You're Dead to Me - History of Kung Fu

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

In this episode, Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Leon Rocha and comedian Phil Wang to learn all about the surprising history of kung fu, from ancient China to the present day. Rooted in ancient Chinese exercises designed to promote long life, kung fu was pioneered by the monks of the Shaolin temple before spreading throughout China. But how did peaceful Buddhist monks come to create a martial arts style that would gain global popularity? From the mountains of medieval China to the movie screens of Hollywood, via plundering pirates and legendary nuns, this episode explores the historical development of Chinese martial arts.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Jon Mason Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are channeling our chi and journeying all the way back to ancient China to learn about the history of Kung Fu. And to help whip us into shape, I'm joined by two very special Kung Fu masters.

In History Corner, he's a historian of China and an expert in the history of East Asian science, medicine and technology. He was previously based at the Universities of Liverpool and Lincoln and now works for University and College Union. It's Dr Leon Rocha. Welcome, Leon. Hi, I'm Leon. I know Kung Fu, but only historically, so not massively useful in a fight. And in Comedy Corner, he's a fantastic comedian, actor and author.

You will know him from Taskmaster, Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News For You and his Netflix comedy special. Maybe you've read his, well, side-splitting book, Side Splitter. It's fantastic. But you'll definitely remember him from previous episodes of You're Dead To Me on the Borgias, Chinggis Khan and the Terracotta Warriors. Entering the podcast dojo for a fourth time, it's Phil Wang. Welcome back, Phil. Hiya, hiya, Greg. Hiya, Leon, hiya, everybody. It's

good to be back. Hiya. Oh, hello. Very nice. I'm already doing my jump kicks. I'm so excited. Phil, today we're talking about Kung Fu and I know from reading your book that you are a black belt in martial arts. I am a black belt in martial arts. I am a black belt in martial arts. I'm a black belt in Shorinji Kenpo, which is a Japanese modification of Chinese Shaolin Kung Fu. Oh. And my father and his brothers became obsessed with this martial art, Shorinji Kenpo, before I was born, to the extent that they all became multiple level black belts, which are called Dan, so like third Dan, fourth Dan black belt. They set up a dojo. So I studied Shorinji Kenpo at a dojo as a kid.

Before I moved to the UK, I went through a sort of crash accelerated course with my uncle to get a black belt, which I definitely do not deserve. I am without a doubt a Kung Fu nepo baby. And what do you know about the history of Kung Fu? It's hard to separate sort of real history with, I guess what I would call a kind of folklore. But for me, the folklore come history of it is that Shaolin Kung Fu was developed by Shaolin monks centuries ago because the monks kept getting attacked by bandits. Ooh, he knows things.

So, what do you know? This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And I'm guessing most people have seen at least one martial arts movie. Kung Fu, or at least Kung Fu-esque martial arts movies, are all over the place. You've got your Bruce Lee, so Enter the Dragon. You've got Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, more dragons.

You've got, my fave, the Matrix trilogy. You've got Kill Bill, Kung Fu Panda. And then, of course, the classic pop song by Carl Douglas. Everyone was Kung Fu Panda, and then of course the classic pop song by Carl Douglas, Everyone Was Kung Fu Fighting. We know about Kung Fu through pop culture, but how did this martial art first come about? And what does clenching your bum hole have to do with any of it? Leon, could you give us a definition of Kung Fu? I hear it involves kicks as fast as lightning, expert timing, and it's a little bit frightening, correct? Kung Fu, or Kung Fu, is really a generic name for a number of martial

arts from China. Some of these martial arts could indeed be traced back to the Buddhist monastery of Shaolin. So the term Kung Fu really translates into daily practice or work or something that's a little bit tedious. So an Excel spreadsheet might be Kung Fu. Although in China today, actually more people would prefer the term Wushu. And although commonly perceived to be ancient, historians generally agree that Shaolin Kung Fu and related martial arts actually came from more or less continuous process of change, of evolution, with key developments happening around the 16th century until the present day. So Kung Fu is give or take 500 years old as we know it now, but the roots are running deeper.

I mentioned ancient China in the introduction. So we're going to go deeper to begin with, Leon. So how far back are we going in time? Well, there are two important precursor traditions. So the first would be unarmed combat and strength training. And we have written records for that from the Warring States period in China. So we're talking about 5th to 3rd century BCE. This mostly involved wrestling and weightlifting and perhaps boxing contests and would have been associated with

lower ranking common soldiers. You also have weapons training, especially archery, with lower ranking common soldiers. You also have weapons training, especially archery, and that's more associated with the nobility. There are two branches that are in the origins of Kung Fu. One is unarmed combat by soldiers. The second branch, do you know what that was? Oh, the second branch, is it monks? Is it monks' self-defense?

It's coming later, I think, because actually when we're... Ah! I just want to say this fact. fact okay so one is unarmed training for soldiers the other route is meditation crossfit crossfit a crossfit class i went too far leon i think he's closer with meditation than crossfit is that right yeah meditation is a good. So the sort of second precursor tradition is actually Taoist. Taoism is a school of Chinese philosophy that kind of came into being in the Warring States period. So we're talking about the 5th or 4th century BCE. Taoism as a Chinese philosophy emphasized things like passivity, naturalness, or spontaneity, or simplicity. It kind of stood in direct contrast to another philosophical school in early China known as Confucianism.

