Discussion keeps the worldturning.
This is RoundTable. You're listening to RoundTable.
I'm yourHulling, joined by Steve andYushen.
Coming up on the second half of theshow, we shine a spotlight on the inspiring story of China's Hermes Style female Kung Fuchoupe.
These warriors are not only masters of martialarts, but also ambassadors of Chineseheritage.
Join us as we uncover their journey ofstrength,grace, and culturalpride.
Andtoday, we will embrace my favoritesegment, Round Table's HappyPlace.
This is where we each share something that brought us a touch of happiness over the pastweek.
We hope our stories inspire you to reflect on your own happymoments.
Butnow, the Hermes Style female Kung Fu choupe has garnered significant attention recently for its efforts in promoting traditional Chinese martial artsglobally.
These young women blend Kung Fu with modern flair to showcase China's rich culturalheritage, like neverbefore.
How do they smash stereotypes and spread the spirit of Umei across theglobe?
Tell me aboutit,Yushen.
Well,actually, when I first heard that there is such a female troop on the Hermes Style KungFu, I was so surprised in a way that the way I was broughtup, I watched a lot of fictional TV series on Chinese martial art andstuff.
I used to believe that Umei Style of martial art only exists in those fictions orlegends.
I don'tknow, history ormythology.
It hasn't been really practicedtoday, but has been alreadyproved.
I'm totally wrong aboutthat.
Becauselately, there's like a Umei Style woman's Kung Fu choupe who shot in a video with nine young women showcasing the Umei Style Kung Fu and their iconic weapons and all the fluent movements in a very gracefulway, demonstrating the Chinese traditional culture for KungFu, especially in a Umeistyle, and also the graceful movements combined with dance and just music and costume and everything in one singlevideo.
And the video got so popular that the spokesperson Wang Wenbin of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs actuallyreposted, Ithink, on X or some social media's outside of China that caught global attention aswell.
I was searching about this mountain area in this particular part ofChina.
It was really fun to search about the history of Umei Kung Fu because I had never heard of itbefore.
I think internationally Shaolin style isknown,right, the Shaolin monks arevery, very well knowninternationally, but I learned that there's the Wudang style of Kung Fu and then there's the Umei style aswell.
So this is what Ifound. Umei originated in 21st century BC in the Mount Umei area of Sichuan province and it was created by a Kung Fumaster.
His name was Shi Tu ZhuangGong.
Have you ever heard of himbefore?
No,perfect.Okay,perfect.
So he initiated the behavior of the white apes that lived in the mountainarea.
It was in part designed after the behavior of the whiteapes, which I thought wasreally, reallycool.
So they say it's categorized by the movements of hands andfeet, particularly the constant changing position of yourfeet.
Veryquick, it's veryforceful.
And I watched another video as well from a master and eighth degree black belt who's been studying it for over 40years.
And he was saying that part of the design as well was inspired by the Sichuanregion.
So in hiswords, notmine, people from the region are quite short or relativelysmall.
Sotherefore, the design of Umei Kung Fu is about being able to attack a stronger person than youare.
Again, those aren't mywords.
Those are the Kung Fu master'swords.
That's just a little bit of background about the style of Kung Fu that we're talking abouthere.
Yes. And there are different styles of Kung Fu here inChina.
Youknow,internationally, maybe people would think about JackieChen, would think about LiXiaolong, these Kung Fumasters.
And they thinkabout,ah, we would tweet our strengths likewater.
We are verygentle, but we're verypowerful.
Butactually, that kind of philosophy runs in a lot of different styles of Kung Fu here inChina.
The main idea is that we can utilize all of ourstrengths.
And by doingso, we might be able to defeat an enemy that is much bigger and maybe stronger thanus.
That's the generalconcept.
But like Steve hassaid, for different styles anddifferent, specifically in differentmountains,actually, they have different specific styles andcombos.
And it is not promoted enough in myopinion.
And this promotional video by these nine ladies is quite a good way to make more people know about more styles of Chinese KungFu.
And these ladies are making it not only verystressful, but also quite elegant andbeautiful.
