Click Here for Chinese New Year 2022: Year of the Soppy Tiger

Before I dig into the 2023 rabbit hole, allow me to mourn the passing of 2022. I had such hopes for last year, hopes that I had held since 2017 at least. Twenty-seventeen was the last great milestone for our print magazine Kung Fu Tai Chi. That was our 25^th anniversary and we celebrated it with a grand gathering I dubbed KFTC AF (AF was an acronym for Anniversary Festival and yes, I totally know what else AF stands for – that worked too).

A Tiger by the Tail…

So do the math. Last year, 2022, would’ve been our 30^th anniversary. What’s more, it was a Year of the Tiger, and tigers are the mascot of our parent company Tiger Claw.  On top of that, it would’ve marked the completion of a zodiac cycle for our charity event, the WildAid Tiger Claw Championship, to which I have a profound personal connection because I launched it at the Tiger Claw Elite Championships in 2010, which was the previous Year of the Tiger. I’ve supported Tiger preservation efforts since 1998 (the previous Year of the Tiger) and given that Tiger Claw’s mascot is the tiger, WildAid was a perfect fit.

Consequently, I’ve had 2022 on my calendar for years. What could we do to top our previous anniversary celebrations coupled with another Year of the Tiger? As it turned out, we did nothing.

We hoped that the pandemic would have subsided enough to do something, but it just wasn’t so. Although in-person events were starting to reopen in 2022, due to the nature of our organization, we must commit to holding a TCEC way ahead of time. That would’ve been in late 2021 and things just weren’t stable enough at that time for us to be confident. On top of that, just like everyone else, we were still grappling with the changes Covid brought.

The staff of TC Media International, the company that oversaw Kung Fu Tai Chi, was let go when our print magazine folded in 2020. We only got to 28 years, not 30. I shifted to a part time position and only one graphic artist remains, Kevin Ho, who is now worksdirectly under Tiger Claw. Together, Kevin and I keep our website KungFuMagazine.com here going, and we’re still thriving. We continue to publish a fresh article every week and offer two sweepstake contests a month, plus special sale offers through our primary sponsor, MartialArtSmart. And our KungFuMagazine.com forum is still running – a searchable crowd-generated database that has been going for a quarter of a century now. Gigi Oh, our publisher emeritus, despite announcing her retirement, still helps at Tiger Claw too. Being a family company, Tiger Claw’s President is her son, Jonny Oh, and he stalwartly navigated the company the pandemic-triggered supply chain issues. Things are stabilizing now so all is well there too.

To be perfectly honest, I’m somewhat relieved we didn’t have to do a 30^th anniversary party. Each of those anniversary events pushed me to the limit and I was younger then than now. The 30^th might have broken me, more so than I’m broken already. While I would’ve loved for the magazine to go on forever,given the overall decline of the print magazine industry, the demise of Kung Fu Tai Chi was inevitable. I’m very satisfied with everything we achieved, proud that we were able to stay on the newsstands as long as we did, and grateful that there was a way to bow out gracefully.

At the very least, we put out a cool Year of the Tiger hoody and T-shirt, thanks to Kevin’s persistent artistry. He has new ones for 2023: hoody and T-shirt. Get yours today and help support KungFuMagazine.com as we continue to forward the cause of Chinese martial arts.

I’m thrilled that we are holding a Tiger Claw Elite Championships in 2023. It’ll be May 6-7 at our favorite venue, South Hall at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California and the 11^th WildAid Tiger Claw Championship will be held there.

I can hardly wait to be reunited with the Wulin. Despite all the intense and overwhelming behind-the-scenes work that goes into TCEC, I cherish the Wulin. The shutdowns made me realize how much I treasure Wulin gatherings and how grateful I am for each and every one that I had the privilege of attending. I truly hope to see everyone again at TCEC 2023, the Year of the Rabbit.

Follow the White Rabbit

Now, about that rabbit hole…the Year of the Water Rabbit begins on Sunday, January 22^nd, 2023. Although the martial arts, especially the Chinese martial arts, have a lot of references to animal styles, there aren’t that many rabbits. I’ve never heard of a rabbit style. I find this surprising because rabbits can be strong – perhaps not as ferocious as the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannogfrom Monty Python and the Holy Grail but powerful, nonetheless.

We had a pet bunny – a large white rescued lab rabbit named ‘Alice.’ I’ll never forget when I let her roam our yard and she got surrounded by several feral cats. I was just about to chase those cats off when Alice charged the biggest tom cat. It’s that ol’ street strategy – when surrounded by a gang, take out the gang leader first. That tom cat flinched and fled, after which the remaining cats looked at each other doubtfully and all bailed. I always respected Alice’s fortitude and bravado after that.

In the western pugilistic tradition, there’s the ‘rabbit punch.’ This is a blow to the base of the skull, and it is universally banned in all sparring sports because it can cause paralysis or death. It is commonly believed that the term originates from how rabbit trappers killed their prey without damaging the fur. But that’s a term that descends from western tradition, so it isn’t relevant to a discussion of the Chinese zodiac.

There are a few references to rabbits in Qigong. These are usually references to a specific rabbit – the Jade Rabbit (Yu Tu 玉兔). According to legend, the Jade Rabbit is a celestial being that lives in solitude on the moon where itgrinds the ingredients for the elixir of life in its pestle. For its diligence and commitment, the Jade Emperor bestowed this holy hare with a coat like fine jade, thus it is the Jade Rabbit.