Confucianism and Taoism were opposites of each other. These kind of Taoist exercises, they were intended to improve the flow of qi or energy or vital essence around the body. And the goal is to increase longevity and cure or prevent illnesses. And usually involve some kind of breathing exercises, physical postures, sometimes meditation. And the text that these exercises were recorded in, that would have been the preserve of high status elite men. So commoners and women are not welcome to do that. A different time. And that text is called the Daoyin Tu. Is that right, Leon? Yeah, that's right. So, Phil, this text, the Daoyin Tu,

has several postures named after animals. So we're going to do a mini quiz for you. Which of these five postures was not described in the Daoyin Tu? Was it the bird stretch, the bear amble, the gibbon jump, the dragon rise, or the crane call. Oh, man. I thought this would be a lot easier. Those all sound viable.

The bird, what was the first one? The bird stretch. The bird stretch. Okay, this feels possible. Okay, what was the next one? Bear amble. Bear amble. Okay, I'm going to put that on the probably not okay

and the next one gibbon jump gibbon jump yes i will say gibbon jump is yes dragon rise dragon rise it's gotta be come on it's so on brand and the crane call crane call we've already had bird stretch yeah i'm going to say that the fake ones are the bear amble and the crane call we've already had bird stretch yeah i'm going to say that the fake ones are the bear amble and the crane call well i'm afraid we have to add a sixth one the red herring because uh they're all in the document oh i knew it was one of those part of me knew it was one of those sorry i'd agree agree that the bear amble to me feels very gentle for a martial art and in fact we can show you an image from that manuscript a gentleman doing the bear amble and i would describe it as adorable it's a sort of old-fashioned chinese illustration of a man chinese man in a robe and to be honest

there's nothing bearish about him he's sort of doing a ha cha cha he's got his arms pointed a bit to the right he looks like he's just pointing to a ha cha cha he's got his arms pointed a bit to the right he looks like he's just pointing to the ground there's nothing berry about this no can i see his legs oh he's got very puffy pantalons and you only really see his feet sticking out the bottom this ranks among the least descriptive drawings i've ever seen of anything it's just a guy standing but wearing massive mc Hammer style parachute pants. Yes he is. So Bear Amble is one of the five. I mean Leon what's the point of these various poses? Is it sort of similar to yoga? Is it about stretching and strengthening muscles? Well many

of these postures are really about the flow of qi and the channels of the body in which qi would flow. There are other postures that were supposed to target specific physical illnesses and pain, and it's been suggested by historians that the animal postures might be related to preceding Chinese shamanism, in which the shaman transforming into animals themselves through some kind of ecstatic dance. Another theory relates to the early Chinese philosophy of animals, whereby a gentleman would master nature by observing and also imitating. Animals have this slightly unusual status in Chinese philosophical thinking. Animals seem to instinctively know what to do, whereas human beings, despite being, well,

technically, quote-unquote, superior and nobler than animals, they are a bunch of confusion. Hence the need to learn from the animals. bunch of confusion hence the need to learn from the animals can i ask something about chi leon i've always wondered does chi begin somewhere in the body does it isn't meant to end somewhere else well i mean everything technically is chi everything in in the entire universe and the difference between you and an enamored object is that apart from being a particular configuration of qi, you also have something that might be called consciousness. And qi surrounds all of us. Within the human body, there are a number of places. The Dan Tian, for instance, which is the region that is below your belly button and just above your pubes, that's usually considered to be one of the key repositories of qi in the human body.

Are they the equivalent of chakras then? Yeah, they're basically like organs in the body and they're also repositories of qi. And then there are channels which are kind of analogous to rivers or vessels that connect all of these different organs and repositories. Well, I feel like I'm going to have to sort of bring the tone down a little bit because the next thing in my script is, Phil, what do you think a buttock pull was? A buttock pull? Yeah.

I think it's what happens to me when I stand up too quickly. You haven't been doing your martial arts. You haven't been training. Not for a while. A buttock pull. I imagine it's one of these sort of feats of strength that a shaolin master will do will they attach some great weight to their buttocks and move it along with the strength of their butts it's absolutely not that but that's that's a great mental image for the podcast no i can't say i then. The buttock pull is probably one of the most important postures. It involves clenching one's anus.

There's a lot of emphasis in Chinese medical texts on that particular region, which includes the anus and the perineum, which is commonly known to you, perhaps, as the gooch. Oh, yeah, the gooch. That's crucial to the cultivation and circulation of qi, right? So there's one medical manuscript that would describe how you should rise at dawn, sit upright, straighten your spine, and open your buttocks, and then suck in the anus and press it down. And if you do that, then you're cultivating qi. If you do that, then you're cultivating qi. And also, when you're eating and drinking, you should relax the buttocks,

straighten your spine, suck in the anus, and let the qi pass through you. And that's called, quote-unquote, moving the fluid. Okay, I'm going to try that. I've got a glass of water right now. I'm going to try the drinking one. Straight back? Straighten the back. Tighten the anus.

Relax the buttocks and tighten the anus, which might sound contradictory, but you know. Yeah, I got it. He's going for it. Wow, that's the finest scalp of water I've ever had. So you should now feel some chi that's shooting up from your gooch area up the spine. Yeah, I'm feeling something. I mean, Phil, you and I once were in a horrible history sketch about a man who held in a fart and died. But I feel like we've definitely come on a whole level now. Yeah, there's a blurry line between chi and what is it when you can't do a poo? Constipation. Yeah.