Yeah, at least in thevideo, I believe they kind of choreographed it into a word like blended dance movement intoit.
But if you see their practicing videos on a dailybasis, because they're not there just to be popular or to be knownby, youknow, onlinefolks, but rather they're an actual Kung Fu troop who practice Lume style Kung Fu everyday.
If you see their practicingvideo, they actuallyjust, they hit prettyhard, but they're also swift and elegant aswell.
It just demonstrates some sort of like an internal energy that's harbor by these feminine Kung Fu practitioners who can gracefully integrate the movement together with their owncharm.
Butwhat, youknow, Chinese Kung Fu is like best knownfor.
It's not really known for its bulking size of the practitioner or really like Stevesaid, like how harsh itdoes.
Some of it originates from animalmovements.
There's like mantisstyle.
And previously we were talking about dancedrama,remember?
There were one dance drama that was very famous that's actually adapted from one of those very famous Cantonese Kung Fu style called the WingChun, where Yong Chun inChinese.
That's like a very good example of how popular martial art movement is these daysthat, youknow, big IPs actually use dance drama to promote the Kung Fuin, youknow, to the general public in such a modernway.
Andalso,like, short people defeating big tall enemies is not really aChinese.
Like a Chinese thingonly, like I've been practicingArnise, which is the Filipino martial art that uses sticks for like around twoyears.
In the theory of Arnise is the samething.
Like they don't need to be as tall or as strong as their enemy because we know that the Philippines used to be dominated by Spanishtroops.
So the idea is to besharp, befast, beflexible, be able to dodge and give enough time for you to react to whatever movement that's thrown atyou.
In themeantime, you're able toattack.
I think it's the same philosophy here in Wing Chun in Lume style and many other Asian Kung Fu styles aswell.
Is this why we've seen you walking around the office with sticks inthere?
Becareful,homie. Don't sparerumors.
This is your shot is a sweetgirl.
SoSteve, you've seen thevideo.
You've watched thevideo.
Yes, it's really popular online from a relatively outsider's pair ofeyes.
What do you think are the highlights of thevideo?
What makes it so popularinternationally?
I think you're combining two artforms.
People who study martial arts will tell you it's not about fighting perse.
It's about the art ofit.
It's also a lifestyle aswell.
So when you take that form of art and then you combine it with the other form of art that they'reusing, which isdance.
And then you combine that with the beautiful mountainscenery.
You put it alltogether.
It just lookscool. It's aestheticallypleasing.
And I think internationally what makes it so popular is that inCanada, inAmerica, inEngland.
Ofcourse, there are students of Taekwondo andWushu.
But I think it still somehow is so foreign to a foreignaudience.
So to see it come fromChina, performed by an extremely talented troop of female martialartists.
I think that's all of it put together is what makes it sopopular.
Yes. And if we talk about the troop actually Lingyuan is the leader of thetroop.
She was born in Yang AnSu-Chuan, South EasternChina.
And in her 20snow, sheis.
She started practicing martial arts at the age of four and formerly began learning Ur-Me martial arts at Mount Ur-Me when she was11.
Now she's an inheritor of Ur-Me martialarts.
So Ur-Me martial arts is actually a culturalheritage.
And in thefuture, Lingyuan plans to innovate on the basis of the traditional martial arts by incorporating futuristic and technological elements into the exercising and at least a displaying of this special art form like Stevesaid, it's the combination of two artforms.
And here comes thequestion, what's the combination of these two artforms?
Will people think this is more of an act of a performance than a actual martial artaccount?
That's a fairquestion, Ithink,right?
Like what are we actually looking athere?
What's the point ofthis?
And I guess you'd have to ask the female troop what their goalis.
But art issubjective. So I think to counterpoint what yousaid.
Yeah, some people might watch it andsay,oh, what am I watchinghere?
Am I watching dance or am I watching KungFu?
But if it means something else to you watching thatvideo, if you seedance, then you seedance.
If you see KungFu, then you see KungFu.
If you see both of themtogether, I think that's probably the goal of theartists.
Butagain, artistssubjective.
