Jump to content
Best wishes to everyone, and best wishes for the New Year. Love from Liv, Kit, and Nathan, our tech guru! ×
Best wishes to everyone, and best wishes for the New Year. Love from Liv, Kit, and Nathan, our tech guru!

Recommended Posts

  • 7 months later...
Posted

Re:  The Chronicles of Tao

 

I was lent this book by my tai chi instructor.  He told me that he found it interesting in parts but also that he was skeptical of its claim to be a biography as some of the stories are quite fantastic.  I read about 30-40 pages of it before my curiosity got the better of me and I began to research its author a bit, but mostly its subject Kwan Saihung.  It was fairly fascinating to me, even more so perhaps than if the book were true and not a pastiche of Chinese legends borrowed or stolen from other sources.

 

After looking into it, it seems likely to me that Kwan Saihung is really a person named Frank Kai who was born a couple of decades after the birth date of 1920 given for Kwan Saihung in The Chronicles of Tao.  Here’s a video of “Kwan Saihung” demonstrating chi kung:

 

https://vimeo.com/36704204

 

It’s interesting to me how he and the author fabricated this elaborate story and most anyone can see that he’s neither a great martial artist nor 90 some years old, but he’s probably more or less committed to it by now (although I think the author no longer stands by his initial claim of the biographical nature of the book).

 

There’s a thread on a forum called the dao bums: http://thedaobums.com/topic/27637-deng-blofield-works-is-it-ethical/where the user shanlung bluntly expresses his righteous indignation over the plagiarism by Deng Ming Dao, eventually gets warned by a moderator and then leaves the forum for good.  I’ve decided to share it because as I was reading it I was laughing so hard that tears were coming out of my eyes; it made me feel fortunate that I was introduced to the Chronicles of Tao saga.  So for me the secondary writings are superior to Chronicles of Tao which, because of its convoluted backstory, if nothing else makes it a fascinating and occasionally amusing study for literary and philosophical issues.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...