For The Silk Road Kung Fu Friendship Tour Part 32, click here.

In the Silk Road Kung Fu Friendship Tour, I started at the Bell Tower in the old capital of China, Xi’an, traveled north as far as Almaty Kazakhstan, Japan to the east, south to Indonesia, west to Qatar and oh so many thousands of road and nautical miles in between including ancient and modern civilizations, countries, great cities, villages, archeological sites, museums, libraries, mausoleums and so on along shining new and ancient dusty roads, on busses, trains and even camels. But somehow, I managed to miss Hong Kong? How is this possible? Suddenly it became glaringly obvious - this situation had to be rectified for I had somehow skipped over the hometown and proving grounds of Li Xiaolong, yes, Bruce Lee and his legendary Sifu, Yip Man. Consequently, this article and the next in this series looks at the ancient and modern backgrounds and forces that shaped both men who blazed dramatic new frontiers in martial arts history as well as one of Sifu Ip Man’s most excellent disciples, students, co-instructors and friends.
 

Hong Kong has traded with mainland China for thousands of years and Hong Kong was certainly part of the Maritime Silk Road, also known as the “Marine Porcelain Road.” From the late 16th to mid-17th centuries until today, European, Southeast Asian, and African countries traded with China via Hong Kong. To get in touch with the ancient spirits that govern the minds and actions of the past and present world theaters, I typically make my first stop in any particular location at the best museum in town. I approach museums like an artist appreciating the evolutionary processes, the sublime greatness, illuminating wisdom and beauty of a civilization and a crime investigator trying to figure out what went wrong, causing the conflicts that invariably bring those great civilizations down in the immutable cycles of birth, growth, decline, death and rebirth. Following the advice of the venerable sage Lewis Carroll and a king he once knew: “Begin at the beginning... and go on till you come to the end: then stop,” I started at the beginning.

Where did it all begin? Like everything else in the Tao, it began with the mysterious and inconceivable, infinitely huge mind-shattering Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago and much later an average second-generation star surrounded by cosmic goop that coalesced into planets whose compositions were determined by gravitational forces from that star, one of which collected considerable ice possibly from comets, while burning like hell in a cauldron of fiery rock. Though the Hong Kong Museum of History doesn’t go quite as far back as I always do, Hong Kong did begin in the fiery volcanic geological period starting about 400 million years ago. Museum visitors are first led through primaeval forests with specimens of now extinct birds, reptiles and mammals chirping, roaring and grunting which are familiar sounds to most because some things never change. Those who knew Bruce Lee, or even just saw his movies, know well that part of the primordial had indeed awoken within him. Was his Kiai more like a cat or a bird? All of that circuitry can be found in the more ancient parts of every human brain waiting only for the right - or very, very wrong - environmental circumstances to bring them back into wakefulness.

Continuing right along in the museum one finds the first-generation inhabitants of Hong Kong were the Yue people from the south of China. The second-generation wave of ancient immigrants to Hong Kong perhaps 4,000 years ago came from central and northern China. How did I learn this? A brochure, a 4,000-year-old ceremonial knife and a cup of coffee.

So, you walk into a museum and what’s the first thing you do? Politely ask where to get a map of the museum and then snap up everything else they have in English. Then, head to the coffee shop to sit, memorize the map and read everything you could get so you know what the museum director thinks is most important in the collection on display and what to keep an eye out for. Museum directors are right at least half the time in my experience, so it's worth the price of a cup of coffee, which by the way feels pretty good going down too because even finding the right museum in a big foreign city can by itself be quite an odyssey. All primed and ready to go, one must relax into the next adventure because time is an infinitely deep ocean and the ancient spirits suspended in the infinity of time are patiently waiting for someone to breathe life back into them again.

First, what did the brochure say?

“The people who inhabited South China from prehistoric times were the Yue people. From the Qin and Han dynasties, however, the Han people of Central China migrated south, bringing with them advanced culture and technology...”