So people will take away from the video what they want to take away from thevideo.
And if through watching thevideo, they feellike,huh, this little may style Kung Fu isinteresting.
Let me take a deeper look into it to let me go online and research a little bit aboutit.
And maybe let me go visit the Mount Ume and learn one or twomoves.
So if you're a younggirl,right, interested in learning martial arts and youthink,oh,well, I've seen the Jackie Chan movies and I guess this is formen,right?
And we know that it's not just formen.
There was a study done in New York Cityand,oh, I forget theyear.
It was a few yearsago. It was done by a market researchcompany.
And I think that the world has found that48% of the people who were taking Taikwondo classes werewomen.
So it's not maledominated, but I think that perception still exists insociety.
So I think one of the greatthings, one of the great things that could happen from this video is that young girls could see this andsay,oh, I'm interested inthis.
And I want to be likethem.
I want to do thistoo. It's a beautiful way to seethat,Steven.
Also, that's the main reason why I practice martial art in away.
But in themeantime, I kind of answering to Holen's questions thisnow.
I just hope that the generalpublic, when they see videos assuch, ofcourse, the promotional side of the martial art itself is rightthere.
You can just see the movement and be wowed by it and maybe try to search for it and learn aboutit.
Butwell, at the end of theday, it's just part of somebody'slife.
It's the nine girls daily life topractice.
It's part of maybe other Kung Fu style practitioners life or daily routine to blend themselves with the martial art practice aswell.
And you know howLingyun, the girl who leads the nine girls troop gotfamous.
It was a video of her photographingherself, droppinggarbage.
But leaving her home going down to the ground floor and droppinggarbage.
But instead of just dropping garbage into the garbage bin like wedo, she practiced the wholemovement.
She dramatically threw the garbage into the bin in a very cool and the martial art kung fuway.
So that is how Lingyun gotfamous.
And that is how she started to plan out or maybe someone from the little ladystyle, where the mountain where like her school plan out this whole school or like the troop that we see are so popularizedtoday.
So still like I mentionedearlier, just hope that you know people see it and realize this cool and know that it's someone's lifestyle out there and normalize the idea that a lot of people practice kung fu is prettycool.
It is prettycool. And I think it's Steve has also made a really good point that we do not talk about female martial artists enough forQuentin.
Yeah, there's movierepresentation,right?
Imean, everything everywhere all at once withMichelle.
Yeah, my favoritemovie.
Right, that's that was a funmovie.
And that's representation rightthere.
The Quentin Tarantinofilm, KillBill, Umatherman played a really toughcharacter.
That's one of my favoritemovies.
So there there is representation in popculture.
Michelle, how can we not talk about crouching tiger hint anddragon.
There is representation in popculture, but it just feels like it's not really enough representation for young women to to look up to in terms of role models within martialarts.
And actually in China and in Chineseculture, we do have a lot of femalefigures.
We have historic figures throughout Chinesehistory.
There have been notable female warriors and martial artists who achieved fame for their skills andvigor.
Examples include FuHao, the first documented female military commander in Chinese history and also a highly accomplished politician during the Shan Dynasty and Liang Fu Ren who fought against the German invaders during the SongDynasty.
And of course in martial art novels andmovies, we have Huang Rong Xiaolong Yu in all these different martial art novels and martial artmasterpieces, the legend of the CondorHeroes, the return of the CondorHeroes, and the modernaspiration.
Well, it's really funny you mentioned Fu Hao because I was watching this cartoon earlier that Fu Hao is likethe, I think the first documented Chinese general ever existed in ancient Chinesehistory.
It was during the ShanDynasty, which is between 1646BC.
So that's like very long time ago and her husband was the emperor who gave commands inside while the wife fights battles and win battles forhim.
So it's like a very interesting combination and back in history that youknow, like the you willbusiness.
Exactly. Theopposite,right?
The ladies are out there fighting and winning wars while the guysinside, youknow, managingbusiness.
Talking about a long timeago, I mentioned those films that I justmentioned, but I looked up other films that I haven't seenbefore.
Chinese martial arts films where women were represented and I wonder if you've heard of this1966.