Well, I hope you feel better. It was quite a strange bit of radio, but thank you. And Leon, another aspect of these martial arts, of these sort of health practices is sexual health as well. So are we talking about contraceptives? Are we talking about cures for STIs? So the sexual cultivation, strictly speaking, text, they talk about how you can promote health and you can increase your lifespan by following a set of rules on the best times for sexual intercourse and how frequent one can have sexual intercourse. So to give you an example, a key text that's called Yin Shu from around the 2nd century BCE, and Yin Shu, you can translate that into the stretching book or the pulling text if you want to. It prescribes a daily exercise that's usually attributed to the legendary figure peng ju and peng ju allegedly practiced this kind of sexual cultivation which then allowed him to live for 800 years

whoa what what this peng ju regimen uh i call b i don't believe it it's definitely a typo news 800 years yeah 80 years 800 years, come on. So that's Peng Ju, is it? Was his name? It's Peng Ju, yeah. I mean, allegedly, I think he had at least 50 wives and 100 sons and countless daughters, all of whom he managed to outlive

because he was practicing sexual cultivation. What did this involve? So it involved the best times to have sex according to the season of the year. In spring, it is recommended that men would enter the chamber, i.e. have sex, between evening and late midnight, so about 1am in the morning. And having more sex than that would harm the qi. In autumn, it is advised that you can enter the chamber or have sex, however often the body finds it beneficial and comfortable, and that would lead to long life and so on and so forth.

Wow, I always knew autumn was my favorite season. Well, okay, I think I've spotted a loophole here. If Peng Ju lived to 800 by abiding by the strict schedule of when to have sex surely his sexual partners would have also lived to 800 because they would have by definition also followed the same schedule uh well that's an that's an interesting one because so first of all in a lot of these texts which are of, of course, written for elite men, women are largely not sort of theorized in any clear way. In this kind of sexual cultivation practice, women are usually seen as a kind of repository of qi, or more like a battery. Peng Zhu will basically use these women as batteries and take their energy to

boost his own lifespan. Wow, that's gnarly. I didn't know that qi was so problematic. The historians who also actually call this kind of sexual cultivation a form of sexual vampirism. So we're bringing in vampires now. Wow, qi sex vampires. Leon, briefly, you mentioned the idea of the text for pulling.

And I believe here, having read your book, Phil, that your dad clearly has read the text on pulling, or rather the modern sense of the word, because he used Kung Fu to chat up your mum, right? That's right, yeah. My mother was an English lady. She flew out to Borneo as a volunteer archaeologist. And a friend of hers said,

I'm starting a new Kung Fu class. Would you like to join? And she said, yeah, right. And she turned up and my dad was the instructor. My dad took a liking to her. My father would always choose my mother to perform the demonstrations on. He'd always try and do the moves a bit too hard on her. So he'd like hurt her a little bit. So he would then have an excuse to bring traditional Chinese medicines to her house on the weekend to heal the injuries that he himself had inflicted. So look, Kung Fu is still problematic today. It's not as bad as the Chi sex vampires, but we still have some way to go. But yeah, I mean, it all worked out in the end. Yeah, my dad sounds like he read the pulling text front to back.

Would you believe it then if I told you that our senior producer, Emma, that her parents met in the same way? No. You're kidding. Her dad is a kung fu instructor. What? What the hell? And also you and Emma are both born in the same year.

So what I'm saying is you are kung fu siblings. What? This is incredible. Everybody was kung fu siblings what you have you this is incredible everybody was kung fu fighting in 1990 that's incredible lovely coincidence for the pod there we've heard about kung fu dating so i guess we can call it kung woo right we can launch a dating app wushu wushu oh wushu very. Let's head over to Henan province in the 7th century, because I think, Phil, for the entire episode, you have been desperately waiting for the Shaolin monks to show up.

Yes. What do you know about the Shaolin monastery? It is the preeminent monastery in China. All the dudes are bald. They wear orange gowns and they meditate on Buddhism. And the story I was always told is that they kept getting attacked by bandits on the road between the monastery and, I don't know, the canteen. And so they developed a system of self-defense to protect them from bandits. Pretty good. I mean, Leon, can we have the more specific history?

So the tradition of unarmed combat and the tradition of self-cultivation techniques from Daoism, they came together at the Shaolin Temple, which is, of course, in Mount Song, near the cities of Luoyang and Zhengzhou. Now, Shaolin Temple is a Buddhist monastery. It's founded in the 5th century CE, allegedly by an Indian monk named in the Chinese sources as Ba Tuo or Fu Tuo. In the 7th century CE, Shaolin became an important center for a new school of Buddhism known as Chan Buddhism or in Japanese Zen Buddhism. By the 8th century CE, it was said that the legendary Indian monk Bodhidharma had founded Chan Buddhism in Shaolin. And he sat in a cave near Shaolin Temple for nine years. And he was staring at a wall and he was meditating.

