Jan/Feb Kung Fu Magazine

[mickey]

Greetings,

The VERY best item about this issue is the second to last paragraph on page 41. That was pure brilliance.


mickey

[GeneChing]

For the rest of you WHO HAVE YET TO PURCHASE YOUR ISSUE, we actually put our cover story online (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=633) and the paragraph mickey is referring to is the second to last in this article.

If you're not subscribed (http://www.martialartsmart.net/19341.html), you can now pick us up at most WalMarts, along with any discerning newsstand. :cool:

[Taijiren]

Just out of curiousity, do you guys make more money if we subscribe or buy off the newstand?

[GeneChing]

We don't even cover production costs with the money we make from subscription or the cover price. No magazine does. Weird, huh? Where magazines make our money is in advertising. For us, that means product sales. Nevertheless, we need both subscribers and newsstand sales.

Just do the math on the subscriptions. Figure out what postage is to send a magazine. Multiply that times six for one year. Subtract that from $15. Divide that by six again, and you get less than our production costs per issue. We actually lose money on the deal. But the more subscribers, the more advertisers are interested. A subscriber base gives a potential advertiser a hard number of people who will see the ad. Now, we don't rely on outside advertisers, so that's not as big of an issue as it is with the mags that rely substantially on outside advertisers, but it's still significant.

As for the newsstand, well, newsstand sales for periodicals is one of the most cutthroat markets there is now. If we fail to sell a certain qouta of issues on the newsstands every issue, the distributors will cut back our numbers, and some other magazine will greedily gobble up our slot. This happens with every single issue. Some of the megabookstores demand 40% point of sale, which is quite high for this industry. Fortunately, we do best in bookstores. The bulk of our newsstand price actually goes back to the distributor. In fact, for many markets, like front stand displays, magazines must pay to be there. We don't buy into that, mostly because we can't afford to do so. Again, the math is not to our favor.

Where do we make the most money, you ask? Actually, we make the most right here online at KungFuMagazine.com (http://www.kungfumagazine.com). No paper costs. No printer costs. No shipping or distribution costs. Just production costs, which are far less than that of the print mag. And we can link directly to product (http://www.martialartsmart.com). That's how we can afford to support this leviathan of a forum. I'll keep the print mag coming as long as it's my watch, but I earn my bread here on the net. ;)

[Dale Dugas]

You earn your baguette and thensome brother Gene.

Got my new subsciption in the mail the other day. Great you guys mail the mag in an envelope to insure that it doesnt get eaten up by the time it reaches me.

Great work as always!

In Boston,

Dale Dugas

[Banjos_dad]

it was a well rounded issue, i thought. Instead of focusing on wing chun, or just Shaolin. i personally liked the Shu Shan Xiao Yao bagua sword article. too bad it's so hard to get the idea of moves from a form, from printed media. Even in a book of 200 pp dedicated exclusively to that subject it would be hard to capture.

one thing that stands out to me though is the article about monitoring who you mentor. seemed like it had sort of an almost hysterical pitch in parts. sure, the message was more or less sound but, hmmm. kung fu witch hunt anyone?
watch out for the purple yin poison.
seriously, no one wants to help coach a spouse abuser etc., but the question of the worthiness of the student, goes back to the day of the first teacher, and the first student.

i like the top left of page 47, but i don't really get it lmao.

also, the free videos are good this month too. i usually don't want to cut up my magazines, but we are going to get jing quan dao v 2, it wasn't an easy choice. i like traditional forms work, but i think in my own personal study i will probably focus more on chin na etc. taking the long view, i think that i will be able to employ chin na at an advanced age than I will be able to punch/kick etc. not that i don't like doing that now.

[mickey]

Re: Page 47 upper left,


It that before the "Rodney King" like beatdown or after?



mickey

[shaolinboxer]

I buy your mag whenever it hits stands now and show it to my kids in my "martial arts club". They love it!

Big ups for continuing to inspire the kids :).

[GeneChing]

As for page 47, that's a one-time advertiser, http://www.bobbyblaylock.com. You got to go to the website to find out more. :)

[mickey]

Greetings,

I went to the site. Mr. Blaylock has a serious eye intensity that reminds me of Superfoot Bill Wallace. They could also be viewed as Svengali-esque. :)


mickey

[GeneChing]

My old fencing master used to say 'look into the eyes, they are the mirrors of the soul". Of course, we wore masks when fencing, so it didn't improve my game much. As for Mr. Blaylock, I only interacted with him over email and he seemed earnest enough. I hope the ad is successful for him. It was quite daring in design.

