I Just Have To...

The Hakka Tulou: World Heritage treasures

The Hakka Tulou: World Heritage Treasures

Published in Confucius Institute Magazine.Number 29. Volume VI. December 2013.

"The Hakka Tulou are large circular houses, mainly distributed in the bordering areas of Fujian Province (South China), mostly built between the 12th and the 20th centuries for defence purposes. These vernacular structures were occupied for a Hakka clan as housing for up to 800 people each."

[Jonathan Bluestein posted this article from Confucius Institute Magazine on his Facebook page, for which I am grateful. Anyone possessing familiarity with Chinese arts knows that many are classed as 'Hakka arts'. Here are the amazing houses that some of the Hakka call home. I'd like to see them firsthand someday. Click on the title above to read the entire article. I'm looking forward to perusing other articles in this online magazine. Thanks, Jonathan!]

Castlerock Museum...

It looks like there is an arms and armor museum in Wisconsin, Castlerock Museum, not too far from where my daughters live. I can't wait to go. They put on plenty of events and lectures. My grandchildren will love the place. It looks like the exhibits are pretty good quality, and cover from the Greco-Roman period to the early modern. Here is a link to their Facebook page, as well.

Changing Emphasis...

My old martial arts-oriented blog emphasized SE Asian arts, especially those of Indonesia, the Indochinese and Thailand. While there will still be some material from those areas/cultures, I have found my interests turning towards the traditional Chinese martial arts, especially xinyi liuhe quan/xingyiquan, bajiquan/piguazhang, and baguazhang.  Possibly southern praying mantis (there is a school where it is taught near my daughters and grandchildren). I've also found an interest in traditional archery and the old Western/European martial arts.


While a younger generation of Western and SE Asian silat teachers have been rising to prominence, there is still a problem with old school politics and I just don't have much patience for it these days. Life is too short. Also, I have some difficulty accessing many of these teachers. At the hospital where I work we have to sign up for annual leave the year before. That makes attending seminars in other states very difficult (to down right impossible). Maybe I'll feel differently when we move to the Great Lakes area. I will be much closer to a lot of the action then.

Archery Tag - Archery Combat Action!

There is a new sport on the horizon called Archery Tag™. Sort of archery meets paintball, or dodgeball (according to their website). According to the website it is already going global, with locations on every continent except Antarctica. I would love to try this. I need to get some archery equipment together and give it a try. There's a location in Woodburn, south of Portland, and there are a couple out in Wisconsin, where my grandkids are.



Horse Archery!...

Traditional archery is something that has been of growing interest to me lately. I can't afford to start the hobby before we move, but I've been looking around on the Internet at what's out there. Its very encouraging. I have a good friend who owns one of Istvan Toth's Hungarian horse bows, that they purchased from Seven Meadows Archery, or one of its vendors. I look forward to when I can get a horsebow, and someday go along firing arrows at a full gallup...lol.

Here's an absolutely stunning traditional Turkish horsebow made by Saluki Bows. Amazing work.

Kassai Lajos has been an instrumental figure in the resurgence of horse archery as an international sport. The Hungarian can put three arrows downrange at a target in six seconds...at a full gallop! Its no wonder the Central Asian and Middle Eastern horsemen often tore up European forces. The photo below is of Istvan Toth, one of the premier makers of traditional bows, another Hungarian, who is associated with Seven Meadows.


Looking at these pictures, its easy to understand the attraction of horse archery as a sport. At least for me. Just brings to mind all sorts of associations. Need I mention LOTR and the Riders of Rohan. I also remember the stunning horsemanship of the (real!) Mongols in the ancient miniseries Marco Polo. Strangely enough, I've done extensive genealogy work for my family and if the old records are true I have VERY distant ancestors who were amongst the nomadic Magyars who settled the plains of Hungary. There are various events held here in the NW. I'm going to try and get to one before we move and check them out.

Ancient Technologies...

[This is a reprint of a piece I posted on my old blog about seven years ago. I just saw a clip the other day where they were discussing the urumi so this seemed like something worth saving...SMV.]


We watched a couple of episodes of Ancient Discoveries today. They were looking at various military technologies, some from the ancient world and others from Asia. It was very interesting. We often think of people in the past being rather primitive. If military technologies are any indication, they were anything but. They showed us early frogmen; jungle crossbows of the Champa and Khmer; Chinese wagons loaded with automatic crossbows fired by the turning of the wagon wheels; a couple of incendiary weapons; the punji-stake traps used successfully by the Vietnamese not only against us, but against the Mongols who invaded their land, both on land and in the water, sinking most of a Mongol fleet; the murderous trap-door couch of Chandragupta with which he eliminated powerful enemies (by dropping them into a spiked pit); and many more. There were a couple of Indian weapons they showed. The first is the urumi, a flexible weapon used in kalaripayattu, an indigenous martial art style found across the Indian subcontinent. Basically, the urumi (or chuttuval) is a sword with one or more flexible steel blades, as much as 5-1/2 feet long. Most popular in the state of Kerala, it is a fearsome weapon, and it is said that a practitioner once killed nine of his foes in a single engagement.

