Was 'Kung Fu Hustle' Based on Historic Events?

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Was 'Kung Fu Hustle' Based on Historic Events?

I have been reading a dissertation called, "Opera Society and Politics: Chinese Intellectuals and Popular Culture, 1901-1937," by Li Hsiao-t'i. It is from 1996, and an updated version will be published in 2019 but I could not wait. 
Li Hsiao-t'i explains that Beijing Opera used fake weapons [probably because after 1860 it was constantly being performed inside the city gates, where weapons were banned]. However, Shanghai developed a version of Beijing Opera using real weapons, swords, spears, etc...

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The Measure of Freedom is a Horror Movie

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The Measure of Freedom is a Horror Movie

Long time readers of this blog will recall the Phillips Theory of Democracy. Here is the back story.

In the mid-1990s I ended a 10 years Movie and Media fast by attending a foreign horror movie festival. It started as a whim, but I fell in love with several of the movies in that first festival. After that I became a mass consumer of horror films, particularly foreign horror. I became a specialist in Asian Religious Horror and wrote a lot of reviews for the San Francisco Film scene. 

In 2004 Natan Sharansky…

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Transformations

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Transformations

I am going through some big shifts. I had a dream about the perfect dance partner, everything we did together always worked. Part of the dream was that this is a dream I have had over and over out to infinity. It as if the perfect dance is always here with me, and yet my life is an obstacle to it. 

Here are a few choice links for my weekly blog. 

Ever wonder why women in the 1800s dueled topless? The best part of this fascinating piece of history is the reason they were dueling. Not love, or truth, but beauty.

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The Four Mass Destructions

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The Four Mass Destructions

I just finished reading Do Not Say We Have Nothing, by Madeleine Thien. It is a fictional account of China from 1920 to the present. It follows a family of musicians. It is a great piece of fiction because it gets you inside peoples thoughts. It is historically accurate and emotionally mature, although incredibly sad. I highly recommend it. I am considering making it mandatory reading for my students.

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Zombie Tai Chi Movie

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Zombie Tai Chi Movie

Can't you just see it? A horror movie where seemingly normal people just start doing Tai Chi, then they creep towards you to try and eat your brains. Hollywood, are you listening? 

It is going to need a cause. The disease thing has been overdone. An electronic, cellphone-activated brain re-wiring app, perhaps. But for the deep chill down the spine, it should be caused by political indoctrination. Government hypnosis conspiracy using Tai Chi to eat people's brains. Dang.


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Re-Thinking the Importance of Comic Martial Arts

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Re-Thinking the Importance of Comic Martial Arts

My new book uses the idea of a YMCA Consensus. That is, after the Boxer Uprising all the voices of reform and Modernity can be understood as conforming to a Protestant Christian notion of religion and the state. There were three or four categories of thought that martial arts reformers subscribed to, but they were all within the YMCA Consensus. They all agreed that martial arts had to be separated from the gods and immortals. They all agreed that temple-festival martial arts were a cause of China's suffering. They all agreed that some forms of theatricality degraded the martial arts--demonstrations of invulnerability being number one on the list.

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Famine

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I had a massive writing push this week. No time for a full post. 

But I have a link to a wonderful article about famine in North China in 1876-1879. (From DisasterHistoriies.org)

The famine comes up briefly in my next book because 1876-1879 are the years that Dong Haichuan was teaching Baguazhang in Beijing. It is a confused issue. Dong Haichuan was supposed to have died in 1882. According to his tombstone, he only began teaching after he was released from service to the Su Prince--after he had become old.