[million]

How many "***** wrestlers" (p.33) shuai chiao practioners, believe some, any or all of this article? Based on recent post on this subject that this is true or some what true,or not true based on the history-lineage of this style and the people involved in it today that new gm chang or studied under someone that trained with gm chang. Even when david was young,,,,does anyone know or is it like the center of a tootsie pop and the licks it takes to aquire the goods confined in these lolly pops.

[Akronviper]

When did it become David Charng and not David Chang. In the many differnt spellings of Grandmaster Changs name I never seen the Chang spelld different. Is this a misprint or just a new spelling.

[Design Sifu]

mmmmmmm Lolly-pops . . .


so, what was the question?

[GeneChing]

Akronviper: Given the politics of Taiwan and the issues with the Romanization of Chinese characters, any spelling of any word or name out of Taiwan is messy. First of all, romanization of Chinese is messy. There's pinyin, which is what we're all supposed to use (at least according to the UN and the PRC) but that doesn't work for Cantonese (the language of Wing Chun, Hung Gar, and many other prominent styles ). It should work for anything coming out of Taiwan, but Taiwan has issues with PRC, so they tend to spell things however they **** well please. A classic example is the Chaio in Shuai Chiao should be Jiao in proper pinyin. There's no system to Taiwanese spelling that I've been able to determine - it's some sort of seat-of-your-pants romanization *very* loosely based on Wade-Giles. Taiwanese is sort of like Mandarin with an accent (although the Taiwanese would probably say that Beijinghua (Beijing Mandarin) is the accent). The trickest part for me is that 'Ls' are often pronounced like 'Ns' and they tend to like to throw in accents at random (such as t'ai chi - this reflect Wade Giles). Anyway, to get down to the nitty gritty of the name game, Master David Charng spells his name with the 'R' now, which apparently is proper Taiwan spelling, pinyin be ****ed. It's what appears on his business card, so we must honor that. He spells his grandfather's name that way too. Who's right? Well, they both are. If you study Chinese, you'll see what I mean.

million: As for any controversy on Charng's lineage, statements, etc, I thought the article raised a lot of issues. I actually toned down some of Master Charng's comments that were more inflamatory. But keep in mind, I did the interview in English and he speaks a lot with his gestures. When I transposed the interview tape, sans the gestures since it was only audial tape, a lot of what he said became more incendiary because it was out of context of how he was actually expressing himself, so I had to do some judicious editing to try to get at what he was really saying. The cover story is here, for those of you freeloaders who use the forum but don't but the mag (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=633) ;)

[Akronviper]

Thanks Gene, I just knew that a great magazine like this would not make typos through out the article. I have noticed that you can spell things many different ways but just never seen this one. It would have been nice to hear some of David Charngs SC bashing of the others he has seemed to me to be the quite one in the SC battle.

Thanks

[GeneChing]

Thanks for the props, Akronviper, but I'll be the first to admit our mag is riddled with typos. Our standard excuse is that it makes it more authentically Chinese. Of course, the romanization issues like I discussed above don't help, but we've certainly had our share of typos.

Charng wasn't bashing others so much as promoting his style as being 'more complete'. He did have a lot more to say about NHB fights, but I figured that the essence of his message came across in the article as is. With all the promotion of NHB in the media and the other mags, he is one of the first to speak out against it, and for moral reasons. I'd be interested to hear a counter argument, but his accusations have gone unanswered so far.

[Banjos_dad]

you get the Chinese characters in KFM, which is one of the greatest things.
Instead of trying to romanize things without displaying the tones.
My teacher is from Taiwan, and in all the printed matter associted with the school there is no Pinyin. it is all "Kung Fu," "Tai-Chi Chuan," "Pa-Kua," etc.

[GeneChing]

Getting the Chinese characters is always a pain for so many reasons, but we feel it's worth it because it clears up any romanization issues. It's been getting easier to get characters lately with improved technology and more serious researchers; at first, it was a nightmare. It drives Gigi, our publisher, nuts, because that's her department and she is adamant about not making any 'typos' in the Chinese, much more so than the English. I find that funny since we're an English language magazine, but I totally understand and respect where's she's coming from on this. It's actually very challenging to try to go from romanized English back to Chinese characters.