When a Chinese uses the expression Bai-de (buy-duh) he or she is saying something is plain, simple, unvarnished. The first word, BAI means "white" and the second DE is a reflexive suggesting the quality of, possession of. In English we might say white-colored, white-ish, or simply white. We might also, more correctly but idiomatically capturing the sense of the phrase, say "vanilla".

So white-ish Kung Fu means plain. And what is plain Kung Fu?

There is an Okinawan view on the art of Karate which may help. As the saying goes there are three types of Karate: The first is a woodsman style; strong choppy moves with brisk and brusque accents. Next comes "fisherman" Karate emphasizing the rolling actions of throwing and drawing a net. And last we have "city dweller" Karate which, bluntly put, isn't worth a damn.

There is an issue of competency here, too, often overlooked in the martial arts. By competency I don't just mean that of the performer but also that of the viewer. Vanilla Kung Fu - of the good variety - is completely understandable when you see it if and only if you know something about the martial arts in the first place. If you're inclined to believe in people who quote their tournament records as objective proof of their skills, you are not likely to have a fine-tuned enough sense to see subtlety in simplicity.

But I have seen this maner of Kung Fu performed and the difference is startling. Vanilla Kung Fu is plain almost to the point of awkwardness. The kicks are simply kicks, like a human being would throw not a gymnastic robot. The leg is often bent, the timing almost lazy, the attitude "so what?" instead of the hyperextension we've come to associate with "champions". The limbs are crooked, the joints reserved, the movements constrained. Many sequences are done not only with flow but almost casually as though the performer were too tired to try and pretend that everything was a killing blow. The face never grimaces, the eyes move but the expression is controlled and almost phlegmatic to an agrarian degree.

Sounds a bit boring doesn't it? But occasionally a girl walks in to a room of overpainted, decked out, jaded femmes and a ring of sunlight hits the clearing. Occasionally you see the turn of a an eye or the shadow of a smile and you trust the person speaking from that moment on. Sometimes the taste of an orange is sweeter than the finest pastry.

Besides I haven't even mentioned the shape. Shape is a concept I was lucky to learn early in my career thanks to Sifu Ron Lew. "Every Kung Fu move has a shape," he told me - what?- 30 years hence. And now we can say, yes, and there's a world of meaning just in that. There is simply nothing like the shape of vanilla Kung Fu. Think of Chuang Tzu's useless "stinktree" that is allowed to grow huge and unmolested because it can't be used for anything. Real Kung Fu keeps that shape. You see the hyperextended postures we see nowadays are, forgive me, just the symbols of our ignorance. What I mean is that an audience of intermediate and lower level martial artists would EXPECT fancy stunts, stretched limbs, exaggerated postures: wouldn't they? Is it any wonder they'd get just that. But an old master demonstrating, say, BaJi would just puzzle most people. As would real Hula to many dancers, and true Flamenco to faux afficianados. A George Xu would be interesting, kindof, but more like awkward like almost. The village artists I saw perform in China would look like they were tentative, incomplete, unfinished. (But their presence created an electricity that nothing else could duplicate.) I'm not just saying this, you would see it too. I've bumped into it in all sorts of places: in an Ohio Studio; in a hovel in Shanghai; across a dinner table when I was half on the floor from a drinking game. The humility is not a put-on, the power is not accompanied by vogueing, the body twists like a slow-mo video of a gnarly tree growing on a mountainside. This is the flower you find in the wilds, this is the smell of a perfectly cooked dish of simple food. This is a bowl of rice or a slice of bread with butter when these taste better than a whole meal. This is a cup of tea on a contemplative dawn.

Bai-de Kung Fu is in as great a danger of extinction as the rain forest. Greater: because half its friends are really its enemies. Don't be fooled for an instant because someone's style sounds old, or they come from China, or they claim to have brothers in the Shaolin Temple. There's a war of extinction going on here aided by people who don't really believe that martial arts matters any more and we have to get the kid's attention at any cost, who specialize in bringing the service to the public regardless of the concessions, or that the hope of the future lies in the Olympics, or sports, or impressing people at parties. Without knowing it these diminish the truth while collaborating with those who know how politically powerful martial arts can be, who look on any such non-conforming relations between people as cultic, who love the urban and detest the simple and who are only too happy to be assisted by well meaning co-conspirators. And lost human knowledge is actually part of the plan: like the forgotten languages of Native Americans impossible to recapture along with defunct wisdom, pain and memory.