Chinese New Year 2026: Year of the Flaming Stud

By Gene Ching

Saddle up for the Year of the Fire Horse. It’s going to be a wild one. Just pair the raging element of fire with the mighty unbridled horse in your mind, and you’ll understand why the Year of the Fire Horse is often considered the unruliest ride of the sixty signs of the Chinese Zodiac (it’s funny how so many other Fire Horse articles on the web right now say it happens only once in sixty years; there are sixty signs so every one of the zodiac years only occurs once every sixty years). But when it comes to the Fire Horse, hold tight to those reins because it’s going to be hot, fast and raging.

For me, 2026 is already in a full fiery charge. Slithering out of last year’s Year of the Snake, that began with the Great Crash of KungFuMagazine.com. We were intermittent all summer, as if sloughing off an old skin. We relaunched in December, along with the return of Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine – in print no less. After nearly a year in limbo, suddenly KungFuMagazine.com was alive again and barreling back – IN PRINT! That made me feel like Lord Guan atop his strapping stallion Red Hare, swinging my Green Dragon Crescent Blade towards the neck of General Yan Liang. Welcome to 2026. If it keeps up this pace, it may be the death of me.

Don’t get me wrong. I am absolutely ecstatic about being back in print. I imagine Lord Guan was ecstatic about decapitating General Yan too. And I’m thrilled with the potential opportunities our new website offers. It’s a game changer.

And yet, obeying the rules of this new game is the challenge. I have a fraction of the production crew as I did before the pandemic. And there’s no newsstand distribution. Any newsstand that was big enough to carry a niche magazine like us died of covid. It’s all up to us now, and by us, I mean you, our loyal audience. Without the safety net of the newsstands, you decide whether we continue to live or die again. It's all up to your subscriptions. Without your support, our publications will relapse into oblivion. The future’s here. We are it. We are on our own.

Shouldering this new business model is a bold, new adventure. Beyond adding to my workload, I quickly realized that I have fallen sorely out of shape after the pandemic, both in body and mind. As strange as it sounds, the commute kept me in shape. As odd as it sounds, back when I had an hour commute to and from the office, I had it good. I would come and go early to beat that rush. Getting to the office before anyone else gave me some time to work out a little before the workday started. I’d do my Baduanjin, run a few forms and recite my Tai Chi.

I miss those years. The Kung Fu Tai Chi studio was a great space to train. Our green room, when we had one, had walls covered with magnificent calligraphy given to us by dozens of masters. Our studio reverberated with the presence of so many masters and champions that demonstrated and posed there over the years. Both were excellent spaces to practice. What’s more, our publisher emeritus Gigi Oh had our headquarters feng shui-ed every year. The qi in those spaces was strong. It was inspiring.

I only practiced lightly because I didn’t want to get all sweaty before work. There are no showers there, and I didn’t want my fellow employees to suffer through my disheveled appearance any more than they already did. Consequently, my practice was nothing heavy. Well, no, that’s not completely true. For a few months, I did work the heavy Guandao – that Green Dragon Crescent Blade – to prepare for the 2023 Tiger Claw Elite Heavy Guandao Championship, a special showcase competition that I had been dreaming of staging for years. That was supposed to be held in 2020, but the plague had other plans for the planet.

We managed to produce a Heavy Guandao championship promotional video, but we didn’t get it up before the shutdown because the Tiger Claw Elite Championship was cancelled that year. We ended up publishing it that July, after the shelter in place had lifted. Despite its rawness, I’m pleased with how it came out. It was intended to be the start of a video series “Old School Kung Fu.” We were just learning how to tell a story that way. The second installment of Old School Kung Fu was in production, to be coordinated with an article by me about dao, slated for the SUMMER 2020 issue. But due to the pandemic, that issue went into a Covid coma.

Unfortunately, the second Old School Kung Fu episode was another casualty of the epidemic. The TC Media studio was dismantled, the footage was lost in the shuffle, and our videographer, Jason Chang, was let go. As I stated in Chinese New Year 2025: Year of the Woody Snake, “I don’t have a budget for video anymore.” Even if we still had the footage we shot for that second episode, we don’t have anyone to edit it together.

Nevertheless, I’m thrilled to reveal that my article ‘Do Chinese Swords Still Make the Cut?’ will finally be published in our next issue, our first magazine of the Year of the Horse. Our upcoming SPRING 2026 issue is largely composed of submissions that we planned to publish in the SUMMER 2020 issue. I’m very pleased that all these articles will finally see the light of day, in print no less. And I am grateful for all our freelancers who patiently waited as I promised them that we would publish their contributions somehow eventually. I can’t tell you how much a rely upon our freelancers. They’re the best.

