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Is Martial arts
interest on the decline?
(October 2006)
It was reported in Beijing some time this year
that Chinese Kungfu has been made compulsory in secondary
schools in central China. Soon Chinese school kids will
be spending their PE classes performing their choreographed
kung-fu punches and kicks. By the way, Confucianism
is also making a comeback with recognition from the
Chinese Government as the official philosophy or religion.
Due to China's one-child per family policy, most Chinese
kids were brought up pampered and fat on the trendy
Western food and sedentary lifestyle. Now with this
kung-fu mandate, the parents are naturally happy and
enthusiatic that their children will achieve good health
and a peaceful or disciplined lifestyle from the strong
kung fu exercises with an added comtemplative nature
of the Shaolin variety that combines Zen Buddhism.
In recent years, popular Kung fu films such as Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, Banquet by top directors
including Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, Stephen Chow, and movie
idols like Bruce Lee, Jet Li, etc., have fanned the
fantasies and desires of many.
The trend now, with ethnic Chinese parents from other
countries, is to send back their children to China for
summer courses in Chinese culture which, of course,
includes kung fu. Such courses provide opportunities
to join some Shaolin troupes touring either locally
or internationally, and in some ways, provide better
chances of getting good kung fu jobs than a university
graduate.
What about locally here in Malaysia?
In Kuala Lumpur, most people, particularly youngsters,
are too busy with their hectic lifestyle and would rather
spend their leisure time hanging out in some sidewalk
cafes or karaokes, to bother acquiring any martial arts
skills. The women would either spend their time chasing
their favorite Korean TV serials or exercise in the
comforts of some air-conditioned gyms with their costly
gears and equipment. Similarly for the men, uninterested
in learning some local martial arts like silat, silambam
or Taiji.
A typical example is my daughter who spends late nights
working, returns home late and exhausted. She has no
time for any form of exercises at all. Well, not entirely
true. She did try yoga on Sundays for about 6 months
but has now totally given it up due to heavy travel
and work commitments. How working life trend has changed
for the worst since the advent of computers in this
Digital age!
My early morning walks through the Titiwangsa park
also revealed the same foreboding trend - a decline
over time now, in participant headcounts for qi-gong
or Taiji lessons. When they first started some years
ago, the response was fairly overwhelming but their
decline now is matched with a noticeably ever increasing
numbers in aerobics and line dancing. Similar trends
are also witnessed in Taiji and other martial arts classes
city-wide, where even newspapers recruitment advertisements
drew blanks. There is a saying in Chinese that "when
young, gamble your life to make lots of money; when
old, gamble back your money made for your life back.".
Very true of the current generation, especially youngsters
who do no exercises.
There is a sharp decline in the interest in Asian martial
arts amongst the locals with an opposite reciprocating
increase in any Western, seemingly indicating an exchange,
bad and good, of lifestyles or cultures between the
East and West. The Asians trading in their martial arts
skills for StarBucks, aerobics, etc. with the Westerners,
also perceived in spiritual development too. Reminds
me of the stinging comment by my sifu that "the
Westerners treat our martial arts skills like treasure
while the locals treat them like dried grass".
This sad but truthful state is reflected by a friend
of mine who voiced his concern of the damaging trend
when he overheard a disparaging remark - "I love
teaching the Chinese" - by one of his Australian
(white) instructor teaching Wing Chun to foreign students,
mostly Asians.
Lost Age - Oct, 2006
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