this may well "sportify" CMA and Kung fu to some degree. But until it is done how can we claim skill in the CMA as a whole when we cannot even measure it ourselves?
The challenge is to try to preserve tradition, skills and the martial spirit while realizing that this is a much larger world today than 19th century GuangDong. And that structure is essential to maintain, preserve, and evolve the arts in this larger context.
Japanese, Korean arts are much more structured as a whole, with every dojo belonging to a well-defined school or art with a strict federation, and each of these responsible within the hierarchy to uphold certain standards and consistency. In fact in most Japanese & Korean arts students must measure up to the master's master or grandmasters in a very direct way, even if it means travel across continents to do so.
Yes, the flip-side is too much formalization may run the risk of make the structure more important than the art, in which case you start "sportifying" the art and run into the risk of becoming large commercial organizations, with all the greed/corruption, and politics involved.
However no structure means no accountability, no standardization, or relative measure of skills. Thus in chinese arts every school and lineage is fractured, with only loose ties at best within the same "art" and so there is no reliable gage of skill or accountability.
This difference is due to many things, largely cultural and historical repression. But it is cultural as well; Outlawing martial arts during the cultural revolution was the final nail in the coffin - but even before that chinese society, with its hundreds of factions and ethnicities and hence its martial arts, has always been extremely fractured, and held together by the softest of silk threads. Japan on the other hand was an extremely tight-knit unified fabric, better placed to organize large "formal schools" of the arts. The only thing that came close in chinese history were the schools of martial monks - Shaolin 1st among them - of which so many of today's CMA come from. But what do monks care of measuring each other periodically and in strict fashion??? To a monk the process of learning is more important than any gage, and thus again we have a loose structure, which we inherited today.
If you want to be able to restore CMA you must first be able to measure what you want to restore. Thus what is really missing is formal structure. We need larger federations and tighter bonds within the same "styles" or arts. We need to get beyond the Confucian ideas of "lineage" (My master does it this way, yours does not, etc) and draw more parallels within similar schools so as to unify, include and eventually reliably codify same or similar arts. We need to open larger and more formal federations with a direct and vested interest in peer review, and in directly grading the quality of those members within. We need formal testing processes and examinations to ensure consitent levels of skill - no more "McBlacBelts". And we need to do this for the traditional arts and offer an alternative to the sport Wushu structure. Yes this may well "sportify" CMA and Kung fu to some degree. But until it is done how can we claim skill in the CMA as a whole when we cannot even measure it ourselves?
The challenge is to try to preserve tradition, skills and the martial spirit while realizing that this is a much larger world today than 19th century GuangDong. And that structure is essential to maintain, preserve, and evolve the arts in this larger context.