And there's still a rock in the Shaolin Temple today, and it has a carved image of the Bodhidharma, and the rock was said to have come from the cave, and because his shadow was imprinted onto the rock from him sitting motionless meditating for nine years. Now, historians generally agree that Chan philosophy actually emerged a century after the death of Bodhidharma, so probably not a whole lot to do with Bodhidharma. But in any case, because of all of these kind of sacred associations, and because Luoyang,

which is a city that was near the Shaolin Temple, was an imperial capital for most of the first millennium CE, Shaolin Temple actually enjoyed a lot of patronage from the ruling elite and became fabulously wealthy. I have a question about this shadow on the rock. If he's in a cave, why does he have a shadow? Well, presumably he's sitting with his back against uh entrance to the cave and just like okay so he's pretty close to the entrance he's barely in it okay my other question then is how can the shadow if it's from natural light will move with the sun so how can it be on any one position i feel like i'm focusing on the wrong detail here. I mean, Leon, you've mentioned that the wealth and the prestige is pretty big. The monks are also siding with a certain political faction. Is that right?

Yeah, that's right. So the 7th century textual evidence celebrates the victory of Shaolin monks over raiding bandits in 610 CE. So finally, we've got some bandits. Wow, so this is actually like war. They actually fought them. So this is possibly a form of self-defense. So there were bandits who were like, well, you guys are fabulously wealthy

and you have things that we may want to make. So we're going to attack the Shaolin temple and the Shaolin monks say, well, no, we're going to beat you up. Wow. It's home alone. It is home alone. Temple alone. They're swinging paint cans at their heads. But the Shaolin estate then get involved in big Chinese politics. Yeah. So basically it was in 621 CE that the Shaolin fighting monks decided to side with the future Tang emperor Li Xiumen by essentially helping Li Xiumen to defeat his rival to the throne. When you say Shaolin helped a particular king defeat another would-be emperor, in what sense are they helping?

Are they actually literally going out and punching them? This is monk power. So they are literally going and beating up the rivals, like soldiers and personal bodyguards, et cetera, et cetera. What? That's no way to achieve enlightenment, is it? That doesn't sound very Buddhist to me. I will relinquish possession of your life.

Wow, amazing. So they were like mercenaries. Yeah. So by the late Ming period, which is the 1500s, so I guess the equivalent of the Tudor era over in Britain, we have loads of evidence that Shaolin martial arts have become more widespread throughout China. And Phil, do you know which weapon the monks are now notorious for using? Long stick? It is long stick, yeah.

Just big old long stick. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I mean, obviously, up to this point, we've heard about unarmed combat, so fists and feet. I feel like somehow they've cheated slightly by agreeing now that they can use weapons. So why the stick?

Why not, I don't know, swords or axes? Well, possibly because a staff would be less lethal than blades. And they're Buddhists, after all, and they're not supposed to kill people, although they most certainly did. But also, the staff was also a kind of religious symbol in Buddhism. There are also historians who have noted that the monks also used other weapons anyway, like spears and swords and blades and so on and so forth. And those would have been far more effective in actual combat. So the staff is important, but perhaps it's more of a symbolic thing.

By the 1540s and 50s, now we can bring in pirates into the story. And we've got monks being sent off to go and hunt down pirates. So they're not just defending their lands anymore. They're now getting on boats and tracking people down and then kicking the crap out of them i'm sorry what happened to the meditating i thought all these guys did was eat soup and meditate and now they're going on trips what is this they're going on cruises i feel like they've lost their way in a thousand years they oh man they haven't been the same since they adopted that stick. I think the stick has got to them.

It's ruined them. Leon, I mean, there's one example in 1553 where these monks from Shaolin won a series of victories. They're really violent. Do you want to tell us the story? There were several groups of people. Like, so there were Shaolin monks,

there were sailors, there were salt workers. The Shaolin monks were considered to be the most effective group by the state. And the 1540s and the 1550s saw a huge number of raids by pirates on the east coast of China, especially in the Jiangnan region. The pirates even started to move inland and pillaged war cities. And these pirates were known as Wokou, and Wokou literally meant Japanese bandits. But they were not all Japanese. Some of them were foreigners, possibly Dutch, possibly Portuguese. And there were also actually a large number of actual Chinese people

who joined the pirates and were involved in the illegal overseas trade. So it's a real cosmopolitan dream. It's very mixed. Cosmopolitan pirates. Yeah, wow. Piracy is very progressive. It's very multicultural. It's very welcoming. And so in 1553, the Shaolin monks allegedly won a series of really important victories against the pirates at a place called Wenjia Gang. And there were apparently 120 fighting Shaolin monks who beat up a huge group of pirates. And those monks even chased the survivors for 10 days along a 20-mile run, essentially. And hundreds of pirates were allegedly killed and only four

shaolin monks died because of this famous victory in 1553 the shaolin temple received a badge of honor a medal of honor imperial patronage and wealth and recognition and prestige throughout the 16th and the 17th century. Wow. It's like when you read a rare Batman comic where he kills someone, you're like, Batman's not supposed to do that. That's how I feel listening about these Buddhist monks, the Shaolin monks. They're jumping on boats, killing people and stuff. Can you imagine the terror of being hunted down by Buddhist monks?