But enough about the Year of the Woody Snake. Onward to a horse of a different color. On to the Year of the Flaming Stud.

Horsing Around

I’ll begin with a confession. The last Year of the Horse marked one of my major failures. It was the Year of the Wood Horse. In Five Element theory, wood begets fire, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it. This is why last year – 2025 – was under the wood element and the last Year of the Horse – 2014 – was also under wood. At the 2014 Tiger Claw Elite & KUNG FU TAI CHI DAY, I tried to launch another showcase championship – the Year of the Horse HORSE STANCE COMPETITION. It was a simple concept. A judge would say ‘go’ and whoever amongst a pool of contestants held a horse stance the longest wins. We used to do that for fun when training and I had heard of other tournaments doing it. But for TCEC, it failed. We didn’t get enough participants to enter the competition, so we never ran it. That’s always been a challenge with our special showcase divisions – got to get enough competitors to play. These competitions are always unique and often unprecedented, and I salute the entries who are willing to take the risk. We always gave them ample spotlight.

I’ve launched a showcase championship at almost every one of our fourteen Tiger Claw Elite Championships. This Horse Stance Competition was the only one that ever failed.

Horse stance is the cornerstone of traditional Kung Fu, however there isn’t a distinct Horse style of Kung Fu to my knowledge. The most prominent example of Kung Fu Horse is within the twelve animals of Xingyi. Xingyi Horse consists of a block and punch combination that mirrors stomping hooves. Beyond that, it’s all about the stance. There’s nothing more fundamental than Horse Stance. It’s the beginning of training, for many the very first thing they learn.

In Mandarin, it’s mabu. Alternatively, it’s ma bou in Cantonese by way of Yale Romanization. In Chinese, it’s 馬步.Something I’ve always liked about horse in Chinese is that the pictogram is so clear. When you look at 馬, you see the horse.

When it comes to strength building, it only takes a minute to understand what a workout Horse Stance can be. It’s self-regulating. You decide how deep and how long to go, unless you’re under a traditional master who balances filled teacups on your thighs and tells you to hold it as long as it takes a stick of incense to burn down. If you’ve ever tried it, you know how ridiculously long that can be.

Training long Horse Stance sitting gives you plenty of time to ponder what it all means. Horse Stance conditions the body and fortifies willpower. Nothing stills the mind like the scream of your thighs as more time in Horse Stance passes. It’s a simple exercise and the longer you sit in it, the more it delivers. It becomes a more violent meditation the longer it goes. The simplest, most basic martial New Year’s resolution is to spend more time in Horse Stance. It’s a resolution that has a good return on investment. Resolve to sit in Horse Stance for a few more minutes each day.

I invested in a little hourglass, well, actually it’s a minuteglass, to keep my Horse Stance time honest. I suppose you could use your Apple Watch or Fitbit. But I train with swords, and I find those techy wristbands clash as an accoutrement. Fitbit, minuteglass, or incense stick – find some chronometer and set daily goals, weekly goals, 2026 goals, life goals, or whatever it takes to spend more time in Horse Stance this year. And when next year comes, the Year of the Fire Ram, if you kept your resolution, let me know if there was improvement.

Sadly, there will be no horse race this year. And by that, I mean we are not planning to stage the 2026 Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championship. With the website relaunch and magazine production, we just don’t have the bandwidth. Initially we discussed various downsizing plans, like just running the Shaolin Kung Fu Games, but after what happened with the Abbot getting ousted, we don’t know the status of those Games. We don’t even know if they’ll continue. Consequently, the Tiger Claw Elite Championship is going on hiatus for 2026.

Not to beat a dead horse, but this year is going to be all about sustaining Kung Fu Tai Chi. It’s rare that we get a second chance like this. I didn’t think it would happen. I thought we were done. And now that it is happening, it’s going to take all our resources to keep it happening.

This is a new model that needs your support, lest we be put out to pasture one last time. Please subscribe online, support our sponsors MartialArtSmart.com, distributors of Kung Fu Tai Chi in print. I, alongside our downsized staff and talented pool of freelance contributors, will strive to bring the best and the latest in the Chinese martial arts… straight from the horse’s mouth.

Happy Lunar New Year!

恭喜發財!

Gung Hei Faat Choi!

Gōngxǐfācái!

The Zodiac Series

Chinese New Year 2024: Year of the Woody Dragon

Chinese New Year 2023: Year of the Wet Hare

Chinese New Year 2022: Year of the Soppy Tiger

Chinese New Year 2021: Year of the Iron Ox

Chinese New Year 2020: Year of the Iron Rat

Chinese New Year 2019: Year of the Dirty Pig

Chinese New Year 2018: Year of the Dirty Dog