World Fighting Arts.

A widely held myth shared by many is that Chinese are inward looking; in as far as cultures are concerned.

And when it comes to fighting arts, the Chinese are wrongly perceived as only paying attention to Chinese originated methodologies and this misreading is sometimes used to debase Chinese scholars in the field of martial arts research and writings.

Well, this might be true to a certain extent considering the span of Chinese fighting systems, the range is so wide, covering Chinese arts alone is an enormous task and then there is the problem of language barrier.

Typically most Chinese scholars are proficient only in Mandarin and any materials in other languages will be a real challenge.

This cut them off from expanding their scope of coverage effectively and coupled with the fact that most non Chinese MAs are only making inroads into China in comparatively recent times, there is almost no “tradition” for them to base their studies on.

However, even under such circumstances, they are push by the various government linked committees to assimilate and research non-Chinese fighting arts now that China is ready to join the international communities in many aspects.

Works of this nature are still exceptions and usually headed by those with associations with Hong Kong, Taiwan or other parts of Asia.

I have yet to hear about of joint project between mainland and Western interest groups in the area of MA research, a situation that will be addressed very soon, in my opinion.

China is quick, very quick in “strategic” positioning.

Well, there are a few mainland publications attempting to overview major fighting systems of the world.

I will try to post as much as possible from one such works.

Starting with glimpses of major Chinese systems:-