Martial Arts Pilgrimage
I like martial arts. This is old news to anybody who knows me, but I haven’t mentioned it here before, so anybody who stumbled upon this blog wouldn’t know. It started when I was 5 or 6 and I happened to find an episode of Power Rangers on TV. I never stood a chance. I was completely hooked. I watched Power Rangers as often as I could as a kid, and started watching Dragon Ball Z later. The fantastical take on fighting that both shows presented was like candy to my small mind. I couldn’t get enough. As I got older I continued to watch and read things that glorified martial arts in entirely unrealistic ways; cartoons, kung fu flicks, manga. Even when I was old enough to realize the difference between fantasy and reality I couldn’t get enough. Not too long (as I remember it) after watching that first Power Rangers episode I started taking martial arts classes. First a couple months of tae kwon do at the Y, then tang soo do at a nearby school. I’ve been doing that (often sporadically) for 20 years now. Now that I’m in China I study wing chun.
Which gets us to why I'm writing this. The older I get, the more I read about martial arts. Usually on Wikipedia (Sorry. Not really sorry). I’ve wanted to go to the Shaolin Temple for years, but it was only recently that I had the idea to go to more places with some connection to martial arts, either historical or more recent. Today I’m going to mention the places I’ve got on the list for my ‘Martial Arts Pilgrimage’ and ask that if you know of any place I missed, or a better place than I mentioned, to speak up so I can make my pilgrimage great. So here we go.
Here I am on my first day of tang soo do
- Shaolin Temple
This is the easy one. Everyone has heard of the Shaolin Temple somewhere. On Mount Song, the Shaolin Temple is a historical home of Buddhism in China and the supposed birthplace of kung fu.
The main gate of the Shaolin Temple
- Wudang Mountains
The Wudang Mountains are the Mount Song of tai chi. The Wudang Mountain have a strong connection to Taoism, which in turn influenced tai chi.
A Taoist Temple in the mountain (1)
- Foshan
An important area for southern Chinese martial arts history, Foshan is the birthplace of both Wong Fei Hung and Ip Man. The former, a Chinese martial arts hero, was a master of Hung Ga and the latter, a master of Wing Chun, taught Bruce Lee and has inspired a number of movies as of late.
- Okinawa
Okinawa is the prefecture in southern Japan that contains the Ryukyu islands. Karate was developed there from a mixture of native and Chinese martial arts.
Okinawan island (2)
This is the list I’ve come up with so far, but there are other countries I have in mind. I’m just not sure where to go in them. The big ones are; South Korea (tae kwon do, tang soo do), Thailand (muay thai, muay boran), Japan (judo, jujitsu), and the Philippines (kali). To try to be less Asia-centric I’m also thinking about England (boxing), Russia (systema), Israel (krav maga), Brazil (BJJ, capoeira), and the USA (MMA).
A couple of final notes.
- I apologize if the list seems a little…obvious. I’m not a martial arts scholar. I probably only know about what other mild enthusiasts know, maybe less.
- As I look back at it, the list is heavily influenced by Asian striking arts. I added some less Asian arts at the end of the list, but I’m not sure where to go yet. There’s still very little ground fighting or wrestling.
- Next, most of my information comes from Wikipedia. If you (or anybody you know) has any recommended reading (books or websites) that give interesting information/history/background on martial arts please, PLEASE send them to me and I’ll look into them. Knowledge is power and the book is mightier than the roundhouse kick…or something like that.
¹By gongfu_king - DSC_1933, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7607580
²By Wvangeit at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42040838