Oh, why do they do this?

Who is ready for some more depressing news about martial arts and China? I bet you are. Anyway, here’s the latest in a long line of Taiji magic tricks that don’t fool anybody:

“We’re challenging these Thais to a match in the spring, I need to show these fighters to my master in Henan,” explained Chen Jia. “It’s going to be televised all over China.”

This is the story of how a Taiji group organised a challenge match against a group of pro Thai boxers. Original article here:

http://fightland.vice.com/blog/taiji-vs-muay-thai-the-fight-i-put-a-stop-to

If you know anything about Thai Boxers then you know that this would be the equivalent of a group of school children challenging a Special Forces unit to a gun battle. The author, realising this, tries to stop it going ahead, thinks he has, but at the end of the article it says the fight went ahead anyway, and the Taiji guys won 3-2, with no further explanation. Winning 3 to 2 sounds amazingly good for the Taiji guys, especially considering who they were fighting.

But then another article appeared recently with a further explanation:

http://thelastmasters.com/taiji-vs-muay-thai/

“So I got the links and watched the fights. Sadly, this “match-up” was exactly what everyone says fights in China are like. The fights were rigged – Chinese fighters wore black pants to hide shinguards, referee saved Chinese fighters from anything more than a 3-punch combo, Thai guys were paid to take a fall.”

I’m not surprised at all, this is the way everything seems to be done in China. It’s such a continual disappointment, and another reason why the Chinese Martial Arts are in such a poor state.

“A girl atop Huashan outside of Xi’an told me once that “fakery is a part of our Chinese culture,” and she said it with a measure of pride. The trickster has always been a hero in Chinese culture, and held above the great warriors who must eventually sacrifice themselves for either cause or country, while the schemer survives. That tradition, combined with a half-century of non-stop brutal lies and another three decades of desperate money mongering, has reached its most bloated moment.

I don’t think the moment can last forever, and I believe a cleansing of the martial arts will hasten the end of a century of lying.”

I’m not so optimistic, I think it will just continue like this forever until there is a change of government in China and an explosion of democracy. Until then we’re going to get stuff like this on Chinese TV. I wonder if the Chinese people know it’s fake, or not? Sigh.