And then, walking through and photographing everything on display I found the “Yazhang Blade.” The sign adjacent to this curiously shaped knife said this:

“...To date, 23 sites in East Asia have been known to have yielded 150 pieces of Yazhang blade, which could have emerged around the Huanghe River (Yellow River) Valley about 4,000 years ago. To a certain extent, the discoveries of Yazhang blade in Hong Kong can be inferred as the ritual objects used in the North China ceremonies had been readily adopted by the ancient inhabitants of Hong Kong. This provides academic significance in the study of the tie between the ancient history of Hong Kong and that of North China.”

Ah ha! A museum of history in Hong Kong also has to celebrate their history as a seafaring people and there was even a life-sized junk that visitors were invited to board and look around, as well as a number of miniatures - all very cool! What, some might ask, is a “junk?”

“Nor then is the voyage undertaken, except in vessels of the three descriptions following: the greatest is called a junk, the middling sized a zaw, the least a kakam. The sails of these vessels are made of cane-reeds, woven together like a mat; which, when they put into port, they leave standing in the wind. In some of these vessels there will be employed a thousand men, six hundred of these sailors, and four hundred soldiers.

The Travels of Ibn Batuta 1325-1354, Translated by Reverend Samuel Lee, 1829

Moving right along I’m going to jump into the 18th Century. William John Napier (1786-1834), AKA the 9th Lord Napier, a.k.a. Baron Napier was a British Royal Navy officer and trade representative in China. It was he who first suggested that the British “take possession” of Hong Kong.

“Lord Napier distinctly recommended that a small British force 'should take possession of the Island of Hongkong, in the eastern entrance of the Canton River, which is admirably adapted for every purpose.’” (Eitel, E. J. 1882)

“Every purpose” came to include importing thousands of tons of opium into China. Due to the military superiority of the British Navy in 1842 the Chinese had no choice but to surrender Hong Kong to the British, and it along with Guangzhou (Canton) quickly became the massive centers of opium distribution in China.

The second Governor, Sir John Davis, once remarked that almost every person in Hong Kong in possession of capital and not connected with government employment was employed in the opium trade. In fact, few of the leading firms in Hong Kong were not connected with the discreditable but profitable traffic in opium.

1860 - 1898 The establishment of entrepot trade - Marine Department

In sum, the very unequal relationship with the British was disastrous for China which was in the middle of a revolutionary war to overthrow the corrupt foreign-supported Manchu Qing Dynasty, a war in which at least 50 million Chinese were killed. Chinese were furious about being conquered by the British Navy, forced to give up Hong Kong and subsequent insidious opium addition and deaths of millions of Chinese from this disease, and this fostered an environment were FIST OF FURY (1972) would naturally evolve and gave rise to the caricature of the “sick man of Asia.” Thus, some Chinese may view some foreign visitors with just a tad bit of suspicion. This goes way back in history, and a quick reading of Ibn Battuta’s writings about China in the 13th Century confirms this.

“The people of China are, in other respects, the most skillful artificers. In painting, none come near to them. Of what I myself witnessed was the following: I once scarcely entered one of their cities: some time after, I had occasion again to visit it; and what should I see upon its walls, and upon papers stuck up in the streets, but pictures of myself and my companions! This is constantly done with all who pass through their towns - And should any such stranger do anything to make Bight necessary, they would then send out his picture to the other provinces; and wherever he might happen to be, he would be taken.

It is also a practice with them, that when a vessel leaves China, an account, as well of the names, as of the forms of the men in it, is taken and laid up. When the vessel returns, the servants of the magistrates board it, and compare the persons in it with the descriptions taken; and if one should happen to be missing, the commander of the vessel is taken, unless he can prove that the man has died by some sickness or other circumstance, or that he has left him, with his own consent, in some other of the Chinese provinces.

The Travels of Ibn Battuta 1325-1354, Translated by Reverend Samuel Lee

Ibn Battuta marveled at the wealth and sophistication of the Chinese but viewed their security precautions as a form of oppression. This isn’t surprising because China was many centuries ahead of every other nation when he visited in regards to immigration policies. Whereas outsiders tended to think of China as a great fat watermelon, ripe for the picking and eating, Chinese always see China as their home and didn’t appreciate foreigners coming in to carve up and exploit their beloved homeland.

