When BBC documentary makers arrived in Taipei in 1981 to undertake research for a martial arts series, Hong Ze-han (洪澤漢) sensed an unmissable opportunity.
At a meeting with producer Howard Reid at the Hilton Taipei (now the Caesar Park Taipei), Hong was asked for advice in choosing a subject for an episode on Chinese fighting styles. The dashing, Cambridge-educated Reid, who Hong recalled as more movie star than film maker, had brought a stack of dossiers. Each featured the name of a renowned martial artist.
Among the candidates was Hong’s own father, Master Hong Yi-xiang (洪懿祥), whose prowess in neijiaquan (內家拳, Chinese internal martial arts) was unrivaled in Taiwan. Reid asked the younger Hong to state his father’s case.
Despite the conflict of interest, Hong — himself a TV director — declined a “Hollywood audition to win a chance at performing,” observing that, as proven practitioners of their disciplines, each candidate was worthy. Reid should speak to them all before deciding, and — word of advice — he should not make it a competition.
Then, reversing Reid’s tactic with the skill his father used to redirect an opponent’s momentum, Hong asked for a reason to convince his father of the enterprise’s merit. Recognizing the faux pas of his initial approach, Reid apologized. This, then, is one way in which the boundaries of the book’s title can be blurred: through cultural confusions and subsequent compromises.
Departing the meeting, the younger Hong resolved to convince Master Hong to participate. At first, his father was uneasy with the proposal, but the son emphasized the importance of recording the old maestro’s knowledge for posterity.
“Dad, the Yizong Tangshoudao (易宗唐手道) school you created with a lifetime of hard work must be passed on in a planned way,” he said.
Over the following 18 months, the BBC team visited Taipei again, including to interview Master Hong at his training hall on Anxi Street (安西街) in Taipei’s Dadaocheng (大稻埕) neighborhood.
There, he demonstrated his abilities to Reid. Using a technique from baguazhang (八卦掌) — one of the three internal forms, along with taijiquan (太極拳) and xingyiquan — Master Hong sent Reid reeling with explosive force.
“It felt at once like my whole rhythm of breathing and blood circulation was disrupted,” the amazed Reid observed.
Such a feeling of “chaotic blood flow” was, said Hong, “a typical response to this attack.”
EMBRACING MODERNITY
Based on this demonstration and conversations with Master Hong, Reid was convinced he had his man. Having planned just one episode for Chinese fighting arts, Reid followed the younger Hong’s suggestion and filmed an installment in Hong Kong on the “hard” external forms and another exclusively on Master Hong’s mastery of “soft,” internal boxing.
A lost treasure, the episode — and others from the Way of the Warrior series — can be found on YouTube. It includes an appearance from the late sculptor Ju Ming (朱銘). As this fascinating book by the younger Hong makes clear, the spotlight began an Indian summer for his father. Foreign martial artists flocked to his studio, which accepted only the truly committed, and Master Hong traveled to Australia to bestow blessing on a branch of his school.
Master Hong’s willingness to spread the gospel does not surprise the reader. Despite his reservations about the BBC documentary, he was anomalously progressive.
While others bemoaned the commercialization of “kung fu” and the divulging of age-old techniques to foreigners, Master Hong welcomed these developments, “to give internal martial arts a more approachable new-era appearance.”
A Bruce Lee flick was, for Master Hong, “a very good vehicle” for communicating the precepts of neijiaquan to contemporary audiences. Yet he expresses anxiety about an uncertain future.
MASTER CHEF
Master Hong’s adaptability had set him apart in his younger days, when he had defeated all comers across a variety of styles. As he told Chen Mi-lan (陳米籃), Taiwan’s three-time heavyweight champion in “Western” boxing, after shocking him and the street-side bookies: “A single win or loss cannot determine the quality of a boxing school. At best, it is just a win or loss between you and me.”
In Master Hong’s holistic approach to pugilism, we have a second kind of blurred boundary.
The fight scenes are riveting, and Christopher Bates, who arrived in Taiwan in 1976 and later trained with Master Hong and sons, realizes them well, though the intricacy of some maneuvers makes them hard to grasp.
Much more than a martial arts tale, the book — which the younger Hong calls a biographical novel — is replete with snapshots of Old Taipei.
Cosy teahouses, rusted machinery piled up in the lanes of Shuanglian (雙鏈) — where repair shops remain — and various dens of iniquity capture the imagination.
A chapter on Master Hong’s preparations for a feast for American GIs he trained ahead of their Vietnam tours is fabulous. Using the dismantled doors of his home as counters, he demonstrates chopping techniques that evoke the Niten Ichiryu double sword style — a pair of cleavers fashioned from Kinmen shell-casings substituting for twin samurai blades.
The roots of Taiwanese cuisine are introduced, the disappearing traditions of holiday banqueting lamented and an array of delectables described.
A QUESTION OF LANGUAGE
Emulating his father’s syncretism, the younger Hong employs an eclectic narrative style. Mundane incidents springboard into broader discussions, connected to the philosophical preludes that open each chapter. Like the passages relating precepts of the internal forms, these range from esoteric and tenuous to insightful and practical.
Dates are rarely included, which can be frustrating for the historically minded, and characters and occurrences are, the preface reveals, combined — a third, structural type of blurred boundary.
Bates’ approach to dialogue is interesting: The question tag “isn’t it” is frequently used to tail-end rhetorical questions that do not start with the “be” verb.
Reflecting on whether a teacher should retain secrets, for example, one of Master Hong’s peers reflects, “You should always hold back the good bits for yourself, isn’t it?”
Elsewhere, when Reid asks the younger Hong if he is familiar with the BBC, the latter replies “it should be that I know more than the average person.” Terms such as “NG” (standing for “no good”), which few outside Taiwan would know, also feature with no explanation.
While this attempt to convey speech authentically is comprehensible for those with a grasp of the languages being represented, others might find the “Chinglish” confusing.
For some, the apparent moral equivalence that is drawn in the chapters on the massacre known as the 228 Incident, might grate. A successful merchant, Master Hong’s father had invited down-on-their-luck martial artists from China to instruct his sons and help protect the business on Dihua Street from protection racketeering. This caused resentment from local Taiwanese and “mainlanders” alike — perhaps the most obvious blurred boundary.
None of this should dissuade anyone from reading this book. With its vivid, affectionate depiction of the postwar era, anchored through the commanding presence of Master Hong, Blurred Boundaries is a unique tale of Taiwan.
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