Note that the Jade Rabbit’s coat is white jade, not green. While Jade is usually green, it can also be white or yellow. It is a gemstone that is held in the highest esteem by the Chinese, especially white jade. This places the Jade Rabbit in that ever-multiplying colony of white rabbits, akin to our Alice or her namesake from Wonderland.

The White Rabbit Clan is vast. Not only does it also include the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, White Rabbit creamy candy must be included because it’s a personal favorite Chinese candy. Like Halloween and Christmas, candy has a role in Lunar New Year rituals. The eating of sweets is symbolic of the potential influx of good fortune in the upcoming year. Many of these sweets will seem exotic to Westerners. Some Chinese refer to the ‘eight sweets’ for the New Year, which are a selection of dried candied fruits, seeds, and veggies. The eight are usually carrots, coconut strips, coconut chunks, kumquats, lotus roots, lotus seeds, water chestnuts, and winter melons. Lotus roots are my favorite mostly because they are so weird looking to Westerners, like something elves or Klingons might eat. Truth be told, I’m not that into the taste, just the look.

First produced in Shanghai in 1943, White Rabbit candy is like the yang to the yin Tootsie roll. They are about the same shape and size, only White Rabbit candies have an edible wrapper inside their regular wrapper. Instead of being colored and chocolatey, White Rabbit candies are white and creamy. In recent years, it has branched out into flavored versions, akin to Japanese Kit Kits (Japan offers a much wider selection of selection of Kit Kat flavors like strawberry cheesecake and green tea). White Rabbit now offers flavors like peanut, maize, mango, red bean, and butter-plum, to name a few. White Rabbit creamy candy capitalizes upon its zodiac related mascot every cycle (just like Tiger Claw hoped to do last year) so there will undoubtably be plenty of fresh 2023 marketing.

If I’m going to be totally honest, what attracted me to White Rabbit candies was the box. Chinese sweet boxes and cookie tins are a major thing. And White Rabbit used to come in these bright red tins, with a giant white rabbit leaping past spotted mushrooms that could only be Amanita muscaria. Talk about going down that rabbit hole.

Beyond legends, fairy tales, and candies, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge two warrior rabbits. Both are animated. Usagi Yojimbo is a popular comic created by Stan Sakai in 1984. The protagonist, a white rabbit named Miyamoto Usagi, is a wandering ronin in the Edo period (1603-1867 CE). The series was an homage to the chanbara genre in film, as well as Japanese folktales. Usagi is still very popular, so much so that Netflix launched the animated series Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles last year(perhaps they should’ve waited for this year). The series followsa teenage white rabbit named Yuichi, who is the descendant of Miyamoto Usagi, and is set in a sci-fi fantasy future. It has already run for two seasons. However, being a Japanese warrior rabbit, Usagi and Yuichi lie outside of Chinese martial arts.

The other warrior rabbit is Chinese. Given the Chinese bent of KungFuMagazine.com, you’d think I might’ve led with this, but it’s too embarrassing. Legend of a Rabbit (Tuxia Chuanq i兔侠传奇) was a 2011 animated feature film from China. The film centered around a white rabbit named Tu. This rabbit pancake cook learns Kung Fu to defeat a villainous Panda. Sound familiar? Swap ‘rabbit’ with ‘panda,’ ‘pancake’ with ‘noodle,’ and ‘panda’ with ‘snow leopard’ and you’ve got Kung Fu Panda. It’s doubly ironic that the panda is recast as the villain.

Legend of a Rabbit was critically lambasted because the similarities to Kung Fu Panda were so obvious. The film was a complete flop, earning only $16M against a budget of $120M. Surprisingly, there was a sequel - Legend of a Rabbit: The Martial of Fire (Tuxiazhiqing li Chuanshou 兔侠之青黎传说). That came out in 2015 and performed slightly better, earning $29M. Nevertheless, it’s closer to a Kung Fu rabbit than Usagi.

Tu, the Kung Fu rabbit, would not have survived in old China. China cancelled the anthropomorphic granddad of white rabbits by banning Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The provincial Governor of Hunan banned it back in 1931, sixty-six years after it was published. He felt that animals acting like humans was an insult and that teaching children that animals and humans are on the same level would prove disastrous. While it’s easy to discredita communist country for banning media, it is important to note that in 1931, China was a republic. Book banning has been with us since publishing began and the current surge of cancel culture makes this a twisty rabbit hole.

Just a few months ago, Balenciaga fell under scrutiny with a scandalous children's campaign that featured teddy bears in bondage. Included in the background of the ad images were stuffed white rabbits. Balenciaga apologized but a Qanon theory believes the white rabbit is a code for adrenochrome, a drug being harvested from kidnapped children by liberal elites so they can achieve immortality. Could adrenochrome be one of the ingredients for the elixir of life that the Jade Rabbit makes? According to Qanon, the chemical symbol of adrenochrome looks like a rabbit when turned on its side. I suspect this conspiracy theory will have a tough go with this for 2023 because a lot of white rabbits are on the way.

And that’s as far as I’m going to take this plunge down the rabbit hole. Nowadays, conspiracy theories are a signpost that you’ve gone too far. Whether you see 2023 as the Year of the Wet Hare, or the Year of the White Rabbit, or just another trip around the sun, let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear.

“…and that’s the queerest thing about it.” the White Rabbit, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Happy New Year!

Xin Nian Kuai Le

新年快樂

Get your 2023 Year of the Rabbit attire here: hoody and T-shirt.