Like, go faster, go faster. They're catching us, they're catching us. Yeah, they just like cross-legged levitating on the deck it's like oh my god what the hell they don't even have any possessions are they how are they doing this now leon i don't know if this is an obvious question but there seems to be a pretty glaring conflict here between the Buddhist monks' presumed commitment to peace and meditation and moderation, and them literally going out and killing pirates with their bare hands. How did they hold those two philosophies at once? So fighting is indeed at odds with Buddhist philosophy. And so Buddhist texts from the period, from let's say the Ming Dynasty, were conspicuously silent about the whole thing, just pretended that it wasn't

happening. On very, very rare occasions, you would get some Buddhist manuscripts that would criticize the monks who voluntarily used violence. And historians have looked into the evolution of this. There might be some reasons, pragmatic reasons, for the Shaolin Temple monks to deviate from the path of peace and to take up violence. These would include self-protection. And then also it's political pragmatism. So they want to be noticed and have a say on the Chinese empire politics, I suppose.

So those violent monks basically got a slap on the wrist. But because it was from other martial arts experts, it was a very painful slap on the wrist. Slap on the wrist, Michelle Lin Monk. Your wrist is immediately severed straight off the worst slap on the wrist possible there's also another story a legendary story of how the stick the fighting stick the staff comes in do you know this story phil of why the monks adopt the staff the invention of the stick surely that's what that was before the 1500s okay not so much the invention the the adoption of the stick is it's to do with a kitchen boy or maybe maybe not a kitchen boy because actually leon it's supposedly the incarnation of vajrapani is that right yeah supposed to be the incarnation of vajrapani yeah so we're talking here that someone has returned in a new body and they're like, oh, that guy's special and he's using a stick to fight off pirates. We can use a stick to fight off pirates. Is that right? Yeah.

So we're talking about a young monk who's fairly low in the pecking order in the Shaolin temple, basically just somebody in the kitchen who would keep the fire going in the stove. And there were the so-called Red Turban Bandit Rebels. They wore a red bandana, so they're kind of like Axl Rose. So imagine a bunch of Axl Roses just kind of randomly decided to attack the Shaolin Temple around the 1350s. And then there was this young lad who may or may not have been the reincarnation of Vajrapani, decided to get the stove poker, the fire poker, and started poking those bandits. So that's how you get the stick became this kind of symbolic figure.

Okay. Right. Okay. okay a fire poke i would say is more lethal than a stick yeah not also not to cast any doubt on reincarnation but if i were a lowly kitchen boy i would also say i was the reincarnation of vajrapani you know i mean was there any way that they could verify a reincarnation? Was there like a capture for reincarnation? How could they confirm? Because surely people, there must have been chances all the time who would say, I am the reincarnation of the big boss from 100 years ago. So I'd like two lunches today, please.

Yeah, these kinds of things are usually kind of retrospective. So it's like if you have performed a heroic deed, that must be because you are a reincarnation of some other. Okay. So if you fight off an Axel Rose, then you get to be... Yeah, you fight off like 10,000 Axel Roses, then you can be a reincarnation of another. Okay, okay, okay. I get you. There's also a classic Ming manual called the Sinews Transformation Classic, 1624.

What a title, Phil. I mean, you could have called your book Sinews Transformation Classic. You've missed out there. Sinews Transformation Classic. I think that's when they brought the brand back. Because they'd rebranded a whole bunch of times and they were like, let's sell the original version. We'll call it Classic.

It's just the original recipe. And it was composed by the author known as the Purple Coagulation Man of the Way. Wow! I mean, a purple coagulation is just a bruise, isn't it? Oh, no, a bruise isn't a coagulation. Sorry, I'm speaking out of turn. Confusing title aside, the text that we have mentioned here the 1624 text it's really important it combines shaolin fighting techniques with the taoist system of self-cultivation that

we heard about at the beginning of the episode leon so we finally got the fusion of the fighting stuff and the the health stuff and they're coming together in the 1620s yeah so the the sinew transformation classic which by the way it's also translated as the Tendon Moving Classic, is a kind of weird text. So it combines military and therapeutic and religious ideas into sort of one book. It's all about training the body, but potentially also making one invulnerable or immortal. one invulnerable or immortal. From the 17th century onwards Shaolin monks because of the senior transformation classic they began to increasingly focus on unarmed combat to the extent that the staff now was kind of de-emphasized. And in the 17th century Leon we're getting household manuals as well starting to appear. And it's offering advice on household management and lifestyle

choices. So anything from like arithmetic divination, nutrition, diet, recipes, arts, jokes, even ideas about romance, etc, etc. And there are also sections in this household manuals on unarmed combat and self-defense for the entire family. Now, in terms of training in Kung Fu, some of the schools would claim lineage from the Shaolin Temple, but also would include lay people. There were individual kind of traveling martial artists who would move up and down the country to study with particular masters and to learn from others, or to improve their skills by testing themselves against worthy rivals. Cool. And so not everybody's doing Kung Fu fighting because there's other branches of martial arts. There's Wudang, there's Tai Chi, but the one I want to talk about has got

a beautiful name. It's Wing Chun, which means beautiful springtime. What a charming name for extreme violence, Phil. Beautiful Springtime. Beautiful Springtime to be kicking your ass. Yeah. Have you heard of Wing Chun? Do you know that one? I've heard of Wing Chung, yes. It's associated with one of the famous fighters,

but I can't remember which one it is. It's not Jet Li, is it? It's Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee, yeah. Bruce Lee, yeah. So he studied Wing Chun under the martial artist known as Ip Man. And we'll come back to Bruce Lee later on. But Wing Chun's got a fun origin story,

a legendary origin story, they always do. Do you want to guess? I'll give you a clue. It involves a nun. A nun? Yeah. Well, a nun went to the shops one day and it was a beautiful spring day and a good for good for nothing ragamuffin came came up out of a side street and said give me

a buns give me a bread rolls give me a nun buns yeah give me a nun buns give me them buns, nun. And she flung the bun at his bont. So he got a bun's bont and Wing Chun was born. That's a beautiful story. Thank you. My father told me that story when I was a boy. Right. That is not the story I've got in my script. Leon, can we have the story of the nun without the bun?

