Introduction 1
NOTES Introduction 1. One immediately encounters a “term problem” in discussing a phenomenology of race. Terms such as “Chinese” and “white” suddenly become woefully inadequate (as if they were not so already). I try to address this problem in a straightfor- ward way: when I wish to call attention to the term problem within the context of my arguments, I place quotation marks around terms like “Chinese,” “Euro-American,” “foreigner,” “white,” et cetera. When I momentarily ask that the reader accept these categories, for example, in my discussion of Chinese history and Chinese American immigration, I refrain from using quotation marks. 2. Gongfu, commonly written in English as “kung fu,” also refers to “skill,” “work,” or “time.” The “kung fu” that has become part of American vernacular functions in English as a kind of catch-all term for Chinese martial arts, but it is more often used this way in Chinese, for example, when the conversation revolves around foreign practice of martial arts or when the term wushu is avoided. Wushu is the term for “martial arts” in Mandarin Chinese, but it has acquired a complicated associa- tion with performance-oriented martial arts that have little or nothing to do with combat training. Practitioners will usually refer to a particular art by its style name or family association. 3. The style is properly referred to as “Wu style taijiquan” (Wu shi taijiquan). When I conflate “Wu” and “Ma” family names, my purpose is to specify the lineage that has developed through the married couple of Ma Yueliang and Wu Yinghua.
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