Almost everyone who comes to a first class carries an image of Kung Fu in their head - and that image almost always comes from a screen. This is not a bad thing. Films brought the art to the West and got a great many people through the door of a hall. But it is worth knowing where film and training part company.
Myth: secret techniques passed on only by word of mouth
A favourite motif: the master who on his deathbed reveals a technique nobody else knows. In reality the Chinese arts are remarkably well documented - manuals survive from the Ming dynasty onwards, and forms were created precisely so that knowledge would not be lost.
What is true: some details really do pass on only in person, because they cannot be written down. But those are not secrets, they are sensations - how weight transfers, when a shoulder releases. For that you need no hidden scroll, only a teacher who corrects you.
Myth: one master against twenty
The most persistent scene in film history, and the most dangerous if anyone believes it. Nobody handles multiple attackers. That is exactly why everything we teach about self-defence points the other way: notice earlier, create distance, leave.
If an art teaches you that you can take on several people, it is not teaching you an art. It is selling you courage.
Myth: flying monks and supernatural abilities
Wires, editing and trampolines. The monks at the Shaolin monastery are extraordinarily well conditioned, which is impressive in itself - but within physics. The same applies to breaking objects: it is a genuine skill, but it is more an exercise in technique and in overcoming fear than proof of fighting ability.
Myth: high kicks are the peak of the art
They look superb on screen, which is why there are so many. In traditional training, low kicks are more common and more useful, and high ones remain chiefly an exercise in mobility and balance. Here film really did reshape the expectations of a whole generation.
What films get right
A surprising amount. Gradualness - years of basics before anything advanced - is often portrayed correctly, if compressed into a montage. So is the relationship between teacher and student, which genuinely is more personal than in most sports. And the Shaolin monastery really exists, while the history of Kung Fu is more interesting than many a screenplay.
Why films are not to blame anyway
Because without them the Chinese arts would have stayed a good deal more closed than they are. It was the film wave of the seventies that opened the door through which the art came West and became available to people who would never have been accepted under the old system.
The only cost is expectation. Anyone arriving with a cinematic picture in their head will be disappointed for the first few hours: no music, no slow motion, and a great deal of repeating the same thing. Those who are not put off by that are very good five years later - and discover that the real art is more interesting than the filmed one.