It's called Come Drink WithMe.
It's a King Whofilm.Yeah, you've never heard of itbefore.
I thought it was quite interesting though because this is from1966, but this is a woman led martial arts film that they say in the martial arts genre is a certified classic here in the country and obviously internationally as well because youknow, this article was written inEnglish.
Starring Cheng Pei Pei as the mainprotagonist.
Oh, Zhong PeiPei.Yeah, so it follows GoldenSwallow, a fighter for hire asked with a mission to retrieve the government's kidnapped son next to the plotline of thestate.
I'm going to watchit. I like Zhong PeiPei.
She's a really goodactor.
I want to watchit, but it's just evidence as well that there has been female representation infilm.
This is a 1966movie. But maybe more today would be good to see aswell.
Yes, and we talk about these women playing an important role in martial artpromoting, but it's also part of the culturalheritage.
And one interesting thing I noticed is that when it comes to Chinese culturalheritage, we tend to think about women's rolein, forexample, embroidery or a papercutting.
Something relatively stayingstill,elegant,grace, relatively skillful and graceful and stayingstill.
And women's image is towards thatdirection.
But with martialart, with these nine ladies promoting Chinese comfort to theworld.
Alsograceful. Alsoskillful.
Yes, but also very stressful andpowerful.
And that is something I find quite amazing and empoweringto,right?
Yes. In this day andage, the difference or the distinction between two genders is getting smaller andsmaller.
We believe that men can be very careful and tender and taking careof, forexample, gindergarten kids aswell.
And women in the same time can be also verypowerful, can fight against enemy and can do whatever mencan.
So this type of sterile type breaking is making me veryinspired.
Inspired enough to go to the Uyme mountain and learn the ways of the whiteapes.
I can tryit. I guess in thefuture.
So I guess witnessing the Uyme style female Kung Fu tube in action is the testament to the transformative power of art andtradition.
Their dedication and creativity show us that true mastery comes from embracing both old andnew.
And their story encourages us to pursue excellence in all ourendeavors, no matter thefield.
We're listening to round table coming up next roundtables.
Happyplace.Delivery.
Delivery.Delivery. What isit?
Happiness from roundtable.
It's the hour of round table withmyself, NeilHolien, Steve Hatterley and UShen.
Now let's spread some positivity and joytogether.
SoSteve, what is our happyplace?
I have a double happyplace.
I have a triple happyplace.
And they're allconnected.
Have youheard, I'll start withthis.
Have you heard of the documentary about the terracotta warriors called mysteries of the terracottawarriors?
This is a new documentary that came out on a streaming site thisyear, maybe within thelast, I don'tknow, a fewmonths, a couple ofmonths.
Anyway, I watched that documentary and I watched it as I was planning my trip toXi'an, which is where the terracotta warriorsare.
And this was all planned out byme.
So I wanted to watch the documentary first and then get on the train in the morning and go to Xi'an and visit the sitemyself.
And then while I wasthere, I had some greatfood, which I'll get to in just asec.
But just for our listeners who may not have heard of this documentarybefore, if you can findit, I think it's definitely worth awatch.
So this is thesynopsis.
Teams ofarchaeologists, scientists and historians work together to uncover answers to one of China's most fascinatingperiods.
In1974, farmers digging a well stumbled upon what is known as the terracottawarriors.
The reason I love the documentary so much is because there's a lot of history to learnthere, but also there are elements of the documentary that are dramatized aswell.
So EmperorQin, his reign only lasted for a short period oftime.
And then there was drama with what happened with his sons in the aftermath of hispassing.
All of that part is dramatized in thedocumentary.
So you get that with the history lesson plus the visuals of the terracottawarriors.
I was blown away by thedocumentary.
Then the nextmorning, I went toXi'an.
That's socool. I saw the realthing.
And if you ever have the opportunity to gothere, it'sstunning.
It's mindblowing. If it's not the largest archaeological site in theworld, it's one of the largestdefinitely.
There's so much to take in while you'rethere.
My biggesttakeaway, I guesspersonally, was the faces of the terracottawarriors.