And can we have some nunchucks? Are nunchucks part of the Shaolin Kung Fu story or are nunchucks different? Nunchucks, you're thinking of Michelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I am, you're right. Yeah, I always am. But nunchucks are actually more of a Filipino or Japanese weapon, although it was used by Bruce Lee in some films. But Wing Chun, on the other hand, is a Kung Fu style that emphasizes a high stance and very, very small, close range movements. So like small jabs, as opposed to sort

of like long range punching. And in the 20th century, an origin story, a legend arose that Wing Chun had been taught by Ng Moi. And Ng Moi was a mythic Shaolin nun. And she taught Wing Chun to a teenage girl called Yim Wing Chun. So Wing Chun is the name of this young girl because she was basically just constantly harassed and she had unwanted sexual advances and marriage proposals and so this mythical Shaolin nun taught this kung fu style to this young girl and said okay so you can just go and beat up all these lecherous men and harassers so that's the sort of legendary origin story in reality Wing Chun probably developed relatively recently. So we're talking about the late 19th, maybe even the early 20th century, in a city called Fushan, which is in Guangdong province in southern China.

Is Wing Chun the martial art that uses that wooden practice thing where it's all the little pegs sticking out and you can stand real close to it? And in the movies, it's always like... Is that for Wing Chun? It's all like very short range movements. Yeah, you may have seen that in either the it man franchise or in the grandmaster the one car why film so basically to practice wing chun you use that thing which is a wooden stick with like multi it looks kind of almost like a christmas tree it's got like multiple branches sticking out from the pole and then, and that emulates shot range punching, basically.

Well, you mentioned the late 19th century and Guangdong province, Southeast China, which means, hooray, here come the British to ruin everything. In the late 19th century, we are talking about the European colonial empire into South China and the horrible stories that come from that. But it's this process thereby where we start to get people in the West becoming aware of Kung Fu because of things like the Boxer Rebellion, which is what Brits call the uprising from the Chinese people. So Leon, this is a complicated piece of political history. But in terms of the martial arts story, is this a kind of really important meeting of East and West? Yeah, this is a very important moment. So in the wake of Western imperial interference, particularly the Opium Wars, martial arts became associated with the

assertion of Han Chinese identity. It's now about cultural pride in the face of Western foreign invasion. It became so popular that it kind of actually threatened the state. So martial arts training was outlawed by the Qing dynasty, and actually a number of kung fu masters were executed because they then started to pose a security problem. These themes contributed to the sort of uprisings in the 19th century. So the Boxer Rebellion, which is 1898 to 1901, 19th century. So the Boxer Rebellion, which is 1898 to 1901, and it's named after the participants who were martial artists, hence the boxers. And the Boxer Rebellion and their Kung Fu styles became known to Britain through a number of channels like military reports or diplomats. Christian missionaries were a particularly

important source of information because they were frequently harassed or even murdered by the boxers from the Boxer Rebellion. And martial arts, although a lot of it was Japanese, started to appear in this country, in Britain, from around the late 19th century. So Edward Barton Wright invented something called a batitsu, which is based on the Japanese jiu-jitsu, which the suffragettes then learned for self-defense. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who famously misspelled the Kung Fu style as baritsu as opposed to batitsu, He used Baritsu, quote-unquote, to explain how Sherlock Holmes

could escape from the grip with Moriarty on the Reichenbach Falls. Oh, so Sherlock Holmes knew Bartitsu? So, yeah, I mean, Sherlock Holmes supposedly knew Kung Fu, and I think that's also then in the Robert Downey Jr. adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. Wow. I had no idea the suffragettes knew Kung Fu. That's incredible.

Yeah. They learned it from, I think, a Welsh lady who taught them all how to defend themselves against police officers trying to arrest them. So we've got a variety of names there for martial arts. Baritsu, Bartitsu, we've had Wing Chun before. Phil, if you were going to invent your own martial arts, what would you call it and what would it involve? Oh, Wang Chung. Wang Chung, nice, nice. Wang Chung is a highly aggressive,

completely unfair martial art. It's random. It comes out of nowhere. It is highly unjust. It is never morally defensible. It is a scourge on society. And the government will try and stop us just like they tried and stopped, tried to stop the Shaolin masters in China.

That's Wang Chung. It has no honor. You only attack sleeping people. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we find the best offence is just a good offence. And when they have no defence. That is Wang Chong's motto. Great.