Before moving on, it is essential to mention one extraordinary Kung Fu master in the early 19th Century, specifically the High Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu. In 1839, the eighth Emperor of the decaying Qing Dynasty, Emperor Minning (also called the Daoguang Emperor) refused both British and domestic demands to legalize and tax opium and appointed his viceroy, Lin Zexu, to end the opium trade completely. Lin Zexu fought with his mind, body and soul in a way no Chinese had before against the most formidable weapon of the colonizers, initially by drafting strict laws against opium importation and sale. He then sent a courteous but firm letter to Queen Victoria in 1839 in which he presented an abstract of a new law about to be enacted in Hong Kong:

"Any foreigner or foreigners bringing opium to the Central Land, with design to sell the same, the principals shall most assuredly be decapitated, and the accessories strangled; and all property (found on board the same ship) shall be confiscated...”

Modern History Sourcebook: Commissioner Lin: Letter to Queen Victoria, 1839 - Fordham University

That letter threw down the gauntlet and began China’s efforts to defend itself against opium, the single most formidable weapon of the world’s greatest colonial superpower. In the short term, enforcing that law led to many martial encounters on the docks of Hong Kong, Canton and great and smaller rivers in China and Commissioner Lin Zexu was at the forefront of most of them. He was and remains a towering figure in the martial art history of Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Unfortunately, Lin Zexu’s heroic efforts directly led to the first Opium War which lasted almost three years from September 4, 1839 to August 29, 1842, ending in China’s defeat by the British, the humiliating Treaty of Nanjing which among other things gave Hong Kong to the British and established the Shanghai International Settlement (in effect until 1941 when Japanese troops blasted their way in immediately following their attack on Pearl Harbor).

 

 

This was followed by the 2nd Opium War, October 8, 1856 to October 24, 1860 which the British won again resulting in Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island being taken by the British as part of Hong Kong and Outer Manchuria being taken by the Russian Empire. All this was simultaneous to the Taiping Revolution (1850 to 1864) and others in China led by the starving farmers and slaves against the corrupt nobility and emperors of the Qing Dynasty in which at minimum 50 million Chinese were killed. The Chinese farmers were largely inspired by the American Revolution (1765-1783) to free itself from British colonial power and the French Revolution (1789-1799) to free itself from the very high taxes and moral decay of the corrupted monarchy (just like China at the time). The revolution in China continued until the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 which was followed by the Warlord Era (1916–1928; Songshan Shaolin was mostly burned down in the last year of this horrific series of feudal wars), which was followed by Japanese invasions in 1931 (Manchuria), 1937 (Beijing, Shanghai and on through large parts of China), which was followed by another foreign financed and armed Civil War that lasted until 1949.

And all that is what one will find in the Hong Kong Museum of History in addition to ancient clay pots, unrivaled porcelain, fantastic jewelry, coins, documents, proclamations, and treaties, paintings, photos, sculptures, etc.

Thus, there were multiple complex intersecting forces at work when Wing Chun student Yip Man was growing up and his family moved from Guangzhou (Canton) to Hong Kong in 1909 at the age of 16. Moving to a British colony at that time was probably intended to spare his family the bloodshed which plagued mainland China. However the British Governor of Hong Kong Mark Aitchison Young surrendered the colony of Hong Kong to Japan on December 25th, 1941 after fierce and losing battles against the Japanese invaders. There was simply no escaping foreign aggression for any Chinese, even in the British colony of Hong Kong.

Was the fiery passion of Bruce Lee at least partly inspired by the seemingly endless abuses and humiliations which the Chinese were subjected? In Part 2 of this Silk Road adventure in Hong Kong I interview a disciple and assistant instructor of Yip Man in Hong Kong who was also a legendary Hong Kong streetfighter “back in the day,” is one of if not the most internationally famous and successful Wing Chun Kung Fu masters in Hong Kong and the world today, and a darned nice guy, Sifu Sam Lau.

For The Silk Road Kung Fu Friendship Tour Part 34, click here.