I'm sure youknow, but they're alldifferent.
And when you take your camera out and you zoom in and you kind of look around at the different faces that are all meant to represent the people of thetime, it's justastonishing.
Thehistory, theartistry, the artist were all brought from around theregions, various regions to make these terracottawarriors.
And to see it in person is just it's a it's a once in a lifetime experience forsure.
It's the place you would recommend to fellow foreign experts or anyone who's visiting China to go and have a lookat.
And while you'rethere, you need to eat the help me out because I know youknow, it's one of the greatest things I've ever eaten in mylife.
Now, I know you can get it here in Beijing aswell.
And I don't know if it originated fromXi'an, but I can say when you're inXi'an, you'll see this at almost everyrestaurant.
It's definitely a localspecialty.
Yeah, that's what they said on theinternet.
So ofcourse, when you travel to aregion, you have to try the localspecialties.
I tried ittwice. Thefirst,oh, I have to describe what thisis.
So it's kind of a pork sandwich inside apita.
And some restaurants will deep fry thatpita.
So it's nice and greasy andoily.
And then some restaurantswon't.
I triedboth, one that didn't and one thatdid.
I recommend getting the oily one whenever you eatit.
And you canget, Ithink, different types ofmeat.
You can get lamb or pork inthere.
And it was OMGlevel.Yeah.
And if it's really hotsummertime, couple it with a cold soda or with some coldnoodles, justtasty.
And it's you want tosay, So there's my happy place thisweek.
It was a tripleone. The documentary about the terracottawarriors, my trip to Xi'an to seethem.
Andthe... I got to practice thatone.
To put the cherry on top of the wholetrip.
Yes, that'sgreat. It sounds like a very happy happyplace.
Itwas. How aboutyou,Yushan?
Well, my happy place is that on June22nd, I attended a concert that I've been waiting for so long that is conducted by the world renowned Maestro Zubimata in the concert hall of NCPA or National Center for the Performing Arts at the heart ofBeijing,China.
And this classical music concert was joined by the orchestra or orchestra del magio musicalFjolendino, sorry it's inItalian, trying mybest.
And also a young Genzi German violinist who didamazing.
And together they played Beethoven's only complete violinconcerto, the violin concerto in Dmajor.
So a huge shout out to all the violin practitioners and also lovers of music done byviolin.
Go listen to thisone. This is like a world classicalpiece.
And I was really honored and glad and happy that I was finally able to see Zubimata inperson.
Like he was like a few metersaway, but he's there breathing the same air as I did in the same concerthall.
And that felt amazing and seeing him and that Genzi violinist performing my favorite violin piece right in front ofme.
And also in the second half of that concert they performed Beethoven's popular SymphonyNo.
7 in A Major to show what classical music looks like at thispinnacle.
So in general it's just like a very eye widening gaze widening and impressive concert that I haven't had quitelong.
Well I pay visits to classical music concerts kind of often like on a monthlybasis, but it's been a while since I've been wowed likethat.
And the honor of being able to see Zubimata in person is also kind of quite an experience forme.
I was meant to join NCPA's opera production forAyaida.
I'm not sure if you've heard of thatone.
That's a very popular Italian operaproduction.
But I purchased tickets for that one too last year just to you know see him faraway.
But unfortunately the 88 year old Maestrowas, he felt sick last year so he didn't make it to thetrip.
But it's just such a blessing that he made it this year and I got to bethere.
Great foryou. I'm very glad you had that perfectexperience.
Oh the power of music right it can be almost spiritual attimes.
So that's great that you had such a greattime.
Thank you everybody was like faithful in the concert hall aswell.
And life performance is definitely different for those of you who haven't had experience and feelinglike, huh I can listen to myphone, I can listen to mycomputer.
It's definitelydifferent.
Go check out a lifeperformance.
You will loveit. That brings us to the end of today's roundtable which love to hear your thoughts on today'stopics.
Just leave us a comment wherever you listen to your podcast and maybe a five star review aswell.
Until next time keep the conversations going and the ideasflowing.
I'm your homelain with Steve and youShent.