Coming to a dojo near you soon. Rolling up the franchises. Well, just so you know, back to producer Emma, her dad's nickname was Kung Stew or Bruce and the Goose. No, Bruce the Goose. Because she's Emma and the Goose,

so Bruce and the Goose was his nickname. Bruce and the Goose. That's so good. And that brings us rather beautifully to Bruce Lee. Phil, Taskmaster fans will know you from your iconic and somewhat scandalous yellow jumpsuit. So in my series of Taskmaster,

I wore Bruce Lee's Game of Death outfit, which I wanted to do as an homage to Bruce Lee, but it ended up being an homage to my own reproductive capability, which was not the plan. If you look at photographs of Bruce Lee in this outfit, the word I would use is flush. It is flush.

He is flush. He is flush with the outfit. Yes. But that did not happen when I wore it. No, there was some crotch prominence. Yeah, you could say there was some detail. Yeah, there's something for the old 4k hd to work on yeah so leon you know why do we get bruce lee what is it historically culturally

that's happening in china and southeast asia that gives us this new sort of cinematic art form when the ccp the chinese communist party came to power in China in 1949, the state actually got involved in Kung Fu and downplayed a lot of the spiritual and contemplative elements, transforming Kung Fu into a form of sport and exercise. left for Hong Kong or Taiwan or America or European countries. And that included Bruce Lee's teacher, Ip Man, who left for Hong Kong, I think it was in 1950. Hong Kong at the time was, of course, a British colony. And in the early communist years, Kung Fu and the related traditions were encouraged in the communist education system, and there were kung fu societies that were set up in major Chinese cities, and popular manuals were published in China to meet the growing demand. But all of the spiritual enlightenment stuff, all of the qi, the meditative elements, all of those were downplayed or de-emphasized.

So during the Cultural Revolution period, so now we're into 1966 to 1976, martial arts then came to be seen as elitist and corrupt and superstitious and so forth. And so during that Communist Cultural Revolution period, the Kung Fu competitions and a lot of the training would then stop and books and weapons were confiscated. And then this led to even more Kung Fu masters leaving China for Western countries. So, Phil, you get a kind of governmental crackdown on martial arts, which gives us Bruce Lee, essentially. Yes, right. Because his family was, I mean, he is from San Francisco, wasn't he, Bruce Lee? on martial arts which gives us bruce lee essentially yes right because you know his family was i mean he is from san francisco wasn't he bruce lee yeah and so he he sort of went back as it were to hong kong and sort of kick-started the kung fu movie industry you wore his game of

death outfit and i know the beginning of your book you talk talk about Bruce Lee as a sort of bit of an icon. Yeah, I had the formative experience of going to the Bruce Lee exhibition in Hong Kong. And they have his outfits out there. They've got a lot of photos of him, lots of footage of him. And he was just so, I hadn't appreciated before just how like, powerful and confident and sexy he was. And it must have been, I mean, it still is to me right now, a pretty revolutionary idea of like the very sexy Chinese guy. And he was doing it in, you know, was it the 60s or 70s? And he built like a whole culture, a whole industry, an entire cultural movement. He's just so incredibly impressive and driven and determined and skillful.

It's one of those things where, you know, someone like Bruce Lee becomes so totemic, you sort of lose sight of how revolutionary he was. But when I went to this exhibition in Hong Kong, I really started to appreciate that and that's what I wanted to embody with my outfit choice for Taskmaster but I don't know if I completely accomplished it but that's what I was aiming for. I enjoyed it I mean Leon in terms of the movies he made you've got Five Fingers of Death, The Green Hornet, Into the Dragon. And we get this sort of kung fu craze almost,

which then leads on to subsequent other artists. And he's also developing his own martial arts, Leon, isn't he? He's not doing Shaolin kung fu anymore. He's come up with something new. Yes. So he developed a martial arts style called Ji Kun Dou, which drew on a number of influences, primarily Wing Chun, but also some Shaolin Kung Fu. And I guess really, as Phil was saying, what Bruce Lee really brought to the table, and

that was kind of unique to Bruce Lee, he was incorporating kind of Western bodybuilding cultures and big muscles into Kung Fu. building cultures and big muscles into Kung Fu. And he also, at the same time, he promoted quite a kind of violent and virile Asian masculinity and a kind of like Chinese nationalism and Asian pride that proved very important culturally and also commercially incredibly successful in Sinophone communities, but also with Western audiences.

And Bruce Lee would pave the way for Chinese stars like Jackie Chan and Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. And he also influenced, often directly, the careers of Hollywood stars, of white Hollywood stars like David Carradine, who was, of course, in Kung Fu, the series, and also Bill from Kill Bill. And one of Bruce Lee's students was Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris! Of course, the internet's favourite meme, Chuck Norris. So, I mean, Bruce Lee is this incredible icon

of ancient story going back, really, we could take it back about two and a half thousand years. We said the 1500s is when Shaolin Kung Fu really emerges. But some of that tradition we were exploring in the Warring States period is in the 5th century BCE. So that's a long, long history. The nuance window! This is part of the show where Phil and I quietly practice some buttock pulls

and clench our anuses while Leon tells us something that we need to know. So my stopwatch is ready. Dr. Leon, take it away, please. Well, I want to say a little bit about what's happening in Shaolin Temple these days. So if you're not satisfied with just watching Kung Fu on a big screen or small screen, you can learn Kung Fu, you can visit the Shaolin Temple yourself

and do a quote-unquote Shaolin Kung Fu summer school. You don't actually have to become a Buddhist monk to do that. The Shaolin Temple by the 1990s and 2000s has become a major tourist center with more than a million visitors every year. It has its own kind of performing troupe that would regularly tour the world. And of course, there's an official Shaolin Martial Arts Academy with tens of thousands of students. And many of these students would go on to become professional athletes or maybe even movie star or soldiers in elite military units in China or the personal bodyguards for Chinese billionaires.