The second weapon is called the chakram, or war quoit, and is a throwing weapon. Used by the Sikhs, it varies in diameter from 5 to 12 inches, is capable of ranges of up to forty yards, and appears capable in larger sizes of removing a person's limb (or possibly their head). On the show, it easily severed large stalks of cane sugar. The weapon has been immortalized, both in the movies and on TV. The Bond villain, Oddjob, employed a deadly bowler hat that was basically a chakram, while the warrior princess, Xena, also used them on the TV show.

Also of interest was the Japanese horro - something akin to a silken parachute that was attached to the back of high-ranking warriors' armor. If they had to retreat - oops, sorry - strategically withdraw - it billowed out behind them, and served to defeat most arrows fired at it. Tests on the show demonstrated a success rate of 70%, quite amazing really. Another interesting defensive item was the Chinese scale armor made from layers of lacquered, or resin-treated paper. It was quite effective at stopping bolts from the inexpensive crossbows issued to the levies.

On the Issue of Humor...

This won't be a blog filled with endless memes and jokes. A little humor, however, is important in life. Soldiers certainly welcome it in the middle of war. And I wanted to post something tonight, but these were about as much as I could handle with the nasty headache I have right now.

Some Humor...

Everything Old is New Again...

The pictures below are of the only remaining Japanese armor for dogs, dating from the early 1800's (mid-to-late Edo period). The picture of the mail-clad Dachsund, well...

My Battle Plan...

Time gets away from you if you aren't careful. It did for me. I turned fifty late in 2015.  It is an odd thing to contemplate.  I have read that we are not as “present” as we age: we decide this experience is like memory 73b, while that one is a 52a, etc., instead of taking each moment as new. I think that is correct. Time management hasn't been my strong point since returning from Iraq.  War changes people.

Chronic injuries, fallout from the war, and illnesses major and minor have been allowed to dominate my life. Add to that the loss of our parents, my wife’s half-sister and aunt; our younger daughter’s divorce and move home; and several other family-related issues, and I'm in the worst shape I've been in for many years. 

After several false starts, the time to turn things around has arrived. I am the most focused that I have been in years, and it feels good. It took me years to fall to where I am now so it is going to be a long road for me. If there is one thing I learned from military service, though, it is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Crazy thing is, as an out-of-shape, overweight man of fifty, I am looking forward to it.

Goals are important in life, doubly so in a venture of this sort. So, what do I need to do?  

• Cultivate a positive, motivated mental state.
• Get more rest. I've got to stop burning my candle at both ends.
• Eat right. No more junk food and beverages. LOTS of greens, veggies, fruits and water.
• Rebuild my endurance while building muscle. Get strong. Get stronger still. Body weight calisthenics seem the best route.
• Regain my flexibility. Lots of Taoist yoga and qigong/neigong, power yoga, and silat yoga.
• Walking, cycling and swimming. With my legs, running is out.
• Lose about sixty pounds by the end of 2017. I will regroup then and see where I'm at.
• As for martial arts, I’ll be practicing American Kuntao Silat as a distance student. We plan to relocate to the Wisconsin area early next year, so I don’t see much point in trying to take a class locally. I’m also planning to supplement that with a distance class in the internal Chinese arts, but haven’t decided on a particular one yet. I’m still weighing the options.

This is where I'm going to chart my journey as I renew my commitment to healing and the martial arts. Come along with me if you like. I'll learn things from you.  I hope that you learn things from me, too.  And we'll both be better for it. 

Masaaki Hatsumi, Soke of the Bujinkan, said, “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter! Try again. Fail again. Fail better! Understand? Good. Play.”

About the Blog...

I began blogging in 2005, deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, then began a martial arts blog, Steven’s Training Hall, back in 2008. Time passed and my blogging output dwindled to almost nothing as other priorities came to the fore.

It is time, once again, to blog so I am starting over. Like my old dress green uniform, those early blogs belong to my past; they no longer "fit".  Over the next few weeks, I will relocate some old posts here that I feel are worth keeping.

This blog is intended to reflect my interests in combative and martial arts. A long time hobbyist, I began in my teens with high school fencing and shinai fighting at SCA events, a Korean composite art called Hap Do Sool, and Tony Gneck’s expression of Muay Thai. Since then I have studied Indonesian Pencak Silat and Indochinese Kuntao Silat, and had exposure to Bujinkan Ninpo Taijutsu, Aikido, U.S. Army Combatives, Gao-style Bagua Zhang, and other arts.

The flip side are the healing arts and they’ll make appearances here, too. I spent nine years as a combat medic and served with the infantry both in Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, and currently work as a cardiac telemetry technician at a VA hospital. I’ve dabbled with massage, reflexology, herbalism, and energetic healing.

My other blogs will embrace living life, family and a better world; matters relating to my writing career (in its infant stage), family history and genealogy, and other topics of personal interest; and the growing and cooking of good food and drink. Links are also listed in the right hand column.

Anyway. I hope you enjoy my blog. My mind runs in many directions. Explore. Relax. Make yourself at home. Let's talk.