A mesmerizing true story of money, murder, gambling, prostitution, and opium in a "wild ramble around Chinatown in its darkest days." (The New Yorker) Nothing had worked. Not threats or negotiations, not shutting down the betting parlors or opium dens, not house-to-house searches or throwing Chinese offenders into prison. Not even executing them. The New York DA was running out of ideas and more people were dying every day as the weapons of choice evolved from hatchets and meat cleavers to pistols, automatic weapons, and even bombs. Welcome to New York City’s Chinatown in 1925. The Chinese in turn-of-the-last-century New York were mostly immigrant peasants and shopkeepers who worked as laundrymen, cigar makers, and domestics. They gravitated to lower Manhattan and lived as Chinese an existence as possible, their few diversions—gambling, opium, and prostitution—available but, sadly, illegal. It didn’t take long before one resourceful merchant saw a golden opportunity to feather his nest by positioning himself squarely between the vice dens and the police charged with shutting them down. Tong Wars is historical true crime set against the perfect landscape: Tammany-era New York City. Representatives of rival tongs (secret societies) corner the various markets of sin using admirably creative strategies. The city government was already corrupt from top to bottom, so once one tong began taxing the gambling dens and paying off the authorities, a rival, jealously eyeing its lucrative franchise, co-opted a local reformist group to help eliminate it. Pretty soon Chinese were slaughtering one another in the streets, inaugurating a succession of wars that raged for the next thirty years. Scott D. Seligman’s account roars through three decades of turmoil, with characters ranging from gangsters and drug lords to reformers and do-gooders to judges, prosecutors, cops, and pols of every stripe and color. A true story set in Prohibition-era Manhattan a generation after Gangs of New York, but fought on the very same turf.

Black Belt Hall of Fame member William Cheung covers the techniques and history of the dragon pole. This weapon, the most effective version of the staff and long pole, was developed by Grandmaster Gee Sin. This book combines wing chun with dragon pole techniques, making the techniques more effective.

This book explores the impact of media representations of violence during the Vietnam War on people in the U.S., specifically how images of violence done to and by the Vietnamese were traumatic in ways that deeply affected the American psyche.

This book explores the social history of southern Chinese martial arts and their contemporary importance to local identity and narratives of resistance. Hong Kong's Bruce Lee ushered the Chinese martial arts onto an international stage in the 1970s. Lee's teacher, Ip Man, master of Wing Chun Kung Fu, has recently emerged as a highly visible symbol of southern Chinese identity and pride. Benjamin N. Judkins and Jon Nielson examine the emergence of Wing Chun to reveal how this body of social practices developed and why individuals continue to turn to the martial arts as they navigate the challenges of a rapidly evolving environment. After surveying the development of hand combat traditions in Guangdong Province from roughly the start of the nineteenth century until 1949, the authors turn to Wing Chun, noting its development, the changing social attitudes towards this practice over time, and its ultimate emergence as a global art form.

Wing Chun Kuen - is the most famous and dynamic style of Wushu in the world. Its distinguishing features are simplicity and economy of movements, softness and flexibility, as well as the effectiveness of protection and power of attacks. The main purpose of this direction of Chinese martial arts is the fastest achievement of victory in battle with the minimum efforts and energy. Over the long history of Wing Chun, the original style was divided into several large branches. It should be noted that at the similarity of the principles that were put to the basis of the style, technique and forms of different versions of Wing Chun Kuen, there are very big differences. This book, proposed to the attention of the readers is devoted to the overview of Wing Chun Kuen technique, transmitted to us by the great master Yip Man. CONTENTS: Introduction Chapter 1. Origin and Development of Wing Chun Kuen Chapter 2. The theory of Wing Chun Chapter 3. Stances and movements Chapter 4. Stroke technique Chapter 5. Defense technique Chapter 6. Throws and grabs Chapter 7. Training combinations Chapter 8. Methods of attack Chapter 9. Methods of defense and counterattack Chapter 10. Sticky hands - Chi Sau Chapter 11. Special exercises - Lop Sau - Fon Sau Chapter 12. Forms - Siu Lim Tao - Martial combinations - Chum Kiu - Martial combinations - Biu Jee - Martial combinations Chapter 13. Training at the wooden dummy Conclusion