You can learn Shaolin Kung Fu at one of the many, quote, Shaolin franchise schools in large cities around the world. There's one in London, there's one in Paris, there's one in Berlin, there's one in New York, there's one in San Francisco. And all of this is a result of Chinese economic part of the unleashing of entrepreneurialism and market forces onto Chinese society. And it was something that was actively supported and endorsed by the Chinese state. So here you have Kung Fu meets capitalism. An unstoppable partnership yes capitalism by the fist that's fascinating that's sick that's cool thank you leon so what do you know now it's time now for the quiz this is the the So What Do You Know Now? Yes. This is our quickfire quiz for Phil Wang to see how much he has learned.

Now, Phil, across the series, I think you're averaging 9 out of 10 on the quizzes. You're very high scoring. Come on, full score. Full score would be a real feather in your cap. Come on, daddy needs a new Shaolin stick. Come on. And you are a black belt. So technically, I'm expecting you to get 10 out of 10 here. My nepotism is going to really show

if I don't do well here. All right, we've got 10 questions. Here we go. Question one. In Chinese traditional medicine, what is qi and why is it important? It is an energy that flows through your body. And it's important because it's energy and it's in your body. Yes, and it protects your longevity and prevents illness as well. Question two. Name two of the ancient poses that were part of ancient Taoist self-cultivation exercises based on animals. Bird stretch. Yes.

And the bear amble. Yay, very good. The famous bear amble, yes. You could have also had the gibbon jump, the crane call and the dragon rise. Lovely. Question three. How do you do a buttock pull? Oh, by clenching your anus.

Yes, not the planet. Yes, your buttocks. Question four. By following a daily regime of self-cultivation, how long did legendary figure Peng Zhou allegedly live for? Eight centuries. The big 8-0-0. It was. Because he was a sex battery sponge or something.

I can't remember what we said, but he did weird things to ladies. Question five. Which Buddhist monastery in Henan province is considered the birthplace of Kung Fu? Shaolin, baby. Yes, it is. Question six. How did fighting Shaolin monks make a name for themselves

during the late Ming period? By killing a bunch of pirates for the government. That's right. Question seven. According to the legend, why did Shaolin monks start fighting with staffs

as weapons? Because of a young boy, a young kitchen boy, who was the reincarnation of a Buddhist monk leader. And he used a fire poker to fend off Axel Rose. Yes, he was a reincarnation of Vajrapani. Very good.

Question eight. What was the nun-related origin story of Wing Chun developed in the late 19th century? The nun was a very powerful, high-up Buddhist nun, and she taught a young girl called Wing Chun the martial arts so Wing Chun could fend off toxic dudes. That's absolutely right. Question nine. What happened to martial arts in China during the Cultural Revolution?

It was turned into exercise and suppressed, and the kung fu guys had to go to the West and elsewhere. That's right. Question 10. This is for a perfect score. What was the name of the new martial arts style developed by Bruce Lee? Jet Kundo! Yay!

He's done it! 100%! I've got a black belt! Black belt in quiz. In martial quiz how does it feel Phil? it feels great what a relief

oh my gosh I feel fantastic there's chi coming out of everywhere you're leaking chi I'm leaking chi all over the place well thank you so much Phil thank you so much Dr Leon and listener

if after today's episode you want more Phil Wang in your life, of course you do. Check out our episodes on the Borgias, Chinggis Khan or the Terracotta Army. All absolute classics. And why not listen to our episode on Chinese pirate queen, Chung Yi-Sau? She's very fun. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends. Subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode. But I'd just like to say a big thank you

to our guests in History Corner. We have the legendary Dr Leon Roscher. Thank you, Leon. Thank you very much. And to quote Bruce Lee, be water, my friend. I have no idea what that means. Means adapting to your situation.

Yeah, fill all the spaces. Buy skinny jeans. And in Comedy Corner, we had the ferociously funny Phil Wang. Thank you, Phil. Hiya, Greg. Hiya, Leon. Hiya, everybody. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much. I've learnt, I've laughed, I've fought, I've punched, I've clenched my anus. What a wonderful time it has been. Absolutely. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we spar with another historical opponent. But for now, I'm off to sit in a cave for nine long years and hope that all the

secrets of history are revealed to me. Bye! This episode of You're Dead to Me was researched by John Mason. It was written by Emmy Rose Prescott, fellow Emma Bruce and the Goose, and me, the audio producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Caitlin Hobbs. It was produced by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow and me. Our senior producer was Emma Naguse and our executive editor was Chris Ledgerd.

Why do so many business ideas that capture the imagination or actually become bestsellers end up toast? I'm Sean Farrington, presenter of the BBC Radio 4 series Toast, which examines exactly that. We'll hear from those who come up with the ideas. This concept was in some ways a kind of busy parent's dream. Helped build them, battled against their demise. There's this fallacy that internet killed Toys R Us and that really is not true.

From Toys R Us to Sunny Delight via Jamie's Italian and Club 18 to 30, Toast will be available in the sliced bread feed on BBC Sounds. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. you