In a recent conversation I had with Duncan Jepson, a personal friend and my producer for the inaugural Hong Kong International Kung Fu Festival, he expressed his view that he found kung fu to be prevalent in the Hong Kong culture. Switch on the television and one of the ads is likely to allude to kung fu, flashing kicks and throwing Wing Chun-style punches, made iconic by Donnie Yen’s onscreen representation in the recent biopic Ip Man. Walk down the street and one of the commercial posters will probably have a visual reference connected in some way to Chinese martial arts.
From selling kitchenware, fast food, clothing, lifestyle, hotel, and even children’s education programmes, kung fu is literally everywhere. Yet kung fu as a living culture of the city is slowly dying.
For kung fu lovers around the world Hong Kong was once the mecca of martial arts. Before the Shaolin Temple and Wudang Mountains gained fame through Hong Kong kung fu cinema’s soft proselytising, pilgrims travelled from far and wide in search of kung fu masters. Remarkably though, it seems that it is the foreign students today who would literally use up a whole year’s saving just to come to Hong Kong and learn kung fu.
Before the 1990s, Mainland China was largely inaccessible to foreigners, so those interested in Chinese culture, martial arts included, either had to go to Taiwan or Hong Kong. As far as kung fu went, Hong Kong was hands down more popular due to its booming film industry and association with Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Gordon Liu and other kung fu film stars.
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Indeed, it is partly owing to the visual magic wrought by martial art films that kung fu retains its hold on the public imagination. Every few years as local cinema goes through its inevitable cycle, a new kung fu wave sweeps across the city and blossoms into a myriad of flowers in popular culture and television.