Lord Hideyoshi, the regent of Japan at the time, took the first step toward the control of firearms. It was a very small step, and it was not taken simply to protect feudal lords from being shot at by peasants but to get all weapons out of the hands of civilians. He said nothing about arms control. Instead, he announced that he was going to build a statue of Buddha that would make all existing statues look like midgets. It would be so enormous (the figure was about twice the scale of the Statue of Liberty), that many tons of iron would be needed just for the braces and bolts. Still more was required to erect the accompanying temple, which was to cover a piece of ground something over an eighth of a mile square. All farmers, ji-samurai, and monks were invited to contribute their swords and guns to the cause. They were, in fact, required to. -- from publisher description.

In this book, the keys to the Ip Man Wing Chun Kung Fu system are explained. The three hand sets are shown in detail, along with the application of the key movements. One of the keys to Wing Chun is laying a proper foundation. The first form Siu Lim Tao (Little Idea) is the development of that foundation. While the first form teaches the correct structure of the attacks and defensive movements, it is in Chum Kiu that the student learns to "seek the bridge" and use both hands simultaneously, such as one hand defending while the other attacks. The third form, Biu Gee (Thrusting Fingers), also known as the (First Aid) form, teaches the keys to recovery from the loss of a superior position in fighting. Biu Gee training is one of the keys to learning to focus energy into a strike. Also covered is the Chi Sao (Sticking Hands) training of Wing Chun, as well as the key principles that have made Ip Man Wing Chun one of the most famous Kung Fu systems in the world.

This imaginative and innovative study by Daniel Miles Amos, begun in 1976 and completed in 2020, examines sociocultural changes in the practices of Chinese martial artists in two closely related and interconnected southern Chinese cities, Hong Kong and Guangzhou. The initial chapters of the book compare how sociocultural changes from World War II to the mid-1980s affected the practices of Chinese martial artists in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong and neighboring Guangzhou in mainland China. An analysis is made of how the practices of Chinese martial artists have been influenced by revolutionary sociocultural changes in both cities. In Guangzhou, the victory of the Chinese Communist Party lead to the disappearance in the early 1950s of secret societies and kungfu brotherhoods. Kungfu brotherhoods reappeared during the Cultural Revolution, and subsequently were transformed again after the death of Mao Zedong, and China’s opening to capitalism. In Hong Kong, dramatic sociocultural changes were set off by the introduction of manufacturing production lines by international corporations in the mid-1950s, and the proliferation of foreign franchises and products. Economic globalization in Hong Kong has led to dramatic increases both in the territory’s Gross Domestic Product and in cultural homogenization, with corresponding declines in many local traditions and folk cultures, including Chinese martial arts. The final chapters of the book focus on changes in the practices of Chinese martial arts in Hong Kong from the years 1987 to 2020, a period which includes the last decade of British colonial administration, as well as the first quarter of a century of rule by the Chinese government.

In the spring of 1959, eighteen-year-old Bruce Lee returned to San Francisco, the city of his birth. Although the martial arts were widely unknown in America, Bruce encountered a robust fight culture in the Bay Area, populated with talented and trailblazing practitioners such as Lau Bun, Chinatown’s aging kung fu patriarch; Wally Jay, the innovative Hawaiian jujitsu master; and James Lee, the Oakland street fighter. Regarded by some as a brash loudmouth and by others as a dynamic visionary, Bruce spent his first few years back in America advocating for a modern approach to the martial arts, and showing little regard for the damaged egos left in his wake. The year of 1964 would be an eventful one for Bruce, in which he would broadcast his dissenting worldview before the first great international martial arts gathering, and then defend it by facing down Wong Jack Man—Chinatown’s young kung fu ace—in a legendary behind-closed-doors showdown. These events were a catalyst to the dawn of martial arts in America and a prelude to an icon. Based on over one hundred original interviews, Striking Distance chronicles Bruce Lee’s formative days amid the heated martial arts proving ground that thrived on San Francisco Bay in the early 1960s.